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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dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
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...
Cheapskates :p

I don't necessarily want my group to use it at the table (although that'd be great and I'm pretty sure at least 2-3 will) or the printouts for their characters. I want it as a means of having a consistent interface and input method for me to maintain character consistency and coherency. I hate having to use five different sheets filled out halfway or messily and trying to decipher them all just so that I know what the group is capable of and can remember and reference the rules surrounding their character's abilities. Having the players use their free accounts to maintain their characters through an interface I find easy to use and is consistent is a big benefit to me.

Not only that, but I'm confident that DDB will get a lot better over time. The devs are really on the ball and getting fixes out very quickly and updating features at a lightning pace. The fact that they're also genuinely listening to all the feedback and working on suggestions and ideas from the community is pretty amazing and, I think, will end up with an amazing tool. So part of me getting in early and insisting players at least maintain their characters there, is also me getting them used to it so that in the future, when there is much greater added value, I can take advantage of those tools without having to get them all invested in it after the fact.

They're already working on the campaign management aspect by opening up a wishlist thread. While I'd prefer to see more automation in the character sheet and a combat/initiative tracker done first, it's all gravy to me from here on out.

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.
Yeah, this is another aspect I like about it. I get the hard copies that I can keep in pristine condition, and I can ensure I get the collector's editions and maintain the books for the long term. I like having the physical copies 'cause they're pretty and nice to read through, but for use, I don't think anything beats digital at the table.

As much as I want it, the legendary pack would draw too much wife agro.
That's where the previously purchased discount comes into play. Keep buying piecemeal until it'll eventually just make sense to buy the Legendary Bundle, even to her :D
 

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DocMindwipe

First Post
Overall impression after just using the free account:

This takes a lot of the headache with a d20-derived system away, I "swear" to a mix&match of Classic D&D, 1st and 2nd Advanced, and have never figured out the d20 proper before. The combat section of the PHB makes me head hurt a LOT, and I wouldn't be able to fugure it out on me own. The Character roller took all those headaches away, although I am still a bit confused about the lack of Thief Skills (I play a Thief.... err, "Rogue" in a F2F game at the LFGS and have learned a lot of things from there) but I am having fun playing my character in the game.

I have not looked too much around otherwise, I felt I needed a good tool to help me with rolling up the character in the first place, and Beyond has been a massive help for that.

System wise, there are plenty of things in NeXT that seems unlogical to my TSR-D&D mindset, but I just roll whatever the DM tells me to roll and have fun within the limitations he sets (which isn't many or hard.... if I want.to do something crazy he tells me what to roll and what modifier I need, and we all have a laugh. As it should be)


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Patrick McGill

First Post
Overall impression after just using the free account:

This takes a lot of the headache with a d20-derived system away, I "swear" to a mix&match of Classic D&D, 1st and 2nd Advanced, and have never figured out the d20 proper before. The combat section of the PHB makes me head hurt a LOT, and I wouldn't be able to fugure it out on me own. The Character roller took all those headaches away, although I am still a bit confused about the lack of Thief Skills (I play a Thief.... err, "Rogue" in a F2F game at the LFGS and have learned a lot of things from there) but I am having fun playing my character in the game.

I have not looked too much around otherwise, I felt I needed a good tool to help me with rolling up the character in the first place, and Beyond has been a massive help for that.

System wise, there are plenty of things in NeXT that seems unlogical to my TSR-D&D mindset, but I just roll whatever the DM tells me to roll and have fun within the limitations he sets (which isn't many or hard.... if I want.to do something crazy he tells me what to roll and what modifier I need, and we all have a laugh. As it should be)


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Hiya! :D

I can tell you real quick what is analogous in 5e to the 1st edition thief skills.


  • Picking Pockets (1e) = Sleight of Hand (5e)
  • Open Locks (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Finding Traps (1e) = Perception (5e) (for more complicated traps, once found the DM might call for an Investigation to figure it out)
  • Disabling Traps (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Moving Silently (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Hide in Darkness (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Listen (1e) = Perception (5e)
  • Climbing (1e) = Athletics (5e)

I think that covers them. Let me know if I missed anything!
 

