I sent my feedback, of course having encounters work like the encounters stand alone is the start we really need to start giving good feedback.
What I am hoping for is that they add an option per the DMs approval to allow certain players access to Maps without the regular DM. In our campaign, I am running a side campaign of sorts for our party. Our DM even joined in the fun. I am having the group clear out a mansion. When we reach Level 5, the hope is that they have cleared out all the rooms of bandits, and this mansion will become our Bastion. Not only to help with tasks, and make some gold, and store items…this Mansion will become our play area and party space.
As it stands now, I have all the party members using pregenerated characters because it’s a different campaign. So I hope they add this option to help implement play without the DM with DMs approval. When using these Maps, we can create our servants, and have fun side quests that have no effect on the campaign, unless the DM finds a need.
I agree with everything I see here on this thread. For me there are two very glaring issues
First, being there is no way to change the HP of enemies when doing an encounter. I absolutely love how well they did the tracking of initiative, its very good and looks great on the players side as well. However, I do not see it being that hard to allow us to dynamically change the HP as players deal out damage, and allow us to track HP of our players at the same time. Its one of those small things that make a huge difference, and would prevent needing to use the old encounters tool and the new maps tool at the same time.
The second big one for me is not having the ability to put conditions on players. Plenty of times in combat my players may be blinded, frightened, prone, etc. etc. Not having any way of indicating that on the map or in the encounter tracker is a serious buzzkill. All I can think of is to tell players "pink circle is frightened, green circle is prone". If we could identify it with something clearer, that would be a massive upgrade.
The Encounter is not autotracking HP and it doesn't let me manually do so from the maps either.
Additionally, whenever I type in here it makes the toolbars flicker through each option when its key short cut is pressed.
Also, being able to type words on the map and up load my own tokens would be idea. And for tokens that I do not have access to have them tell me what product I need to purchase to have access to them.
And i get that others have this issue too. But its been two weeks since the first post so I am posting too.
What is the chance of getting a chat box in the Maps & Encounters. I am running my M&E as a secondary DM, building up our parties Bastions. So the Mpas are homemade of the mansion we are looking to clear out. Currently the way we have it set up is we do text chat on our Discord. While we move and battle on D&D Beyond. But if there can be a chat feature put into this, it will allow the old text style D&D to take place. This will help M&E become very standalone if you wanted. Adding more versatility to the entire M&E attributes.
Dont know if mentioned ... when importing a custom map, the square sizer tool is not great. Used it but could never get the scale right as a result tokens when moving would not stay in the squares.
A numbered pixels option to get scale size of squares vs tokens perfect would be great.
Upvote to everyone above me. It's nowhere near as good as the Encounters combat tracker, which seems strange, given that the two have always been so well-integrated.
Also, has anyone mentioned that Maps does not accept players' initiative rolls, so the lovely initiative tracker along the top is pointless?
I'm worried that they are not going to be able to follow through on even half the promises they've made about Project Sigil.
I’m having trouble getting the heath + and - from showing. Once I start combat I’m only able to remove a token from combat. Did you have to do anything to get that to show up.
The feedback option isn't even available for me. :( My feature requests are:
Adding tokens outside of monsters, players, and companions. I have artwork for a lot of unique NPC's. My only option is to make a stat block for each one.
The ability to add an emanation to tokens, especially with the new rules and paladin auras.
Shortcut to open (in a new tab) an appropriate character sheet or stat block from a selected token (if it has one).
A way to track a token's hit points. Tracking a token's conditions with icons.
Ability to resize tokens (especially for scenarios like enlarge/reduce).
Ability to roll dice (sometimes I just need a quick d20 or d100).
Simple chat feature for sharing name spelling, a list of treasure, etc.
The most important feature above all else an UNDO/REDO BUTTON. Gods, please. Give us a simple way to undo/redo.
@SANSd20 You can 'pause' the session and that will refrain any changes from showing up for players, including switching to a different map. When you resume, they will see what you see
@SANSd20 but don’t sleep on it, after 1 hour it will remove tokens. So if you tell them to take lunch, you may need to blink the resume session only to pause it.
But now you gave me a great idea. What if Maps has a DM Screen, a toggle switch to place a DM Screen for the players while the DM works on live Maps without the players seeing. Seems like a nice option to add.
I think if they are wanting to keep things on DDB, which is their ultimate goal, they will likely push the updates and changes only to maps and to project sigil. The encounter tool, while it's nice for those who play in person, or with other means, really could become obsolete if at some point you're able to manage multiple encounters in the maps tool. I think its just going to keep getting more and more robust to compete with the likes of Roll20 and Foundry. Do I see it getting mod scripting and that sort, no, but definitely more of the likes of Owlbear Rodeo with DND integration. Hopefully we get lighting, doors and better fog, as well as recognition of conditions and more roll automation.
