D&D Beyond Launches -- Electronic Tools For D&D Are Here!

D&D Beyond, the official online toolkit for 5th Edition D&D, is now live - just in time for Gen Con! With a character builder, online rules compendium, digital character sheet, and more, the software has been in beta testing for a while. D&D's relationship with electronic tools has never been an easy one -- Master Tools, Gleemax, DungeonScape all being failed initiatives - but D&D Beyond looks like it might be the one which actually breaks that curse.

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NOTE -- if you can't see the comments below the article, click here instead. For some reason they aren't showing for everybody.

Here's their launch announcement:

This morning, we launched D&D Beyond - an official digital toolset for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition.

For over 40 years, Dungeons & Dragons has been bringing players together at tables all over the world. D&D Beyond, our new digital companion web app, aims to enhance the D&D experience by making game management easier by putting all of the game information you need to tell fantastic stories with your friends into a digital format, eliminating the need to manually search through books, and taking the load off of players through other features.

At launch, D&D Beyond offers a compendium with all the game rules, lore, and adventures, as well as sought-after tools like a character builder and an interactive digital character sheet. It’s built with official D&D content and the ability to create and add your own custom homebrew spells, magic items, and monsters. Groups can play with digital versions of every official D&D sourcebook within the compendium. They can build characters using all the material published by Dungeons & Dragons for fifth edition, while adding custom magic items or spells created using the homebrew system. That homebrew content can then be shared with the community for other players to use in their own games.

We never could have gotten to where we are without the incredible support of over 200 thousand beta testers. For all of the help, for enduring "Basic Rules only" content and the accompanying forum posts for all these months, we sincerely thank you. You have already built nearly 300 thousand characters and 25 thousand homebrew creations. You have shared feedback that has been vital to the development of the toolset, and we have taken great strides to build confidence that we not only listen to that feedback, but we move quickly to act on it when it's needed.Our team has an extensive roadmap for D&D Beyond, including implementing features such as a native mobile app, monster and encounter building, digital dice rolling, combat tracking, and much more. D&D Beyond is excited to continue to work closely with the D&D team at Wizards of the Coast to introduce all new adventures and rules material into the toolset, such as Tomb of Annihilation and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything coming this fall, the new mystic and artificer classes and other Unearthed Arcana playtest material, and Adventurers League support.

With the launch of the toolset, we are also excited to also unveil our new video and content initiative. We have a vision for DDB to be your hub for all things D&D - your companion both at the table and between sessions - whether you're looking up spells or watching Mike Mearls geek out about ogre magi. We'll tell the story of Dungeons & Dragons and help you play out your own D&D stories. We can't wait to see where all of it leads.

This truly is only the beginning for us and for what D&D Beyond will become in the upcoming weeks, months, and years. We welcome you to the adventure. Pack your gear and let's hit the trail!

Check it out over at the official website.

The pricing is subscription based, with costs ranging from $2.99 per month to $5.99 per month, depending on the features you require. You also buy official D&D content (rulebooks and adventures) for $24.99 for adventures and $29.99 for rulebooks, or you can engage in micropurchases and grab single classes, races, feats, monsters, etc. for $1.99 to $3.99. Full pricing info can be found here.

NOTE -- if you can't see the comments below, click here instead. For some reason they aren't showing for everybody.

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[kenmarable]

I was impressed enough by the character builder and basic rules compendium to buy something to see what the content looks like. I bought Lost Mine Of Phandelver since I never got the starter set. It's...it's pretty cool. The links to all the monster stats and basic rules make it pretty useful. $15 seems pretty high, as $10 is about the most I'd normally pay for a PDF. But the fact that the compendium linking means I can run this as a complete game all from my tablet, that's pretty neat.
Now, the characters my kids have run include some PHB content not included in the basic set. I'm considering doing the crazy thing of buying those items piecemeal with the understanding I would probably pickup the PHB later. I think I'm only missing the illusionist sub class and a few spells they might have picked out.

One thing to keep in mind is that the PHB is on sale for the first week at $20 instead of usual $30. Might still be worth it for you to buy the pieces now and PHB later (what you spend lowers to price like iTunes "complete my album" style), but just wanted to make sure you were aware of that factor if it matters.

 

[jaycrockett]

Yeah I'm trying to be sensible about spending a bunch of money on this as I don't even have an active group. I'll try playing with the kids again this weekend and see how it goes.

 

[kenmarable]

Yeah I'm trying to be sensible about spending a bunch of money on this as I doing even have an active group. I'll try playing with the kids again this weekend and see how it goes.

No, of course! I'm not trying to sucker you in. Just since it's easy to miss that there's a sale, figured it wouldn't hurt mentioning.

Also, for things like spells, the homebrew section to create your own spells is nicely robust. I did that for my non-free spells during the Beta test. Also allows you to modify an existing one if there is one like it (handy for a lot of the cantrips which are similar but different damage types, for example).
https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/creations/create-spell

Unfortunately, nothing for subclasses yet, but those are far more complex and varied, so it's understandable that would come later.

Good luck playing with the kids!

 

[Koren n'Rhys]

That is grand! Found the code for linking to homebrew stuff yet?

At this point the tooltip coding for homebrew hasn't been added yet. It's a feature that's being requested for sure, and they have talked a bit about the hurdles to do that. With the official content, everything is unique - spells, monsters, whatever, but once you open up to homebrew, you can have umpteen versions of something that people have added with the same name, so you need to differentiate those. I think the idea is to have homebrew stuff get a unique number/code or something, that you could link to, rather than just by name. No timeline or promises on that at this point.

