I like that Maps and Encounters are coming together! Couple of items I've already passed on to the feedback tab. And remember to use the Feedback tab so they can see it! But we can group our concerns here so we can make sure stuff doesn't get forgotten:
1) When you type into the Feedback tab, Maps thinks they're keyboard commands. If you want to see your battle go insane, start writing feedback with tokens bouncing all over the place 2) Feedback tab gets blocked by adblockers (maybe that's not your fault; but a note to folks here) 3) I can't edit HP directly? So I can't really track battle without also running the old Encounters app 4) The gif and one of the screenshots says you can roll from monster statblocks but I don't see that ability anywhere. The gif shows the dragon using a breath attack and all the numbers show up, but that's just.....not there anywhere. Maybe I can't find it, but if I can't find it, it's not well designed. 5) The filtering options in the Encounter builder are really, really good, we need those in Maps if it's going to replace Encounters.
Really, without HP tracking and monster statblocks, it's dead in the water. It's also a pain that to use the 2024 DMG encounter levels I have to use Maps, but to properly track a battle, I need to use Encounters. That's not the end of the world but it's somewhat annoying.
The feeback tab is unusable with keyboard shortcuts.
This feels like a parital release of a beta feature that wasn't quite ready to ship. I can only assume we're leading to full stat block/player sheet integration. However, I felt pretty let down as I slowly realized this was not that. The description felt disengenuous: It's not an encounter tracker. It's an initiative tracker baked into a map (done pretty well, mind you).
I get it. There's a lot of presure to ship, espeically when it needs to coincide with other big releases (like the 2024 DMG). However, without that full feature set, this is a niche set of tools that leaves users with a less than stellar experience (no charater sheet integration/no stat blocks). I'm a big fan of dndbeyond and where we're going with all this, but I can't help but think it would have been better to sit on this until full integration was ready.
Agree entirely with the above. I logged on to maps without knowing it had updated, got really excited and then tried to setup an encounter...and basically realized the same things above. All it does is add initiative tracking to the map, I still have to save a tab entirely for the Encounter. Bummed the 2024 DMG balance isn't also shipped to Encounters, maybe a toggle switch so you can tell it to balance for 2014 or 2024?
I think one thing I'd really like to mention is awesome however is the visual indication of who's turn it is on the top center of the spectator view. Hoping this is what my players see as well. Props to whoever did that.
Hoping that Health editing and monster flashcards become a thing in this some point soon, but happy to see progress on this in general.
Also, there should be a way to filter for monster tokens that you have content licenses for. - I've a decent number of books but scrolling through and seeing 80% of them greyed out without even an indication of which license it's tied to isn't a great user experience. I get we can search for a monster specifically, but I think people will "Monster shop" in this, and there's definitely room for improvement here.
This in-map encounter builder is not usable on iPad it seems. I can add things to it no problem, but the start button seems to be displayed off screen and is not accessible at all. Granted I’ve also been getting a pop up in recent weeks upon opening maps that says “Maps cannot be constrained to this pocket-sized device at present. For the best experience, temper the magic through a desktop browser” with so maybe this is what that has been referring to.
I was really looking forward to this release until I opened it up. The encounter builder has essentially no tools. It's just dragging minis onto the board, adding them to the list, and then getting a difficulty rating. Press start and all it is is an initiative tracker. I can't filter monsters by type, CR, size, or any of the other things I could do in the 2014 Builder. When I add the same Creature to the board I have to manually change the name so there's something to indicate which creature is which when my players want to attack something. When I run the encounter I can't trigger anything for the creatures or see their stat blocks. I can't track their health. And then with all of these new tools in the DMG for allocating treasure and making sure to give X number of Magic items per level range, no tools for implementing treasure that can be given to the PCs. Given how long this has been baking, I really expected a lot more at this point. AboveVTT has 90% of what is needed, it's just fiddly from an interface perspective. It's been a year and the functionality of Maps is just extremely limited to be able to run an online session. It's not impossible, as we use it today for the board stuff, but compared to other tools it's just miles behind in functionality. And most other tools, like Roll20 and such, are supporting way more than DnD. I'm just kind of disappointed at how limited this integration is, given how much they can learn from everyone else in the market. Hopefully this will update rapidly.