DocMindwipe

First Post
Hiya! :D

I can tell you real quick what is analogous in 5e to the 1st edition thief skills.


  • Picking Pockets (1e) = Sleight of Hand (5e)
  • Open Locks (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Finding Traps (1e) = Perception (5e) (for more complicated traps, once found the DM might call for an Investigation to figure it out)
  • Disabling Traps (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Moving Silently (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Hide in Darkness (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Listen (1e) = Perception (5e)
  • Climbing (1e) = Athletics (5e)

I think that covers them. Let me know if I missed anything!
Thank you for that one. It was just a little confusing when I rolled up my very first post-2k style Thief character not to have them.

I trust the DM to know what I need to roll anyways, so it is not a big problem in play. I sure got a couple of confused lools when I said "I can't find the Thief skills anywhere, am I overlooking something?" when I came to the first session, though

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hbarsquared

Quantum Chronomancer
Can someone quickly refresh my memory on what is available in the books versus the srd? Specifically?

I know the SRD is missing subclasses, backgrounds, and a few spells that are in the PHB. But besides a couple magic itrms and a couple monsters, what does the DMG and MM have to offer over the srd?
 

fjw70

Adventurer
Can someone quickly refresh my memory on what is available in the books versus the srd? Specifically?

I know the SRD is missing subclasses, backgrounds, and a few spells that are in the PHB. But besides a couple magic itrms and a couple monsters, what does the DMG and MM have to offer over the srd?

The DMG and MM have the full text from the books. So that means full monster lore from the MM and all the background, DM advice, and optional rules from the DMG.
 

ddaley

Explorer
To tell you the truth.. I like the skills from 1e better. They are more intuitive for the most part. We have been playing 5e for a while and I still can't remember which skill basic checks should use.

Hiya! :D

I can tell you real quick what is analogous in 5e to the 1st edition thief skills.


  • Picking Pockets (1e) = Sleight of Hand (5e)
  • Open Locks (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Finding Traps (1e) = Perception (5e) (for more complicated traps, once found the DM might call for an Investigation to figure it out)
  • Disabling Traps (1e) = Thief's Tools (5e)
  • Moving Silently (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Hide in Darkness (1e) = Stealth (5e)
  • Listen (1e) = Perception (5e)
  • Climbing (1e) = Athletics (5e)

I think that covers them. Let me know if I missed anything!
 

Good news! The five giant elites I mentioned I submitted upthread were approved and placed in the public homebrew monster section, looking all nice and official, other than artwork. I'm on vacation now, but I'll work on the others once I get back home.

As for persuading/cost splitting with groups, I bought the core 3 and Volo's on my own, my players are going to get SCAG and any other a la carte stuff they want from other sources...

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dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
Good news! The five giant elites I mentioned I submitted upthread were approved and placed in the public homebrew monster section, looking all nice and official, other than artwork. I'm on vacation now, but I'll work on the others once I get back home.

Artwork is always the problem for any material that you want to get published. DDB's requirements that it be free to use and using Google Image Search with the "Labelled for Non-commercial Reuse" is severely limiting. Hence why I have this as my firbolg (based on original rather than the abomination that is the PC race in 5e): https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17543-firbolg
 

dropbear8mybaby

Banned
Banned
This looks positive:

We have had a very successful first week, which would indicate as we expected that many people desire to invest in the service as it currently is. This is a good thing, as it means we will be able to continue development strongly and add the aforementioned robust campaign management over time. We even hope to ramp up our resources with this level of support.

http://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d...used-feedback-campaign-management?comment=272

After getting aggravated with some of the responses to DDB here and elsewhere I realised that they are probably the vocal minority and that I thought DDB would end up being a success despite them. Glad to see I was right about that.
 

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