Although the character creator is following the order in the PHB, I feel like it should be adjusted a little. In my opinion the "abilities" and "description" sections should be placed before "class" for a few reasons. When creating a character with at least 1 ability score increase, it's useful to know what your base stats are already. Also since choosing a background gives you automatic proficient skills, it's useful to know that before having to choose the ones based on your class. It might also be helpful to display what skills are already given to you when choosing the class skill proficiencies.
Very cool-I like the clean and logical UI. I noticed a couple things when creating a Monk PC just to put the system through its paces. There was only one Monastic Tradition available, the way of the open hand. Under Attacks there was no obvious place to have unarmed attacks listed. The Backgrounds were also limited, showing only a few options.
Will there be an integrated dice function if the user wants to use a randomized rather than roll physical dice?
Using the Standard creation method with help text enabled is confusing because is breaks the navigation paradigm of the section tracker at the top. It adds multiple pages (the help text) with no visual cue to the user and, in my opinion, creates a bit of a navigation swamp.
I would change the Standard method to still have 1 page per section, allowing the user to navigate through by using the section nav or the Next/Previous buttons in a more concise manner, but still provide the help text as a collapsible card entitled help text.
Alternatively, you could even more effectively shift the help text into a series of more contextual, guided blurbs that are next to the feature they are describing, be it through rollovers or dismissable help bubbles.
Another idea may be to have a 'Guided' creation method that is standard with help text turned on. Then keep Standard (w/o text) as its own method.
Picking the Variant Human Race only allows for 2 feats to be chosen, Grappler and Svirfneblin Magic.
And a dice roller would be cool. I also got confused in the equipment section, I couldn't choose anything.
Thank you for your post - we appreciate people taking the time to give us feedback.
During the beta test of D&D Beyond, we'll only be including content that is freely available from Wizards of the Coast, including the D&D 5th edition SRD , D&D 5th edition Basic Rules, Elemental Evil Companion and potentially others. The beta will not include additional content from a Commercially Released Book, Module or Supplement.
All of the remaining published content from the PHB, DMG, MM and other D&D 5th edition books will be added to D&D Beyond for product release - the cost for accessing this material has not yet been announced.
Do forgive me if I'm not going to browse through 18 pages of feedback at this hour, I do intend to sleep tonight.
I took the character builder on a joyride this morning and again tonight and I must say I am impressed overall by the experience. I converted my myth-weavers Tiefling Bard into DDB in roughly half an hour or so. thankfully it was an all SRD+EE content character, so It is a godsend to have all the reference- material needed available in one place, I can only imagine how much better it will be once the full version is out.
some notes I thought needed mentioning:
when I approached the builder the first time on my mobile I went directly to the step-by-step freestyle building, but I was struggling to navigate through it as several things felt out of place, such as the spells selection, which is available at an early part of the building but sidetracked my progress. The help text option was rather rather inconvenient because while it did do it's job as a guide to D&D, it wasn't very helpful on how to use the builder itself, it took me time to figure it out, hence why I was lost trying to make sense of the controls.
On the first character I built I tried to fight the program over an extra cantrip due to being a 4th-level illusionist (I forgot it was not available yet, and then I thought I could still get by somehow). it would be nice if spells known/cantrips had an override option , Especially because Wizard (perhaps with a hover pin from the DM's perspective that would signal to the DM of the override or otherwise brings it to his/her attention when he/she is looking over the character sheet. Hooray for supervision! A flexible way to enforce fair play!) anyhow, the subclass option, (and stats!) were available a while after the page with the button to choose spells, how is that supposed to work? I mean, I'm certain that picking subclass after spells makes sense in a linear progression but makes little sense for a character that doesn't start at 1st level.
It was only after I started over with the Tiefling Bard, and switched off the help textsbefore I started that I was able to learn how to use the builder in peace. I took my time learning where everything is and I'm quite pleased with the result! I do hope there will be options to upload character portraits for personal use, or expanded stock art over time, or even just find room for a blank square canvas to fit your own image on the sheet. y'know?
