D&D 5E D&D Beyond Phase 2 and 3 are open beta!

[Demetrios1453]

Fun, but it's clearly a work in progress. I built a Tiefling Dragon Sorceror and I had no access to metamagic and after the first three cantrips it wouldn't let me choose any more spell period, so I couldn't select a fourth cantrip or a first level spell. It also simply listed dragon types instead of letting me pick one.

I did however get to pick Sphinx as a language thanks to Noble background, so the character knew Common, Infernal, Draconic, and Sphinx, an interesting array of languages. What alaphbet does the Sphinx language use?

Given that sphinxes speak in riddles, I can only assume they would write in rebuses...

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[Charles Rampant]

I've had a look, and created a couple characters. It's not perfect: for example...

• when you try to add Plate to your fighter, it'll bring up a list of all the magical platemail first, which seems an odd choice in character creation
• it asks you to assign ASIs before assigning base ability scores, and without showing you the total score after each pick, if you create a high level character
• it informs you of what equipment your class gets, but doesn't then let you just click a button to accept it - you'd have to manually add it all yourself.

However, overall its a very slick and clean presentation, and I think that the issues thus far would be mainly addressed with a few checkboxes at the start ('do you want to see magic items?') and some tooltips to keep the player in check. Once you look at the sheet, it's pretty easy to understand what's going on, and it all loads quickly so that you can verify what Magic Missile does, how many spell slots you've got, what Orcish Resilience does, and what your Greataxe attack and damage scores are. I've got a good feeling about this; very keen to see how they'll do combat tracking and campaign integration.

 

[wedgeski]

Integrating homebrew this early in the process is really cool...

 

[ExploderWizard]

For my first test, I made simple start variant human fighter level 1 to see what the defaults were. Everything came out much as expected except one thing:

1st level feat: Svirfvneblin magic!

I gotta make another one and see what comes up in the slot machine next.

OK. My next attempt was a random human variant rogue. The program put an 8 in INT, a 12 in STR, and assigned the feat: Grappler which requires a 13 STR.

Quick start characters suck.

 

[Dausuul]

For my first test, I made simple start variant human fighter level 1 to see what the defaults were. Everything came out much as expected except one thing:

1st level feat: Svirfvneblin magic!

I gotta make another one and see what comes up in the slot machine next.

OK. My next attempt was a random human variant rogue. The program put an 8 in INT, a 12 in STR, and assigned the feat: Grappler which requires a 13 STR.

Quick start characters suck.

They really shouldn't have incorporated the human variant if they were only going to show us the Basic rules. Human variant makes no sense without feats, and feats aren't in Basic. I suppose it's there to reassure us that it wasn't left out.

 

[ExploderWizard]

They really shouldn't have incorporated the human variant if they were only going to show us the Basic rules. Human variant makes no sense without feats, and feats aren't in Basic. I suppose it's there to reassure us that it wasn't left out.

All the races from the PHB and the Elemental Evil supplement are in the builder. The feat selection seems to random from a table with no thought to the race/class being built.

 

[MarkB]

I did however get to pick Sphinx as a language thanks to Noble background, so the character knew Common, Infernal, Draconic, and Sphinx, an interesting array of languages. What alaphbet does the Sphinx language use?

My halfling wizard can speak Giant Owl, which will at least be useful for mail delivery.

 

[Kalshane]

Wow. I'm getting flashbacks to this "DND Character Gen" program I had on my PC back in the MS-DOS days. Does it also randomly generate names that are just letters strung together with no thoughts towards pronounceability?

 

[Zaukrie]

Assuming they launched now, partly, because this weekend should be less volume, for to the holiday. It's a good start. Looking forward to improvements

 

[Ricochet]

I like what I'm seeing in the character builder so far. Replicated my 5th level paladin in 5 minutes (without most equipment, mind).