I'm often having issues with searching out questions via the Compendium, and noted that while all the sourcebooks have a Table of Contents they seem to lack the index I believe would come with most of the physical copies of a rules book and such. SO, I just wanted to ask if there was any hope of something like a Master Index in the making for D&D Beyond, or if that was a feasible request. The issue with the compendium search as stands is that I feel most of the key words, terms, and phrases I use pull up results without any priority in relevance and all too often draw from an Adventure I don't own. :/
In advance, thanks very much for looking at this and I hope it has some potential for integration with the big picture. :)
Yeah the search kind of sucks. It can be helpful to quickly pull up a rule if you already know exactly what it is called and how it is worded, but that is not what a search is needed for most of the time.
I'm not sure if the physical books have an index (I don't own any). Regardless, if the search bar could start sorting results by relevance instead of... whatever it currently is, that would be very helpful.
It is inconvenient. Each page of a module or source book on DnDBeyond should have its corresponding physical media page on it. Also, the digital source books and adventures should be searchable by their related physical media page numbers.
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Watch your back, conserve your ammo, and NEVER cut a deal with a dragon!
The problem with that is the the 'pages' on DDB would correspond to entire sections or chapters of the book. There's no page parity. And due to dynamic formatting, the position of a page reference would move depending on browser window size. It's very difficult to reliably map physical media to non-paginated digital media
I love DDB... but the fact that page has to even exist is a testament to how poorly the pages on DDB are indexed and how bad the core book TOCs are.
Take finding "Adjudicating Areas of Effect" in the DMG. If you don't go to a physical book or external index to find it, you can spend a lot of time searching.
It's under "Combat" in Chapter 8: Running the Game... along with nine othersecond-tier subsections: Tracking Initiative, Tracking Monster Hit Points, Using and Tracking Conditions, Monster and Critical Hits, Improvising Damage, (Adjudicating Areas of Effect), Handling Mobs, Using Miniatures, Adjudicating Reaction Timing, Combining Game Effects... all of these are underscored as second-tier headers, but the *only* sub-header in the side-TOC under Combat is... "Mob Attacks"... a third-tier header.
The "Combat" section is one of thirteen first-tier headers in the chapter, yet it accounts for nearly one-fifth of the entire chapter... and gets *one* sub-TOC entry, to a third-tier header.
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I'm often having issues with searching out questions via the Compendium, and noted that while all the sourcebooks have a Table of Contents they seem to lack the index I believe would come with most of the physical copies of a rules book and such. SO, I just wanted to ask if there was any hope of something like a Master Index in the making for D&D Beyond, or if that was a feasible request. The issue with the compendium search as stands is that I feel most of the key words, terms, and phrases I use pull up results without any priority in relevance and all too often draw from an Adventure I don't own. :/
In advance, thanks very much for looking at this and I hope it has some potential for integration with the big picture. :)
Yeah the search kind of sucks. It can be helpful to quickly pull up a rule if you already know exactly what it is called and how it is worded, but that is not what a search is needed for most of the time.
I'm not sure if the physical books have an index (I don't own any). Regardless, if the search bar could start sorting results by relevance instead of... whatever it currently is, that would be very helpful.
I just want the capability ti crossference dndbeyond with physical books so I can point my players to appropriate pages between the two media . . .
Watch your back, conserve your ammo,
and NEVER cut a deal with a dragon!
This is pretty close:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/35037-page-references-d-d-beyond-to-core-rules
It is inconvenient. Each page of a module or source book on DnDBeyond should have its corresponding physical media page on it. Also, the digital source books and adventures should be searchable by their related physical media page numbers.
Watch your back, conserve your ammo,
and NEVER cut a deal with a dragon!
The problem with that is the the 'pages' on DDB would correspond to entire sections or chapters of the book. There's no page parity. And due to dynamic formatting, the position of a page reference would move depending on browser window size. It's very difficult to reliably map physical media to non-paginated digital media
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I love DDB... but the fact that page has to even exist is a testament to how poorly the pages on DDB are indexed and how bad the core book TOCs are.
Take finding "Adjudicating Areas of Effect" in the DMG. If you don't go to a physical book or external index to find it, you can spend a lot of time searching.
It's under "Combat" in Chapter 8: Running the Game... along with nine other second-tier subsections: Tracking Initiative, Tracking Monster Hit Points, Using and Tracking Conditions, Monster and Critical Hits, Improvising Damage, (Adjudicating Areas of Effect), Handling Mobs, Using Miniatures, Adjudicating Reaction Timing, Combining Game Effects... all of these are underscored as second-tier headers, but the *only* sub-header in the side-TOC under Combat is... "Mob Attacks"... a third-tier header.
The "Combat" section is one of thirteen first-tier headers in the chapter, yet it accounts for nearly one-fifth of the entire chapter... and gets *one* sub-TOC entry, to a third-tier header.