Finally, certain page options seemed rather weird to me. such as choosing your background at the bottom of the description page, and having to write all the standard gear by hand, because there was no apply button next to standard gear to put it in there, which I think would be a definite timesaver if you can just tick box a or box b at a given standard gear option and push a button to put class and background gear on your sheet immediately. having only one of each personality trait, ideal, bond and flaw boxes meant cramming as much of my character into them ( which is rather easy and not inconvenient but I'm never satisfied with just one of each.)
P.S. Try searching leather armor or "Leather" when hand picking equipment, because first the magic items all clutter the search while the normal one is on the bottom (is there a on/off switch for magic items when searching gear? if not, how about it?). and second the thing you look for in the search disappears when you type it's full name, I hope you could fix that.
Wow I had a lot to say about the standard builder! I'm gonna try touching on the other options quickly:
-Quickbuild option seems exceptional when you need an instant 1st level character - equipment is there, spells are planned out, stats and skills are effective - all the player needs to do is work a little on the fluff and he's set with a competent 1st level character - I love it! I fiddled around with a deep gnome warlock, I do hope further down the line there will be quick-build "quick sheets" built around other subclass options or more specialized builds, too!
-Randomized was a lot of fun to experiment with, yet utterly ridiculous in practice. I randomized a level 20 halfling bard with 12 charisma and 23 passive perception, and a level 1 tiefling monk with only 3 strength and 18 charisma. I can certainly see my friends at a party building 80-100% randomized characters in seconds using this, and having to improvise through the adventure with it! :P shenanigans ensue, it's delicious! however, I think it would be nice if there was an option for standard gear/starting gold(as a budget of items and coins), maybe a "add random magic items" filter( with a rarity filter, naturaly) to be built in with the random engines. other than that, a superb job! I was much amused by it!
overall I was incredibly impressed by the effort put into the builder, It is incredibly convenient to use (on the phone it was a little less but from my understanding it's easier now than it was this morning, I'll have to double check) and hopefully will only get better from here! If I may ask for one more detail it would be trinkets - randomized or select from the table/options. Trinkets are SRD ain't they? :3
I'm not - nor was I ever - your "obstacle" until you've deemed me as such, nor am I your wallet, my hard earnt money is not yours by deault.
Je suis Consumer - We are the foundation, the floor beneath your rug. our support is the fate of every retail product, business, and franchise. for success you need support.
I will always miss what you were, but I will never miss what you've become.
I'd like to see auto calculations such as when a ranger duel wields or a button that you can click to track if the ranger has used a certain action such as giant slayer.
i feel like in general the character sheet should be "smarter" with automatic changes to stats, attacks, etc, much like herolab software does
Oh, and built-in virtual dice for things like generating Ability Scores and increasing hit points when leveling up, not to mention attack and damage rolls, would be icing on the cake.
Not sure if anybody made mention yet but for the sorcerer character the plus 3 to ac for not wearing armor is not being added to the ac and my character does not even own armor. Also I have noticed that certain spells my character knows from the sorcerer list are not available which are Chromatic Orb and Witchbolt.
Have been transferring a character from a pdf and these are my only issues I have run into so far.
Rod of Lordly Might - Equipped as Gear, Attuned. Doesn't have a listing under the Attack section despite it's description.. It cannot be equipped as a weapon.
Interesting but biggest thing I see missing are all the magic sources for Sorcerer are missing but Draconic Bloodline is missing, as are variant racial traits.
I was trying to build my Sorc who has Wild Magic as his source and took the extra feat racial variant.
Additionally, it would be nice to get a small wizard that popped up for starting equipment, especially since its not all on the list (like arcane focus)
Also, when I click to learn more about a race, it should open a new window instead of taking me entirely away from the page I was looking at.
Seeing some missing content/options. Is there a specific place we should track that or are those known issues? Specifically I don't see a Circle of the Moon option for my Druid at all. Similarly the Hermit background seems to be missing.
Otherwise, the biggest thing I'd like to see added in the UI is the ability to know what your final scores will be when modifying XP, health, ability score improvements, etc. No reason those calculations can't be previewed before hitting the ok button.
