An update to homebrew and existing systems.

Like the title says, update the homebrew system and already existing systems. I mean really the core of DnD is imagination and having somewhere to track it is really all we want. They keep making sourcebooks with 10 new items that no one buys just for us to make hundreds of homebrew every day and deal with broken OFFICIAL features that don't work.

Just off the top of my head I can here's what i can think of:

• Truly custom weapons and armor. Meaning they aren't based on existing ones, damage and AC can be set manually instead of being forced to copy existing items and include tags to make +1, +2, +3 variants without making whole new weapons and armor
• The ability to add options drop down boxes to weapons that augment it's properties like damage type, reach and bonuses on the fly after their in player inventory
• The ability to add option drop down boxes to monsters to augment thier properties like speed, AC, HP, Temp HP, adding actions on the fly after their on player character sheets
• The ability to make general items instead of only magical ones
• Easy tooltip additions
• Feats that level up with class level instead of only character level
• Custom classes
• The ability to replace class features in subclass creation
• Fixing all of Tasha's. There's no sidekick class support and several optional class features have zero functionality

This is just some of the stuff i can think of and run into myself as I'm sure many people reading this do as well.

It is undeniable that the homebrew could be better. However, it's at the point where their options to change anything are slim to none. Getting the homebrew system to be the way we need it to be would be a monumentally herculean task. The system for homebrewing is tied to the system for official stuff. It would involve rewriting huge sections of the coding architecture - they would have to change and update every release since site inception and every existing homebrew would break and stop working. Frankly it would be less effort to scrap the site altogether and restart entirely from scratch than it would be to implement the major changes to get homebrewing where you expect it to be.

When D&D Beyond was made it wasn't designed for homebrewing and the tools for adding content needed to be more streamlined to match the speed of releases and rules validation being required  - when Curse was making the site, WotC told them homebrew was not permitted. Fan demand convinced WotC to change their minds but it was too late to redo the site: it was already up, running and with releases. Curse then made a sort of "lite" version of their own content tools and released those as homebrew. 

So, yeah, it's now too big of an ask. We may see some updates here and there but ultimately homebrew tools on D&D Beyond will never be what we need it to become. There is too much to rewrite, too much that can break, and too little time/money/devs. 

I feel sorry for the devs if this is the headache inducing garbage they have to use daily to author new content. As a dev myself, I would be working weekends unpaid on a major refactor no matter what it took, just so I wouldn't have to use this trash.

Also a rebuttal to your point about breaking everything. Database model migrations aren't that hard and can be ran during an announced maintenance. And if that maintenance announcement said they were fixing homebrew I bet DMs world wide would be more than willing to pause a game for a day or 2 if it even took that long. 

I agree that a true "homebrew item system" that covers all the possible configuration options is quite difficult. I also know that it's very easy as an outsider to underestimate the complexity of making adjustments to a system or building some new functionality. 

That said, what we have now is SO TERRIBLE. The current system doesn't even support all the official items, like, not even official items that were there at launch over a decade ago (oh hey look, it's Flame Tongue Longsword which only does 1d8 damage unless you remember to manually roll the 2d6 fire damage (or build a custom action for 2d6 fire and remember to click it) every time you attack.

Anyone who has used the homebrew system to try and build something has a sense of how complex all these different options must be to try and allow people to build objects into the underlying "system"... but the thing is that MOST of those fields are actually never used, because the only tool they've built that actually ingests those items in any meaningful way is the character sheet. So then, why do we have fields for things like "Effect on miss", "Effect on save success", "Effect on save fail"? Just in case they eventually build some VTT that can do something with that data?

