roll20-character-sheets/Ars_Magica_5th/documentation.md

Sheet Documentation

Welcome the th Ars Magica 5th Edition character sheet. This page contains the documentation for the sheet.

Experience

The fields for experience work as follows:

• the first number is your xp towards the next level. You can edit it.
• the second number is the xp needed to reach the next level. It is readonly.
• the third number is the total xp needed to reach your current level. It is readonly.

Rolls and roll buttons

The sheet contains a number of button that roll dice, known as roll button. There are the three button right to the tabs: Roll, Botch and Critical (in english, they might be translated to your language):

• Roll rolls a 10-sided die, with no particular results (roll20's default formatting for 1s and 10s is disabled)
• Botch handles rolling botch dice, see below
• Critical handles critical rolls, see below

There are also die-shaped roll buttons in the sheet near interesting totals (characteristics, abilities, spells etc.) for easy rolling. This sheet supports both simple dice and stress dice, for all of them.

Roll configuration

In the configuration section (above this documentation), you will find a setting for how you want to handle simple vs. stress rolls:

• on "both", you will have two roll buttons, the plain one rolling a simple die, the red & gold one rolling a stress die
• on "toggle", a new button will appear left to the "Roll" button. It display the current type of roll, and you can click on it to toggle between simple and stress dice

Simple die

The icon for simple dice is a plain die, without particular colouring. When you roll a simple die from the sheet, the result in chat will be coloured grey or white (note it is colorless).

A simple die has no special results, so no further formatting is needed.

Stress die

The icon for stress dice is a die with a red side, and a gold side, reflecting the possibility of a botch or a critical roll. When you roll a stress die from the sheet, the result will be coloured:

• brown or khaki if the result is nothing special
• red on a botch
• gold on a critical (natural 1)

The formula for a stress die (you can see it by hovering over a result, see also "Labels" below) is quite complex, but does something simple:

• on a 10, the value will be 0. You then roll botch dice to see if you botch
• on a critical (natural 1), the value will also be 0
• Otherwise, the result is whatever was rolled

Botch

When you roll a 10, the formula for a stress die yields a value of 0 (though other modifiers will apply). A roll of 10 can be easily seen, as the result will be bright red. You must then roll botch dice. To roll botch dice, you have to equivalent options:

• click on Botch right to the tabs on top of the sheet
• click the "botch!" button n direclty in the chat near the result

In the configuration section (above this documentation), you will find a setting for how you want to roll botch dice:

• on "separate", all botch die will be displayed individually in the chat, and you choose the number of botch dice with a dropdown menu (limited to 8 botch dice)
• on "grouped", only the total number of botch will be displayed (i.e. the number of 1s rolled). You enter the number of botch dice as a number. You can still see the individual rolls by hovering on the result in chat

When you do botch (i.e roll 10s), the output will be coloured bright red.

Critical

When you roll a natural 1 on a stress die, you rolled a critical. The result will be displayed in bright gold colour. In that case, the formula for a stress die has value 0, so that you can add the result of the dice to your modifiers and bonuses. To roll the critical dice, you have two nearly equivalent options:

• click on the Critical button right to the tabs
• click the "critical!" golden text next to the result in chat

In both case, you will be asked for the previous total (just copy-paste the value), and the die special Ars Magica 5th doubling die will be rolled and added (the formula does now you already rolled at least a 1s, and so must multiply by at least 2). The displayed result is the sum, i.e. the final result.

Warning

When you crit on a spontaneous casting roll or initiative roll, always use the "critical!" golden text next to the result in chat. Those button do not call the standard critical roll, but specific ones:

• For spontaneous rolls, it takes into account the divide by 2
• For initiative rolls, it will set your token's initiative in the turn tracker

As the exploding rolls of Ars Magica are quite hard to handle, there's a caveat in the formula if you use 3D dice in roll20: the last result you see on screen is wrong as the last rolled die is rerolled. This is because the formula splits the roll in two parts:

• the first computes the number of 1s you rolled (for each 1, it will multiplie the final roll by 2, as in the Ars Magica rules). But in doing that, the last (non-1) roll is lost. This is a limitation of the roll20 dice engine
• the second part rerolls the last result as 1d9+1, a weird dice that takes values from 2 to 10 (because the last roll cannot be 1, otherwise it is not the last)

This might be a bit weird, but this yields exactly the same results (that is, you have the exact same chance to roll a given number) than what the Ars Magica 5 rules describe. The problem is only visual.

Other than that, the formula is correct: it does takes into account that you already rolled a 1 before clicking on the "Critical" button, and the previous total is also correct. No need to substract 1, or multiply by two, just copy-paste your previous result and read the final total in the chat.

Inline Labels

When you roll from the sheet, the rolltemplates displayed in the chat will show some values that went into the roll. You can hover on the final result with your mouse to see all the values that were used in the roll. The values are labelled so that you know where that +5 comes from.

