It was kind of odd to me to find out that private/public setting for the character was for anyone that you share the link for, not the campaign. Logic would be that it is meant to be viewable only by the GM, who you send the link to, and the private/public would be for your campaign. <shrug>
Having been a gamer for decades, and starting with D&D red box, I have some thoughts on this topic. I only bring it up as I am new to D&D 5e.
1) It can be fun to hide info from other players, which is the point of this topic.
2) I have only seen it in a few campaigns overall, and most of the time it was just so you can play an evil character. At some point this is likely to cause hard feelings and a party fight. Some players have a nicer intention and are only sandbagging.
3) You might as well just be honest and put what you really know. Tell the other players that their characters do not know, and maybe they know X. It gives everyone a bit more practice for roleplaying, and only acting on CHARACTER knowledge instead of player knowledge.
Can it be implemented as a feature? Sure. But they probably figure on point 3 and don't implement it, and help you to avoid hard feelings from point 2.
I'm not sure if you read everything in this topic. As it is not only point 1) but actually mostly the point 3)
Haravikk tried to explain that well. I will add a bit to it. Most of the new players, especially young ones (take age 10-12) are reasonably able to "not look in anyone's character sheet", but can't "unsee" that main page with race/class. So yeah, point 3) is actually the main reason we want this feature. To help players that are not able to differentiate between player/character knowledge easily. And that brings us to point 1) it is a fun factor.
I myself play TTRPG for almost 30 years, but heck even I sometimes "slip up" and mix what I know in my character knowledge. If you in your experience are able to 100% differentiate more power to you, but I would not expect such an enormous level of self-control in most players.
And about your point 2), I saw many campaigns (a few dozen) that would benefit from this feature in at least some small way, and not one of them was "evil" reasons.
Bumping 2 years later as it still doesn't look like an option. I've got a REALLY cool story/plot twist coming that involves one of my PC's... and having the ability to hide all character sheets versus having him in a completely separate campaign would make it WAY easier.
I'll bump this too. I really don't see what would be difficult about giving the DM the ability to just toggle the visibility of the characters on the campaign page.
If they can have a section for private DM notes, it doesn't seem to difficult to make the characters private as well.
you can set characters to private in the home section of the character builder.
Campaign Only
Only others within a Campaign you have joined can view your Characters.
Public
Anyone with a shared link can view your Characters.
Private
Only you can view your Characters.
Yes, but the discussion here is about the fact that even when a character is set to 'private' and somebody can't view your full sheet, anyone within the campaign can still see your character's name, level, race, and class, any of which you might want to keep a secret from your fellow players for story reasons.
Necro time! If DndBeyond is truly interested in DMs using their new Maps Alpha feature, we NEED, MUST, have the ability to hide NPCs in the campaign page. I have to have a whole other campaign just to have my NPCs as it is.
If I am to use this new Maps Alpha, i need to be able to hide NPCs i make in the campaign. Otherwise my players will just look at all the bad guys. Simply cant use this feature at all without that ability.
Also need to be able to upload tokens. but that is for a different thread
Necro time! If DndBeyond is truly interested in DMs using their new Maps Alpha feature, we NEED, MUST, have the ability to hide NPCs in the campaign page. I have to have a whole other campaign just to have my NPCs as it is.
If I am to use this new Maps Alpha, i need to be able to hide NPCs i make in the campaign. Otherwise my players will just look at all the bad guys. Simply cant use this feature at all without that ability.
Also need to be able to upload tokens. but that is for a different thread
If you set the NPCs to private, your players can only see the basic information.
If you build them as monsters, instead of characters (which is the design intent, and works better in a fight in most situations), then they won't see them at all, and the encounter builder will do the CR calculations correctly.
I build my NPCs who might fight alongside the players as private characters, and the ones they're likely to fight as monsters.
Welp, time for another bump, and some info I found out:
If you add a character sheet to the campaign, and disable it, it will not show up in the app's character list. Not sure how it works in the website's campaign, as I'm a GM and the sheets are greyer out, but this at least seems to be a solution to hide NPC's.
Secondly: Players should NOT be looking in the campaign for any reason, because so much information is present. I've even had an issue where two players were doing some PvP, and one of them was looking at the campaign page to see how the other player's HP was going down.
Players should NOT be looking in the campaign for any reason, because so much information is present. I've even had an issue where two players were doing some PvP, and one of them was looking at the campaign page to see how the other player's HP was going down.
This is a good "house rule" but difficult to enforce. Would be SO MUCH EASIER WITH A TOGGLE THAT DID IT FOR YOU! I work in software development and this is literally a one day fix. At this point it's purposefully being excluded and they won't tell us why.