Also, on the Druid front, is there a good place to put known wildshapes or familiars for Rangers? In other apps I've used the two normally live in the same place. Great work! Thanks.
I gotta admit. I'm gonna check out on this. I won't be using it unless something changes.
So we only have the SRD to work with.... That means I have to fudge my forest gnome with a rock gnome and adjust dex accordingly. No prob. I had everything ready for when my group got together today until I went to the spell list. How is Ray of Sickness and Tausha's hideous laughter not available/on the SRD? I stopped at level one spells. Didn't even bother to see what was missing on my level 2 or 3 spells.
Guys I cant play test this for you if I can't PLAY with it. I can't even build my character properly? Why would I ever use this when "More Purple More Better"'s automated PDF sheet does everything I need and more?
I understand it's in Beta (I've beta tested many games), but it's come to my intention that I will need to pay for anything outside of SRD content.
Im afraid I won't be happening.
I own every DnD Wizards of the Coast book there is. Why is it fair that I pay again for content I technically already own and have paid for?
Sorry gents. Thanks for the hard work and I wish you all the best, but I'm not paying again for content I already own.
I broke the Equipment when I added 25 Rations. Could add a single ration. It could be nice if we could change the amount of equipment, lets say, I have 1 ration, but want to change it to 4 rations, without finding it in the list. (make sense?)
Also, Wild Magic is not yet implemented in the builder correct? :)
Just want to say that looks awesome so far, I'm interested with what you guys are doing with this and I am looking forward to you adding Volo's monster PCs. I can't wait to make my Triton Warlock. Also I yet to see anything about the class archetypes option, but are there only one option for each class? Also does anyone know how to reduce your character level? I want to restart one of my level 3 characters as a level 1 but when I'm in the character builder it only allows level increases. Continue doing the good work!
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Although the character creator is following the order in the PHB, I feel like it should be adjusted a little. In my opinion the "abilities" and "description" sections should be placed before "class" for a few reasons. When creating a character with at least 1 ability score increase, it's useful to know what your base stats are already. Also since choosing a background gives you automatic proficient skills, it's useful to know that before having to choose the ones based on your class. It might also be helpful to display what skills are already given to you when choosing the class skill proficiencies.
Very cool-I like the clean and logical UI. I noticed a couple things when creating a Monk PC just to put the system through its paces. There was only one Monastic Tradition available, the way of the open hand. Under Attacks there was no obvious place to have unarmed attacks listed. The Backgrounds were also limited, showing only a few options.
Will there be an integrated dice function if the user wants to use a randomized rather than roll physical dice?
It would be useful to have a way to track spell slots used on the character sheet.
Picking the Variant Human Race only allows for 2 feats to be chosen, Grappler and Svirfneblin Magic.
And a dice roller would be cool. I also got confused in the equipment section, I couldn't choose anything.
Using the Standard creation method with help text enabled is confusing because is breaks the navigation paradigm of the section tracker at the top. It adds multiple pages (the help text) with no visual cue to the user and, in my opinion, creates a bit of a navigation swamp.
I would change the Standard method to still have 1 page per section, allowing the user to navigate through by using the section nav or the Next/Previous buttons in a more concise manner, but still provide the help text as a collapsible card entitled help text.
Alternatively, you could even more effectively shift the help text into a series of more contextual, guided blurbs that are next to the feature they are describing, be it through rollovers or dismissable help bubbles.
Another idea may be to have a 'Guided' creation method that is standard with help text turned on. Then keep Standard (w/o text) as its own method.
Thank you for your post - we appreciate people taking the time to give us feedback.
During the beta test of D&D Beyond, we'll only be including content that is freely available from Wizards of the Coast, including the D&D 5th edition SRD , D&D 5th edition Basic Rules, Elemental Evil Companion and potentially others. The beta will not include additional content from a Commercially Released Book, Module or Supplement.
All of the remaining published content from the PHB, DMG, MM and other D&D 5th edition books will be added to D&D Beyond for product release - the cost for accessing this material has not yet been announced.
