Beyond20 rolls don't trigger 3D dice animation in Roll20 Jumpgate

[richcollins]

Description

Beyond20 rolls appear in Roll20 chat correctly, but do not trigger 3D dice animation when using Roll20's Jumpgate engine. Other players rolling natively from Roll20 character sheets see 3D dice animations as expected.

Environment

• Beyond20 version: 2.17.x
• Browser: Chrome
• Roll20: Jumpgate engine
• D&D Beyond: 2024 character sheet

Root cause (investigation)

Roll20 Jumpgate triggers 3D dice animation via its quantumRoll system. Native Roll20 rolls use this system and get the quantumRoll CSS class on their chat messages.

Beyond20 rolls are injected into Roll20 chat using sheet-rolltemplate-default with pre-calculated inlinerollresult values. Because they bypass Roll20's dice engine entirely, Jumpgate never triggers the 3D dice animation.

This worked in the Legacy VTT because the 3D dice system there didn't depend on quantum rolls.

Steps to reproduce

1. Join a Roll20 game using the Jumpgate engine
2. Open a D&D Beyond character sheet with Beyond20 enabled
3. Click any roll (skill check, attack, save, etc.)
4. Roll appears in Roll20 chat as text, but no 3D dice animate
5. Compare with a native Roll20 roll from another player — 3D dice animate normally

Expected behavior

Beyond20 rolls should trigger Roll20's 3D dice animation in Jumpgate, the same way they did in the Legacy VTT.

[kakaroto]

If you enable digital dice in D&D Beyond, it will roll the dice on DDB and send the results. You cannot have roll20's "quantum dice" and use roll results from dice rolled on D&D Beyond.
Make sure you disable the Digital Dice option in Beyond20 settings, and it should roll the dice in Roll20 like you expect.

[richcollins]

I tested with Digital Dice disabled in Beyond20 settings. The roll still doesn't trigger 3D dice animation in Jumpgate.

I inspected the DOM after rolling an Intelligence check from D&D Beyond. Here's what the Beyond20 message looks like in Roll20 chat:

classes: "message general you"
hasQuantumRoll: false
templateClass: "sheet-rolltemplate-default"
hasInlineRoll: true (inlinerollresult)

Compare with a native Roll20 roll from the GM in the same session:

classes: "message rollresult player--xxxxx quantumRoll discord-production"
hasQuantumRoll: true

The issue is that Beyond20 injects pre-calculated results using inlinerollresult inside a sheet-rolltemplate-default, even with Digital Dice disabled. It never goes through Roll20's quantumRoll system, which is what Jumpgate uses to trigger 3D dice animation.

Disabling Digital Dice changes where the dice are calculated (Beyond20 native vs D&D Beyond), but the result is still injected into Roll20 chat as a pre-computed value — not as a roll that Roll20's dice engine processes.

[richcollins]

@kakaroto Please have a look at my comment from last week. The issue remains.

[kakaroto]

@kakaroto Please have a look at my comment from last week. The issue remains.

I do get notified, I will check when my availability changes, you do not need to bump it

[nox-4O4]

I've looked into how Roll20 (Jumpgate) animates the 3D dice, and I don't think it's technically feasible to use the animation for dice rolls from D&D Beyond.

It's certainly possible to start the dice animation manually, but we have no direct control over what the dice result will be. This is because Roll20 uses a random seed value to initialize the animation, which is provided by the QuantumRoll server. Based on the seed, a unique dice result can be generated reproducibly. However, the reverse is not possible; we cannot know in advance which seed we need to achieve the result from D&D Beyond.

For simple rolls (e.g. 1d20 or 2d20), a workaround could theoretically be to call the QuantumRoll API repeatedly until the desired result is achieved and then use the corresponding seed to start the animation. However, as soon as more dice are used in a roll or the probability of hitting the desired value is too low (such as with 6d20 or 1d100), a very large number of requests would have to be sent until the correct seed for the dice animation is obtained on average. Not only would that take far too long, but Roll20 probably wouldn't be happy if the API was called that often either.

