The current sheet is hard to navigate and find the information for my character I need. Especially the features section which hides a lot until you click on it. In general having to open close just to get at the titles for things like feats is not good. I need to be able to see my character and the abilities at a glance. Then if I want more info on it - click. I know there is a lot of information to fit on the page. Perhaps some additional pages for things like character description and spells?
I imagine this would be helpful for beastmasters also but. Would really like summoned minion support. My necromancer like to name his skeletons and give them +1 arrows and other such things.
The thing that annoys me about this character builder isn’t just the lack of Unearthed Arcana or that the functionality is so poor (no UA, no spell cards, no proper descriptions, character backgrounds being exported in what looks like two point font) ... it’s that merely by existing, it has removed far superior character builders from the picture. Ones that gave useful printable sheets. I say this as someone who has invested in D&D Beyond for the Legendary Bundle and been distinctly underwhelmed. Finding that the alpha of the iOS app was basically PDFs of the books with additional DRM overhead has not encouraged me the be more positive about my investment.
Hero Lab (excellent product), OrcPub, 5th Edition app ... all of these things now require a lot of manual work to use or have disappeared entirely, probably because of WotC enforcing Beyond’s niche (certainly Hero Lab tried to get licenced for a long time). This is an area where competition is genuinely good. The success of Pathfinder is that it helps players invest emotionally in the game by creating characters, without hassle and without massive investment. 5E seems to be succeeding despite a ham-fisted digital strategy (not Beyond’s fault, admittedly).
The character builder is currently less useful than creating a character in Fantasy Grounds, exporting it, and then using other resources to print the spell cards. A process that gets me Unearthed Arcana content within a couple of weeks of it being released, at no cost. A process that supports infinite characters with no subscription fee. A process that will probably be available long after our leases of content via Beyond are non-renewable. Let that sink in for a moment.
Anyhow, I look forward to the character builder becoming useful with spell cards with correct DCs, a proper and unbugged Notes section, a wide variety of excellent defaul portraits, and updated Unearthed Arcana. Other than the last part these are bare minimums that really shouldn’t take much effort to meet and it’s bemusing that you haven’t done so yet.
As for Unearthed Arcana - it may be unattractive at first sight because you can’t charge for it, but it could be an excellent source of analytics because you can monitor how many people use different UA classes and archetypes and feed that back to WotC and get business intelligence out of it for Beyond’s own home brew releases if you make any. Just do it as a loss leader. It should be at most a day of programming and a couple of days of data entry unless your underlying framework is really bizarre.
While I totally agree with you in content and other builders (I've used OrcPub religiously), even developers close to a project underestimate the requirements. It's a fact of life as a programmer. We don't what they do, how they do it and what other pressures they are under. So we can't even begin to estimate how long something takes.
I, myself, have been on a project where the UI was almost completely revamped five times because management changed their minds is suddenly had a better idea.
I couldnt love orc pub... Too much stuff i either didnt understand or not enough automation for my taste. Hero lab... Who can say counter intuitive... That thing may be good but they could definitely redo the whole ui if it was me.
Though i agree fifth edition character sheet is awesome. It is also very illegal just like the rest you say. Also illegal to use lion den xml files. Which you probably use as well. Not to mention they are full of typos !!!
All excellant reasons for me to stick with beyond.
Also you already have everything you need to emulate ua already. Once homebrew races gets in youll have everything you need.
Aside from classes which are not worth it anyway... Artificer bein very sub optimal and psychic being overpowered. It seems to me like we dont need those at all.
After trying everything else i can say not many have both the ui and the actual rules.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
OrcPub is very automated and very straightforward. Its process is even more logical than Beyond. It's not legal but not for lack of trying and even if you have to create every piece of info yourself, it's still more useful than the current character builder here. It's, basically, only missing an invocation creator.
But you don't need to create classes, subclasses, races, feats, and invocations so they're redundant? Great for you but the rest of us want the freedom to create.
The character builder is a Chinese Room right now - it doesn't do anything with the class features. It doesn't need to factor them in to anything. It's simple retrieval and display at this stage. Unless something is terribly wrong it should be a trivial task.
For those who might not know, the character sheet will see a major revamp next year. There won't be any collapsible boxes. A revamp is intended for the export function as well.
Note: the following image is just intended to be an example of the layout.
If the Exported Character Sheet is similar to that I would be pleased. I would like to see that whole sheet before passing full judgement, but from what I can see it looks great.
If export lets you print out character cards and details features, that's good. If the level of detail is like it is now, an improved UI won't make a difference.
I couldnt love orc pub... Too much stuff i either didnt understand or not enough automation for my taste. Hero lab... Who can say counter intuitive... That thing may be good but they could definitely redo the whole ui if it was me.
Though i agree fifth edition character sheet is awesome. It is also very illegal just like the rest you say. Also illegal to use lion den xml files. Which you probably use as well. Not to mention they are full of typos !!!
All excellant reasons for me to stick with beyond.
Also you already have everything you need to emulate ua already. Once homebrew races gets in youll have everything you need.
Aside from classes which are not worth it anyway... Artificer bein very sub optimal and psychic being overpowered. It seems to me like we dont need those at all.
After trying everything else i can say not many have both the ui and the actual rules.
Given I said I use Fantasy Grounds, I am bemused that you say I use Lion's Den (which I haven't heard of). Hero Lab has a sensible UI which works fine, it's certainly no worse than Beyond - actually it's superior because you can always access any given screen whereas you have to click through some on Beyond (a basic UI error).
I can't emulate the revised Ranger so it's not clear what point you're attempting to make by saying that I can do everything already.
If export lets you print out character cards and details features, that's good. If the level of detail is like it is now, an improved UI won't make a difference.
