D&D 5E D&D Beyond Announces Combat Tracker

"We're happy to announce the Alpha release of the Combat Tracker tool to subscribers of D&D Beyond! Try it out in your D&D games and your feedback will be used to make this the best it can be!"

D&D Beyond has just announced the alpha development version of a combat tracker. You can track monsters, initiative, and access quick reference information. This functionality is similar to that offered by Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

You can read more about the combat tracker here. The Alpha version is available to DDB subscribers.

"We have been using the Combat Tracker in our home games for a few weeks, and although it is certainly not in a finished state yet, we experienced enough value that we have decided to go ahead and release it now - even in its unfinished state - to both 1) let subscribers gain some of that value and 2) get feedback as early as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is not a finished product, and we invite subscribers to help us make it the best it can be!

Who can use the Combat Tracker?

All D&D Beyond Subscribers. The Combat Tracker is in full active development right now. We will be allowing early access to NEW Combat Tracker features to our Subscribers first, to prove out concepts and new functionality. We took the same approach with the Alpha version of the Encounter Builder with much success. This delivery method allows us to digest feedback in bite sized chunks and perform testing to figure out the best user experience possible.

What is a Development Alpha?

The Development Alpha of the Combat Tracker allows us to test features and user experience.

• Functional but expecting a lot of bugs
  • Should be no core functionality bugs
• Core functionality could change with feedback
• Functionality could appear or disappear at any time

We will be working on validating bug reports and cleaning up the Combat Tracker. Once these tasks have been completed we will release to Beta, essentially meaning the Combat Tracker tool is complete."

 

[Oofta]

The definition of beta software (emphasis mine).

Beta software refers to computer software that is undergoing testing and has not yet been officially released. The beta phase follows the alpha phase, but precedes the final version. Some beta software is only made available to a select number of users, while other beta programs are released to the general public.​

​

The encounter builder is still in beta. Test code breaks sometimes. Heck, prod code breaks sometimes. I've found DDB to be quite stable once the code has gotten out of beta.

They may not have NASA levels of software testing requirements (although even they scree it up sometimes)

 

[Maialideth]

Disclaimer: I don't work in video gaming or entertainment. I work in corporate finance. So if there are any defects going to production, head's roll in my world. Can you imagine if millions of customers all the sudden couldn't access their online banking features? So maybe my bias is a bit more strict.

That said. I have noticed this trend where video game/entertainment companies are just skipping any sort of robust testing at all, and relying on users to do it for them by calling it "alpha". IMO, that's lazy. And makes your company look bad.

In my world, we have DEVS do the coding, and QA/UAT (Quality assurance/User acceptance testing) does the testing. Then we go to pilot, with a handful of production folks to try to find things we couldn't find in testing for one reason or another (usually due to environmental limitations in the test environment). Then, after robust testing in pilot, it gets deployed to production.

As an alpha build, I fully expect bugs here and there. But to completely lose functionality of one of your key and critical areas? That should have been worked out long before it went to alpha. I'm not a DEV, so I don't know the exact coding, but access to the site with apparently no linkage to the database tables tells me that I'm guessing when they deployed code, something got overwritten or deleted or something that broke that link to the monster database

I work as a software tester, and I completely agree with this.

In professional testing "alpha testing" is wholly performed in-house by people employed by the developing company, and "beta testing" is performed by external consultants, whether they are paid by the company (which is where I usually do my job) or if it is open to the public.

I use a lot of 3rd-party monsters like Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex, so I'm not that into the encounter building and combat tracking stuff for dndbeyond. I also am a bit concerned that using only the online tools, means that players don't always remember to ask the DM, if something is appropriate for their campaign. I had a player, who chose a language from Ravnica for his Eberron character, and it seems that it is easy to ignore the descriptions of classes and races, when using only the online tools.

 

[Panda-s1]

I also am a bit concerned that using only the online tools, means that players don't always remember to ask the DM, if something is appropriate for their campaign. I had a player, who chose a language from Ravnica for his Eberron character, and it seems that it is easy to ignore the descriptions of classes and races, when using only the online tools.

uh, how is that at all different from using books?

