WTH? I can hardly find anything I'm looking for. For 7 years I have gotten used to and efficient with getting in here daily and getting a lot done, but this threw a massive wrench in those smoothly working gears. I am working on a huge campaign right now and this has tacked a lot of extra wasted time on to it. Hiding everything in sub menus is never, never a good idea. Sure, we all want a clean interface, but there is way, way too much material here to hide it all away behind a few tabs. This site seems to be more geared towards the continuous pursuit of selling something over actually taking care of the ones who have purchased it all (and continue to).
Extremely frustrated with this mess. Having to search where they hid everything. This minimalistic approach looks good, but equates to making it more difficult to navigate. Can't even hover over the top tabs to for a quicker way to get to something now (we used to be able to).
Update: I ran an 8-hour game session on Saturday. With the Library now looking completely different, for ease I went in and put my main reference books as Favorites ahead of time so that they now pop up in my Library (Library was empty until I did this). And with this minimalistic design, instead of giving us an actual search box on the main page, they gave us the search magnifying box that hides the search box (clueless as to why they did this!), so I opened that ahead of time too. My workaround to this mess is to open multiple tabs ahead of time after I found much of what I would need. PITA, but it is a workaround.
They have this massive landing page (scroll down and look) that has "Build Your Character" and other sales pushes, and this is your only option of what you get to see. There is no reason why (other than sheer and blatant greed), when I log in as a Master Tier member that my only homepage option is to have a sales page pushing D&D Beyond products and services down my throat that I have already purchased or used. We need to be able to customize this page for actual use since we have chosen to pay for services and digital products. Sure WotC, give me a banner for new products and services and I can easily live with that, but this is ridiculous and a major step backwards. If it's a free account, then give them the sales splash page, but not Master Tier members who are obviously using the site regularly and quite heavily. You should be embarrassed with this.
Okay, lets say I need to reference base armor quickly. I click Rules, then Equipment, and instead of listing categories (weapons, armor, adventuring gear, etc) I get a short, multi-page list and have to filter the results. I actually have to type Armor before getting a multi-page list of armor. Then I have to skim for base armor choices. This is obnoxious. It used to be Rulebooks, Players Handbook, armor. Who is making these design decisions? Do they actually play? I can go through the book faster.
DnD Beyond, I CAN GO THROUGH THE BOOK FASTER.
Read that several times and consider what your core purpose is? Please. Please. Get someone who thinks like a player.
Okay, lets say I need to reference base armor quickly. I click Rules, then Equipment, and instead of listing categories (weapons, armor, adventuring gear, etc) I get a short, multi-page list and have to filter the results. I actually have to type Armor before getting a multi-page list of armor. Then I have to skim for base armor choices. This is obnoxious. It used to be Rulebooks, Players Handbook, armor. Who is making these design decisions? Do they actually play? I can go through the book faster.
DnD Beyond, I CAN GO THROUGH THE BOOK FASTER.
Read that several times and consider what your core purpose is? Please. Please. Get someone who thinks like a player.
The click path for equipment hasn't changed? Selecting equipment from the drop-down always took you to that search page
Yeah, I can still go Library > Player's Handbook through my favorites (and, really, the core rulebooks should be their own category in that menu, but that's beside the point).
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
People with repetitive stress injuries to their hand would say this isn't accessible.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
People with repetitive stress injuries to their hand would say this isn't accessible.
And people with hand tremors will say hover menus are not accessible.
There is an easy fix for this that makes everyone happy: Make the top bar minimally large and give each tab the shape of a button with a smaller secondary button next to that a steady hand can place its cursor on to get the hover pop-up option (over the smaller button only). Do not give the larger button itself the hover option though. Right now there is no visual definition between the words "PLAY D&D" and the down arrow next to it, and black background of the bar behind it. They could be two visually distinct buttons though and still look good. Does it look slick, sure. Is it user friendly, nope. Superficial Aestheticism has definitely won out here, with their primary focus being on sales, and the new UI's usability being placed in the back seat.
It's crazy that this discussion started back in Oct of 2025 and somehow is still relevant.
For some odd reason someone at dndbeyond or above is making these decisions to change the ui for no apparent reason, to a lesser experience rather than an improvement. Most of these changes somehow always feel less about enhancing user experience and more about something else, considering how much discomfort and discontent it raises in the community.
