Hello! I really appreciate D&d Beyond, and this is my first thread so please excuse me if I have posted this in the wrong category! I am happy to move it if so!
I wanted to ask if there was a reason for low numerical caps on game-sheet information. An example being [Strength Ability Score cannot exceed 30 in any way], or [Hit Point Maximum cannot exceed 999]. I understand this is how D&d base rules operate, and that is probably the reason for this design. But it also dawned on me that being a massive archive for internet data, maybe it was designed this way to save on the digit length of data being passed and stored.
My friends and I have been using D&d Beyond for EVERYTHING. It's fantastic. But the one problem we faced, was when we started a homebrew campaign where certain NPC, PCs, and Monsters were suuuuper strong, and D&d Beyond didn't support fully homebrewed characters/monsters. The campaign though wacky, has been such a blast that we've been running it for 23 sessions now, a total of 7 months in real life and we are still going strong! Sadly, we have been using Google Documents for the characters that have exceeded D&d Beyond's capabilities. Slowly... as the campaign continues, more and more content has been offloaded from the site, and onto documents as more PC's limit-break, and more monsters of suitable challenge are generated. We have a very strong group and love this campaign so much I don't see it ending in the near or even mid-range future. It may be something that we just continue for years to come.
So, to put my question(s) simply, will D&d Beyond ever support homebrewed content like this [higher than base D&d stat numbers]? Or is there a reason we have to play within non-homebrew limits? Can we expect a feature to let us turn off limits? Or do we just have to be creative with notes?
Maybe I am just bad at DMing, or limiting my universes, but we have had a lot of fun. And I am just wondering because it would help us out a lot if the site could support such a feature. If it can't, I understand, I am mostly just asking out of convenience for myself and my party.
DDB limits everything acording to the limits of official 5e material.
The only issue I have regarding DDB limiting beyondepic level games is the inability to multiclass over a total level of 20. I didn't think stats capping at 30 (or HP at 999) would be a problem because that is scaled against a d20 (and a CR30 creature could have at most 30d20+300 HP).
So you might want/need to weaken your players a bit and use different kinds of challenges and rewards instead of bigger numbers for both.
Agreed about the multiclassing. As for the scaling down, I understand the concept, and have done that in the past. The problem is the sheer range of power i can make between two characters or monsters. Taking an extreme example, I want a bunny to have 3 for its ability acores, a player to have 16, a boss to have 24, a god to have 34 and a primordial to have 70. I cant get that kind of variance with the current system, and crunching all the numbers within 1-30 means in theory, 100 bunnies could kill 1 primordial unless I make notes, feats, and powers that make that damage or hp impossible to take. Id rather just scale it with stats than notes, especially since D&d Beyond has such a great automatic ability calculator.
There are other areas you can strengthen besides abilities to reflect power. Particularly attack damage, the dice are not tied to the ability score, the ability just adds a flat bonus (you dont need to do 2d4+30 when you can do 6d8+8 for the same average). Also, immunity to certain damage and conditions becomes more common at high level, so no amount of bunnies can kill something with immunity to non-magic damage.
Also a CR30 monster with 30 in a stat has a hit bonus that caps at +19, which means unless it rolls a 1 it can always hit an AC of 20 and even hit an AC of 30 half the time. A 70 is a +30 bonus not counting a +8 or +9 proficiency bonus, their save DCs would be around 46, good luck rolling higher than that on a d20.
Basically what it comes down to is, by the time you are dealling with stats that you want, you are not really playing 5e anymore, you are playing a homebrewed game that is based on 5e.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said. "Basically what it comes down to is, by the time you are dealing with stats that you want, you are not really playing 5e anymore, you are playing a homebrewed game that is based on 5e." That is very true. I just wish D&d Beyond was a tad more flexible so I can use their site for such homebrew campaigns.
(Sorry if I get a bit wordy here I am trying to convey a feeling we get when playing with these homebrewed rules. It may feel like a rant, but I think you are correct. I am just expressing my motive to want to use above 30 stats on D&d Beyond.)