This feels like a parital release of a beta feature that wasn't quite ready to ship.
I feel that it's worth pointing out here that this is exactly what it is. The Maps tool is currently in Beta status, as is the Encounters tool.
While your criticisms are valid, please do keep in mind that if you use a Beta version of something, you should not expect it to be release quality, and the entire point of a Beta release is to get user feedback before a full release.
I was just hoping for the very simple thing of being able to throw adhoc tokens onto the map. I realize that it's a tall order to get every single creature illustrated into a token but I imagine a simple workaround is to just allow me to grab any image of say, a snake, and add it to the map as opposed to adding a snake that looks like a wolf (the placeholder). I get that it may need to be constrained to a specific size/resolution for performance. We can kinda do this by creating a custom home-brew monster with a custom image but that's a heck of a workaround if the image token is all I care about.
Even better, to work in synthesis with encounters, would be to just allow us to replace an existing token with a custom image on the fly. So that way, I could have an actual snake in the encounter and just replace its wolf placeholder token with a snake image I grab from the internet.
I really like the direction of this update! The preview video was well done and the additions are most welcome!
The ability to pick "Sides" of Encounters (Party, Neutral, Enemy) is very well implemented, this was also something I wished for in the existing encounter builder! Ex: For a zombie horde attacking a town, I might want a bunch of non-combatants "in" the encounter but not engaged directly in combat. Great Work!
Same goes for being able to "Separate" a stack of enemies so they can roll/be tracked separately if needed, Nice detail!
Great work on the initiative options 🙏
With this update, many of the bases are covered! However, I will +1 a few items other have mentioned that also are a blocker for me from using this as my main VTT at my (digital) table:
Ability to Quickly View and/or Roll against Monster Token Statblocks right inside map interface.
Ability to Track Health & Ideally apply damage to Monsters in the Encounter Map. This especially with the dndbeyond encounter builder style apply damage/healing amount to an existing creature (not having to directly set the hp value)
Ability to apply custom art to tokens (it may seem petty but it is a huge immersion breaker to see a generic face on this big spooky boss I have been hyping up to my party for hours)
TIL - There is a feedback button - my ad blocker has been nuking it 😁
Didn't see a the "feedback button" while giving maps a new test run. For me, the biggest problem is getting the players to the map. As it is now, or as it would seem now, you must send an invite link to each player who then has to accept that link much in the same way they joined the campaign page. Use three maps in a session? That's 3 links to each player, 18 links in a single session. Seems like it would be nice to just be able to launch from the campaign page and include the linked players. My players range in age from 20's to 60's and none of them know how to use the D&D Beyond progam well. They can bare;y access and navigate through their character sheet despite my best efforts in teaching and sharing instructional videos. Second big problem is a temporary one, I'm sure: I have to use a laptop to use it. We play at a game store but everyone enjoys using D&D Beyond on their phones. It would be cool to share the maps not for VTT use per se, but so that they can see the map of Sanctum, for example, since we're playing Eve of Ruin.
I really like the direction of this update! The preview video was well done and the additions are most welcome!
The ability to pick "Sides" of Encounters (Party, Neutral, Enemy) is very well implemented, this was also something I wished for in the existing encounter builder! Ex: For a zombie horde attacking a town, I might want a bunch of non-combatants "in" the encounter but not engaged directly in combat. Great Work!
Same goes for being able to "Separate" a stack of enemies so they can roll/be tracked separately if needed, Nice detail!
Great work on the initiative options 🙏
With this update, many of the bases are covered! However, I will +1 a few items other have mentioned that also are a blocker for me from using this as my main VTT at my (digital) table:
Ability to Quickly View and/or Roll against Monster Token Statblocks right inside map interface.
