I have previously used tools like ones on donjon.bin.sh, so I would like the ability as others have mention, to have (all usable in any combination):
select a terrain type (terrain subtype?)
select a monster type (Additionally it might be nice to drill down monster type, to subtype)
number of party members
level of party members
Difficulty (or even APL scaling, idk, your call)
Random encounters based on the above (select a terrain and just generate whatever would be there)
Save a party (as in, please let this work with our pre-existing campaigns)
Save encounters (Please let me do all the work for a given place/area/time frame and let me come back to it, i may generate everything sporadically over a week, for a saturday game)
Possibly a combat tracker like thing, for said encounter, for when I am running the encounter, maybe above and beyond this, but this is D&D... beyond.)
I'd like to be able to rebuild multiple encounters and save them till game day, especially with some descriptive text so I know which is which
I'd like to able to adjust monster stats. Give it more hit points, change its attack or defense, maybe give it special weapons and armor or wondrous items etc, so it can have more flavor or be tweaked for higher or lower encounter levels.
I'd like a tracker for monster special abilities and their refresh rates.
I'd like to be able to record effects and conditions on monsters and see numeric changes.
I'd like to be able to put conditions on PCs in the encounter tracker and them show up on the players character sheet on their own device.
It would be awesome if the encounter tracker generated loot, especially if it took into account whatever special items the creature was already using in the battle.
I would love to see some kind of implementation similar to the Encounter+ app on the apple App Store. Initiative tracking, tied with player management and access to the monster database.
I agree. Encounter+ is vital to my campaign and even easy enough for my 7 year old daughter to use!
I use it to build my encounters and then display initiative tracking on a second screen via AirPlay. The players absolutely love having the initiative clearly displayed and the “blood” overlay when a monster is getting low on hit points.
The drawback is having to input player/NPC/monster data into the app. While it has a large amount of monsters in the app, I’ve needed to create quite a few as well. I also need to track character hit point changes as the battle transpires. Image just getting the update from the player’s character sheet to the initiative tracker...this is where D&D Beyond could really shine!
Ideally, I’d love to have all the great features of Encounter+ available in D&D Beyond with tight integration to the players character sheets. The initiative tracking on a second screen is a must for our group and this would be incredibly beneficial!
Others have mentioned the possibility for a random encounter generator, which would create a level-appropriate encounter in just a few clicks. One thing I'd like to see as part of such a feature is encounter formations.
What I mean by this is the ability to pick a breakdown for how the encounter's XP budget is spent. This is something I do when creating encounters myself. Basically, it means allocating based on a series of CR ranges. For example:
Small Gang: the encounter will consist of 2-5 creatures of roughly equal CR
Horde: the encounter will consist of 8+ creatures of low individual CR
Little And Large: the encounter will consist of one high-CR creature and one lower-CR sidekick
Pyramid: the encounter will consist of one high-CR commanding creature, plus 2-4 medium-CR creatures each leading a group of low-CR creatures
Summoner: the encounter will consist of one high-CR creature and a number of low-CR minions; the minions are chosen to have a reduced effect on the overall combat so that the DM can adjust on the fly by choosing to not summon them, or to summon extra
etc.
This sort of thing makes it easier to plan an encounter that fits with the theme the DM intends, particularly if it is possible to specify creatures or types for the groups. For example, you might select "pyramid", with the options "mummy, undead, beast" to get a mummy commanding some undead lieutenants who each command a group of beasts, where the numbers of the lieutenants and beasts are scaled to get the overall encounter to the difficulty rating you need.
Let us know what you are looking for when making or running an encounter.
I’d like to be able to search for monsters based on terrain and monster type.
A random encounter button would be great. It would be even better if we could get random encounters based on terrain, monster type, and party level!
XP threshold calculator for determining encounter difficulty.
Monster CR scaling is probably what I want the most. Let’s say a cocky Red Dragon is tricked and weakened by a Hag Coven’s curse, and a party of level 5 PC’s are tasked with killing it, being able to scale the dragon’s difficulty to the equivalent of a hard encounter for the party’s level would be fantastic. Balanced monster CR scaling opens up so many story and encounter possibilities without feeling cheap.