Roll buttons

The following roll buttons are defined in the sheet and may be called using ability command buttons:

• reroll
• botch
• critical
• critical-spontaneous
• critical-init
• personality1_simple / personality1_stress through personality6_simple / personality6_stress
• reputation1_simple / reputation1_stress through reputation6_simple / reputation6_stress
• Intelligence_simple / Intelligence_stress
• Perception_simple / Perception_stress
• Strength_simple / Strength_stress
• Stamina_simple / Stamina_stress
• Presence_simple / Presence_stress
• Communication_simple / Communication_stress
• Dexterity_simple / Dexterity_stress
• Quickness_simple / Quickness_stress
• ability_simple / ability_stress (inside a repeating section, needs special handling)
• Formulaic_simple / Formulaic_stress
• Ritual_simple / Ritual_stress
• soak
• weapon_Init
• weapon_Atk
• weapon_Dfn
• spell_simple / spell_stress (inside a repeating section, needs special handling)

Roll Template

This is the list of available roll template and what value they support.

All rolltemplate support the following values:

• stress: If any value is supplied, indicate that the roll is a stress rolls. Changes the colors of the main roll, and displays the following buttons if appropriate
• botch-button: ability button to roll the botch dice if the roll is a botch. Usually [@{botch_i18n}!](~@{character_name}|botch)
• crit-button: ability button to roll the critical dice if the roll is a critical. Usually [@{critical_i18n}!](~@{character_name}|critical), but not always (e.g. spontaneous and initiative rolls are special-cases)

Those are omitted in the following list of rolltemplate names and supported values:

• custom:
  • This is the improved default template created by Jakob. See https://wiki.roll20.net/Building_Character_Sheets/Roll_Templates#Jakob.27s_Better_Default_Rolltemplate for details. All CSS v3 colors are supported by the color key (names must be all lowercase)
  • In addition, the rolltemplate supports the roll-color and button-color to change the background color of inline rolls and ability buttons, respectively, within the template. Both values support all CSS v3 colors, as color does. Those also support the transparent color.
  • The keys left-align and right-align can be used to control the text alignement of the left and right column, respectively. Values can be "left", "center" or "right".
• spell:
  • character
  • duration
  • effect
  • Form
  • Level
  • mastery
  • range
  • roll
  • sigil
  • spell
  • target
  • Technique
• botch:
  • roll
  • type
• reroll:
  • roll
• critical:
  • roll
  • type
• attack:
  • attack
  • damage
  • name
• defend:
  • defend
  • name
• soak:
  • armorsoak
  • name
  • rollsoak
  • soakbonus
• initiative:
  • name
  • roll
  • weapon
• ability:
  • banner
  • label0 through label4
  • name
  • result0 through result4
• generic:
  • Banner
  • Label
  • Result
• arcane:
  • label0 through label6
  • result0 throughresult6
  • textfield
  • textlabel

Changelog

• March 2021, v1.6.4
  • Added lalign and ralign to the custom rolltemplate
• March 2021, v1.6.3
  • Added roll-color and button-color properties to the custom rolltemplate, with all CSSv3 colors
• February 2021, v1.6.2
  • Fixed centering not working
  • Fixed translation of spellcasting words options
  • Added support for the custom rolltemplate from the forum, with all CSS colors. Can be useful for spell tables or similar chat menus
• February 2021, v1.6.1
  • Fixed botch die botching on 1s instead of 10s
  • Fixed critical dice displaying 10s as exploding, instead of 1s
  • Fixed spell's arts value not being updated when the character's arts are modified
    • Completely changed how arts are handled inside spells
    • A script will be run to convert your data to the new format, but may fail for some spells
  • Added a critical roll for initiative that sets the turn tracker initiative (not visible in the sheet, use the chat button)
  • Added option to always ask which characteristic to use when rolling abilities
  • Centered the sheet in its tab
• February 2021, v1.6
  • Added inline labels to all rolls
  • Fixed tabs not displaying properly (now attched to an attribute again)
  • Added simple/stress die handling
  • Support for focus in magic totals & rolls
  • Support for additional fatigue levels
  • Fixed ability rolltemplate being too wide in some cases
  • Added documentation direclty to the sheet
• May 2020, v1.51
  • Small change to the Ability roll template for legibility
• April 2020, v1.5
  • Incorporated new fonts throughout the sheet!
  • Polished several roll templates and added new ones for Defending. Stylish!
  • Added an extra button for rerolling stress explosions, can be found next to the botch button.
  • Fixed several missing translation tags and side-effects of having translations added into the sheet. In particular, Abilities should now have access to the Accelerated Ability option.
  • Updated the sheet space and button for Soak/Armor Protection to use the combat roller templates.
  • Relinked images from imgur to github asset folders.
• October 2019
  • Initiatives now output to Roll20's Tracker while selecting a token.
  • Character sheet tabs no longer attached to an attribute, so multiple players can view the same character sheet without wrestling over tab controls.