ExtraplanarLabs.net created an app called Arcane Eye that uses your phone camera (and possibly a USB camera?) to read physical dice rolls and sync them directly to a VTT or game log with the appropriate roll labels.
I hope D&D Beyond could look at adding something like this. Many players want to roll real dice while playing digitally, and this would finally bridge physical and online play.
Let us roll real dice without breaking digital integration; a huge quality-of-life win for digital tables.
Note: I understand the concerns about camera use or moderation: Wizards of the Coast already uses camera-based technology with SpellTable for Magic: The Gathering, where players use webcams to play remotely. The precedent already exists; cameras use with clear guidelines and user controls.
[Preamble—please keep in mind this forum is not just for people to share feedback, for the community to give their opinions on said feedback, hence my below response]
Yeah no, I don't think this is something the devs should invest time in, let alone would.
It'd be a hefty undertaking for a very niche use case. It'd require the devs develop a quick, accurate way of reading any type of dice through camera image recognition. This would be completely different to SpellTable. Why? Because MtG cards are standardised and that's great for image recognition. Dice are not.
It requires additional hardware commitment to use as people would have to setup a rig that holds their phone to see their dice tray. Most people aren't gonna faff around with that. Also it'd be useless for people who play D&D via their tablets and the like
It's a solved problem already. How? By just telling the table what you rolled and having trust. If you want to argue accessibility, that's why digital dice exists and if you want to insist on both using physical dice and accessibility you can use a calculator to add modifiers
I feel like this is a solution in search of a problem and not something that'd meaningfully add anything to the value of using D&D Beyond.
To the API, I'm not asking for coding or access to anything to plug in or use externally to DNDbeyond, just for it to be a default/native function.
1. Dice are standardized. Dice have been standardized for decades. Outside of edge cases like novelty or bullet dice, official sources already define the expected dice set — the PHB (2014, p.6) directly lists the standard dice, including the typical cubic d6 and the common 7-dice set. This isn’t an unsolved recognition problem; it’s a known, consistent format that could take alot of building blocks from Spelltable (probably).
2. The hardware problem is already solved. Camera setups aren’t a new barrier. The SpellTable community already normalized the technology in the wotc consumer base; camera mounts, overhead rigs, and DIY stands during COVID-era remote play, many still sold in LGSs today. Households may already own a smartphone or USB camera, so this isn’t asking users to adopt exotic hardware, it builds on tools people may already be using. If anything, it might have players have to go buy dice-sets, (which I see as a win)
3. This is not a “solution in search of a problem,” nor is it niche. This isn’t a bug report, but if it needed a problem to address: reconnecting physical dice with modern digital tools. Many pre-Beyond players feel D&D Beyond shifted play away from rolling physical dice toward digital-only play, it's a common sentiment, not a niche one. Just because you wouldn’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to others. “Just meet in person”; this misses the point; many groups play remote or hybrid due to distance, schedules, or accessibility. "Just roll the dice and tell them", if I roll a nat20, I'm going to jump up and down and taking a picture and posting in group chat anyway, why not have Beyond do that, this function doesn't even need to be a live-view function. The goal is to restore the physical tabletop feel within how people actually play today.
Great points, thanks for the opportunity to clarify!
Have you not seen all the zany dice people use? Different fonts, styles, effects and materials. I'm not talking number of sides, I'm talking how any given dice looks.
All of this is rendered moot by just rolling dice just like you would at a physical table. Roll dice, tell you rest of the table
A d12 is still a d12. It’s 2026, camera recognition handling numbers on dice a few feet away isn’t an unsolved problem, and edge cases could be addressed with simple limitations or dice guidelines.
At this point, repeating “just roll and tell people” isn’t engaging with the suggestion. I understand your disagreement, but let's not drift into a “why support SpellTable when Arena exists” argument.
The goal is simple: preserve an experience D&D was built on; rolling real dice and sharing that moment in real time with friends.
Your suggestion would require a massive amount of cost, time, effort and resource management to develop from a small, already overworked, team.
The benefit is minimal since the result can be achieved without all of this by just telling your players what you rolled or using a webcam to show your roll. Since the exact result can already be achieved without D&D Beyond having to do anything, them having to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to just achieve a more complicated way to do the same thing is a pure waste of resources.
The best middleground would be allowing manual roll results into the dice log and that is something already been raised as feedback and passed on.
--
Also, to clarify Davyd's point. A d12 isn't just a d12, it can be a d12 that is hard to read because of colour, texture, font, and bad environment such as lighting. Your eyes are better at reading such things than any camera software would be - so you will encounter a lot of issues and problems when trying to make something read fancy dice.