Honestly, I recognize that this is a beta, and Im okay with it being clunky a bit while we give them feedback. The proof will be in the pudding of what they do with our feedback. This has the makings of a truly experience-changing tool. I am setting up a campaign to play with my kids who live 12 hours away, and all of us being able to play a TTRPG using a giant computer screen is a terrific possibility. Lets keep pinging with the feedback! Great ideas, everyone. I echo them all.
This was the feedback I gave with the latest update:
After creating the encounter and starting the combat I've found a number of items that make it difficult to use this during the game. If you drop a bunch of the same creature, they're all called the same thing (Like Goblin). Selecting the creature in the initiative order doesn't help either, since nothing on the map is highlighted to show who is selected. Renaming the creatures (Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc.) results in the creatures getting individual initiative instead of group initiative like it is supposed to. When rolling for attacks and damage from the Monster stat block, you cannot select to roll with advantage or disadvantage, and there's no option to roll a critical hit. In a perfect world I would like to be able to select the target of the attack and have the system automatically determine success/failure and apply relevant damage. There are simply a lot of missing tools that exist in other products that help speed combat. Things like selecting an attack and getting an overlay of what's in range, easy to see markers for statuses, character sheet integration in Maps so I can see the players stat blocks and abilities easily. So many things are simply missing and needed in order for this to be a fully usable VTT. These items aren't nonessential, they are what facilitates playing the game with a group of remote players over the internet and keeping everyone on track. You can get away with less when you're in the same room, but remote play requires more tools to be able to effectively run the game.
Playing with this in real scenarios I have a few extra points:
Adding new entries during the combat for summoned monsters is great, but there's no way to ensure they appear *behind* the person with the same initiative, unless the next value down is empty. If one person has an initiative of 14, and the next has 13, and the first person summons creatures to fight for them, at initiative 14, the creatures appear ahead of the player. According to the Summon Beast spell, In combat, the creature shares your Initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. This can't be organized during the game. And since summoned creatures are the most common reason for adding creatures mid fight, there needs to be a way to tag the creatures as being tied to a player.
There's also no way to indicate that those creatures are allies.
It would be really nice to be able to add monsters from a template set, to pre-prepare encounter groups then add them to the map, instead of adding every monster before the game.
When a monster goes below half health, there's no indicator that they're bloodied, like the Encounter Builder used to.
When a monster dies, (now that you're tracking HP), it would be really nice to have the token do something like a red cross-hash. Similar would be nice for the bloodied.
Tying an affect to a person, such as a Paladin Aura would make moving characters far easier.
Can we please have a "Snap to grid squares" option, so that we can move tokens and have them stay inside the grid. It would allow non-gridded images to work much better as a map.
I would love to be able to declare that Crits will use the Perkins Crit method.
Please let the middle mouse button be always Panning. So I don't keep having to switch away from a tool to move the map.
It's a bit of a small thing, but clicking on the stat blocks does not cause a dice roll animation for the DM, it just shows the value in the game log. :-(
I really like how much faster Maps runs than roll20 for me. I would gladly trade nice features to maintain that speed.
I didn't see tokens for the 'new' monsters and npcs in Scions of Elemental Evil. I am guessing that they will appear when the Monster Manual releases.
I really hope they give every token an image instead of using silhouettes.
I sent my feedback, of course having encounters work like the encounters stand alone is the start we really need to start giving good feedback.
What I am hoping for is that they add an option per the DMs approval to allow certain players access to Maps without the regular DM. In our campaign, I am running a side campaign of sorts for our party. Our DM even joined in the fun. I am having the group clear out a mansion. When we reach Level 5, the hope is that they have cleared out all the rooms of bandits, and this mansion will become our Bastion. Not only to help with tasks, and make some gold, and store items…this Mansion will become our play area and party space.
As it stands now, I have all the party members using pregenerated characters because it’s a different campaign. So I hope they add this option to help implement play without the DM with DMs approval. When using these Maps, we can create our servants, and have fun side quests that have no effect on the campaign, unless the DM finds a need.
I agree with everything I see here on this thread. For me there are two very glaring issues
First, being there is no way to change the HP of enemies when doing an encounter. I absolutely love how well they did the tracking of initiative, its very good and looks great on the players side as well. However, I do not see it being that hard to allow us to dynamically change the HP as players deal out damage, and allow us to track HP of our players at the same time. Its one of those small things that make a huge difference, and would prevent needing to use the old encounters tool and the new maps tool at the same time.
The second big one for me is not having the ability to put conditions on players. Plenty of times in combat my players may be blinded, frightened, prone, etc. etc. Not having any way of indicating that on the map or in the encounter tracker is a serious buzzkill. All I can think of is to tell players "pink circle is frightened, green circle is prone". If we could identify it with something clearer, that would be a massive upgrade.