The ability to save encounters and edit/come back to them later.
Let us know how you currently build encounters for your home game.
I use Google Docs to list monsters and their condition like HP, status effects, and other notes of interest. I’ll have DnD Beyond tabs open for each monster’s stat block, so there can be some clicking back and forth between tabs. Neatly combining a monster’s stat block with modifiable HP, status conditions, and a notes box would streamline my encounter process greatly.
Let us know how you use / modify official encounters for your home games.
I’m the DM for three players, and do my best to make things challenging and scary for them. I usually just reduce monster HP, but there are times when I would like to throw something big at them and feel that it hits too hard. I mentioned monster scaling above, and it’s something I feel could take out a lot of encounter prep work at my table.
Let us know what you are looking for when making or running an encounter. When making an encounter I want to be able to see the expected difficulty for the amount of PCs and Companions involved. For running an encounter I want to be able to easily see the profile of a monster when I select it. I also want to have a way to show the player characters their initiative on a separate view, if possible, such as through their character sheet or through a "player view" of the running encounter. I think this goes without saying, but I really want to be able to add custom monsters to the builder. I also would like to be able to apply damage and healing to monsters and players quickly and easily.
Let us know how you currently build encounters for your home game. I currently use the Encounter Builder app for iOS. I really enjoy the amount of freedom it provides when controlling an encounter, but its database has to be updated manually, which is time consuming since I use D&D beyond to develop my monsters these days.
Let us know how you use / modify official encounters for your home games. I don't use any official encounters for my home games at this time. I'm using 100% homebrew encounters, apart from the monsters themselves.
Anything else you want to share with us about encounter building! Building encounters is one of my favorite parts of the DMing experience. When I use an encounter builder, I want it to be fast, easy to use and populate, for both players and monsters, and, in best case scenarios, provide information quickly to my players. Excited to see how it turns out! Keep up the good work!
Maybe this was posted earlier, but I’d like to be able to download a pdf or printable format that I could use when computers or whatever are less accessible. Personally, I like using dnd beyond to build characters and as a reference, but I’d rather keep the table mostly tech free.
I have found a pretty good initiave tracker cleverly named improved initiative. It has some pretty good features which i'd love to see, i suspect these features wont be possible at launch but boy would i like to see them. you see this tracker has the ability to choose mobs very easily and add them to your combat list as you would expect but what you can also do is show your party on another screen the initiative order and the type of health level of not only your team but also the monsters as well, with pictures (you have to choose them yourself) you have an idea of what your up against. well worth a look at as i'd love to see this second screen option available.
of course i'd like to see improvements, for instance have official images of mobs combine that with some kind of visual representation of damage, so possibly blood overlays so you have an idea if your even doing some kind of hurt.
super excited for this dndbeyonds tracker, hope there able to keep to there internal target of showing us it action.
Integrate this feature with the campaigns. While running trough a campaign using D&D Beyond, it would be a great feature to be able to start an encounter from the campaign material at the click of a button, whilst also being able to scale the difficulty up or down as required.
Integrate this feature with the campaigns. While running trough a campaign using D&D Beyond, it would be a great feature to be able to start an encounter from the campaign material at the click of a button, whilst also being able to scale the difficulty up or down as required.
Loading encounters from existing material is part of the roadmap for the encounter builder. The monster builder will allow for scaling of monsters.
This has all been addressed in development updates and is available as part of the summary document.
It would be awesome if the shareable links to encounters worked similar as the character sheet does with regard to generating JSON if you put `/json` at the end.
Let us know what you are looking for when making or running an encounter.
Making: All the usual monster filters, but most importantly, a random monster button also tied to the filters. A normal person doesn't think "a Slaad would be cool here," cuz all that comes to mind easily is typical monsters like dragons, goblins, orcs, etc, so a random button to give, say, a band of orcs a random beast under a filtered set of parameters would be cool.
Would also like it to allow me to see the exp/CR budget for the party members I select are involved in the encounter and auto track that for me as I add creatures. Maybe show the modifiers too so I know why adding that extra goblin takes more from my budget than the monsters stat block says.
