LIke potion dice? LoL, sorry in almost 4 years I'm not buying it.
i did, they actually are the better dice. and it was for a good cause. you know, not ddb's pocket. it was for the kids in extra life !
all that said.. those who think DDB is more then a compendium, you need to get real here... DDB has never boasted to be a complete VTT, it has though, always boasted to be a website that helps DMs. does it do that ? sure does. i too like to complain they aren't fast enoguh, but reality is... much like a hollywood movie, its not their fault its slow... its the fact that everytimes they need to make a change they need to go down the chain of about 10 people just to get an ok to do a draft of the said change. in the end, those who really care about this site are not at the top. also, WotC has never been the fastest machine ever built. took them about 15 years to actually get onboard the digital sales. so yeah, a slow producing company along with a company that is just a subdivision of a sub division, what can you expect. the longer the chain the longer it will take to get something done. thats not DDB's fault. its the machine's fault. just like how hollywood refuses to change after 100 years of cinema... they still employ 100+ employees on set where they could just hire 50 and be doing the same work but faster. but no they refuse to do that, the formula works, why change it, even if its to make it faster.
again, is that DDB's fault... nope... its how the machine work, if you wanna change the machine, this is not the place to do it.
do like me... even though i'm trying hard to put my friend on this site... i get the same response, i don't want to pay because its missing tons of features... but all i tell them is... all the compendium in the same place, half the price of the others in the market... any other features is just added bonuses. at this point i don't care anymore... to me DDB is only that... full source book compendium, character sheet... anything else is icing on the cake for me. but honestly those who say they do it better anywhere else... well good for you, i don't think anywhere else is good, thats why i'm here to begin with. and let's be honest... there is no other places where the compendium is this neatly placed. what am i paying for... their servers, i don't want to be shut down from my books. my characters, even though i export them all, sorry but PDFs are ugly as hell. my own softwares are also ugly as well... so yeah... i tryed fantasy ground, i tryed roll20... i don't like them, fantasy ground is fine, but cost a lot. even the SRD cost you money ! Roll20, ugly interface. honestly they should pass more time polishing the interface instead of polishing the database. but at that point none of the two companies will care, their money is made...
don'T take me wrong, i also think DDB is way late on features... FG got up and running on 5 different TTRPG rulings in about 3 or 4 years. DDB is far from that on a single edition. Roll20 was up and running in about only 2 years. complete too. again DDB is far from that... but stop looking at the features and start looking at the professionnalism... you see a heck of a difference between FG, Roll20 and DDB. DDB is much better at this then the other two.
if i had to give an advice to DDB... i'd concentrate on finishing the basic features first... we don't even have complete DMG functionnality yet... dice, easy to make, i wonder why it took them so long to do them... combat tracker, easy to make, how long could it take you to do it. i'm glad they finally did those. but man, finish up on boons and the likes... your DMG isn't even complete yet !
also to end on this... they had more time back 2 years ago. WotC was releasing 2 books a year... 2 years ago they decided to go for 4 books a year. which leaves DDB really not much time to make any kind of features now. so instead of having 4 months to work on features and 2 or 3 months to work on new books... they have now about a few weeks to work on features before a new book arrives... a few weeks is not going to be fast work...
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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)
And class features, too. That's the main problem I have.
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"I'd like to see if there's anyone in this bar hot enough to buy a drink for." "Roll perception." "Nat 1. I guess I'm the hottest person in here." "You buy yourself a drink."
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
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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)
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. People aren't asking for the HomeBrewClassMaker9000, they just want a way to make and publish basic classes, and if that means some stuff has to sit in the "Features and Traits" section instead of having its own special drop-down or box to tick, then I'm sure its still preferable to nothing. I think many of us just want what HMP177 was saying, to have everything in one place.
There are plenty of features from the normal DndBeyond that either still haven't gotten added yet (legendary/artifact magic items that have random stats) or took a while to finally get on here (looking at you Hexblade + Pact Weapon). All we're asking for is SOMETHING to work with.
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. People aren't asking for the HomeBrewClassMaker9000, they just want a way to make and publish basic classes, and if that means some stuff has to sit in the "Features and Traits" section instead of having its own special drop-down or box to tick, then I'm sure its still preferable to nothing. I think many of us just want what HMP177 was saying, to have everything in one place.
There are plenty of features from the normal DndBeyond that either still haven't gotten added yet (legendary/artifact magic items that have random stats) or took a while to finally get on here (looking at you Hexblade + Pact Weapon). All we're asking for is SOMETHING to work with.
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Having text features is still better than nothing. Making the "Half-life 3" argument doesn't change the fact that 90% of people will be content with just having text features, because the reason we use DDB is because it streamlines the character creation process, especially for new players who don't really understand all the little bits and pieces of making a character. Being able to integrate my own homebrew seamlessly alongside the official content for my players is the reason i myself started using this service, so more features that allow me to do that for more things is at the top of my priority list, even if i cant make all the unique mechanics in the world.
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Having text features is still better than nothing. Making the "Half-life 3" argument doesn't change the fact that 90% of people will be content with just having text features, because the reason we use DDB is because it streamlines the character creation process, especially for new players who don't really understand all the little bits and pieces of making a character. Being able to integrate my own homebrew seamlessly alongside the official content for my players is the reason i myself started using this service, so more features that allow me to do that for more things is at the top of my priority list, even if i cant make all the unique mechanics in the world.
then why not just create races with your class in it? if text is all you need, then you already have all the necessary tools to do it. many people did it with races or sub classes. no need for more. at least in my opinion. seems to me like you don'T want just text, you want actual class mechanics. like gaining abilities at levels and all.
all im saying is, if all you want is for text, then anything can already do this. but as menitonned, if you want mechanics to be upheld, then thats where the problem lies and the reason we don't have them yet.
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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)
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Having text features is still better than nothing. Making the "Half-life 3" argument doesn't change the fact that 90% of people will be content with just having text features, because the reason we use DDB is because it streamlines the character creation process, especially for new players who don't really understand all the little bits and pieces of making a character. Being able to integrate my own homebrew seamlessly alongside the official content for my players is the reason i myself started using this service, so more features that allow me to do that for more things is at the top of my priority list, even if i cant make all the unique mechanics in the world.
then why not just create races with your class in it? if text is all you need, then you already have all the necessary tools to do it. many people did it with races or sub classes. no need for more. at least in my opinion. seems to me like you don'T want just text, you want actual class mechanics. like gaining abilities at levels and all.
all im saying is, if all you want is for text, then anything can already do this. but as menitonned, if you want mechanics to be upheld, then thats where the problem lies and the reason we don't have them yet.
There are 2 BIG Reasons why we would still want this feature implemented of being able to add a simple text box in the Feats section of our character sheet:
1. Creating a custom race and hacking one to add features EVERY time one is added or needed, by using a custom race's "description" field box is a pretty inconvenient and unintuitive way of going about it. Most people wouldn't even know to even try this without somehow stumbling upon this post.
2. The features or other desired customized fields wouldn't show up in the proper sections of the character sheet, which is a large part of what makes D&Dbeyond so worth while. You'd have to go digging into the race's description somehow. What a clunky and annoying way of hacking the character sheet, only to not even have the homebrew content show up in the correct sections. Until this gets fixed... almost anything homebrew will always be better and more convenient to create in Roll20. I want DND beyond to be my one stop shop. This is the last thing that's missing.
There are enough companies and players creating homebrew content now that D&D Beyond cannot keep up with. I just bought a book called the Masterclass Codex that includes 16 new classes, complete with subclasses, that was published by EN Publishing. This book has some great options, but they aren't usable with D&D Beyond. The same goes for the website www.sw5e.com that I want to use to run a Star Wars Campaign with 5e rules. It's far easier to let your players create custom classes, and it'll help bring more players to D&D Beyond, than it would be for your staff to try and bring these various sources into the database.
Come on, D&D Beyond... open up the ability for players to create custom classes! It's become necessary.
There are enough companies and players creating homebrew content now that D&D Beyond cannot keep up with. I just bought a book called the Masterclass Codex that includes 16 new classes, complete with subclasses, that was published by EN Publishing. This book has some great options, but they aren't usable with D&D Beyond. The same goes for the website www.sw5e.com that I want to use to run a Star Wars Campaign with 5e rules. It's far easier to let your players create custom classes, and it'll help bring more players to D&D Beyond, than it would be for your staff to try and bring these various sources into the database.
Come on, D&D Beyond... open up the ability for players to create custom classes! It's become necessary.
then again, without the mechanics, would you really be ok with just text and your players not able to do the attacks or their things without it ? if they do decide to open up homebrew classes, they have to be ok with dealing with people asking for mechanics to work with their classes. its all fine and dandy to ask classes beczaause books and all do it, but you have to count that those books do not care which character sheet you play with, they dont care for mechanics, but here they do. same for fantasy ground and roll20. thats the biggest hurdle you guys have to think about. you say that now that text only is good enough, but once that will be done and availlable, you will ask for more out of it. your players will be asking for more out of it.
its not a decision taken lightly, it has repercussion if they do accept to allow us to do that.
