So, BG doesn't support [dice] tags. Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be anything on the SMF site that would enable that sort of thing. Weird, I know. I'm not satisfied with the current situation (offsite die-roller) mainly because I'm a trifle paranoid. It's not that I don't trust my players, but I don't see any reason to give my players an easy opportunity to cheat. The offsite roller is pretty good, but I'm relatively sure it allows for easy re-rolls if you don't like the first roll (generate a new roll and link that one instead).
Anyway, either way, I think typing [dice]1d20+4[/dice] is much easier than going elsewhere and dealing with their dieroller. So this thread right now is for feature requests and discussion. Post what you would like to see in such a roller, especially roll-strings and how they should be parsed. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the DnDOG roller, for example, the way it reports rolls isn't all that awesome.
I'm assuming this will be a relatively straightforward PHP mod, but I'm not positive. I've written mods for the PHPbb system, but not SMF, so it if turns out their bbcode and presentation parser is all spaghetti, I won't touch it. But I've got to believe any sizeable project such as SMF has to be relatively well-designed and organized. It
should just be a matter of extending the parser with some new tag types and their presentation rules.
If anyone has any links (I haven't yet exercised true Google-Fu yet, I've just been poking at the SMF homepage), or advice, I'm all ears. Better yet, if anyone has a mod that already works, or wants to do it themselves, this isn't my baby, just something I think ought to be done.
Here's what I have so far in terms of features, critical and optional:
- (critical) Straightforward parsing: [dice]1d20+7 1d8+5 3d6[/dice] should be an attack, a damage roll, and a sneak attack roll or something like that.
- (critical) Detailed reporting: The above should report something like (5)+7 = 12, (3)+5 = 8, (4, 6, 2) = 12, so you can see what the rolls were and the like. That way, the 3d6 could instead represent 2d6 of SA as well as 1d6 of flaming weapon damage, and the DM knows to remove the last die in the event of fire-immunity.
- (critical) Tamper-resistant: you shouldn't be able to edit your posts in order to reroll things you don't like. I've got some ideas about how to accomplish this, but it strikes me that this is probably the hardest part. I don't think we need a completely "hacker-proof" system, but if players know that their critical failure at a really bad time could be wiped away with two button-presses, it might be that temptation will get the best of them.
- (optional) Die-drop rolling: Stats are usually rolled as 4d6 drop the lowest, so something like 4d6k3 for (4d6 keep 3) would be handy.
- (optional) Reroll-ones: Many hitpoint rolls are rolled where you reroll 1s. So: 1d8r1. Or XdNrM
- (optional) Smart-rolling, d20-style at least, where we could specify attack bonuses and have the system automatically make attack, crit confirmation, and damage rolls. That's probably more trouble than it's worth, but a possibility.
