Open Letter on the 2024 Encounter Calculator

/rant on

To say that I'm disappointed that one cannot get access to the latest and greatest version of the Encounter Calculator except through the Maps VTT would be an understatement.  Don't get me wrong - I see nothing wrong with the Maps VTT.  I just don't use it.  I have friends who prefer Roll20, so when I'm gaming with them, that's what I use.  I prefer Foundry for its flexibility and breadth.  Maps VTT came late to the game, and, so far, it's fine for what it does.  But -- I just don't use it.  Why must I use it just to mess around with possible encounters?

Locking the 2024 encounter calculator behind the Maps VTT makes the encounter calculator less than useful to me.  I have to have a fake campaign, with a fake map in order to use the encounter calculator.  I have to do all this even when I'm just in the speculative part of assessing encounters to present to my players, who I'm gaming with at my table -- not across a VTT.  Doing that extra work wasn't necessary with the "beta" encounter calculator (that looks a lot like the 2024 version of the encounter calculator).  Keep it integrated with the Maps VTT if you must, but at least provide a way to use the new encounter calculator without having to jump through all the Maps VTT hoops in order to use it.  

Thanks.

/rant off

BTW, I read the excellent Encounter Builder 2024 thread initiated by Caerwyn_Glyndwr: Feb 5, 2025.  It's been a minute since that thread.  I still would like to see D&D Beyond fix this issue.

"Fix this issue" is likely the problem here.  It's not an issue if it was a conscious choice to try to drive more players into thier VTT.

My guess is that they want you to use all of thier products exclusively by making it easier to just stay on DDB than to use other services.

I believe you're correct, that they are trying to drive folks to use their VTT.  I'm not really one to bash WoTC or D&D Beyond, but I believe they are taking the wrong course here.  They should be building the best tools that they can, and the business will be there, rather than forcing their customers into specific behaviors that really don't make much sense. 

Forcing people to "hack" their choices, by this I mean, make a fake campaign, assign fake maps, and then use the encounter calculator, may really only make the WoTC or Hasbro suits happy who only look at raw numbers, without understand how people are actually using the tools.  In my case, I have to dive into their VTT simply in order to balance encounters that I'm presenting face-to-face.  It's a ludicrous choice that they are forcing on me.  I could use one of the number of online spreadsheets that also exist, if I want to populate my copy of a particular encounter calculator with any non-SRD creatures that I'm using in my encounters.  That's a lot of work when I already am busy in campaign prep.  

Thanks for your respnnse.

They also need to balance the concept of not taking away the 5e stuff so people not playing 5.5 are not short changed.

Based on the fact that they are literally recoding the whole website, having the Encounter Builder handle 5e and 5.5e based off of what people selected was probably out of the question, hence the VTT having a separate encounter builder.

It may work better than you think.  My group was around the table, and has transitioned to either all remote or hybrid (I still show up mostly), but we also started with Roll20 and have now switched completely to DDB with Discord for comms.  Good enough to use, enough difficulty to leave.  Not to mention the huge investment we have and no pdf option to take to another VVT.  

Kind of like the Apple ecosystem, which I also fell into.

Take care.

They said this in the most recent AMA, so it looks like they're aware of the need to seperate the encounter tool from the VTT and plan to do so in the future, but it doesn't look like it's on the immediate list of priorities.

Yes! I love the Encounter Builder tool. Under the hood, it is very old, archaic, and fragile, which has made it very difficult to update and enhance. It definitely needs a lot of love.

The Encounter Builder does a lot of things really well, and a few things not so well. Meanwhile, the Encounter Manager in Maps does some things really well, and some things not so well.

On my list of things to do is to revisit both the Encounters Builder, and the Encounter Manager in Maps, and see what we can do to improve both. This improvement will be part of our evolution of Maps to be a tool that you can run with players as a VTT, or by yourself as a game management platform with a suite of DM Prep tools.

That being said - I have absolutely heard that not everyone wants to use a full-on VTT. As we get closer to looking at the Encounter Builder, I intend to do a full-on listening tour to understand all the ways people use this tool and to make sure we’re able to continue to support DMs.