This is why I am reserving judgement (and money lol) till we see the full product.
For those who might not know, the character sheet will see a major revamp next year. There won't be any collapsible boxes. A revamp is intended for the export function as well.
Note: the following image is just intended to be an example of the layout.
The export version is more important to me, when I game electronic devices are a distraction and I do not wish to appear distracted.
Not to be rude, but, if the character builder is meant to be based on the 5th Edition system, why are so many of the 5th Edition options from the basic hand books not listed as options on the site? I have a whole list of back up characters I have on scratch paper I would like to have backed up digitally somewhere, but I can't put in so many of the options I can't remakes them here. It's really disappointing.
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The current sheet is hard to navigate and find the information for my character I need. Especially the features section which hides a lot until you click on it. In general having to open close just to get at the titles for things like feats is not good. I need to be able to see my character and the abilities at a glance. Then if I want more info on it - click. I know there is a lot of information to fit on the page. Perhaps some additional pages for things like character description and spells?
I imagine this would be helpful for beastmasters also but.
Would really like summoned minion support. My necromancer like to name his skeletons and give them +1 arrows and other such things.
The thing that annoys me about this character builder isn’t just the lack of Unearthed Arcana or that the functionality is so poor (no UA, no spell cards, no proper descriptions, character backgrounds being exported in what looks like two point font) ... it’s that merely by existing, it has removed far superior character builders from the picture. Ones that gave useful printable sheets. I say this as someone who has invested in D&D Beyond for the Legendary Bundle and been distinctly underwhelmed. Finding that the alpha of the iOS app was basically PDFs of the books with additional DRM overhead has not encouraged me the be more positive about my investment.
Hero Lab (excellent product), OrcPub, 5th Edition app ... all of these things now require a lot of manual work to use or have disappeared entirely, probably because of WotC enforcing Beyond’s niche (certainly Hero Lab tried to get licenced for a long time). This is an area where competition is genuinely good. The success of Pathfinder is that it helps players invest emotionally in the game by creating characters, without hassle and without massive investment. 5E seems to be succeeding despite a ham-fisted digital strategy (not Beyond’s fault, admittedly).
The character builder is currently less useful than creating a character in Fantasy Grounds, exporting it, and then using other resources to print the spell cards. A process that gets me Unearthed Arcana content within a couple of weeks of it being released, at no cost. A process that supports infinite characters with no subscription fee. A process that will probably be available long after our leases of content via Beyond are non-renewable. Let that sink in for a moment.
Anyhow, I look forward to the character builder becoming useful with spell cards with correct DCs, a proper and unbugged Notes section, a wide variety of excellent defaul portraits, and updated Unearthed Arcana. Other than the last part these are bare minimums that really shouldn’t take much effort to meet and it’s bemusing that you haven’t done so yet.
As for Unearthed Arcana - it may be unattractive at first sight because you can’t charge for it, but it could be an excellent source of analytics because you can monitor how many people use different UA classes and archetypes and feed that back to WotC and get business intelligence out of it for Beyond’s own home brew releases if you make any. Just do it as a loss leader. It should be at most a day of programming and a couple of days of data entry unless your underlying framework is really bizarre.
While I totally agree with you in content and other builders (I've used OrcPub religiously), even developers close to a project underestimate the requirements. It's a fact of life as a programmer. We don't what they do, how they do it and what other pressures they are under. So we can't even begin to estimate how long something takes.
I, myself, have been on a project where the UI was almost completely revamped five times because management changed their minds is suddenly had a better idea.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
Well to each its own...
I couldnt love orc pub... Too much stuff i either didnt understand or not enough automation for my taste. Hero lab... Who can say counter intuitive... That thing may be good but they could definitely redo the whole ui if it was me.
Though i agree fifth edition character sheet is awesome. It is also very illegal just like the rest you say. Also illegal to use lion den xml files. Which you probably use as well. Not to mention they are full of typos !!!
All excellant reasons for me to stick with beyond.
Also you already have everything you need to emulate ua already. Once homebrew races gets in youll have everything you need.
Aside from classes which are not worth it anyway... Artificer bein very sub optimal and psychic being overpowered. It seems to me like we dont need those at all.
After trying everything else i can say not many have both the ui and the actual rules.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
OrcPub is very automated and very straightforward. Its process is even more logical than Beyond. It's not legal but not for lack of trying and even if you have to create every piece of info yourself, it's still more useful than the current character builder here. It's, basically, only missing an invocation creator.
But you don't need to create classes, subclasses, races, feats, and invocations so they're redundant? Great for you but the rest of us want the freedom to create.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
The character builder is a Chinese Room right now - it doesn't do anything with the class features. It doesn't need to factor them in to anything. It's simple retrieval and display at this stage. Unless something is terribly wrong it should be a trivial task.
For those who might not know, the character sheet will see a major revamp next year. There won't be any collapsible boxes. A revamp is intended for the export function as well.
Note: the following image is just intended to be an example of the layout.
We saw this visualisation before. Is this final? Going to production? Is there a date?
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
If the Exported Character Sheet is similar to that I would be pleased. I would like to see that whole sheet before passing full judgement, but from what I can see it looks great.
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master
I new to this site and love the character builder, but where are the tabaxi?
If export lets you print out character cards and details features, that's good. If the level of detail is like it is now, an improved UI won't make a difference.
Thank you very much
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master
DND Beyond Legendary Bundle Holder
Not to be rude, but, if the character builder is meant to be based on the 5th Edition system, why are so many of the 5th Edition options from the basic hand books not listed as options on the site? I have a whole list of back up characters I have on scratch paper I would like to have backed up digitally somewhere, but I can't put in so many of the options I can't remakes them here. It's really disappointing.