In comparison, I'd like to point out that the changes made back for the 2024 revision launch were, for the most part, reasonable and welcomed. A lot of those changes were very much improvements on the ui in particular and on the user experience as a whole. So I don't believe this is merely the community resistance to change, but rather an outcry for the change to be meaningful and beneficial.
It's crazy that this discussion started back in Oct of 2025 and somehow is still relevant.
For some odd reason someone at dndbeyond or above is making these decisions to change the ui for no apparent reason, to a lesser experience rather than an improvement. Most of these changes somehow always feel less about enhancing user experience and more about something else, considering how much discomfort and discontent it raises in the community.
In comparison, I'd like to point out that the changes made back for the 2024 revision launch were, for the most part, reasonable and welcomed. A lot of those changes were very much improvements on the ui in particular and on the user experience as a whole. So I don't believe this is merely the community resistance to change, but rather an outcry for the change to be meaningful and beneficial.
For context, I posted this back when the 'draft' of this design leaked back in October 2025. They claimed that it wasn't complete and shouldn't have gone live. The irony here is that this redesign in Mar 2026 is effectively the same as what the leaked Oct 2025 design was.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was proactive activity from the devs and designers of the website to defend against layoff rounds. Some executive somewhere has started to question the value of the people at computers in the company and has maybe swallowed the LLM lie believing its a good way to cut costs. At this point my estimation is that WotC is in freefall right now. We didn't hear anything from marketing or PR department announcing that a 'fresh, new, design' was coming. Either the marketing/pr folks didn't know or they are just stunningly bad at their jobs. Similarly with the 5e/5.5e change. Though, I'm pleased they've finally seen sense on that one the marketing/pr around it was laughable. Perhaps there's just no-one left doing those jobs. It wouldn't surprise me.
Of course that would just be me guessing with no actual evidence. What I will say though is that from a design point of view it slows a lot of users down. It certainly increased the amount of stuff a forum user needed to do to engage with the site. That to me feels like poor design led by an idea rather than understanding of the userbase. Similarly, instead of fixing any of the things people have been asking for from the site for a long time now, they went ahead with something big, flashy, and visible. That leads me to question motivations and skill levels of those involved.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with this. I don't see the site designers doing anything to actually improve the things they broke for many people. What is annoying is that if done well D&D beyond is still one of the best tools out there for managing character sheets and sharing access legally to content licenced by players and DMs. While the new design is for me a worse experience than the old one, it's sadly still light years ahead of Roll20 for example. Something tells me they probably know that, and so think they can get away with whatever pops into their heads.
Quote from martintheactor>> Similarly, the new 'Library' menu item has no drop-down like the old 'Sources' item has, meaning more time spent, and more work on the part of the user to get to the books they want to access. This is dreadful design.
I'm with you on the lack of my ability to hover over library and select the player's handbook. Having to go dig for it now make me more likely to just grab my hardcover. This is NOT a timesaver, it isn't easier or more convenient.
Quote from martintheactor>> Similarly, the new 'Library' menu item has no drop-down like the old 'Sources' item has, meaning more time spent, and more work on the part of the user to get to the books they want to access. This is dreadful design.
I'm with you on the lack of my ability to hover over library and select the player's handbook. Having to go dig for it now make me more likely to just grab my hardcover. This is NOT a timesaver, it isn't easier or more convenient.
Just favourite it. Then you can get to it in like 3 seconds from the menu.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
You can have hover menus that don't do this really easily.
I agree it was a poorly designed to have hovering instantly change the menu for this reason. However, this was/is easily fixable to allow hover to still work. All it takes is a miniscule delay on the menu appearing when hovering a header. Then you have time to move to the actual menu before triggering the change from accidentally hovering the neighbouring buttons. It was just a simple css delay. I added that to old menu myself for that exact reason.
I've also added hover back to this new menu and a forum link myself - for me it's vastly more accessible to have hover. Both faster, easier and less issues with reptitive motion issue/essential tremor which gets triggered when clicking (due to activating muscles even though my tremor isn't particularly bad compared to many I've seen). I understand people not liking how the old hover used to work due to the instant menu display but that could have been resolved while still offering hover capabilities.
OMG this new format is horrible. I cannot even easily get to the content I have purchased. Is there a place to go to get a refund? They can have their digitals crap back and take away my access to it.