Ability to Track Health & Ideally apply damage to Monsters in the Encounter Map. This especially with the dndbeyond encounter builder style apply damage/healing amount to an existing creature (not having to directly set the hp value)
Ability to apply custom art to tokens (it may seem petty but it is a huge immersion breaker to see a generic face on this big spooky boss I have been hyping up to my party for hours)
TIL - There is a feedback button - my ad blocker has been nuking it 😁
The Dev team doesn't read the forums for feedback (well not as a matter of course), so that Feedback button is necessary for them to hear things.
On the custom art tokens, it works. It just seems to take an inordinately long time to cache and load, but once it does, the custom art tokens work fine. I 100% agree with all the other points though.
Is there anyone actually using this to run encounters? There's no snapping to grids, is there? How about it you just want to move 30 ft? You can use a ruler to show you 30 ft distance from your token, but then you have to get rid of the ruler to actually move the token. Do you just eyeball it then?
The whole thing seems closer to minis on a table than an actual VTT, since there's no interaction with the grid at all. Maybe that's how a lot of people play? For me that would be the most important feature though.
The encounters in Maps needs to connect with the actual Encounters tool. I should be able to build the encounter separately, then add the creatures into the maps when ready. You can't change HP or see monster stat blocks. The initiative should carry over between the two. Maps encounters is half baked as they leave behind the actual tool needing improvement. I hope to see these become one in the near future, or carry over detail. Because the 'only one tab needed' is factually incorrect.
Man, I just realized that since they put the difficulty rating for 2024 only in the new Maps tool, I'd bet you money that 2025 Monster Manual creatures will only be in Maps as well, and not in the Encounters tool. I really hope we have equal functionality by then or you're going to see really mad people on here (i mean more than usual).
Man, I just realized that since they put the difficulty rating for 2024 only in the new Maps tool, I'd bet you money that 2025 Monster Manual creatures will only be in Maps as well, and not in the Encounters tool. I really hope we have equal functionality by then or you're going to see really mad people on here (i mean more than usual).
That seems extremely unlikely given that the Encounters tool already includes the few new stat blocks that were published in the 2024 Player's Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
This also leads me to believe that statblocks / HP / combat tracking won't come until the MM is released and that 2025 MM creatures will only be supported in Maps. If you look at the dragon gif on the maps start page, it shows the breath attack happening but it isn't triggered by anything; my guess is they edited out the statblock trigger portions until it's ready for release in January. Also notice they have friendly/enemy/noncombatant rings on this version which I don't see in the one we have now. (EDIT: I realized this was grouping categories which we do have now. My bad. They have to be manually made) My guess is that it will support old content you have but all new content will be Maps only. I checked using Scions of Elemental Evil which doesn't show any creatures in the Encounters tool (as those creatures are coded with 2025 MM entries per the SoEE description. Interestingly enough SoEE still shows up as a selectable source in the Encounters tool though). Some of the SoEE creatures show up in Maps now, but i assume these are the 2014 versions. I haven't searched for each creature from it, but "Tough Boss" doesn't show up in either the Maps tool or Encounters, so I'm guessing while the maps from SoEE are in Maps, the creatures are turned off until the MM is released.
And you can clearly see "Roll from character sheets and monster stat blocks" in the preview, so it's coming.
Man, I just realized that since they put the difficulty rating for 2024 only in the new Maps tool, I'd bet you money that 2025 Monster Manual creatures will only be in Maps as well, and not in the Encounters tool. I really hope we have equal functionality by then or you're going to see really mad people on here (i mean more than usual).
That seems extremely unlikely given that the Encounters tool already includes the few new stat blocks that were published in the 2024 Player's Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
I very much hope you're right! Maybe it's just a bug with SoEE and I can breathe a little easier :)
This feels like a parital release of a beta feature that wasn't quite ready to ship.