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If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
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It would be useful to track any expendable class resource: spell slots, ki points, maneuver dice, channel divinity etc.
i found in the spells section after you put in the spells it shows how many slots you have and you can put an "x" in the slots you've used.
Do forgive me if I'm not going to browse through 18 pages of feedback at this hour, I do intend to sleep tonight.
I took the character builder on a joyride this morning and again tonight and I must say I am impressed overall by the experience. I converted my myth-weavers Tiefling Bard into DDB in roughly half an hour or so. thankfully it was an all SRD+EE content character, so It is a godsend to have all the reference- material needed available in one place, I can only imagine how much better it will be once the full version is out.
some notes I thought needed mentioning:
when I approached the builder the first time on my mobile I went directly to the step-by-step freestyle building, but I was struggling to navigate through it as several things felt out of place, such as the spells selection, which is available at an early part of the building but sidetracked my progress. The help text option was rather rather inconvenient because while it did do it's job as a guide to D&D, it wasn't very helpful on how to use the builder itself, it took me time to figure it out, hence why I was lost trying to make sense of the controls.
On the first character I built I tried to fight the program over an extra cantrip due to being a 4th-level illusionist (I forgot it was not available yet, and then I thought I could still get by somehow). it would be nice if spells known/cantrips had an override option , Especially because Wizard (perhaps with a hover pin from the DM's perspective that would signal to the DM of the override or otherwise brings it to his/her attention when he/she is looking over the character sheet. Hooray for supervision! A flexible way to enforce fair play!) anyhow, the subclass option, (and stats!) were available a while after the page with the button to choose spells, how is that supposed to work? I mean, I'm certain that picking subclass after spells makes sense in a linear progression but makes little sense for a character that doesn't start at 1st level.
It was only after I started over with the Tiefling Bard, and switched off the help texts before I started that I was able to learn how to use the builder in peace. I took my time learning where everything is and I'm quite pleased with the result! I do hope there will be options to upload character portraits for personal use, or expanded stock art over time, or even just find room for a blank square canvas to fit your own image on the sheet. y'know?
Finally, certain page options seemed rather weird to me. such as choosing your background at the bottom of the description page, and having to write all the standard gear by hand, because there was no apply button next to standard gear to put it in there, which I think would be a definite timesaver if you can just tick box a or box b at a given standard gear option and push a button to put class and background gear on your sheet immediately. having only one of each personality trait, ideal, bond and flaw boxes meant cramming as much of my character into them ( which is rather easy and not inconvenient but I'm never satisfied with just one of each.)
P.S. Try searching leather armor or "Leather" when hand picking equipment, because first the magic items all clutter the search while the normal one is on the bottom (is there a on/off switch for magic items when searching gear? if not, how about it?). and second the thing you look for in the search disappears when you type it's full name, I hope you could fix that.
Wow I had a lot to say about the standard builder! I'm gonna try touching on the other options quickly:
-Quickbuild option seems exceptional when you need an instant 1st level character - equipment is there, spells are planned out, stats and skills are effective - all the player needs to do is work a little on the fluff and he's set with a competent 1st level character - I love it! I fiddled around with a deep gnome warlock, I do hope further down the line there will be quick-build "quick sheets" built around other subclass options or more specialized builds, too!
-Randomized was a lot of fun to experiment with, yet utterly ridiculous in practice. I randomized a level 20 halfling bard with 12 charisma and 23 passive perception, and a level 1 tiefling monk with only 3 strength and 18 charisma. I can certainly see my friends at a party building 80-100% randomized characters in seconds using this, and having to improvise through the adventure with it! :P shenanigans ensue, it's delicious! however, I think it would be nice if there was an option for standard gear/starting gold(as a budget of items and coins), maybe a "add random magic items" filter( with a rarity filter, naturaly) to be built in with the random engines. other than that, a superb job! I was much amused by it!
overall I was incredibly impressed by the effort put into the builder, It is incredibly convenient to use (on the phone it was a little less but from my understanding it's easier now than it was this morning, I'll have to double check) and hopefully will only get better from here! If I may ask for one more detail it would be trinkets - randomized or select from the table/options. Trinkets are SRD ain't they? :3
I'm not - nor was I ever - your "obstacle" until you've deemed me as such, nor am I your wallet, my hard earnt money is not yours by deault.