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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)
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of. so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working. allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for. i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
Having text features is still better than nothing. Making the "Half-life 3" argument doesn't change the fact that 90% of people will be content with just having text features, because the reason we use DDB is because it streamlines the character creation process, especially for new players who don't really understand all the little bits and pieces of making a character. Being able to integrate my own homebrew seamlessly alongside the official content for my players is the reason i myself started using this service, so more features that allow me to do that for more things is at the top of my priority list, even if i cant make all the unique mechanics in the world.
then why not just create races with your class in it? if text is all you need, then you already have all the necessary tools to do it. many people did it with races or sub classes. no need for more. at least in my opinion. seems to me like you don'T want just text, you want actual class mechanics. like gaining abilities at levels and all.
all im saying is, if all you want is for text, then anything can already do this. but as menitonned, if you want mechanics to be upheld, then thats where the problem lies and the reason we don't have them yet.
There are 2 BIG Reasons why we would still want this feature implemented of being able to add a simple text box in the Feats section of our character sheet:
1. Creating a custom race and hacking one to add features EVERY time one is added or needed, by using a custom race's "description" field box is a pretty inconvenient and unintuitive way of going about it. Most people wouldn't even know to even try this without somehow stumbling upon this post.
2. The features or other desired customized fields wouldn't show up in the proper sections of the character sheet, which is a large part of what makes D&Dbeyond so worth while. You'd have to go digging into the race's description somehow. What a clunky and annoying way of hacking the character sheet, only to not even have the homebrew content show up in the correct sections. Until this gets fixed... almost anything homebrew will always be better and more convenient to create in Roll20. I want DND beyond to be my one stop shop. This is the last thing that's missing.
except it wont happen the way you want it to. you already said it yourself right there in your number 2. you want things to appear at the right place, then that means you want whatever mechanics you put in, to be able to actually be processed by the engine itself. that means accepting every single DM request for anything they ask for. that has precedants you know, and every sites where they allow that, inclduing roll20 and fantasy ground, have had trouble keeping up with all the homebrew, fantasy ground even tryed to put it back into the hands of people by giving them literally access to the software as if it was open source. and guess what ? even that wasn't enough. they are still struggling with it everyday... do you have any idea as to the man power needed to satisfy such a feat ?
all i'm saying is... you think its easy, but there are tons of ramifications to go along with it. and while you all ask for just text to be able to be parsed... its not that easy... because you said it yourself... you want a 1 shop stop that does it all... so you will ask for mechanics to become part of this.
its not like we don't already see this with the homebrew system... just look at everything people ask for magical items, races and all... they asked us about new keywords, and yet 2/3rd of the thread posters ask for literally new features instead. this is why i'm ok with it not hapenning... because i preffer they work on finishing the engine first, instead of trying to be on par with people who will never be satisfyed with the system anyway.
its just that hard to realise, its dfinitely not an easy thing to do consideering everything people requires out of it.
just by what people are asking, we already see people asking to break their engines by redoing the entirety of the spell slot system, others literally wanting to give more spell slots to classes, people asking for extra attacks to stacks and so on and so forth. those things breaks the engine. so what you are asking is for people to just break what they have worked so hard up to this point... again, this is all they have to take into considerations, because we already have the ability to homebrew everything on our sheet. we've even seen the dnd beyond team play charcaters with classes not even on beyond. so one has to wonder... if that isn'T enough, then what will be ?
its a really hard decision for them. all i'm saying !
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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)
There are 2 BIG Reasons why we would still want this feature implemented of being able to add a simple text box in the Feats section of our character sheet:
1. Creating a custom race and hacking one to add features EVERY time one is added or needed, by using a custom race's "description" field box is a pretty inconvenient and unintuitive way of going about it. Most people wouldn't even know to even try this without somehow stumbling upon this post.
2. The features or other desired customized fields wouldn't show up in the proper sections of the character sheet, which is a large part of what makes D&Dbeyond so worth while. You'd have to go digging into the race's description somehow. What a clunky and annoying way of hacking the character sheet, only to not even have the homebrew content show up in the correct sections. Until this gets fixed... almost anything homebrew will always be better and more convenient to create in Roll20. I want DND beyond to be my one stop shop. This is the last thing that's missing.
except it wont happen the way you want it to. you already said it yourself right there in your number 2. you want things to appear at the right place, then that means you want whatever mechanics you put in, to be able to actually be processed by the engine itself. that means accepting every single DM request for anything they ask for. that has precedants you know, and every sites where they allow that, inclduing roll20 and fantasy ground, have had trouble keeping up with all the homebrew, fantasy ground even tryed to put it back into the hands of people by giving them literally access to the software as if it was open source. and guess what ? even that wasn't enough. they are still struggling with it everyday... do you have any idea as to the man power needed to satisfy such a feat ?
all i'm saying is... you think its easy, but there are tons of ramifications to go along with it. and while you all ask for just text to be able to be parsed... its not that easy... because you said it yourself... you want a 1 shop stop that does it all... so you will ask for mechanics to become part of this.