I know this system is complex, so here's my proposal for a quick solution:

Short Term: Rework Custom Actions as a 1st class citizens:

Honestly, if we really want a quick solution to drastically improve things, leave the current homebrew system alone, just reimplement the "Custom Action" functionality and we can get by manually adding items to our sheet, just like we used to do with pen and paper. The issue is that currently the Custom Action is lacking in a lot of ways, here is the list of features which I don't think would be too crazy to implement (because again, it doesn't have to interact with the underlying homebrew system, it just has to work at the "character sheet level", which can literally just be javascript in the client browser that does the calculation/rendering):

1. Add a "Notes" field to the Custom Action.
   • Currently it has a "Snippet" and "Description" field, which are useful, but having the "quick note reference" in the Action table is incredibly useful, it seems crazy that Custom Actions just leave an entire 1/3 of the table as empty unusable space. I wind up creating tons of Homebrew just to be have the very simple Action that I could make in Custom Actions, but with an ability to add Notes to it on my character sheet.
2. Allow snippets in the Hit/DC field
   • They already have a system for using formulas to calculate values based on the player stats... why does this formula ONLY work in the Snippets section (which has to be the least-viewed field for actions... I'm either looking at the Notes column for the highlights, or I'm looking at the full Description so I can get the exact wording... the only time I ever look at the Snippet is so I can click it to open the full Description.
3. Allow rollable values in the Damage field
   • Honestly it may make sense to ignore the current rollable syntax they use for monsters and just make a new one that can properly allow for multiple damage types and also reference the creature stats dynamically (the same way the snippets do), look, here's what Flame Tongue Longsword might look like: {{[1d8+(modifier:str)slash,2d6fire]}} , I'm not sure why they decided to make the rollable syntax so complex, but still not able to handle multiple damage types: {"diceNotation":"1d8+3","rollType":"damage","rollAction":"Attack with Flame Tongue Longsword","rollDamageType":"slashing"} {"diceNotation":"2d6","rollType":"damage","rollAction":"Make sure you also click me so that you don't do half as much damage as you're supposed to","rollDamageType":"fire"}
     • Yes, multiple dice and multiple damage types means that the label for the button might not be able to always display all of the dice that are going to roll... that's probably fine? I think a button that says "Roll Damage" that shows the dice calculation when you hover over it is likely good enough, or they crib from the current rollable syntax and just allow for the button label to be defined as part of the syntax.

If you made those 3 changes (hell Notes is the most important, you can hide the 2nd and 3rd under an "advanced" option if you want), it would eliminate over half of the homebrew feats I've had to make just to show stuff on my character sheet in a useful compact way. 

Most recent example: I am making a grappling character, my DM has also decided to allow a re-implementation of the optional 2014 Climb onto a bigger creature rule. So in order to make it easier to reference on my sheet, I want to have an action for "Grapple" that shows my grapple DC and an action for "Climb" that shows my climb DC (they can use different ability scores and have different conditions for resisting/ending). With Custom Action I can create those items, and even have the DC shown dynamically update as my character levels up. What I can't do without building an entire homebrew feat, is write a little note to display "STR or DEX save to avoid, ACTION: Athletics or Acrobatics to end" next to Grapple and "DEX save to avoid, ACTION: Athletics check to end" next to Climb. I can add Snippet and Description to Custom Actions, but those require scrolling/clicking to get to the information. There's no good reason why "Notes" shouldn't just be a field on the custom action.

Additionally, if my DM gives me a magic item that gives me "+2 to Grapple DC", there is no way to do that in the current system at all except to hardcode the new DC value and manually update it (either on the Custom Action or on the Homebrew) every time it would change. I can add the formula {{10+proficiency+modifier:DEX}} to the snippet field, and that will properly be updated as my character changes, but there is no way to add a static value on top of a proficiency and ability modifier when building homebrew actions currently.

Longer term

The long term fix would be to allow those same "calculated values" to be used when creating Homebrew items. If you look at the current homebrew form, it's a giant list of all the different unique factors that they've had to build out as they try to handle every possible factor, so that behind the scenes they can dynamically calculate something based off of your character sheet. They tried to build a "user friendly" system for configuring these different possible things, but what they actually built is an incredibly clunky tool which I'm sure is a nightmare to refactor whenever some new thing needs to be available to use in the calculations. If they add support for formulas (and yes, add some new tokens for things like "martialArtsDie" so we could use that in the formulas) they could eliminate the majority of the fields on the form.

I'd say it probably makes sense to just make a fork and have "New Homebrew Items" use the new formula option. Legacy items using the old system, both official and homebrew, might be a bit of technical debt... though I suspect someone could build a tool to read the current configuration and spit out the formula needed to match them pretty reliably.