So I don't see how we could implement this in a practical way.

By the way, this has absolutely nothing to do with the classes in the DOM for the chat entries.

[richcollins]

I don't expect Roll20 to use a result from dndbeyond. I just expect that when I click a "Beyond 20" dice roll button in dndbeyond (e.g. an attack roll), that in addition to seeing results in the roll20 chat window, I see a dice roll in roll 20 (as do my party members). This used to work for me and it somehow still works for other members of my party when they roll.

[nox-4O4]

This used to work for me and it somehow still works for other members of my party when they roll.

I was able to get this working.

First, make sure that the game in Roll20 uses one of the following templates:

• D&D 5E 2014
• D&D 5E (Community Contributed)
• D&D 5E By Roll20 - 2014 Sheet Version

Then check the Beyond20 settings in Roll20. The "Roll20 Character Sheet Setting" should be set to "D&D 5E By Roll20". Also, D&D Beyond's Digital Dice must be switched off.

This way the rolls are rendered in Roll20 directly, and the dice roll animation should display as long as 3D dice are enabled in Roll20 under Settings > Dice Options.

[richcollins]

Those are the settings I have although I haven't found the settings for the Roll20 Template. It must be fine since I see dice rolls from other players that are using Roll20?

[nox-4O4]

The settings look all right.

I checked the roll behavior with all the supported Roll20 character sheet templates, and indeed, when using the "D&D 5E (Community Contributed)" template, Beyond20 uses its own roll renderer which leads to inline rolls without 3D dice animations.

It must be fine since I see dice rolls from other players that are using Roll20?

The other players perform their rolls directly from within Roll20, don't they? So the rolls never touch Beyond20's roll handling logic and use the correct roll template.

It shouldn't be too hard to add support for the community character sheet template. I'll look into it this weekend.

[richcollins]

D&D 5E (Community Contributed) template

Where do I find the template type for my character?

The other players perform their rolls directly from within Roll20, don't they? So the rolls never touch Beyond20's roll handling logic and use the correct roll template.

No. They're using dndbeyond and clicking the Beyond 20 roll buttons from the dndbeyond UI (for actions, skill checks, etc).

[nox-4O4]

No. They're using dndbeyond and clicking the Beyond 20 roll buttons from the dndbeyond UI (for actions, skill checks, etc).

Oh, that's unexpected. I've created an (empty) test game here: https://app.roll20.net/join/21363131/5r0uOw
Could you check if the 3D dice work for you in there,

• by rolling something manually (e.g., type /roll 1d20 in the chat),
• by clicking one of the roll buttons in D&D Beyond
  (no need to add your character to Roll20, it suffices to just have both tabs open),
• by pasting the following template into the chat:
  &{template:simple} {{charname=test}} {{rname=Dexterity}} {{mod=+0}} {{r1=[[1d20 +0[DEX]]]}} {{normal=1}}
  (Also, does the roll display in the chat?)
• and by pasting the following template into the chat:
  &{template:default} {{charname=test}} {{rname=Dexterity}} {{mod=+0}} {{r1=[[1d20 +0[DEX]]]}} {{normal=1}}

Where do I find the template type for my character?

It doesn't depend on your specific character sheet template, but rather, the default template for the campaign. That's why I'm surprised it's working for the other players. The setting is only visible to the DM (when exiting the game, there is Settings -> Game Settings -> Character Sheet Template).

As a player, you can get the name of the default character sheet template using the DevTools console in Roll20. Open the console with F12 and switch to the "Console" tab. Type CHARSHEET_NAME in there; it should return the short name for the currently configured character sheet template for the campaign. Currently, 3D dice for rolls by Beyond20 only work with the ogl5e templates.

[richcollins]

See my comments in the chat there.