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."

 

[R_J_K75]

I dont use D&D Beyond but Im assuming to make full use of this Id have to buy the DMG, PHB and MM at the very least on top of the subscription? Otherwise you only get certain PC, monsters and magical item options?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Of course it's alpha, but man, it's broken. When I go to run the encounter, none of the stats (AC or hp) pull over. The monster portraits are blank as well. And that's if it even loads the participants at all.

 

[R_J_K75]

Of course it's alpha, but man, it's broken. When I go to run the encounter, none of the stats (AC or hp) pull over. The monster portraits are blank as well. And that's if it even loads the participants at all.

I'll stick with my errata hard copy books and a word processing program. At least if I make a mistake typing creating encounters its on me. Looks great if it worked though.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'll stick with my errata hard copy books and a word processing program. At least if I make a mistake typing creating encounters its on me. Looks great if it worked though.

I do a homebrew initiative system anyway, so I'm sticking with that.

I think I might know why it's not pulling anything over. While in my encounter summary list, all the encounters are there with the proper difficulty rating, but when I go to expand the encounter, it errors out and says it can't find any of my monsters. None. On every single encounter I had. And if you go to create an encounter, it can't find any monsters either. So they broke that.

 

[R_J_K75]

I do a homebrew initiative system anyway, so I'm sticking with that.

I think I might know why it's not pulling anything over. While in my encounter summary list, all the encounters are there with the proper difficulty rating, but when I go to expand the encounter, it errors out and says it can't find any of my monsters. None. On every single encounter I had. And if you go to create an encounter, it can't find any monsters either. So they broke that.

Thats sucks. I used the free version for PCs for while and everytime I leveled up stuff I already inputed was missing and Id have to rebuild the character to one extent or another. Thats why I never bought the subscription.

 

[MNblockhead]

What? I just had DDB open and missed that...be back in a bit!

 

[OB1]

I do a homebrew initiative system anyway, so I'm sticking with that.

I think I might know why it's not pulling anything over. While in my encounter summary list, all the encounters are there with the proper difficulty rating, but when I go to expand the encounter, it errors out and says it can't find any of my monsters. None. On every single encounter I had. And if you go to create an encounter, it can't find any monsters either. So they broke that.

Was working for me earlier and now is not. Wonder if it's a bandwidth problem as I'm guessing a lot of people are checking it out right now.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Was working for me earlier and now is not. Wonder if it's a bandwidth problem as I'm guessing a lot of people are checking it out right now.

Bandwidth would affect the entire page, not just the monster database. They broke something when they installed the alpha combat tracker build. As someone who does software testing as my day job, this is really unacceptable to not have done basic regression on their existing code before deployment.

Seems like they're working on it:

Can't Add Monsters to Encounters - (Discontinued) Encounters Feedback Portal - D&D Beyond Feedback - D&D Beyond General - D&D Beyond Forums - D&D Beyond

I'm trying to set up a new encounter and when I load it up it won't show any monsters. With no filters applied, same thing. With filters applied,...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[MNblockhead]

We'll only got to play around with it for a few minutes before I got an error: "We are currently performing maintenance and expect to be down for about an hour. "

For now, I'll probably stick with Improved Initiative. But I have to play around with the DDB combat tracker more, after they kill the gremlins and get it up and running again, before I pass judgement.