I feel that it's worth pointing out here that this is exactly what it is. The Maps tool is currently in Beta status, as is the Encounters tool.
While your criticisms are valid, please do keep in mind that if you use a Beta version of something, you should not expect it to be release quality, and the entire point of a Beta release is to get user feedback before a full release.
That's a good point however, I would take issue with the definition of beta software. I think your comment applies more to alpha releases than it does beta. A beta release is normally something which is feature-complete, and without major features, a beta test will not yield very usable feedback. It's sort of like getting drivers to test an early prototype of a car that doesn't have an accelerator pedal - they're just going to say 'I can't drive this!' Same thing here with the lack of being able to edit HP of monsters (i.e. damage and heal) - most of the feedback will simply be as others have already posted; 'this is great but I can't actually use this as an encounter tracker'.
Agree this looks like things are going in a good direction. I'm puzzled by the fact that the map encounters, despite being very unfinished, already has features that the encounter tracker is still missing.
1 - Marking creatures as good, bad, or NPC
2 - Add and remove creatures on the fly (add is very limited in encounters and there's no remove)
3 - A way to mark conditions (this isn't direct, but you can use colors, shapes, or text. Encounters has nothing. No check boxes, no text fields, nothing)
I wonder if encounter tracker will be left behind and we'll end up using the VTT tracker on our laptop as the players sit around the table looking at a dry erase board.
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Hey guys,
I like that Maps and Encounters are coming together! Couple of items I've already passed on to the feedback tab. And remember to use the Feedback tab so they can see it! But we can group our concerns here so we can make sure stuff doesn't get forgotten:
1) When you type into the Feedback tab, Maps thinks they're keyboard commands. If you want to see your battle go insane, start writing feedback with tokens bouncing all over the place
2) Feedback tab gets blocked by adblockers (maybe that's not your fault; but a note to folks here)
3) I can't edit HP directly? So I can't really track battle without also running the old Encounters app
4) The gif and one of the screenshots says you can roll from monster statblocks but I don't see that ability anywhere. The gif shows the dragon using a breath attack and all the numbers show up, but that's just.....not there anywhere. Maybe I can't find it, but if I can't find it, it's not well designed.
5) The filtering options in the Encounter builder are really, really good, we need those in Maps if it's going to replace Encounters.
Really, without HP tracking and monster statblocks, it's dead in the water. It's also a pain that to use the 2024 DMG encounter levels I have to use Maps, but to properly track a battle, I need to use Encounters. That's not the end of the world but it's somewhat annoying.
+1 to everything above.
The feeback tab is unusable with keyboard shortcuts.
This feels like a parital release of a beta feature that wasn't quite ready to ship. I can only assume we're leading to full stat block/player sheet integration. However, I felt pretty let down as I slowly realized this was not that. The description felt disengenuous: It's not an encounter tracker. It's an initiative tracker baked into a map (done pretty well, mind you).
I get it. There's a lot of presure to ship, espeically when it needs to coincide with other big releases (like the 2024 DMG). However, without that full feature set, this is a niche set of tools that leaves users with a less than stellar experience (no charater sheet integration/no stat blocks). I'm a big fan of dndbeyond and where we're going with all this, but I can't help but think it would have been better to sit on this until full integration was ready.
Agree entirely with the above. I logged on to maps without knowing it had updated, got really excited and then tried to setup an encounter...and basically realized the same things above. All it does is add initiative tracking to the map, I still have to save a tab entirely for the Encounter. Bummed the 2024 DMG balance isn't also shipped to Encounters, maybe a toggle switch so you can tell it to balance for 2014 or 2024?
Agreeing with the posts above,
I think one thing I'd really like to mention is awesome however is the visual indication of who's turn it is on the top center of the spectator view. Hoping this is what my players see as well. Props to whoever did that.
Hoping that Health editing and monster flashcards become a thing in this some point soon, but happy to see progress on this in general.