-
It's great to make suggestions, but this is simply not one that would be worth implementing.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
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ExtraplanarLabs.net created an app called Arcane Eye that uses your phone camera (and possibly a USB camera?) to read physical dice rolls and sync them directly to a VTT or game log with the appropriate roll labels.
I hope D&D Beyond could look at adding something like this. Many players want to roll real dice while playing digitally, and this would finally bridge physical and online play.
Let us roll real dice without breaking digital integration; a huge quality-of-life win for digital tables.
Note: I understand the concerns about camera use or moderation: Wizards of the Coast already uses camera-based technology with SpellTable for Magic: The Gathering, where players use webcams to play remotely. The precedent already exists; cameras use with clear guidelines and user controls.
What you're asking for is an API to add log entries.
We currently don't even have access to the existing API: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/148262-can-i-use-the-api-for-free
[Preamble—please keep in mind this forum is not just for people to share feedback, for the community to give their opinions on said feedback, hence my below response]
Yeah no, I don't think this is something the devs should invest time in, let alone would.
I feel like this is a solution in search of a problem and not something that'd meaningfully add anything to the value of using D&D Beyond.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
The alternative is allowing Arcane Eye style send log entries to the D&D VTT, which would be far less extensive, and have far more general utility.
To the API, I'm not asking for coding or access to anything to plug in or use externally to DNDbeyond, just for it to be a default/native function.
1. Dice are standardized.
Dice have been standardized for decades. Outside of edge cases like novelty or bullet dice, official sources already define the expected dice set — the PHB (2014, p.6) directly lists the standard dice, including the typical cubic d6 and the common 7-dice set. This isn’t an unsolved recognition problem; it’s a known, consistent format that could take alot of building blocks from Spelltable (probably).
2. The hardware problem is already solved.
Camera setups aren’t a new barrier. The SpellTable community already normalized the technology in the wotc consumer base; camera mounts, overhead rigs, and DIY stands during COVID-era remote play, many still sold in LGSs today. Households may already own a smartphone or USB camera, so this isn’t asking users to adopt exotic hardware, it builds on tools people may already be using. If anything, it might have players have to go buy dice-sets, (which I see as a win)
3. This is not a “solution in search of a problem,” nor is it niche.
This isn’t a bug report, but if it needed a problem to address: reconnecting physical dice with modern digital tools. Many pre-Beyond players feel D&D Beyond shifted play away from rolling physical dice toward digital-only play, it's a common sentiment, not a niche one. Just because you wouldn’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to others. “Just meet in person”; this misses the point; many groups play remote or hybrid due to distance, schedules, or accessibility. "Just roll the dice and tell them", if I roll a nat20, I'm going to jump up and down and taking a picture and posting in group chat anyway, why not have Beyond do that, this function doesn't even need to be a live-view function. The goal is to restore the physical tabletop feel within how people actually play today.
Great points, thanks for the opportunity to clarify!
Have you not seen all the zany dice people use? Different fonts, styles, effects and materials. I'm not talking number of sides, I'm talking how any given dice looks.
All of this is rendered moot by just rolling dice just like you would at a physical table. Roll dice, tell you rest of the table
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
A d12 is still a d12. It’s 2026, camera recognition handling numbers on dice a few feet away isn’t an unsolved problem, and edge cases could be addressed with simple limitations or dice guidelines.
At this point, repeating “just roll and tell people” isn’t engaging with the suggestion. I understand your disagreement, but let's not drift into a “why support SpellTable when Arena exists” argument.
The goal is simple: preserve an experience D&D was built on; rolling real dice and sharing that moment in real time with friends.
Cost vs Benefit is an important factor.
Your suggestion would require a massive amount of cost, time, effort and resource management to develop from a small, already overworked, team.
The benefit is minimal since the result can be achieved without all of this by just telling your players what you rolled or using a webcam to show your roll. Since the exact result can already be achieved without D&D Beyond having to do anything, them having to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to just achieve a more complicated way to do the same thing is a pure waste of resources.
The best middleground would be allowing manual roll results into the dice log and that is something already been raised as feedback and passed on.
--
Also, to clarify Davyd's point. A d12 isn't just a d12, it can be a d12 that is hard to read because of colour, texture, font, and bad environment such as lighting. Your eyes are better at reading such things than any camera software would be - so you will encounter a lot of issues and problems when trying to make something read fancy dice.
-
It's great to make suggestions, but this is simply not one that would be worth implementing.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.