its not like we don't already see this with the homebrew system... just look at everything people ask for magical items, races and all... they asked us about new keywords, and yet 2/3rd of the thread posters ask for literally new features instead. this is why i'm ok with it not hapenning... because i preffer they work on finishing the engine first, instead of trying to be on par with people who will never be satisfyed with the system anyway.
its just that hard to realise, its dfinitely not an easy thing to do considering everything people requires out of it.
just by what people are asking, we already see people asking to break their engines by redoing the entirety of the spell slot system, others literally wanting to give more spell slots to classes, people asking for extra attacks to stacks and so on and so forth. those things breaks the engine. so what you are asking is for people to just break what they have worked so hard up to this point... again, this is all they have to take into considerations, because we already have the ability to homebrew everything on our sheet. we've even seen the dnd beyond team play charcaters with classes not even on beyond. so one has to wonder... if that isn'T enough, then what will be ?
its a really hard decision for them. all i'm saying !
My man, the slippery slope fallacy is just that: fallacious. When you say that people will be knocking at the doors of DnDBeyond demanding that they add their custom class mechanics then all I can do is laugh because as evidenced in this gargantuan thread, no amount of pestering will get them to do anything they don't want to do.
Simple things that don't break the engine in the slightest:
Class features per level that pastes the custom description of a feature into the feature's/traits box
Custom Spell lists, once again literally just pastes info into the appropriate spot + we already have custom spells so its just a matter of linking that system to classes
Something that tells the character sheet if the class is full-caster or half-caster for spell slots + spell levels
That's it, that's literally the bare minimum we are asking for, and numerous coders have spoken in this very thread about how not complicated those things are. It was one of the first things that was made clear when this thread was first made and the first frivolous excuses were thrown our way.
DnDBeyond isn't going to give you anything for slavishly defending them from legitimate criticism, and "just saying" is a feeble way to deflect criticism from yourself while you needlessly play "devil's advocate."
Sure, but similarly this kind of explanation has been refuted a ton of times. Already two years ago DnDBeyond said they were working on a basic-custom class system, where you can only make custom classes that follow the mechanics of existing classes. Like, you want to have a wizard that can prepare two extra spells per level, and stuff like that (personally I'd make a Healer class, essentially a trimmed down version of a Cleric with earlier access to healing spells etc). That would be extremely straightforward for them, as all mechanics code is already there; they'd only need to implement the GUI. And it would satisfy 99% of people asking for custom classes. Win-win.
But that statement was two years ago. And no progress since.
Easy to implement, satisfying the majority of users, promised two years ago, but no follow-up? No wonder people are frustrated.
There are 2 BIG Reasons why we would still want this feature implemented of being able to add a simple text box in the Feats section of our character sheet:
1. Creating a custom race and hacking one to add features EVERY time one is added or needed, by using a custom race's "description" field box is a pretty inconvenient and unintuitive way of going about it. Most people wouldn't even know to even try this without somehow stumbling upon this post.
2. The features or other desired customized fields wouldn't show up in the proper sections of the character sheet, which is a large part of what makes D&Dbeyond so worth while. You'd have to go digging into the race's description somehow. What a clunky and annoying way of hacking the character sheet, only to not even have the homebrew content show up in the correct sections. Until this gets fixed... almost anything homebrew will always be better and more convenient to create in Roll20. I want DND beyond to be my one stop shop. This is the last thing that's missing.
except it wont happen the way you want it to. you already said it yourself right there in your number 2. you want things to appear at the right place, then that means you want whatever mechanics you put in, to be able to actually be processed by the engine itself. that means accepting every single DM request for anything they ask for. that has precedants you know, and every sites where they allow that, inclduing roll20 and fantasy ground, have had trouble keeping up with all the homebrew, fantasy ground even tryed to put it back into the hands of people by giving them literally access to the software as if it was open source. and guess what ? even that wasn't enough. they are still struggling with it everyday... do you have any idea as to the man power needed to satisfy such a feat ?
all i'm saying is... you think its easy, but there are tons of ramifications to go along with it. and while you all ask for just text to be able to be parsed... its not that easy... because you said it yourself... you want a 1 shop stop that does it all... so you will ask for mechanics to become part of this.
its not like we don't already see this with the homebrew system... just look at everything people ask for magical items, races and all... they asked us about new keywords, and yet 2/3rd of the thread posters ask for literally new features instead. this is why i'm ok with it not hapenning... because i preffer they work on finishing the engine first, instead of trying to be on par with people who will never be satisfyed with the system anyway.
its just that hard to realise, its dfinitely not an easy thing to do considering everything people requires out of it.
just by what people are asking, we already see people asking to break their engines by redoing the entirety of the spell slot system, others literally wanting to give more spell slots to classes, people asking for extra attacks to stacks and so on and so forth. those things breaks the engine. so what you are asking is for people to just break what they have worked so hard up to this point... again, this is all they have to take into considerations, because we already have the ability to homebrew everything on our sheet. we've even seen the dnd beyond team play charcaters with classes not even on beyond. so one has to wonder... if that isn'T enough, then what will be ?
its a really hard decision for them. all i'm saying !