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

uh, how is that at all different from using books?

My experience is that the more that players are relying on software to play the game the less the players know about playing the game, and they not only wouldn't know when the software is in error, but they become totally lost when the software isn't holding their hand.

Thanks, but no. I prefer to require players to use books. And if I feel the need to use software to manage combat during a game I'll kick the combat rules in the teeth until they're simpler to use, or else abandon that version of the game as unnecessarily complicated. If it's too much work to do it without software IT'S TOO MUCH WORK full stop. IMO

 

[Maialideth]

uh, how is that at all different from using books?

Because some things in the online tool are free, we don't have the Ravnica book, and you choose from lists instead of having to look through the books. Online is a lot more tl;dr but maybe that's just me...?

 

[Panda-s1]

My experience is that the more that players are relying on software to play the game the less the players know about playing the game, and they not only wouldn't know when the software is in error, but they become totally lost when the software isn't holding their hand.

first of all, the example was people looking stuff up via the website, which should not be any different than looking it up in a book.
also that's huge amount of skepticism to assume the software would be in error for such a length of time that people would play the game incorrectly. also assuming that online tools are sufficiently different enough from the pen and paper version that they wouldn't be able to play the game otherwise is a weird stance to take.

Thanks, but no. I prefer to require players to use books. And if I feel the need to use software to manage combat during a game I'll kick the combat rules in the teeth until they're simpler to use, or else abandon that version of the game as unnecessarily complicated. If it's too much work to do it without software IT'S TOO MUCH WORK full stop. IMO

so a website like The Hypertext d20 SRD is worthless in your opinion?

Because some things in the online tool are free, we don't have the Ravnica book, and you choose from lists instead of having to look through the books. Online is a lot more tl;dr but maybe that's just me...?

oooooooookay, what's the difference then between looking up the race on the website and going straight to the entry in the book?

 

[Oofta]

first of all, the example was people looking stuff up via the website, which should not be any different than looking it up in a book.
also that's huge amount of skepticism to assume the software would be in error for such a length of time that people would play the game incorrectly. also assuming that online tools are sufficiently different enough from the pen and paper version that they wouldn't be able to play the game otherwise is a weird stance to take.

so a website like The Hypertext d20 SRD is worthless in your opinion?

oooooooookay, what's the difference then between looking up the race on the website and going straight to the entry in the book?

I find DDB handy. I don't have to haul out books, flip pages and so on. It's easier to have multiple things open at the same time, etc. I also like that I can have all of my players use it so that I can peek at their PCs now and then. Mostly I do that to check to see what spells and abilities I may have to deal with next session so I can brush up on how things work.

That, and I buy "parts" of a lot of books. I don't expect to ever run an Eberron campaign for example, but I did buy the monsters from the book because they fit my campaign.

 

[Zarithar]

I've gradually made the shift from physical books to digital. I use D&D Beyond extensively and the PDFs for a whole slew of 3rd party products (Tome of Beasts, etc). I don't think I could ever go back to flipping through a stack of books.

As for initiative though, I use folded notecards hanging on my DM screen, which still seems simpler and faster than this system. I will reserve judgement though for when it moves out of alpha.

Finally, the people who are complaining about how bad it is in its current state need to maybe educate themselves as to what exactly an alpha test is...

 

[cbwjm]

I do like DnDBeyond but I've found that in a few occasions, it is easier for me to find what I want by flipping through the books. I am liking the increased tools coming from DnDBeyond though, I've been waiting for an initiative tracker ever since the encounter builder came out. In the meantime, I've been using a table in onenote that I just enter initiative and then just sorting it highest to lowest, seems to work well it also means I can have an additional column which I can use for conditions as a reminder that they are affected by something.

 

[HarbingerX]

Man, I come to this forum to talk about D&D, not argue about software methodology and software quality in different market segments.

Looking forward to giving this a try, as I don't think anyone's done a really good online combat tracker.