Necro time! If DndBeyond is truly interested in DMs using their new Maps Alpha feature, we NEED, MUST, have the ability to hide NPCs in the campaign page. I have to have a whole other campaign just to have my NPCs as it is.
If I am to use this new Maps Alpha, i need to be able to hide NPCs i make in the campaign. Otherwise my players will just look at all the bad guys. Simply cant use this feature at all without that ability.
Also need to be able to upload tokens. but that is for a different thread
A thousand times this. Maps aside, I am tired of making NPCs in my campaign so that I can benefit from our shared books and then having to remove them from the campaign so my players do not spoil themselves or meta by accident. Infuriating that such a simple feature is not added already
I have a player who is playing a Bard but in his back story he bumped his head and now thinks he's a fighter who likes to sing while fighting. He wants the other players to perceive that he is a fighter and that's how he roleplays and wants it to be revealed organically. Putting the "privacy" setting still shows the other players that he's playing a Bard...
Would love the option to adjust the private settings to the other players.
I Perposed an idea for immersion to have all our character be a mystery before they actually meet in game let them fill out the info like a mystery as you see them in action and i found a workaround for the name and race and subclass at least but the class is the biggest issue sense nothing about it can be altered even the name.
If people want to know the work around for the name, race and subclass it's pretty simple really: have a character that wants to hide it make 2 character sheets and make sure they have access to homebrew creation on here. On the second character sheet make the fake name whatever you want and add whatever image you want, homebrew the race and subclass but just copy the one you want and rename it and you can get around MOST of the issues besides the class, in which case you should be advocating instead in my opinion for there to be a purely in game option to rename classes honestly.
The fact of the matter is that this is an extremely simple feature we have been requesting for years, and any workaround is excessively annoying and extra work that should not have to be done. That's why we are here advocating for the simplest option for solutions to all of issues we've brought up.
It is because it's extremely simple and should be at least addressed that i mentioned the workarounds but they won't make much difference if the class can't be altered whatsoever in my opinion.
I'm also going to necro this thread to comment on it. I want to be able to see characters be able to be added to a campaign that the OTHER PLAYERS cannot see are added. I had a player's death *somewhat* scripted and wanted his character ready to go before it happened, but we couldn't all because then the other players would be able to see it coming. Honestly kinda stupid it isn't allowed.
I'll bump this as well. I also DM and one of my players is diagnosed and simply can't not look at others classes and races and everything else. Luckily we can use the Private option to at least hide stats etc, but he always stalks the campaign even before it starts and spoils himself and everyone else because he can't keep a secret whatsoever :') Some peeps would like their class and/or races to be hidden for RP purposes or story, and we can't do that.. the only option is still to just separate the characters into different campaigns, which is annoying, or just add them literally a second before we start playing or after they get introduced to avoid spoiling, but it still shows the class and race which remains the issue. Getting just a simple ,,HIDE CHARACTER,, function for DMs within a campaign would solve so many problems.
I just saw this post is here for 5 YEARS already.
Please Beyond, we beg you! \ToT/
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Okay, yeah, I agree with that.
It was kind of odd to me to find out that private/public setting for the character was for anyone that you share the link for, not the campaign. Logic would be that it is meant to be viewable only by the GM, who you send the link to, and the private/public would be for your campaign. <shrug>
I'm not sure if you read everything in this topic. As it is not only point 1) but actually mostly the point 3)
Haravikk tried to explain that well. I will add a bit to it. Most of the new players, especially young ones (take age 10-12) are reasonably able to "not look in anyone's character sheet", but can't "unsee" that main page with race/class. So yeah, point 3) is actually the main reason we want this feature. To help players that are not able to differentiate between player/character knowledge easily. And that brings us to point 1) it is a fun factor.
I myself play TTRPG for almost 30 years, but heck even I sometimes "slip up" and mix what I know in my character knowledge. If you in your experience are able to 100% differentiate more power to you, but I would not expect such an enormous level of self-control in most players.
And about your point 2), I saw many campaigns (a few dozen) that would benefit from this feature in at least some small way, and not one of them was "evil" reasons.
This is a helpful workaround idea. Thank you!
Bumping 2 years later as it still doesn't look like an option. I've got a REALLY cool story/plot twist coming that involves one of my PC's... and having the ability to hide all character sheets versus having him in a completely separate campaign would make it WAY easier.
I'll bump this too. I really don't see what would be difficult about giving the DM the ability to just toggle the visibility of the characters on the campaign page.
If they can have a section for private DM notes, it doesn't seem to difficult to make the characters private as well.
you can set characters to private in the home section of the character builder.
Campaign Only
Only others within a Campaign you have joined can view your Characters.
Public
Anyone with a shared link can view your Characters.
Private
Only you can view your Characters.