My man, the slippery slope fallacy is just that: fallacious. When you say that people will be knocking at the doors of DnDBeyond demanding that they add their custom class mechanics then all I can do is laugh because as evidenced in this gargantuan thread, no amount of pestering will get them to do anything they don't want to do.
Simple things that don't break the engine in the slightest:
Class features per level that pastes the custom description of a feature into the feature's/traits box
Custom Spell lists, once again literally just pastes info into the appropriate spot + we already have custom spells so its just a matter of linking that system to classes
Something that tells the character sheet if the class is full-caster or half-caster for spell slots + spell levels
That's it, that's literally the bare minimum we are asking for, and numerous coders have spoken in this very thread about how not complicated those things are. It was one of the first things that was made clear when this thread was first made and the first frivolous excuses were thrown our way.
DnDBeyond isn't going to give you anything for slavishly defending them from legitimate criticism, and "just saying" is a feeble way to deflect criticism from yourself while you needlessly play "devil's advocate."
and i understand what you are saying... but even what you are asking for right now is a problem apparently, because they would of done it already if they could. also, what you are asking... can already be done right now by just modifying your character sheet. did you know that in their stream silver and something... one of them is already playing a brawler. like the dmsguild class ? how do you think he's playing that on DND Beyond ? they can already do everything you are asking, yet you arehere right now asking them to add that to their mechanics as well. so one has to wondr why you just don't do it already if thats what you want ?
back on topic though.... i have to redo a few thing to work my race and features to the dnd beyond interface. i'm playing into a game where the DM just homebrewed every races to balance them out. so i will have to redo the race and background as well as other things... i realised that languages cannot be removed fromt he list, i can add whatever i want, but removing is a no no. so...
what i would ask for now, since we can already modify everything, is the ability to remove already there text, or the ability to put a simple character sheet with nothing in it, so we can manually add everything to it. just this would be tremendously able to make homebrew class for me. and i think that would be quite easier to do, i think.
so yeah, i'm requesting the ability to have blank character sheets to which i could customise my own stuff.
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Sure, but similarly this kind of explanation has been refuted a ton of times. Already two years ago DnDBeyond said they were working on a basic-custom class system, where you can only make custom classes that follow the mechanics of existing classes. Like, you want to have a wizard that can prepare two extra spells per level, and stuff like that (personally I'd make a Healer class, essentially a trimmed down version of a Cleric with earlier access to healing spells etc). That would be extremely straightforward for them, as all mechanics code is already there; they'd only need to implement the GUI. And it would satisfy 99% of people asking for custom classes. Win-win.
But that statement was two years ago. And no progress since.
Easy to implement, satisfying the majority of users, promised two years ago, but no follow-up? No wonder people are frustrated.
there is also the problem of them havign to follow the book release of every wizard of the coast release, which WotC has decided to release 4 books a year. thats about 1 book every 4 months. how long do you think it takes beyond to parse a book in its entirety to their database and then having it follow the mechanics that goes along with it. that doesn'T leave them with much room to work on features. the homebrew system that released about 3 years ago had a lot more time to dedicate to since they were having only 2 books a year to worry about.
i think of all of that is what makes people angry and them having much less time to do anything aside following book release. we don't know how mnay people are working on the design team either. but i think things have been going on quite well for now. they are clearly working ont he mobile app which was asked for since almost day one. i think once that will be on par with the website, they will have more time to add more core tools for us. we'll see once they get there.
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Sure, but similarly this kind of explanation has been refuted a ton of times. Already two years ago DnDBeyond said they were working on a basic-custom class system, where you can only make custom classes that follow the mechanics of existing classes. Like, you want to have a wizard that can prepare two extra spells per level, and stuff like that (personally I'd make a Healer class, essentially a trimmed down version of a Cleric with earlier access to healing spells etc). That would be extremely straightforward for them, as all mechanics code is already there; they'd only need to implement the GUI. And it would satisfy 99% of people asking for custom classes. Win-win.
But that statement was two years ago. And no progress since.
Easy to implement, satisfying the majority of users, promised two years ago, but no follow-up? No wonder people are frustrated.
there is also the problem of them havign to follow the book release of every wizard of the coast release, which WotC has decided to release 4 books a year. thats about 1 book every 4 months. how long do you think it takes beyond to parse a book in its entirety to their database and then having it follow the mechanics that goes along with it. that doesn'T leave them with much room to work on features. the homebrew system that released about 3 years ago had a lot more time to dedicate to since they were having only 2 books a year to worry about.
i think of all of that is what makes people angry and them having much less time to do anything aside following book release. we don't know how mnay people are working on the design team either. but i think things have been going on quite well for now. they are clearly working ont he mobile app which was asked for since almost day one. i think once that will be on par with the website, they will have more time to add more core tools for us. we'll see once they get there.