Last immediate thought is a list of encounters, similar to my characters page, that I can filter through and have multiple encounters prepared.
Running: The main thing that would be handy for encounter running, is an initiative tracker, and not just for me, but the players as well. Perhaps like a field on the top of their character sheet that says when they are on deck, up to play, or on standby. Probably way too complicated, but is a dream feature. Otherwise there's not much to running an encounter, just like HP tracking and so forth. Maybe adding custom things into the initiative tracker, for any odds or ends in the scenario.
Let us know how you currently build encounters for your home game.
Basically have a google doc with cells coded to auto calculate the exp/CR budget based off which characters are involved and what level they are. Then I just try to think of relevant monsters and look them up. The biggest issue I'd like solved is all the more bizarre creatures that I'll never just think of; probably a random monster button controlled by filters as suggested above.
I also have an overall road map to track what happens when players do things (just roughly because they will always soil your plans) and have a list of encounters prepared.
Let us know how you use / modify official encounters for your home games.
Official encounters often end up being too tough for my group as written, so I often use 'DM magic' to help them out (ex. "you break their morale and they flee"). I've never used official ones outside of official stories though, I know I can, it would just take too much work to tweak it to be relevant.
Which gives me an idea! Also a lot of work on your part, but maybe let us pick a source book with encounters, pick one, and save it off as one of our encounters. Then it can be used if running that campaign, or modified on the fly within Beyond and then 'save as' for your own campaign. That would actually be sick.
Anything else you want to share with us about encounter building!
Aside from raw creature/mechanism/player tracking, would also be cool to have descriptions and details. Possibly special rules or conditions, or information to give players as they accomplish certain tasks (linear or branching), that kind of thing.
EDIT: Ideally, when this is all said and done, I've love to be able to have some friends over, and chill out comfortably in the living room, maybe with some wine and cheese on the coffee table, and chat, laugh, and play DnD with nothing other than our phones/tablets.
Having an auto-adjust for an encounter where it will add or subtract monsters based on party size would be great. Sometimes I don't know exactly how many players (or even friendly NPCs they encounter) I'm going to have in a session at any given time (especially something like Adventurer's league) and its tough to make sure I have the right difficulty I'm looking for on the fly. It would be great if its a hard encounter for 4 players, i can just click a toggle switch to goes to 7 players and it gives suggestions on how to keep that same encounter difficulty but with more players (possibly even ways to buff monsters a bit to make them fit larger groups? I know that would be a tough fix though). If this sort of thing was added, this would definitely be something that would make me take a look at DnDBeyond as an encounter builder when I would normally just stick with the Kobold Fight Club I already know.
Let us know what you are looking for when making or running an encounter.
I always look for ways to theme an encounter in an interesting way. Drider + spiders is fairly expected. Fire Giant + Fire Elemental Mymirdon's is less expected but doesn't require significant suspension of disbelief. I look for ways the theming can offer synergies between the monsters.
Being able to search abilities, immunities, senses, etc. to look for ways to synergize encounters would be really helpful.
Let us know how you currently build encounters for your home game.
I try to offer a mix of bruisers and casters with environmental circumstances to overcome.
Occasionally, I offer just one big monster whose stat block I modify with additional health, abilities, magic items, etc.
Let us know how you use / modify official encounters for your home games.
I've got a big group, so I often add extra enemies more health, and modify AC / DC of abilities.
Anything else you want to share with us about encounter building!
To offer some context, I run a campaign at work that has anywhere from 6-12 players at any given session. We're more consistently around 10.
Any update on this?Just a quick "Here's where we're at" would be nice so that I don't have to sit through a 30 minute video for one piece of information that I (currently) care about.
Any update on this?Just a quick "Here's where we're at" would be nice so that I don't have to sit through a 30 minute video for one piece of information that I (currently) care about.
I have previously used tools like ones on donjon.bin.sh, so I would like the ability as others have mention, to have (all usable in any combination):
Sorry if a lot of this has been said by others.
