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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So far, I haven't found the maps very cleverly implemented.

I can view them in a standard galleri-like feature where the surrounding webpage fades somewhat. Not particularly helpful. No map tools or seperate views for DM and player maps. There is zoomed parts of the maps though in seperate images. They look quite nice for the dungeon parts for instance. Overall quite lackluster though to be honest, and resolution isn't the greatest either.

Unlike other images on the site, I can't seem to open the images in the adventure in full screen either, but that might be due to my incompetence. :)

I'm hoping they can improve the adventure interface to be something more robust than the standard compendium one. It's still better than PDFs to me, but still a ways from what it could be.

As for the maps, unfortunately, they can only include what WotC has provided to them. Apparently these are the highest resolution they were given, and I believe the Curse staff specifically said they were not given unlabeled player maps (Although, I *think* just a day or two ago they said that has finally changed and they will have player maps soon??? Can't find the exact quote.). So they are restricted by what WotC gives them - and I believe it was just the InDesign print files that they had to extract all of the text and images from. But if this looks like it does well, hopefully WotC can give them better material to include.
 

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Echohawk

Shirokinukatsukami fan
No map tools or seperate views for DM and player maps. There is zoomed parts of the maps though in seperate images. They look quite nice for the dungeon parts for instance. Overall quite lackluster though to be honest, and resolution isn't the greatest either.
According to this post, there was a problem with the Lost Mines of Phandelver maps being low resolution, which has been fixed. Possibly there are some other adventures with similar issues. Also from the same post, it seems that player versions of the maps are something that will be looked at, where those are available.
 

SkidAce

Legend
Supporter
Requiring a Twitch account was also a really bad idea. Twitch is very polarizing, it's going to be a deal breaker for some number of people. Forcing people to sign up for social media sites, especially single purpose sites whose popularity may very well be only due to people dreaming about being the next Pewdiepie, isn't a selling point.

I created the Twitch account for the purpose of D&D Beyond and haven't been to Twitch since.

Its irrelevant to me.
 

Dausuul

Legend
Hmm. Well, the character sheet layout issues aren't fixed yet. If they sort that out, I'm on board, but currently I can still make a more functional character sheet with paper and pencil. I gather they're working on it.

All things considered, though, it's a good start. They were pretty responsive to complaints in the beta, which is very encouraging, and the answer I got when I complained about the layout made it clear they understood what the issue was. If they fix this one thing, I will happily shell out for a sub and a bunch of books.
 
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CapnZapp

Legend
I'm hoping they can improve the adventure interface to be something more robust than the standard compendium one. It's still better than PDFs to me, but still a ways from what it could be.

As for the maps, unfortunately, they can only include what WotC has provided to them. Apparently these are the highest resolution they were given, and I believe the Curse staff specifically said they were not given unlabeled player maps (Although, I *think* just a day or two ago they said that has finally changed and they will have player maps soon??? Can't find the exact quote.). So they are restricted by what WotC gives them - and I believe it was just the InDesign print files that they had to extract all of the text and images from. But if this looks like it does well, hopefully WotC can give them better material to include.
Obviously there needs to be a way to plug in Schley's magnificent maps: in high resolution and in both player and DM versions.

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lkj

Hero
So I try to make up a random L17 wizard. I gives me a PC with a 5 INT....

Yeah. Apparently, random really is random. I think I've seen mention of them making the 'random build' smarter. But I don't know where it is on their priority list.

Quick build works great for 1st level characters though.

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Flexor the Mighty!

18/100 Strength!
I'm not a big fan of all archmages are the same for example, so I'd like to be able to bang out a quick L18-20 mage with feats and gear. Not sure this product if perfect for that but I can tweak.
 

lkj

Hero
I'm not a big fan of all archmages are the same for example, so I'd like to be able to bang out a quick L18-20 mage with feats and gear. Not sure this product if perfect for that but I can tweak.

Yeah, I'd like a 'constrained random' button as well. Might be worth dropping it as a feature request on their forums.

Though I can see the programming logic getting complicated pretty fast if they are trying to optimize at all.

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