One of the biggest problems... that many of us that have been following this thread for a while know... is that this used to be on the roadmap. Now, it is removed completely. The more those of us that desire this feature raise our voices, the sooner they will make this a priority. If you do not care for this feature, that's fine. But please stop invalidating the desires and requests of those of us that do think this should be prioritized. Thanks!
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i did, they actually are the better dice.
and it was for a good cause. you know, not ddb's pocket. it was for the kids in extra life !
all that said.. those who think DDB is more then a compendium, you need to get real here... DDB has never boasted to be a complete VTT, it has though, always boasted to be a website that helps DMs. does it do that ? sure does. i too like to complain they aren't fast enoguh, but reality is... much like a hollywood movie, its not their fault its slow... its the fact that everytimes they need to make a change they need to go down the chain of about 10 people just to get an ok to do a draft of the said change. in the end, those who really care about this site are not at the top. also, WotC has never been the fastest machine ever built. took them about 15 years to actually get onboard the digital sales. so yeah, a slow producing company along with a company that is just a subdivision of a sub division, what can you expect. the longer the chain the longer it will take to get something done. thats not DDB's fault. its the machine's fault. just like how hollywood refuses to change after 100 years of cinema... they still employ 100+ employees on set where they could just hire 50 and be doing the same work but faster. but no they refuse to do that, the formula works, why change it, even if its to make it faster.
again, is that DDB's fault... nope... its how the machine work, if you wanna change the machine, this is not the place to do it.
do like me... even though i'm trying hard to put my friend on this site... i get the same response, i don't want to pay because its missing tons of features...
but all i tell them is... all the compendium in the same place, half the price of the others in the market... any other features is just added bonuses.
at this point i don't care anymore... to me DDB is only that... full source book compendium, character sheet... anything else is icing on the cake for me.
but honestly those who say they do it better anywhere else... well good for you, i don't think anywhere else is good, thats why i'm here to begin with. and let's be honest... there is no other places where the compendium is this neatly placed. what am i paying for... their servers, i don't want to be shut down from my books. my characters, even though i export them all, sorry but PDFs are ugly as hell. my own softwares are also ugly as well... so yeah... i tryed fantasy ground, i tryed roll20... i don't like them, fantasy ground is fine, but cost a lot. even the SRD cost you money ! Roll20, ugly interface. honestly they should pass more time polishing the interface instead of polishing the database. but at that point none of the two companies will care, their money is made...
don'T take me wrong, i also think DDB is way late on features... FG got up and running on 5 different TTRPG rulings in about 3 or 4 years. DDB is far from that on a single edition.
Roll20 was up and running in about only 2 years. complete too. again DDB is far from that... but stop looking at the features and start looking at the professionnalism... you see a heck of a difference between FG, Roll20 and DDB. DDB is much better at this then the other two.
if i had to give an advice to DDB...
i'd concentrate on finishing the basic features first...
we don't even have complete DMG functionnality yet...
dice, easy to make, i wonder why it took them so long to do them...
combat tracker, easy to make, how long could it take you to do it.
i'm glad they finally did those.
but man, finish up on boons and the likes... your DMG isn't even complete yet !
also to end on this...
they had more time back 2 years ago. WotC was releasing 2 books a year...
2 years ago they decided to go for 4 books a year. which leaves DDB really not much time to make any kind of features now.
so instead of having 4 months to work on features and 2 or 3 months to work on new books... they have now about a few weeks to work on features before a new book arrives... a few weeks is not going to be fast work...
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Even if there was a simple way to swap alway known/always prepared subclass spells that would be what I would find a useful compromise.
And class features, too. That's the main problem I have.
"I'd like to see if there's anyone in this bar hot enough to buy a drink for."
"Roll perception."
"Nat 1. I guess I'm the hottest person in here."
"You buy yourself a drink."
Yeah modifying class features would be fun as heck....
I would love to mess about with the warlock slot progression (3 spells needs to come sooner IMO)
Most of those sound like races, not classes.