I'd like to be able to rebuild multiple encounters and save them till game day, especially with some descriptive text so I know which is which
I'd like to able to adjust monster stats. Give it more hit points, change its attack or defense, maybe give it special weapons and armor or wondrous items etc, so it can have more flavor or be tweaked for higher or lower encounter levels.
I'd like a tracker for monster special abilities and their refresh rates.
I'd like to be able to record effects and conditions on monsters and see numeric changes.
I'd like to be able to put conditions on PCs in the encounter tracker and them show up on the players character sheet on their own device.
It would be awesome if the encounter tracker generated loot, especially if it took into account whatever special items the creature was already using in the battle.
Any chance the Modules we own will automatically be set up with adjustments based on player numbers/levels?
My bet is: As long as it's not included in the adventure, don't count on it. And no ETA about having modules, like AL, available on DNDBeyond.
However, monster scaling is an advertised feature in the encounter builder.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
I agree. Encounter+ is vital to my campaign and even easy enough for my 7 year old daughter to use!
I use it to build my encounters and then display initiative tracking on a second screen via AirPlay. The players absolutely love having the initiative clearly displayed and the “blood” overlay when a monster is getting low on hit points.
The drawback is having to input player/NPC/monster data into the app. While it has a large amount of monsters in the app, I’ve needed to create quite a few as well. I also need to track character hit point changes as the battle transpires. Image just getting the update from the player’s character sheet to the initiative tracker...this is where D&D Beyond could really shine!
Ideally, I’d love to have all the great features of Encounter+ available in D&D Beyond with tight integration to the players character sheets. The initiative tracking on a second screen is a must for our group and this would be incredibly beneficial!
Others have mentioned the possibility for a random encounter generator, which would create a level-appropriate encounter in just a few clicks. One thing I'd like to see as part of such a feature is encounter formations.
What I mean by this is the ability to pick a breakdown for how the encounter's XP budget is spent. This is something I do when creating encounters myself. Basically, it means allocating based on a series of CR ranges. For example:
This sort of thing makes it easier to plan an encounter that fits with the theme the DM intends, particularly if it is possible to specify creatures or types for the groups. For example, you might select "pyramid", with the options "mummy, undead, beast" to get a mummy commanding some undead lieutenants who each command a group of beasts, where the numbers of the lieutenants and beasts are scaled to get the overall encounter to the difficulty rating you need.
I'm a little late, but here are my thoughts!
Let us know what you are looking for when making or running an encounter.
Let us know how you currently build encounters for your home game.
Let us know how you use / modify official encounters for your home games.
When making an encounter I want to be able to see the expected difficulty for the amount of PCs and Companions involved. For running an encounter I want to be able to easily see the profile of a monster when I select it. I also want to have a way to show the player characters their initiative on a separate view, if possible, such as through their character sheet or through a "player view" of the running encounter. I think this goes without saying, but I really want to be able to add custom monsters to the builder. I also would like to be able to apply damage and healing to monsters and players quickly and easily.
I currently use the Encounter Builder app for iOS. I really enjoy the amount of freedom it provides when controlling an encounter, but its database has to be updated manually, which is time consuming since I use D&D beyond to develop my monsters these days.
I don't use any official encounters for my home games at this time. I'm using 100% homebrew encounters, apart from the monsters themselves.
Building encounters is one of my favorite parts of the DMing experience. When I use an encounter builder, I want it to be fast, easy to use and populate, for both players and monsters, and, in best case scenarios, provide information quickly to my players.
Excited to see how it turns out! Keep up the good work!
Maybe this was posted earlier, but I’d like to be able to download a pdf or printable format that I could use when computers or whatever are less accessible. Personally, I like using dnd beyond to build characters and as a reference, but I’d rather keep the table mostly tech free.
I have found a pretty good initiave tracker cleverly named improved initiative. It has some pretty good features which i'd love to see, i suspect these features wont be possible at launch but boy would i like to see them. you see this tracker has the ability to choose mobs very easily and add them to your combat list as you would expect but what you can also do is show your party on another screen the initiative order and the type of health level of not only your team but also the monsters as well, with pictures (you have to choose them yourself) you have an idea of what your up against. well worth a look at as i'd love to see this second screen option available.
of course i'd like to see improvements, for instance have official images of mobs combine that with some kind of visual representation of damage, so possibly blood overlays so you have an idea if your even doing some kind of hurt.
super excited for this dndbeyonds tracker, hope there able to keep to there internal target of showing us it action.