Also, there should be a way to filter for monster tokens that you have content licenses for. - I've a decent number of books but scrolling through and seeing 80% of them greyed out without even an indication of which license it's tied to isn't a great user experience. I get we can search for a monster specifically, but I think people will "Monster shop" in this, and there's definitely room for improvement here.
This in-map encounter builder is not usable on iPad it seems. I can add things to it no problem, but the start button seems to be displayed off screen and is not accessible at all. Granted I’ve also been getting a pop up in recent weeks upon opening maps that says “Maps cannot be constrained to this pocket-sized device at present. For the best experience, temper the magic through a desktop browser” with so maybe this is what that has been referring to.
I was really looking forward to this release until I opened it up. The encounter builder has essentially no tools. It's just dragging minis onto the board, adding them to the list, and then getting a difficulty rating. Press start and all it is is an initiative tracker. I can't filter monsters by type, CR, size, or any of the other things I could do in the 2014 Builder. When I add the same Creature to the board I have to manually change the name so there's something to indicate which creature is which when my players want to attack something. When I run the encounter I can't trigger anything for the creatures or see their stat blocks. I can't track their health. And then with all of these new tools in the DMG for allocating treasure and making sure to give X number of Magic items per level range, no tools for implementing treasure that can be given to the PCs. Given how long this has been baking, I really expected a lot more at this point. AboveVTT has 90% of what is needed, it's just fiddly from an interface perspective. It's been a year and the functionality of Maps is just extremely limited to be able to run an online session. It's not impossible, as we use it today for the board stuff, but compared to other tools it's just miles behind in functionality. And most other tools, like Roll20 and such, are supporting way more than DnD. I'm just kind of disappointed at how limited this integration is, given how much they can learn from everyone else in the market. Hopefully this will update rapidly.
I feel that it's worth pointing out here that this is exactly what it is. The Maps tool is currently in Beta status, as is the Encounters tool.
While your criticisms are valid, please do keep in mind that if you use a Beta version of something, you should not expect it to be release quality, and the entire point of a Beta release is to get user feedback before a full release.
pronouns: he/she/they
I was just hoping for the very simple thing of being able to throw adhoc tokens onto the map. I realize that it's a tall order to get every single creature illustrated into a token but I imagine a simple workaround is to just allow me to grab any image of say, a snake, and add it to the map as opposed to adding a snake that looks like a wolf (the placeholder). I get that it may need to be constrained to a specific size/resolution for performance. We can kinda do this by creating a custom home-brew monster with a custom image but that's a heck of a workaround if the image token is all I care about.
Even better, to work in synthesis with encounters, would be to just allow us to replace an existing token with a custom image on the fly. So that way, I could have an actual snake in the encounter and just replace its wolf placeholder token with a snake image I grab from the internet.
I really like the direction of this update! The preview video was well done and the additions are most welcome!
With this update, many of the bases are covered! However, I will +1 a few items other have mentioned that also are a blocker for me from using this as my main VTT at my (digital) table:
TIL - There is a feedback button - my ad blocker has been nuking it 😁
Didn't see a the "feedback button" while giving maps a new test run. For me, the biggest problem is getting the players to the map. As it is now, or as it would seem now, you must send an invite link to each player who then has to accept that link much in the same way they joined the campaign page. Use three maps in a session? That's 3 links to each player, 18 links in a single session. Seems like it would be nice to just be able to launch from the campaign page and include the linked players. My players range in age from 20's to 60's and none of them know how to use the D&D Beyond progam well. They can bare;y access and navigate through their character sheet despite my best efforts in teaching and sharing instructional videos. Second big problem is a temporary one, I'm sure: I have to use a laptop to use it. We play at a game store but everyone enjoys using D&D Beyond on their phones. It would be cool to share the maps not for VTT use per se, but so that they can see the map of Sanctum, for example, since we're playing Eve of Ruin.
The Dev team doesn't read the forums for feedback (well not as a matter of course), so that Feedback button is necessary for them to hear things.