 

[ddaley]

Funny (sad?) that assigning a primary key value to an entry is causing them problems... Applications have been doing that for many years. Not a new concept.

At this point the tooltip coding for homebrew hasn't been added yet. It's a feature that's being requested for sure, and they have talked a bit about the hurdles to do that. With the official content, everything is unique - spells, monsters, whatever, but once you open up to homebrew, you can have umpteen versions of something that people have added with the same name, so you need to differentiate those. I think the idea is to have homebrew stuff get a unique number/code or something, that you could link to, rather than just by name. No timeline or promises on that at this point.

 

[Koren n'Rhys]

Lost Mine of Phandelver was a fun adventure. I wish they would release more adventures like that. That is a big reason I have started using the Next play test adventures. They are more inline with LMoP.

Maybe a topic for a new thread rather than this one, but I'm curious to hear a bit more about your thoughts on this. Is it because they are all their own little sandboxes as well (Daggerford, Baldur's Gate & Icewind Dale regions), or is there more to it than that? I hadn't really thought about them like that, but you may be on to something.

Also, as I checked something before replying - I see that Crystal Shard and Scourge of the Sword Coast are available on Fantasy Grounds. Maybe that means that they could ultimately find their way to DDB also.

 

[kenmarable]

Funny (sad?) that assigning a primary key value to an entry is causing them problems... Applications have been doing that for many years. Not a new concept.

Sounds like a user interface issue, not a database one. If there were no primary keys in the db, the whole thing wouldn't work. It's a matter of having a user interface for using a unique identifier - which, in good system design would still not be the actual primary key. Table primary keys are for computers, not humans.

Ultimately, it is probably easily addressed. It's just that it's likely item #250 in the list of "requested features that would be easy to implement." Even if it is a quick change, it still have to be prioritized against all of the other quick changes - as well as analyzed by interface experts to make sure it's easy to understand and use without adding too much clutter to the screen from desktop to tablet to smartphone.

 

[Charles Rampant]

I've gone ahead and bought the PHB, the DMG, the races from VGtM, and the backgrounds, subclasses, and spells from SCAG. That should have me set - it's all the player facing content that I need, with the exception of the Haunted One background from CoS and the bizarro subraces (Duergar, Ghostwise, "Feral" Tieflings) from SCAG. I thought about buying the MM and the rest of VGtM and SCAG on it, but right now there isn't really any point; being able to look up monsters is really nice and cool, but without an encounter builder or combat tracker there isn't a lot of actual in-game value for me in doing so. SCAG is the most likely one for me to buy, if only because I'd only have to pay $14 for the rest of it, and having the ability to refer players to the compendium to find out about the setting would actually be really helpful, since I run games on the Sword Coast.

The character builder is really good. I mean, it should be, right? I've also found this to be a good tool to let the players experiment with ideas; for an upcoming campaign, one player has made three separate characters just to see how they'd look, which is certainly easier to do now.

Otherwise, with my big spend done - and my wife irate at the sudden deduction in funds - I'm going to wait and see what tools they add, before I revisit the idea of buying more content. I own all the 5e books and run my games five feet away from my D&D shelf, so nothing that I've read online about the dndbeyond implementation of them has made me think that rebuying the adventures has any utility or benefit.

 

[Koren n'Rhys]

I bought in with PHB, MM & DMG so I have all the basics. SKT and LMoP as I'm running those two for different groups, and hadn't planned on it, but also ended up adding SCAG as well. One of my players has a Ghostwise Halfling, and I wanted the extra player goodies and regional reference content. Holding off on Volo for now, but will likely add that eventually so I have all that for both DM and Player-side use. I'll likely add PoTA at some point too, so I have one giant sandbox to play in. No real interest in OotA of CoS for the foreseeable future. Xanathar's? yeah, I expect so.

Also ponied up for a 6 month Master sub so i can share all that with my players, and some have already said they'd throw me some cash. i expect I'll continue that as long as I need to. Very happy with what I see so far, and the direction this is all going. I DO really want to see UA added sooner rather than later, and the homebrew section upgraded to add races, subraces, and subclasses.

 

[ddaley]

There are a number of things that I like about these adventures. First, they are not as grand as the hard cover adventures. There are a number of threads going on in each adventure, and the characters can choose which to deal with and which not to (and in which order). Each thread in the adventure has just about the right amount of substance. So, they are not overwhelming in scope and the party doesn't lose interest as easily. Also, for the DM, prep time is reduced because of the way the adventure is broken up.

With all of the threads of activity, it can be a bit difficult to keep things straight... especially if your group doesn't play regularly. I am not sure I am crazy about the 2nd half of LotCS. We'll see. I may transition the group into another adventure before they finish. But, the first half is great.

I hope they make these adventures available in D&D Beyond. As you mentioned, they are available for FG (I have purchased them there and in physical form where available).

Maybe a topic for a new thread rather than this one, but I'm curious to hear a bit more about your thoughts on this. Is it because they are all their own little sandboxes as well (Daggerford, Baldur's Gate & Icewind Dale regions), or is there more to it than that? I hadn't really thought about them like that, but you may be on to something.

Also, as I checked something before replying - I see that Crystal Shard and Scourge of the Sword Coast are available on Fantasy Grounds. Maybe that means that they could ultimately find their way to DDB also.