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.

 

[Zaukrie]

Great start! Also, looks great.

 

[bedir than]

It's almost like the Cards system in Heroes from the Borderlands.

 

[Zaukrie]

It's almost like the Cards system in Heroes from the Borderlands.

That was my thought. I really wish we could get cards for actions and spells that had a dry erase spot on them for bonuses and stuff. Like, I really think the starter set was onto something.

 

[darjr]

How’s it working on desktop?

 

[mearls]

How’s it working on desktop?

It works great! Just built a dragonborn paladin. The background I took gave me wizard spells (shield, blade ward), so I had a nifty, very tanky character. with a few clicks. This is really cool!

Here's a link:

D&D Beyond Character Sheet

The World's most intelligent Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheet.

www.dndbeyond.com

I think backgrounds do pose a bit of an issue in this format, since there are so many of them and the feat benefits are non-obvious, but the interface is great.

 

[Zaukrie]

It didn't equip my armor or weapons, so you'd have to do that (I only tried one PC). Overall, it seems like a really good tool. It also appears to be level 1 only. I'd like to be able to ask for a level 7 PC, for a one shot or whatever, eventually.

 

[mearls]

Like if I could play D&D right now with that character, I 100% would.

 

[mearls]

It didn't equip my armor or weapons, so you'd have to do that (I only tried one PC). Overall, it seems like a really good tool. It also appears to be level 1 only. I'd like to be able to ask for a level 7 PC, for a one shot or whatever, eventually.

I wonder if accounting for all the decisions you need to make while levelling is a blocker. DDB used to offer random characters, but they were hilariously unplayable. We used to do them for whacky one shots ("I'm a gnome barbarian with an 8 strength who put all his ASIs into Charisma!")

 

[Zaukrie]

I wonder if accounting for all the decisions you need to make while levelling is a blocker. DDB used to offer random characters, but they were hilariously unplayable. We used to do them for whacky one shots ("I'm a gnome barbarian with an 8 strength who put all his ASIs into Charisma!")

At some point, if you want to support one shots, this is a big deal. IMO, of course.

But, yes, they'd need some better logic than I see in many games I play.....