Integrate this feature with the campaigns. While running trough a campaign using D&D Beyond, it would be a great feature to be able to start an encounter from the campaign material at the click of a button, whilst also being able to scale the difficulty up or down as required.
Loading encounters from existing material is part of the roadmap for the encounter builder. The monster builder will allow for scaling of monsters.
This has all been addressed in development updates and is available as part of the summary document.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
It would be awesome if the shareable links to encounters worked similar as the character sheet does with regard to generating JSON if you put `/json` at the end.
Making: All the usual monster filters, but most importantly, a random monster button also tied to the filters. A normal person doesn't think "a Slaad would be cool here," cuz all that comes to mind easily is typical monsters like dragons, goblins, orcs, etc, so a random button to give, say, a band of orcs a random beast under a filtered set of parameters would be cool.
Would also like it to allow me to see the exp/CR budget for the party members I select are involved in the encounter and auto track that for me as I add creatures. Maybe show the modifiers too so I know why adding that extra goblin takes more from my budget than the monsters stat block says.
Last immediate thought is a list of encounters, similar to my characters page, that I can filter through and have multiple encounters prepared.
Running: The main thing that would be handy for encounter running, is an initiative tracker, and not just for me, but the players as well. Perhaps like a field on the top of their character sheet that says when they are on deck, up to play, or on standby. Probably way too complicated, but is a dream feature. Otherwise there's not much to running an encounter, just like HP tracking and so forth. Maybe adding custom things into the initiative tracker, for any odds or ends in the scenario.
Basically have a google doc with cells coded to auto calculate the exp/CR budget based off which characters are involved and what level they are. Then I just try to think of relevant monsters and look them up. The biggest issue I'd like solved is all the more bizarre creatures that I'll never just think of; probably a random monster button controlled by filters as suggested above.
I also have an overall road map to track what happens when players do things (just roughly because they will always soil your plans) and have a list of encounters prepared.
Official encounters often end up being too tough for my group as written, so I often use 'DM magic' to help them out (ex. "you break their morale and they flee"). I've never used official ones outside of official stories though, I know I can, it would just take too much work to tweak it to be relevant.
Which gives me an idea! Also a lot of work on your part, but maybe let us pick a source book with encounters, pick one, and save it off as one of our encounters. Then it can be used if running that campaign, or modified on the fly within Beyond and then 'save as' for your own campaign. That would actually be sick.
Aside from raw creature/mechanism/player tracking, would also be cool to have descriptions and details. Possibly special rules or conditions, or information to give players as they accomplish certain tasks (linear or branching), that kind of thing.
EDIT: Ideally, when this is all said and done, I've love to be able to have some friends over, and chill out comfortably in the living room, maybe with some wine and cheese on the coffee table, and chat, laugh, and play DnD with nothing other than our phones/tablets.
Time to Juice!
I would want something like kobold fight club
thats what i use now, its comprehensive
100% this!
Having an auto-adjust for an encounter where it will add or subtract monsters based on party size would be great. Sometimes I don't know exactly how many players (or even friendly NPCs they encounter) I'm going to have in a session at any given time (especially something like Adventurer's league) and its tough to make sure I have the right difficulty I'm looking for on the fly. It would be great if its a hard encounter for 4 players, i can just click a toggle switch to goes to 7 players and it gives suggestions on how to keep that same encounter difficulty but with more players (possibly even ways to buff monsters a bit to make them fit larger groups? I know that would be a tough fix though). If this sort of thing was added, this would definitely be something that would make me take a look at DnDBeyond as an encounter builder when I would normally just stick with the Kobold Fight Club I already know.
Any update on this?Just a quick "Here's where we're at" would be nice so that I don't have to sit through a 30 minute video for one piece of information that I (currently) care about.
It's all tracked in the summary document at http://bit.ly/DNDBeyondUpdateQnA.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times