Je suis Consumer - We are the foundation, the floor beneath your rug. our support is the fate of every retail product, business, and franchise. for success you need support.
I will always miss what you were, but I will never miss what you've become.
#OpenDnD #CanceltheSub #DnDBegone.#NeverForgive #NeverForget
I'd like to see auto calculations such as when a ranger duel wields or a button that you can click to track if the ranger has used a certain action such as giant slayer.
i feel like in general the character sheet should be "smarter" with automatic changes to stats, attacks, etc, much like herolab software does
This is a silly little bug: the button to cast cantrips gets grayed out when you have no spell slots.
Oh, and built-in virtual dice for things like generating Ability Scores and increasing hit points when leveling up, not to mention attack and damage rolls, would be icing on the cake.
I'm on the DM's Guild: click here
Not sure if anybody made mention yet but for the sorcerer character the plus 3 to ac for not wearing armor is not being added to the ac and my character does not even own armor. Also I have noticed that certain spells my character knows from the sorcerer list are not available which are Chromatic Orb and Witchbolt.
Have been transferring a character from a pdf and these are my only issues I have run into so far.
I can't seem to access any cleric domains other than life, either on my computer or my phone.
Rod of Lordly Might - Equipped as Gear, Attuned. Doesn't have a listing under the Attack section despite it's description.. It cannot be equipped as a weapon.
Interesting but biggest thing I see missing are all the magic sources for Sorcerer are missing but Draconic Bloodline is missing, as are variant racial traits.
I was trying to build my Sorc who has Wild Magic as his source and took the extra feat racial variant.
Additionally, it would be nice to get a small wizard that popped up for starting equipment, especially since its not all on the list (like arcane focus)
Also, when I click to learn more about a race, it should open a new window instead of taking me entirely away from the page I was looking at.
Seeing some missing content/options. Is there a specific place we should track that or are those known issues? Specifically I don't see a Circle of the Moon option for my Druid at all. Similarly the Hermit background seems to be missing.
Otherwise, the biggest thing I'd like to see added in the UI is the ability to know what your final scores will be when modifying XP, health, ability score improvements, etc. No reason those calculations can't be previewed before hitting the ok button.
Also, on the Druid front, is there a good place to put known wildshapes or familiars for Rangers? In other apps I've used the two normally live in the same place. Great work! Thanks.
I gotta admit. I'm gonna check out on this. I won't be using it unless something changes.
So we only have the SRD to work with.... That means I have to fudge my forest gnome with a rock gnome and adjust dex accordingly. No prob. I had everything ready for when my group got together today until I went to the spell list. How is Ray of Sickness and Tausha's hideous laughter not available/on the SRD? I stopped at level one spells. Didn't even bother to see what was missing on my level 2 or 3 spells.
Guys I cant play test this for you if I can't PLAY with it. I can't even build my character properly? Why would I ever use this when "More Purple More Better"'s automated PDF sheet does everything I need and more?
I understand it's in Beta (I've beta tested many games), but it's come to my intention that I will need to pay for anything outside of SRD content.
Im afraid I won't be happening.
I own every DnD Wizards of the Coast book there is. Why is it fair that I pay again for content I technically already own and have paid for?
Sorry gents. Thanks for the hard work and I wish you all the best, but I'm not paying again for content I already own.
I broke the Equipment when I added 25 Rations. Could add a single ration.
It could be nice if we could change the amount of equipment, lets say, I have 1 ration, but want to change it to 4 rations, without finding it in the list. (make sense?)
Also, Wild Magic is not yet implemented in the builder correct? :)
Just want to say that looks awesome so far, I'm interested with what you guys are doing with this and I am looking forward to you adding Volo's monster PCs. I can't wait to make my Triton Warlock. Also I yet to see anything about the class archetypes option, but are there only one option for each class? Also does anyone know how to reduce your character level? I want to restart one of my level 3 characters as a level 1 but when I'm in the character builder it only allows level increases. Continue doing the good work!