OMG this new format is horrible. I cannot even easily get to the content I have purchased. Is there a place to go to get a refund? They can have their digitals crap back and take away my access to it.
You can easily access your purchased content using Library menu. Recently opened books are on the left, books you have favourited on the right. You can click View My Library to see all books - you can use filters and search there to get to the book you want easily.
Once used to it you can get to any book you own within a few seconds.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
People with repetitive stress injuries to their hand would say this isn't accessible.
I'm sorry but I don't understand this.
Getting to any content on this site has always required clicking, often multiple clicks, use of sheets and tools requires lots of clicking. It does not make sense to me why making the menu one extra click will all of a sudden make it no longer accessible?
I don't have an RSI myself but I do understand the mechanics of RSIs - I do understand why clicking can cause discomfort but the level of clicking required for this site shouldn't cause such levels of aggravation even with the extra menu click, unless your RSI is rather extreme. However, if you had extreme RSI or similar hand impairment then there's stuff you can do (or should already be doing - any use of internet requires a lot of clicking after all) to mitigate that. For instance you can rebind the left-click, so you can move the mouse with the hand that has the RSI and left/right click using your other hand. If your RSI issues would allow it, you can get a mouse with a side-button that can be pressed with the thumb which can be bound as your left-click. This might be more comfortable. And so on. If you have a bad enough RSI that this extra click is an issue for you then these are steps you should already be taking for your own computer use, just in general, to avoid making the RSI worse. Your doctor should have already recommended them.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, there are people with tremors and other conditions that make hover difficult to use and for them there's nothing they can do on their side about it, unlike the RSI sufferers. So this change may make the menu slightly more difficult for people with RSIs who have ways to mitigate that but this change also greatly improves the menu for those with other hand-affecting conditions who don't have a way to otherwise mitigate menu difficulties. Overall this change is therefore, objectively speaking, an improvement in accessibility. I get it can make it inconvenient for some but this is not the same as accessible and yours was an argument about accessibility not convenience.
Basically whether it's a click or a hover somebody is gonna get annoyed - so its about whichever one is the lesser of the two evils. Click-menu is a lesser evil than hover-menu when viewed for accessibility - it alleviates more issues than it causes, and the issue it does cause can be circumvented on the user side.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
No, I haven't read through this whole thread, and it's not like many re-designs are welcomed wholeheartedly, but I would definitely agree with anyone here complaining about the new design's userability. It is far less user-friendly and far more confusing. The design prior was actually a pretty good design, why alter it and make it more complicated?
I often feel designers make some of these major overhauls just to stay busy and aren't actually trying to fix anything. Perhaps changes were made to make the designer's lives easier when updating or organizing content, but this certainly doesn't help the users!
Every function will now need to be searched for through multiple "drop down" menus instead of cleanly being layed out in easy to understand tabs like before. It's counterintuitive and overly complicated! NOT what you want while running a game!
WTH? I can hardly find anything I'm looking for. For 7 years I have gotten used to and efficient with getting in here daily and getting a lot done, but this threw a massive wrench in those smoothly working gears. I am working on a huge campaign right now and this has tacked a lot of extra wasted time on to it. Hiding everything in sub menus is never, never a good idea. Sure, we all want a clean interface, but there is way, way too much material here to hide it all away behind a few tabs. This site seems to be more geared towards the continuous pursuit of selling something over actually taking care of the ones who have purchased it all (and continue to).
Extremely frustrated with this mess. Having to search where they hid everything. This minimalistic approach looks good, but equates to making it more difficult to navigate. Can't even hover over the top tabs to for a quicker way to get to something now (we used to be able to).
Update: I ran an 8-hour game session on Saturday. With the Library now looking completely different, for ease I went in and put my main reference books as Favorites ahead of time so that they now pop up in my Library (Library was empty until I did this). And with this minimalistic design, instead of giving us an actual search box on the main page, they gave us the search magnifying box that hides the search box (clueless as to why they did this!), so I opened that ahead of time too. My workaround to this mess is to open multiple tabs ahead of time after I found much of what I would need. PITA, but it is a workaround.
