Item Macros Before v1.21.0

In versions before v1.21.0, item macros worked differently from the way they are working from v1.21.0 onward. Specifically, the priority of the values for item macros were reversed from how it’s described here. In practice, that means:

• (Teen) skills, power shifts, (teen) attacks, and (teen) abilities use the values specified on the item sheet. For values not specified in the item sheet, the ones specified in the macros are used. Values that are taken from the item sheet cannot be overwritten in the macro.

• Ammo, (teen) armor, artifacts, cyphers, equipment, (teen) lasting damage, materials, and oddities use the values specified in the macros, since there are no values to be specified on the item sheets that would be used in the macros.

There are no system defaults in version prior to v1.21.0.

What does this mean for me if I have updated to v1.21.0 and have old item macros?

If you have updated to v1.21.0 and have old item macros, I recommend deleting the old ones and create new ones.

You can use the old ones, but they probably have different values from the ones you expect. Since now all values can be overwritten in the macro, and the values in the macros have the highest priority, the values from the item sheets are overwritten and they most likely have the wrong value. One important difference between the old item macros and the new ones is that the new ones don’t have values specified in the macro, while the old ones came with values specified.

Example: You have created a skill macro prior to v1.21.0, the macro has a skill level of “practiced” specified, but it wasn’t used. So if you actually had a skill level of “trained” in this skill, the roll macro would use “trained,” even though “practiced” was specified in the macro. After v1.21.0, if you use the same macro, the value of “practiced” is prioritized over the value of the item, so the macro would use “practiced” instead of “trained.”

This works similarly with (teen) attacks, (teen) abilities, and power shifts, which each had values taken form the item sheet and ignored the values specified in the macro, which is now reversed.

Why was this changed at all?

In v1.20.0 roll buttons were introduced for (teen) skills, power shifts, (teen) attacks, and (teen) abilities, which included a way to change the values of the roll button on the item sheet. If you were using both the roll buttons and item macros, it has become confusing where you should change the values, and if you were using item macros, some values had to be changed in the item sheet while others had to be changed in the macro, and some values changed in the macro still used the ones specified on the item sheet. In other words, it was a mess.

Now it’s relatively simple: If you specify values in the macro, the macro uses these. If you don’t they use the defaults, which is are either the ones specified on the item sheet or they are simply system defaults which can’t be changed anyway.

I hope this is better understandable, and at the same time allows for more flexibility, as you now can create item macros for different situations without the need to create multiple items. A prime example would be to have two macros for onslaught attacks, one for physical attacks dealing 2 damage, one for physical attacks dealing 4 damage.