On the custom art tokens, it works. It just seems to take an inordinately long time to cache and load, but once it does, the custom art tokens work fine. I 100% agree with all the other points though.
Is there anyone actually using this to run encounters? There's no snapping to grids, is there? How about it you just want to move 30 ft? You can use a ruler to show you 30 ft distance from your token, but then you have to get rid of the ruler to actually move the token. Do you just eyeball it then?
The whole thing seems closer to minis on a table than an actual VTT, since there's no interaction with the grid at all. Maybe that's how a lot of people play? For me that would be the most important feature though.
The encounters in Maps needs to connect with the actual Encounters tool. I should be able to build the encounter separately, then add the creatures into the maps when ready. You can't change HP or see monster stat blocks. The initiative should carry over between the two. Maps encounters is half baked as they leave behind the actual tool needing improvement. I hope to see these become one in the near future, or carry over detail. Because the 'only one tab needed' is factually incorrect.
I really like the current version Maps.I have not encountered an error! I love how easy it is to use a dndbeyond character sheets.
I LOVE!!! how much faster maps is than roll20. I would be happy with fewer bells and whistles to keep the speed.
Here are my requests:
Man, I just realized that since they put the difficulty rating for 2024 only in the new Maps tool, I'd bet you money that 2025 Monster Manual creatures will only be in Maps as well, and not in the Encounters tool. I really hope we have equal functionality by then or you're going to see really mad people on here (i mean more than usual).
That seems extremely unlikely given that the Encounters tool already includes the few new stat blocks that were published in the 2024 Player's Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
pronouns: he/she/they
This also leads me to believe that statblocks / HP / combat tracking won't come until the MM is released and that 2025 MM creatures will only be supported in Maps. If you look at the dragon gif on the maps start page, it shows the breath attack happening but it isn't triggered by anything; my guess is they edited out the statblock trigger portions until it's ready for release in January. Also notice they have friendly/enemy/noncombatant rings on this version which I don't see in the one we have now. (EDIT: I realized this was grouping categories which we do have now. My bad. They have to be manually made) My guess is that it will support old content you have but all new content will be Maps only. I checked using Scions of Elemental Evil which doesn't show any creatures in the Encounters tool (as those creatures are coded with 2025 MM entries per the SoEE description. Interestingly enough SoEE still shows up as a selectable source in the Encounters tool though). Some of the SoEE creatures show up in Maps now, but i assume these are the 2014 versions. I haven't searched for each creature from it, but "Tough Boss" doesn't show up in either the Maps tool or Encounters, so I'm guessing while the maps from SoEE are in Maps, the creatures are turned off until the MM is released.
And you can clearly see "Roll from character sheets and monster stat blocks" in the preview, so it's coming.
I very much hope you're right! Maybe it's just a bug with SoEE and I can breathe a little easier :)
That's a good point however, I would take issue with the definition of beta software. I think your comment applies more to alpha releases than it does beta. A beta release is normally something which is feature-complete, and without major features, a beta test will not yield very usable feedback. It's sort of like getting drivers to test an early prototype of a car that doesn't have an accelerator pedal - they're just going to say 'I can't drive this!' Same thing here with the lack of being able to edit HP of monsters (i.e. damage and heal) - most of the feedback will simply be as others have already posted; 'this is great but I can't actually use this as an encounter tracker'.
Agree this looks like things are going in a good direction. I'm puzzled by the fact that the map encounters, despite being very unfinished, already has features that the encounter tracker is still missing.
1 - Marking creatures as good, bad, or NPC
2 - Add and remove creatures on the fly (add is very limited in encounters and there's no remove)
3 - A way to mark conditions (this isn't direct, but you can use colors, shapes, or text. Encounters has nothing. No check boxes, no text fields, nothing)
I wonder if encounter tracker will be left behind and we'll end up using the VTT tracker on our laptop as the players sit around the table looking at a dry erase board.