I hope they add Homebrew Class options in the future. I've had to use other websites and methods for creating my characters and it's really frustrating not having everything all in one place. They have everything else, why not straight up classes? Fingers crossed one day it makes it's way here.
its been answered a ton of times, the problem is that you can't create mechanics for every single thing 7 billion people can think of.
so one has to wonder, yeah you could just add your homebrew classes as text only, but what would be the point of that, the goal is to have mechanics.. what if someone wants a combo mechanics where each attack of a weapon gives you a bonus. how would one add that to the class ? you'd then start asking for each mechanics you would add to be included in the game. this is the major problem of why homebrew classes aren't a thing.
the goal of this characer sheet is to have actual mechanics working.
allowing everyone to create their own little mechanics would , in the end... add a lot of work for them because now they have to add every single mechanic people ask for.
i can guarantee you, it wouldn'T stop at just adding homebrew classes... people would start asking for them to add every single mechanic each individual wants even if its not official.
just look at homebrew sub classes right now, you already see this in action.
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Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. People aren't asking for the HomeBrewClassMaker9000, they just want a way to make and publish basic classes, and if that means some stuff has to sit in the "Features and Traits" section instead of having its own special drop-down or box to tick, then I'm sure its still preferable to nothing. I think many of us just want what HMP177 was saying, to have everything in one place.
There are plenty of features from the normal DndBeyond that either still haven't gotten added yet (legendary/artifact magic items that have random stats) or took a while to finally get on here (looking at you Hexblade + Pact Weapon). All we're asking for is SOMETHING to work with.
Amen!
Having text features is still better than nothing. Making the "Half-life 3" argument doesn't change the fact that 90% of people will be content with just having text features, because the reason we use DDB is because it streamlines the character creation process, especially for new players who don't really understand all the little bits and pieces of making a character. Being able to integrate my own homebrew seamlessly alongside the official content for my players is the reason i myself started using this service, so more features that allow me to do that for more things is at the top of my priority list, even if i cant make all the unique mechanics in the world.
then why not just create races with your class in it? if text is all you need, then you already have all the necessary tools to do it.
many people did it with races or sub classes. no need for more. at least in my opinion. seems to me like you don'T want just text, you want actual class mechanics. like gaining abilities at levels and all.
all im saying is, if all you want is for text, then anything can already do this.
but as menitonned, if you want mechanics to be upheld, then thats where the problem lies and the reason we don't have them yet.
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There are 2 BIG Reasons why we would still want this feature implemented of being able to add a simple text box in the Feats section of our character sheet:
1. Creating a custom race and hacking one to add features EVERY time one is added or needed, by using a custom race's "description" field box is a pretty inconvenient and unintuitive way of going about it. Most people wouldn't even know to even try this without somehow stumbling upon this post.
2. The features or other desired customized fields wouldn't show up in the proper sections of the character sheet, which is a large part of what makes D&Dbeyond so worth while. You'd have to go digging into the race's description somehow. What a clunky and annoying way of hacking the character sheet, only to not even have the homebrew content show up in the correct sections. Until this gets fixed... almost anything homebrew will always be better and more convenient to create in Roll20. I want DND beyond to be my one stop shop. This is the last thing that's missing.
There are enough companies and players creating homebrew content now that D&D Beyond cannot keep up with. I just bought a book called the Masterclass Codex that includes 16 new classes, complete with subclasses, that was published by EN Publishing. This book has some great options, but they aren't usable with D&D Beyond. The same goes for the website www.sw5e.com that I want to use to run a Star Wars Campaign with 5e rules. It's far easier to let your players create custom classes, and it'll help bring more players to D&D Beyond, than it would be for your staff to try and bring these various sources into the database.
Come on, D&D Beyond... open up the ability for players to create custom classes! It's become necessary.
then again, without the mechanics, would you really be ok with just text and your players not able to do the attacks or their things without it ? if they do decide to open up homebrew classes, they have to be ok with dealing with people asking for mechanics to work with their classes. its all fine and dandy to ask classes beczaause books and all do it, but you have to count that those books do not care which character sheet you play with, they dont care for mechanics, but here they do. same for fantasy ground and roll20. thats the biggest hurdle you guys have to think about. you say that now that text only is good enough, but once that will be done and availlable, you will ask for more out of it. your players will be asking for more out of it.
its not a decision taken lightly, it has repercussion if they do accept to allow us to do that.
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except it wont happen the way you want it to. you already said it yourself right there in your number 2. you want things to appear at the right place, then that means you want whatever mechanics you put in, to be able to actually be processed by the engine itself. that means accepting every single DM request for anything they ask for. that has precedants you know, and every sites where they allow that, inclduing roll20 and fantasy ground, have had trouble keeping up with all the homebrew, fantasy ground even tryed to put it back into the hands of people by giving them literally access to the software as if it was open source. and guess what ? even that wasn't enough. they are still struggling with it everyday... do you have any idea as to the man power needed to satisfy such a feat ?
all i'm saying is... you think its easy, but there are tons of ramifications to go along with it.
and while you all ask for just text to be able to be parsed... its not that easy...
because you said it yourself... you want a 1 shop stop that does it all... so you will ask for mechanics to become part of this.