The Encounter is not autotracking HP and it doesn't let me manually do so from the maps either.
Additionally, whenever I type in here it makes the toolbars flicker through each option when its key short cut is pressed.
Also, being able to type words on the map and up load my own tokens would be idea. And for tokens that I do not have access to have them tell me what product I need to purchase to have access to them.
And i get that others have this issue too. But its been two weeks since the first post so I am posting too.
What is the chance of getting a chat box in the Maps & Encounters. I am running my M&E as a secondary DM, building up our parties Bastions. So the Mpas are homemade of the mansion we are looking to clear out. Currently the way we have it set up is we do text chat on our Discord. While we move and battle on D&D Beyond. But if there can be a chat feature put into this, it will allow the old text style D&D to take place. This will help M&E become very standalone if you wanted. Adding more versatility to the entire M&E attributes.
Dont know if mentioned ... when importing a custom map, the square sizer tool is not great.
Used it but could never get the scale right as a result tokens when moving would not stay in the squares.
A numbered pixels option to get scale size of squares vs tokens perfect would be great.
Upvote to everyone above me. It's nowhere near as good as the Encounters combat tracker, which seems strange, given that the two have always been so well-integrated.
Also, has anyone mentioned that Maps does not accept players' initiative rolls, so the lovely initiative tracker along the top is pointless?
I'm worried that they are not going to be able to follow through on even half the promises they've made about Project Sigil.
Now an update, live HP tracking from sheets to Encounters/Maps….
Slow progress… we will get there.
Is it just me, or is there no way for the DM to look at, say, the DM's Map with out showing it to the players?
I’m having trouble getting the heath + and - from showing. Once I start combat I’m only able to remove a token from combat. Did you have to do anything to get that to show up.
The feedback option isn't even available for me. :(
My feature requests are:
@SANSd20 You can 'pause' the session and that will refrain any changes from showing up for players, including switching to a different map. When you resume, they will see what you see
I miss not being able to cut rectangles and circles out of Fog of War. With my faulty hand, using brushes only sucks big time.
Watch your back, conserve your ammo,
and NEVER cut a deal with a dragon!
@SANSd20 but don’t sleep on it, after 1 hour it will remove tokens. So if you tell them to take lunch, you may need to blink the resume session only to pause it.
But now you gave me a great idea. What if Maps has a DM Screen, a toggle switch to place a DM Screen for the players while the DM works on live Maps without the players seeing. Seems like a nice option to add.
I think if they are wanting to keep things on DDB, which is their ultimate goal, they will likely push the updates and changes only to maps and to project sigil. The encounter tool, while it's nice for those who play in person, or with other means, really could become obsolete if at some point you're able to manage multiple encounters in the maps tool. I think its just going to keep getting more and more robust to compete with the likes of Roll20 and Foundry. Do I see it getting mod scripting and that sort, no, but definitely more of the likes of Owlbear Rodeo with DND integration. Hopefully we get lighting, doors and better fog, as well as recognition of conditions and more roll automation.
Honestly, I recognize that this is a beta, and Im okay with it being clunky a bit while we give them feedback. The proof will be in the pudding of what they do with our feedback. This has the makings of a truly experience-changing tool. I am setting up a campaign to play with my kids who live 12 hours away, and all of us being able to play a TTRPG using a giant computer screen is a terrific possibility. Lets keep pinging with the feedback! Great ideas, everyone. I echo them all.
Uploaded character portraits lead to tokens with a broken link in the initiative tracker and generic silhouette tokens on the board.
Putting this here because I don't get a Feedback button in the tool.
This was the feedback I gave with the latest update:
After creating the encounter and starting the combat I've found a number of items that make it difficult to use this during the game. If you drop a bunch of the same creature, they're all called the same thing (Like Goblin). Selecting the creature in the initiative order doesn't help either, since nothing on the map is highlighted to show who is selected. Renaming the creatures (Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc.) results in the creatures getting individual initiative instead of group initiative like it is supposed to. When rolling for attacks and damage from the Monster stat block, you cannot select to roll with advantage or disadvantage, and there's no option to roll a critical hit. In a perfect world I would like to be able to select the target of the attack and have the system automatically determine success/failure and apply relevant damage. There are simply a lot of missing tools that exist in other products that help speed combat. Things like selecting an attack and getting an overlay of what's in range, easy to see markers for statuses, character sheet integration in Maps so I can see the players stat blocks and abilities easily. So many things are simply missing and needed in order for this to be a fully usable VTT. These items aren't nonessential, they are what facilitates playing the game with a group of remote players over the internet and keeping everyone on track. You can get away with less when you're in the same room, but remote play requires more tools to be able to effectively run the game.
Playing with this in real scenarios I have a few extra points: