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.

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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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.

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When I'm not poor and broke I'll probably end up grabbing a few of the books and subscribing at the Master tier level (since lord knows I end up being DM nine times out of ten) but for now I'm satisfied with tinkering around with the free version and the basic ruleset loaded into it. I'm hoping my financial situation can improve before November, since that's when the UA content is going to hit in the form of Codex: Unearthed Arcana 2: WotC Boogaloo...uhh...I mean Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

I'm actually pretty pleased with it so far, both what it is now and how quickly they jump on things the userbase highlights for them to focus on. Their forums are pretty great in terms of responsiveness of devs and forum admin folks both.

I agree, they are really responsive, and quick in those responses. I and a few others suggested that they do monster and magic item bundles from each adventure, and it was done and ready to go in a few days - and that was in the busy run up to launch. Right now they are working on feedback on an encounter and campaign system, so no doubt that is in progress already...


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Having just purchased a bunch of the books on their site, I feel entitled to complain a bit. PDFs would be awesome. Even non-pdf pdf-like app I had to install on my laptop and tablet would be okay as long as I can search and read online. Drop a nice linked index in there, and it is 90% of a pdf without the piracy concern. Compendium is nice, but I need it offline.

I see a lot of future potential in Beyond for things like the MM, which could really use a "printable-tokens" version. I spent a small fortune buying pdfs of printable monster art for 1" square grids, and would really like to be able to have integration with the app. This is an area where it would be a massive value-add over just a pdf, as it could generate a per-encounter pdf instead of the cumbersome pdf slicing I have to do now. And I don't like triple paying for content, as own a physical book, the roll20 version, and now the Beyond version.
 

Satyrn

First Post
Having just purchased a bunch of the books on their site, I feel entitled to complain a bit. PDFs would be awesome. Even non-pdf pdf-like app I had to install on my laptop and tablet would be okay as long as I can search and read online. Drop a nice linked index in there, and it is 90% of a pdf without the piracy concern. Compendium is nice, but I need it offline.
An app with offline availability is on the way. It's what Il'm waiting for.
 

ddaley

Explorer
Ooh... printable tokens might be nice. Only problem is, I already have a bunch of monster tokens and I never use them. Always too much of a pain to find the ones I need. I guess, if I could print them off right before a session, I might be more likely to use them.

We usually resort to coins for non-player creatures.

I see a lot of future potential in Beyond for things like the MM, which could really use a "printable-tokens" version. I spent a small fortune buying pdfs of printable monster art for 1" square grids, and would really like to be able to have integration with the app. This is an area where it would be a massive value-add over just a pdf, as it could generate a per-encounter pdf instead of the cumbersome pdf slicing I have to do now. And I don't like triple paying for content, as own a physical book, the roll20 version, and now the Beyond version.
 

Ricochet

Explorer
Discussed it with my group. They basically fell into the "I'm not paying for the same book twice" camp with a heavy dose of "I can get free/low cost alternatives" to boot. So if I wanted in, I'd have to pony up the money myself, which is not in my budget.

Sad, but that's life.

I more or less told my group: "This is what we are buying if you want me to keep GM'ing."

Worked with no objections. :)
 


Ricochet

Explorer
I did the opposite and said that nobody had to buy anything as I would eventually get the Legendary Bundle. They bought stuff anyway :D

*Grin* That might have worked too. I didn't get a lot of objections though, the group is fairly optimistic. We sprang for a master account and a bunch of books, and then hooked everyone's free accounts up to the campaign.
Quite surprising that my players can only make a new character using the purchased books if that character joins the campaign. So not a lot of testing is allowed. I am running OotA and it's quite lethal, so people want to check out backup-character options.
 

dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
Quite surprising that my players can only make a new character using the purchased books if that character joins the campaign. So not a lot of testing is allowed. I am running OotA and it's quite lethal, so people want to check out backup-character options.

You have twelve slots per campaign and if they're a member of the campaign, they can just use the invite link to invite themselves to create a new character and experiment away.
 

Remathilis

Legend
I more or less told my group: "This is what we are buying if you want me to keep GM'ing."

Worked with no objections. :)
I did the opposite and said that nobody had to buy anything as I would eventually get the Legendary Bundle. They bought stuff anyway :D
Most of my group uses 5th edition character sheet by Walter Kammerer. They paid 5 bucks for it and it has all the classes, races and stuff for PC's so far (without the actual rules, just "see PHB" notes). It's got it's limits (you manually have to put in spells and type in items) but for them, it's cheap and has all options and unlimited charscters for $5. It's an uphill battle to convince any of them to pitch in more money for the official tools, esp around $30 each to split the legendary bundle. And I'm pretty sure even if I footed the entire bill, they probably all won't log on to use it anyway.

For a group that is close and tech savvy, it's great. For myself group; it was asking a lot to get them to ask buy the PHB from Amazon...
 
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DaveDash

Explorer
Purchased the PHB and Monsters Manual while the price is good. My hard copies were falling apart, and I like to have all that material online anyway. I also subscribed to master tier, so my players can get convenient access to the rules & spells.

As much as I want it, the legendary pack would draw too much wife agro.
 

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