You are right. I am pushing the rules for 5e and maybe this isn't the site to use for this campaign? Then again we are very far into the campaign, it is not like the numbers are scaling too fast that we need like 1000 Strength or something. I expect them to end the campaign around 50ish in certain stats. And I do use the other methods of damage and stat scaling, along with a homebrewed version of Multiattack, AC, Multicasting, and "Parrying". It's just difficult to explain why I need it without the context of you being in the campaign :P We deal with roll modifiers like that all the time and it's what makes it interesting for us. It's like an OP anime battle where characters can only take on characters within their d20 range or "weightclass" (as I provide various methods of exceeding those limits via special abilities or items players have gained, adding tolerance to the equation). It has lead to some amazing fights/situations, unexpected moments, and critical teamplay when odds are stacked against one side or another. PCs often have to win fights with stratagem and coordination, or utilizing a prepared battle plan. In many cases it has lead to incredible story moments where a PC will team up with another PC (or NPC) who was having to buy time or was caught out of position by a powerful foe. And it's not because the foe was immune or resistant to one person's damage, but because the foe's health, or parry amount per turn, or sheer damage output was too high for a single person to take on alone. One of the most fulfilling experiences as a PC (or in my case as a DM watching), is defeating a challenge deemed impossible by others. And knowing that you and your team did it because you worked hard for it and put everything on the wire and made careful choices that mattered in order to do so. It wasn't an RPG hit and be hit combat, or even based off of resistances in some cases, but a true victory over an opponent by outplaying them or having the right person at your side in the end. It's not that I can't work around D&d Beyond's limits or scale in different ways. I have, and do. Its just not perfectly what I want, and it is for the most part, selfish of me to request a homebrew mechanic from a strictly 5e site. But it would help in a "homebrew game based on D&d 5e" and if they want to facilitate creative campaigners on their site it would be greatly appreciated, and I don't think I am the only person who would want it either...hopefully...maybe I'm the only one?
I think the crux of my post is: If there isn't a reason to limit it, then why do so? Do they not want homebrewers like us using their site? Everything in our campaign works in D&d Beyond except they have capped stats for etiquette (or code reasons?). And I am simply voicing a want for such a feature, I am sure other DMs balance in a number of ways. There isn't just one way to play D&d.
Honestly, I completely agree. I have a campaign of my own that nearly went above 30 in stats and above 20 in levels. Unfortunately it fell apart due to an out of game falling out between players and my increasing level of stress from general life. But it would've been nice to have those features. As is, I actually used two character sheets for beyond-20 characters (I made major NPCs using PC sheets for various reasons) and that worked okay for the most part. The hard part was making sure that, aside from individual class levels, the two sheets had the same information and stats.
If you go to their feature roadmap, in the long term section is "Homebrew Revamp", which might include stuff like this. There is also a link to vote on stuff you want worked on to help them prioritize.
What you need is a small minority of players though, and even though it is probably technically easy, stuff that affects the most people gets prioritized first.
Hello! I really appreciate D&d Beyond, and this is my first thread so please excuse me if I have posted this in the wrong category! I am happy to move it if so!
I wanted to ask if there was a reason for low numerical caps on game-sheet information. An example being [Strength Ability Score cannot exceed 30 in any way], or [Hit Point Maximum cannot exceed 999]. I understand this is how D&d base rules operate, and that is probably the reason for this design. But it also dawned on me that being a massive archive for internet data, maybe it was designed this way to save on the digit length of data being passed and stored.
My friends and I have been using D&d Beyond for EVERYTHING. It's fantastic. But the one problem we faced, was when we started a homebrew campaign where certain NPC, PCs, and Monsters were suuuuper strong, and D&d Beyond didn't support fully homebrewed characters/monsters. The campaign though wacky, has been such a blast that we've been running it for 23 sessions now, a total of 7 months in real life and we are still going strong! Sadly, we have been using Google Documents for the characters that have exceeded D&d Beyond's capabilities. Slowly... as the campaign continues, more and more content has been offloaded from the site, and onto documents as more PC's limit-break, and more monsters of suitable challenge are generated. We have a very strong group and love this campaign so much I don't see it ending in the near or even mid-range future. It may be something that we just continue for years to come.
So, to put my question(s) simply, will D&d Beyond ever support homebrewed content like this [higher than base D&d stat numbers]? Or is there a reason we have to play within non-homebrew limits? Can we expect a feature to let us turn off limits? Or do we just have to be creative with notes?
Maybe I am just bad at DMing, or limiting my universes, but we have had a lot of fun. And I am just wondering because it would help us out a lot if the site could support such a feature. If it can't, I understand, I am mostly just asking out of convenience for myself and my party.
Thank you for your time,
-Bingbong
DDB limits everything acording to the limits of official 5e material.
The only issue I have regarding DDB limiting beyondepic level games is the inability to multiclass over a total level of 20. I didn't think stats capping at 30 (or HP at 999) would be a problem because that is scaled against a d20 (and a CR30 creature could have at most 30d20+300 HP).
So you might want/need to weaken your players a bit and use different kinds of challenges and rewards instead of bigger numbers for both.
Agreed about the multiclassing. As for the scaling down, I understand the concept, and have done that in the past. The problem is the sheer range of power i can make between two characters or monsters. Taking an extreme example, I want a bunny to have 3 for its ability acores, a player to have 16, a boss to have 24, a god to have 34 and a primordial to have 70. I cant get that kind of variance with the current system, and crunching all the numbers within 1-30 means in theory, 100 bunnies could kill 1 primordial unless I make notes, feats, and powers that make that damage or hp impossible to take. Id rather just scale it with stats than notes, especially since D&d Beyond has such a great automatic ability calculator.