its not like we don't already see this with the homebrew system...
just look at everything people ask for magical items, races and all... they asked us about new keywords, and yet 2/3rd of the thread posters ask for literally new features instead.
this is why i'm ok with it not hapenning... because i preffer they work on finishing the engine first, instead of trying to be on par with people who will never be satisfyed with the system anyway.
its just that hard to realise, its dfinitely not an easy thing to do consideering everything people requires out of it.
just by what people are asking, we already see people asking to break their engines by redoing the entirety of the spell slot system, others literally wanting to give more spell slots to classes, people asking for extra attacks to stacks and so on and so forth. those things breaks the engine. so what you are asking is for people to just break what they have worked so hard up to this point... again, this is all they have to take into considerations, because we already have the ability to homebrew everything on our sheet. we've even seen the dnd beyond team play charcaters with classes not even on beyond. so one has to wonder... if that isn'T enough, then what will be ?
its a really hard decision for them. all i'm saying !
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My man, the slippery slope fallacy is just that: fallacious. When you say that people will be knocking at the doors of DnDBeyond demanding that they add their custom class mechanics then all I can do is laugh because as evidenced in this gargantuan thread, no amount of pestering will get them to do anything they don't want to do.
Simple things that don't break the engine in the slightest:
Class features per level that pastes the custom description of a feature into the feature's/traits box
Custom Spell lists, once again literally just pastes info into the appropriate spot + we already have custom spells so its just a matter of linking that system to classes
Something that tells the character sheet if the class is full-caster or half-caster for spell slots + spell levels
That's it, that's literally the bare minimum we are asking for, and numerous coders have spoken in this very thread about how not complicated those things are. It was one of the first things that was made clear when this thread was first made and the first frivolous excuses were thrown our way.
DnDBeyond isn't going to give you anything for slavishly defending them from legitimate criticism, and "just saying" is a feeble way to deflect criticism from yourself while you needlessly play "devil's advocate."
Sure, but similarly this kind of explanation has been refuted a ton of times.
Already two years ago DnDBeyond said they were working on a basic-custom class system, where you can only make custom classes that follow the mechanics of existing classes. Like, you want to have a wizard that can prepare two extra spells per level, and stuff like that (personally I'd make a Healer class, essentially a trimmed down version of a Cleric with earlier access to healing spells etc). That would be extremely straightforward for them, as all mechanics code is already there; they'd only need to implement the GUI. And it would satisfy 99% of people asking for custom classes. Win-win.
But that statement was two years ago. And no progress since.
Easy to implement, satisfying the majority of users, promised two years ago, but no follow-up? No wonder people are frustrated.
and i understand what you are saying... but even what you are asking for right now is a problem apparently, because they would of done it already if they could.
also, what you are asking... can already be done right now by just modifying your character sheet.
did you know that in their stream silver and something... one of them is already playing a brawler. like the dmsguild class ? how do you think he's playing that on DND Beyond ?
they can already do everything you are asking, yet you arehere right now asking them to add that to their mechanics as well. so one has to wondr why you just don't do it already if thats what you want ?
back on topic though....
i have to redo a few thing to work my race and features to the dnd beyond interface. i'm playing into a game where the DM just homebrewed every races to balance them out. so i will have to redo the race and background as well as other things... i realised that languages cannot be removed fromt he list, i can add whatever i want, but removing is a no no. so...
what i would ask for now, since we can already modify everything, is the ability to remove already there text, or the ability to put a simple character sheet with nothing in it, so we can manually add everything to it. just this would be tremendously able to make homebrew class for me. and i think that would be quite easier to do, i think.
so yeah, i'm requesting the ability to have blank character sheets to which i could customise my own stuff.
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there is also the problem of them havign to follow the book release of every wizard of the coast release, which WotC has decided to release 4 books a year. thats about 1 book every 4 months. how long do you think it takes beyond to parse a book in its entirety to their database and then having it follow the mechanics that goes along with it. that doesn'T leave them with much room to work on features. the homebrew system that released about 3 years ago had a lot more time to dedicate to since they were having only 2 books a year to worry about.
i think of all of that is what makes people angry and them having much less time to do anything aside following book release.
we don't know how mnay people are working on the design team either. but i think things have been going on quite well for now. they are clearly working ont he mobile app which was asked for since almost day one. i think once that will be on par with the website, they will have more time to add more core tools for us. we'll see once they get there.
DM of two gaming groups.
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One of the biggest problems... that many of us that have been following this thread for a while know... is that this used to be on the roadmap. Now, it is removed completely. The more those of us that desire this feature raise our voices, the sooner they will make this a priority. If you do not care for this feature, that's fine. But please stop invalidating the desires and requests of those of us that do think this should be prioritized. Thanks!