Yes, but the discussion here is about the fact that even when a character is set to 'private' and somebody can't view your full sheet, anyone within the campaign can still see your character's name, level, race, and class, any of which you might want to keep a secret from your fellow players for story reasons.
Hi all,
exactly what SteelAndSparks said.
Name and Race is not so much the big issue(pending if you are playing a Shapeshifter)
but the Class is a big issue, you are playing a Warlock for example and it shows you patron ! ! !
it is only a display setting to add.
but we are waiting since a long time :-)
best regards,
JayneCobbJr :-)
Necro time! If DndBeyond is truly interested in DMs using their new Maps Alpha feature, we NEED, MUST, have the ability to hide NPCs in the campaign page. I have to have a whole other campaign just to have my NPCs as it is.
If I am to use this new Maps Alpha, i need to be able to hide NPCs i make in the campaign. Otherwise my players will just look at all the bad guys. Simply cant use this feature at all without that ability.
Also need to be able to upload tokens. but that is for a different thread
If you set the NPCs to private, your players can only see the basic information.
If you build them as monsters, instead of characters (which is the design intent, and works better in a fight in most situations), then they won't see them at all, and the encounter builder will do the CR calculations correctly.
I build my NPCs who might fight alongside the players as private characters, and the ones they're likely to fight as monsters.
I really wish this was fixed. Having players who want to hide things for story or npc for ease of encounter builders use. Makes it super frustrating.
Pls dndbeyond help!!
Hey der!
Welp, time for another bump, and some info I found out:
If you add a character sheet to the campaign, and disable it, it will not show up in the app's character list. Not sure how it works in the website's campaign, as I'm a GM and the sheets are greyer out, but this at least seems to be a solution to hide NPC's.
Secondly: Players should NOT be looking in the campaign for any reason, because so much information is present. I've even had an issue where two players were doing some PvP, and one of them was looking at the campaign page to see how the other player's HP was going down.
This is a good "house rule" but difficult to enforce. Would be SO MUCH EASIER WITH A TOGGLE THAT DID IT FOR YOU! I work in software development and this is literally a one day fix. At this point it's purposefully being excluded and they won't tell us why.
A thousand times this. Maps aside, I am tired of making NPCs in my campaign so that I can benefit from our shared books and then having to remove them from the campaign so my players do not spoil themselves or meta by accident. Infuriating that such a simple feature is not added already
I'm in a situation similar to the above.
I have a player who is playing a Bard but in his back story he bumped his head and now thinks he's a fighter who likes to sing while fighting. He wants the other players to perceive that he is a fighter and that's how he roleplays and wants it to be revealed organically. Putting the "privacy" setting still shows the other players that he's playing a Bard...
Would love the option to adjust the private settings to the other players.
I Perposed an idea for immersion to have all our character be a mystery before they actually meet in game let them fill out the info like a mystery as you see them in action and i found a workaround for the name and race and subclass at least but the class is the biggest issue sense nothing about it can be altered even the name.
If people want to know the work around for the name, race and subclass it's pretty simple really: have a character that wants to hide it make 2 character sheets and make sure they have access to homebrew creation on here. On the second character sheet make the fake name whatever you want and add whatever image you want, homebrew the race and subclass but just copy the one you want and rename it and you can get around MOST of the issues besides the class, in which case you should be advocating instead in my opinion for there to be a purely in game option to rename classes honestly.
The fact of the matter is that this is an extremely simple feature we have been requesting for years, and any workaround is excessively annoying and extra work that should not have to be done. That's why we are here advocating for the simplest option for solutions to all of issues we've brought up.
It is because it's extremely simple and should be at least addressed that i mentioned the workarounds but they won't make much difference if the class can't be altered whatsoever in my opinion.
I'm also going to necro this thread to comment on it. I want to be able to see characters be able to be added to a campaign that the OTHER PLAYERS cannot see are added. I had a player's death *somewhat* scripted and wanted his character ready to go before it happened, but we couldn't all because then the other players would be able to see it coming. Honestly kinda stupid it isn't allowed.
I'll bump this as well. I also DM and one of my players is diagnosed and simply can't not look at others classes and races and everything else. Luckily we can use the Private option to at least hide stats etc, but he always stalks the campaign even before it starts and spoils himself and everyone else because he can't keep a secret whatsoever :') Some peeps would like their class and/or races to be hidden for RP purposes or story, and we can't do that.. the only option is still to just separate the characters into different campaigns, which is annoying, or just add them literally a second before we start playing or after they get introduced to avoid spoiling, but it still shows the class and race which remains the issue. Getting just a simple ,,HIDE CHARACTER,, function for DMs within a campaign would solve so many problems.
I just saw this post is here for 5 YEARS already.
Please Beyond, we beg you! \ToT/