WotC D&D Beyond Launches Its Character Quickbuilder

Mentioned in their roadmap last month, D&D Beyond has now launched its Character Quickbuilder, designed to make creating your first character as easy and fast as possible. This is in incremental progress, and the Quickbuilder will continue to develop based on feedback.

Our design process started with talking to players about their pain points, and conducting player research labs on prototypes (For those interested in User experience research, the prototype sessions were qualitative, moderated 1:1 sessions with an average of 8 participants per round, split across two prototype rounds).

Our goal is to learn not only about the challenges with the current builder but also about players’ end-to-end D&D experience.

Here are some of the design principles we developed from those early conversations and research studies that have guided the design explorations and concepts we’re showing you today.

• You shouldn’t have to be an expert in the rules to build a character.
• It should feel great to use across all device sizes, from phones to 4K monitors.
• Lead with iconic D&D art, not walls of text and rules details in tiny pop-ups.
• Provide easy default selections and let players decide how deeply to customize their characters.
• Put the DM back in control of their campaign, including which rules it uses or omits.
• Help players see and avoid common builder mistakes, such as forgetting ability score bonuses or picking duplicate skill proficiencies.

 

[Clint_L]

It made me a cleric that wasn’t proficient in Religion…

That’s fine. It’s a fairly useless skill, so most players don’t pick it for their clerics; I’d be annoyed if the quick builder tried to force me to take it.

If you’re worried about RP, note that most IRL clerics have little knowledge of religious lore beyond their own, and even that is often very limited.

From what I can tell, the quick builder defaults to “optimal,” or at least very conventional builds, which avoid Religion. Obviously, it’s not for folks who have a specific character concept; use the standard builder for that. Or use the quick builder and then edit it. Swap out insight for religion if you like.