You have said exactly what I've been frustrated about. I have invested quite a bit into the content on Beyond, but playing at the table physically while having to navigate the maps VTT just to use 5.5e stat blocks feels so backwards. Dnd Beyond has become quite the resource for character creation, inventory management, content sharing and campaign mobility. Maps VTT is just one more branch of that tree that I currently don't have use for. If I played online...maybe. The tool needs to be able to stand on its own, and I believe that focus on making it more accessible and intuitive to use with purchased content is the way to ensure its longevity. As it stands now, the difficulty surrounding the use of the encounter manager with 2024 content acts more like a deterrent for using Beyond and not the encouragement to use Maps like I believe it was intended to do. 

Okay, I have a question. What exactly is the problem?
As far as I know, the 5.5 stat blocks are fully usable in the Encounter Calculator, and as I understand it, the only issue is that the difficulty calculation doesn't work correctly with 5.5. So, you'd have to go to Maps to see how difficult the encounter is and then recreate it in the Encounter Calculator.
Is that the problem people are having?

Sort of.  In order to balance a combat encounter for my face-to-face 5.5e campaign, I have to fire up the Maps VTT, move all the PCs into whatever map I've had to find (that won't be correct, by the way, because who has the time to move your maps also into the Maps VTT, then fire up the encounter manager and develop my encounter, and use the encounter calculator to estimate the impact on my players.  I then close all that down because I'm not going to be using it.  It's a waste of time for an already busy DM to do all that to prep for the next session.  

The problem is that D&D Beyond has completely integrated the encounter calculator, a useful tool for a DM during session prep, into a tool, the Maps VTT, that's irrelevant for a DM prep-ing for a session of their face-to-face campaign.  ((It's also irrelevant for a DM prep-ing for their Roll20 session, or their Foundry session, or whatever other long-standing VTT that they may already be using.))  

Quote from DerBlooob >>

Okay, I have a question. What exactly is the problem?
As far as I know, the 5.5 stat blocks are fully usable in the Encounter Calculator, and as I understand it, the only issue is that the difficulty calculation doesn't work correctly with 5.5. So, you'd have to go to Maps to see how difficult the encounter is and then recreate it in the Encounter Calculator.
Is that the problem people are having?

 5.5e uses a modified version of the encounter building logic from 5e. It gets rid of the monster count multiplier, removes some difficulty bands, etc. From my experience, and the experiences of DMs I've spoke to, it generally gives better results in terms of challenging encounters while also being quicker due to simpler math.

The rub is the Encounter Builder only supports the 5e logic, while Maps only supports 5.5e logic. However, the Encounter Builder has a better UX for just making encounters—Maps makes things a little more clunky because it's designed (logically) around setting up encounters on a VTT map.

What people want is is the ability to use the 5.5e encounter building logic without having to navigate the Maps UX, instead wanting an Encounter Builder style UX as a standalone app.

Quote from Davyd >>

 5.5e uses a modified version of the encounter building logic from 5e. It gets rid of the monster count multiplier, removes some difficulty bands, etc. From my experience, and the experiences of DMs I've spoke to, it generally gives better results in terms of challenging encounters while also being quicker due to simpler math.

Well, sort of. Getting rid of the monster count multiplier basically doubles the budget for a medium sized encounter (3-5 monsters), which certainly makes them more challenging, but it doesn't do anything about the difficulty of single monsters, and just filling out your budget with swarms of low CR ranged attackers such as the bandit can get you into TPK territory pretty fast.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Davyd >>

 5.5e uses a modified version of the encounter building logic from 5e. It gets rid of the monster count multiplier, removes some difficulty bands, etc. From my experience, and the experiences of DMs I've spoke to, it generally gives better results in terms of challenging encounters while also being quicker due to simpler math.

Well, sort of. Getting rid of the monster count multiplier basically doubles the budget for a medium sized encounter (3-5 monsters), which certainly makes them more challenging, but it doesn't do anything about the difficulty of single monsters, and just filling out your budget with swarms of low CR ranged attackers such as the bandit can get you into TPK territory pretty fast.

 You seem to have misunderstood the point of what I was saying. I wasn't giving a precise breakdown of the changes, just acknowledging that changes have been made and giving some cursory examples. We don't need an analysis of 2024 encounter building in this thread....

I would note that you can use the encounter builder as is through level 5 (look at total XP rather than adjusted XP; if it's <= Medium the difficulty is Low, if it's <= Hard the difficulty is Moderate, if it's <= Deadly the difficulty is High) and mostly as is through level 8 (as Hard and Deadly match up through level 8); beyond that you can still use the encounter builder to count xp totals but you'll need to calculate your own budgets.