They have this massive landing page (scroll down and look) that has "Build Your Character" and other sales pushes, and this is your only option of what you get to see. There is no reason why (other than sheer and blatant greed), when I log in as a Master Tier member that my only homepage option is to have a sales page pushing D&D Beyond products and services down my throat that I have already purchased or used. We need to be able to customize this page for actual use since we have chosen to pay for services and digital products. Sure WotC, give me a banner for new products and services and I can easily live with that, but this is ridiculous and a major step backwards. If it's a free account, then give them the sales splash page, but not Master Tier members who are obviously using the site regularly and quite heavily. You should be embarrassed with this.
Okay, lets say I need to reference base armor quickly. I click Rules, then Equipment, and instead of listing categories (weapons, armor, adventuring gear, etc) I get a short, multi-page list and have to filter the results. I actually have to type Armor before getting a multi-page list of armor. Then I have to skim for base armor choices. This is obnoxious. It used to be Rulebooks, Players Handbook, armor. Who is making these design decisions? Do they actually play? I can go through the book faster.
DnD Beyond, I CAN GO THROUGH THE BOOK FASTER.
Read that several times and consider what your core purpose is? Please. Please. Get someone who thinks like a player.
The click path for equipment hasn't changed? Selecting equipment from the drop-down always took you to that search page
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Yeah, I can still go Library > Player's Handbook through my favorites (and, really, the core rulebooks should be their own category in that menu, but that's beside the point).
I have to say I dislike the fact that you can no longer open a menu from the top bar by just hovering over it. I know one extra click isn't a huge deal, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
This change is actually better for accessibility reasons. I know my wife will appreciate that I'll stop ranting about it every time I go to click Manage on a character and end up on the Classes page instead.
People with repetitive stress injuries to their hand would say this isn't accessible.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Why is the little red notifications dot so slow to go away after you've read what it's indicating??
I agree, I hate it.
Charles P. Morris II
And people with hand tremors will say hover menus are not accessible.
There is an easy fix for this that makes everyone happy: Make the top bar minimally large and give each tab the shape of a button with a smaller secondary button next to that a steady hand can place its cursor on to get the hover pop-up option (over the smaller button only). Do not give the larger button itself the hover option though. Right now there is no visual definition between the words "PLAY D&D" and the down arrow next to it, and black background of the bar behind it. They could be two visually distinct buttons though and still look good. Does it look slick, sure. Is it user friendly, nope. Superficial Aestheticism has definitely won out here, with their primary focus being on sales, and the new UI's usability being placed in the back seat.
It's crazy that this discussion started back in Oct of 2025 and somehow is still relevant.
For some odd reason someone at dndbeyond or above is making these decisions to change the ui for no apparent reason, to a lesser experience rather than an improvement. Most of these changes somehow always feel less about enhancing user experience and more about something else, considering how much discomfort and discontent it raises in the community.
In comparison, I'd like to point out that the changes made back for the 2024 revision launch were, for the most part, reasonable and welcomed. A lot of those changes were very much improvements on the ui in particular and on the user experience as a whole. So I don't believe this is merely the community resistance to change, but rather an outcry for the change to be meaningful and beneficial.
For context, I posted this back when the 'draft' of this design leaked back in October 2025. They claimed that it wasn't complete and shouldn't have gone live. The irony here is that this redesign in Mar 2026 is effectively the same as what the leaked Oct 2025 design was.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was proactive activity from the devs and designers of the website to defend against layoff rounds. Some executive somewhere has started to question the value of the people at computers in the company and has maybe swallowed the LLM lie believing its a good way to cut costs. At this point my estimation is that WotC is in freefall right now. We didn't hear anything from marketing or PR department announcing that a 'fresh, new, design' was coming. Either the marketing/pr folks didn't know or they are just stunningly bad at their jobs. Similarly with the 5e/5.5e change. Though, I'm pleased they've finally seen sense on that one the marketing/pr around it was laughable. Perhaps there's just no-one left doing those jobs. It wouldn't surprise me.