There are other areas you can strengthen besides abilities to reflect power. Particularly attack damage, the dice are not tied to the ability score, the ability just adds a flat bonus (you dont need to do 2d4+30 when you can do 6d8+8 for the same average). Also, immunity to certain damage and conditions becomes more common at high level, so no amount of bunnies can kill something with immunity to non-magic damage.
Also a CR30 monster with 30 in a stat has a hit bonus that caps at +19, which means unless it rolls a 1 it can always hit an AC of 20 and even hit an AC of 30 half the time. A 70 is a +30 bonus not counting a +8 or +9 proficiency bonus, their save DCs would be around 46, good luck rolling higher than that on a d20.
Basically what it comes down to is, by the time you are dealling with stats that you want, you are not really playing 5e anymore, you are playing a homebrewed game that is based on 5e.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said. "Basically what it comes down to is, by the time you are dealing with stats that you want, you are not really playing 5e anymore, you are playing a homebrewed game that is based on 5e." That is very true. I just wish D&d Beyond was a tad more flexible so I can use their site for such homebrew campaigns.
(Sorry if I get a bit wordy here I am trying to convey a feeling we get when playing with these homebrewed rules. It may feel like a rant, but I think you are correct. I am just expressing my motive to want to use above 30 stats on D&d Beyond.)
You are right. I am pushing the rules for 5e and maybe this isn't the site to use for this campaign? Then again we are very far into the campaign, it is not like the numbers are scaling too fast that we need like 1000 Strength or something. I expect them to end the campaign around 50ish in certain stats. And I do use the other methods of damage and stat scaling, along with a homebrewed version of Multiattack, AC, Multicasting, and "Parrying". It's just difficult to explain why I need it without the context of you being in the campaign :P We deal with roll modifiers like that all the time and it's what makes it interesting for us. It's like an OP anime battle where characters can only take on characters within their d20 range or "weightclass" (as I provide various methods of exceeding those limits via special abilities or items players have gained, adding tolerance to the equation). It has lead to some amazing fights/situations, unexpected moments, and critical teamplay when odds are stacked against one side or another. PCs often have to win fights with stratagem and coordination, or utilizing a prepared battle plan. In many cases it has lead to incredible story moments where a PC will team up with another PC (or NPC) who was having to buy time or was caught out of position by a powerful foe. And it's not because the foe was immune or resistant to one person's damage, but because the foe's health, or parry amount per turn, or sheer damage output was too high for a single person to take on alone. One of the most fulfilling experiences as a PC (or in my case as a DM watching), is defeating a challenge deemed impossible by others. And knowing that you and your team did it because you worked hard for it and put everything on the wire and made careful choices that mattered in order to do so. It wasn't an RPG hit and be hit combat, or even based off of resistances in some cases, but a true victory over an opponent by outplaying them or having the right person at your side in the end. It's not that I can't work around D&d Beyond's limits or scale in different ways. I have, and do. Its just not perfectly what I want, and it is for the most part, selfish of me to request a homebrew mechanic from a strictly 5e site. But it would help in a "homebrew game based on D&d 5e" and if they want to facilitate creative campaigners on their site it would be greatly appreciated, and I don't think I am the only person who would want it either...hopefully...maybe I'm the only one?
I think the crux of my post is: If there isn't a reason to limit it, then why do so? Do they not want homebrewers like us using their site? Everything in our campaign works in D&d Beyond except they have capped stats for etiquette (or code reasons?). And I am simply voicing a want for such a feature, I am sure other DMs balance in a number of ways. There isn't just one way to play D&d.
Honestly, I completely agree. I have a campaign of my own that nearly went above 30 in stats and above 20 in levels. Unfortunately it fell apart due to an out of game falling out between players and my increasing level of stress from general life. But it would've been nice to have those features. As is, I actually used two character sheets for beyond-20 characters (I made major NPCs using PC sheets for various reasons) and that worked okay for the most part. The hard part was making sure that, aside from individual class levels, the two sheets had the same information and stats.
If you go to their feature roadmap, in the long term section is "Homebrew Revamp", which might include stuff like this. There is also a link to vote on stuff you want worked on to help them prioritize.
What you need is a small minority of players though, and even though it is probably technically easy, stuff that affects the most people gets prioritized first.
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The reasons the devs give for why the limits are what they are is because the rules don't say what happens when those limits are exceeded.
We can guess that a level 30 character will have +9 proficiency and a 40 ability score will be a +15 modifier, the rules do not state that.
And while DDB wants to allow us all the homebrew they can manage, they will not make up rules themselves.