Of course that would just be me guessing with no actual evidence. What I will say though is that from a design point of view it slows a lot of users down. It certainly increased the amount of stuff a forum user needed to do to engage with the site. That to me feels like poor design led by an idea rather than understanding of the userbase. Similarly, instead of fixing any of the things people have been asking for from the site for a long time now, they went ahead with something big, flashy, and visible. That leads me to question motivations and skill levels of those involved.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with this. I don't see the site designers doing anything to actually improve the things they broke for many people. What is annoying is that if done well D&D beyond is still one of the best tools out there for managing character sheets and sharing access legally to content licenced by players and DMs. While the new design is for me a worse experience than the old one, it's sadly still light years ahead of Roll20 for example. Something tells me they probably know that, and so think they can get away with whatever pops into their heads.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I'm with you on the lack of my ability to hover over library and select the player's handbook. Having to go dig for it now make me more likely to just grab my hardcover. This is NOT a timesaver, it isn't easier or more convenient.
Just favourite it. Then you can get to it in like 3 seconds from the menu.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
You can have hover menus that don't do this really easily.
I agree it was a poorly designed to have hovering instantly change the menu for this reason. However, this was/is easily fixable to allow hover to still work. All it takes is a miniscule delay on the menu appearing when hovering a header. Then you have time to move to the actual menu before triggering the change from accidentally hovering the neighbouring buttons. It was just a simple css delay. I added that to old menu myself for that exact reason.
I've also added hover back to this new menu and a forum link myself - for me it's vastly more accessible to have hover. Both faster, easier and less issues with reptitive motion issue/essential tremor which gets triggered when clicking (due to activating muscles even though my tremor isn't particularly bad compared to many I've seen). I understand people not liking how the old hover used to work due to the instant menu display but that could have been resolved while still offering hover capabilities.
OMG this new format is horrible. I cannot even easily get to the content I have purchased. Is there a place to go to get a refund? They can have their digitals crap back and take away my access to it.
You can easily access your purchased content using Library menu. Recently opened books are on the left, books you have favourited on the right. You can click View My Library to see all books - you can use filters and search there to get to the book you want easily.
Once used to it you can get to any book you own within a few seconds.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I'm sorry but I don't understand this.
Getting to any content on this site has always required clicking, often multiple clicks, use of sheets and tools requires lots of clicking. It does not make sense to me why making the menu one extra click will all of a sudden make it no longer accessible?
I don't have an RSI myself but I do understand the mechanics of RSIs - I do understand why clicking can cause discomfort but the level of clicking required for this site shouldn't cause such levels of aggravation even with the extra menu click, unless your RSI is rather extreme. However, if you had extreme RSI or similar hand impairment then there's stuff you can do (or should already be doing - any use of internet requires a lot of clicking after all) to mitigate that. For instance you can rebind the left-click, so you can move the mouse with the hand that has the RSI and left/right click using your other hand. If your RSI issues would allow it, you can get a mouse with a side-button that can be pressed with the thumb which can be bound as your left-click. This might be more comfortable. And so on. If you have a bad enough RSI that this extra click is an issue for you then these are steps you should already be taking for your own computer use, just in general, to avoid making the RSI worse. Your doctor should have already recommended them.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, there are people with tremors and other conditions that make hover difficult to use and for them there's nothing they can do on their side about it, unlike the RSI sufferers. So this change may make the menu slightly more difficult for people with RSIs who have ways to mitigate that but this change also greatly improves the menu for those with other hand-affecting conditions who don't have a way to otherwise mitigate menu difficulties. Overall this change is therefore, objectively speaking, an improvement in accessibility. I get it can make it inconvenient for some but this is not the same as accessible and yours was an argument about accessibility not convenience.
Basically whether it's a click or a hover somebody is gonna get annoyed - so its about whichever one is the lesser of the two evils. Click-menu is a lesser evil than hover-menu when viewed for accessibility - it alleviates more issues than it causes, and the issue it does cause can be circumvented on the user side.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
No, I haven't read through this whole thread, and it's not like many re-designs are welcomed wholeheartedly, but I would definitely agree with anyone here complaining about the new design's userability. It is far less user-friendly and far more confusing. The design prior was actually a pretty good design, why alter it and make it more complicated?
I often feel designers make some of these major overhauls just to stay busy and aren't actually trying to fix anything. Perhaps changes were made to make the designer's lives easier when updating or organizing content, but this certainly doesn't help the users!
Every function will now need to be searched for through multiple "drop down" menus instead of cleanly being layed out in easy to understand tabs like before. It's counterintuitive and overly complicated! NOT what you want while running a game!
In short... very disappointed.
The Art Wizard of Oaktown