I feel like the development of this site has become stagnant, quality of life features requested 2 years ago by community are never added. Nothing has really changed since a year ago, Encounter Builder and Combat Tracker are still in their respective testing stages.

Anyone can recommend better/more functional alternatives to D&D beyond?

The frustrating thing is, when new books are added with exciting new content, implementing that becomes the priority for the team as they have to almost 'keep pace' with what Wizards of the Coast are putting out to stay relevant. Unfortunately, and I could be wrong, but I feel that comes at the cost of effort that could be put into making a fully fledged Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker etc (and BOY do I need a fully working Combat Tracker - top of my wish list for this site)

That said, I couldn't give any recommendations; the Character Sheet, whilst not perfect, is a very high standard that I don't know if you'd find better elsewhere. If you use the Beyond20 extension for Roll20, I think that fills in some of the blanks that this site hasn't quite got round to fixing yet? (Life Cleric healing bonuses being added correctly and other things that I can't think of off the top of my head).

Additionally, all this stuff will hopefully be updated sooner rather than later. Just need perseverance.

agree with lamoon...plenty of alternatives but not sure if any qualify for your better/more functional. its easy to write a paragraph of options....exponentially harder to program all the consequences of that paragraph.

Quote from Lamoon01 >>

The frustrating thing is, when new books are added with exciting new content, implementing that becomes the priority for the team as they have to almost 'keep pace' with what Wizards of the Coast are putting out to stay relevant. Unfortunately, and I could be wrong, but I feel that comes at the cost of effort that could be put into making a fully fledged Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker etc (and BOY do I need a fully working Combat Tracker - top of my wish list for this site)

 

 Worse still, is that those roll outs aren't even being done that well. TCoE was a disaster, and it was just the latest and most extreme example in a string of incomplete implementations. And, while I appreciate the difficulty in coding some of the latest features in the 5e rule-set, we seem to be at a point where nothing is happening with the development of a VTT environment (which, given the bones we see, has infinite potential to be the best option, by far), AND book releases are leaving a lot to be desired. It's an unfortunate case of trying to please everyone and not pleasing anyone. 

If you are looking for fully implemented content of all the books, + character sheets, + the ability to build encounters, track combat, and make die rolls from your sheet, you only really have the option of DDB or a VTT with full WOTC support/licensing. So far as I know, the two VTTs with full licensing, and thus access to all books and all content, are Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. There are other VTTs out there (Foundry, Astral, etc.) but these do not, as far as I know, have the licensed full text of all books, licensed images, etc., the way DDB, Roll20, and FG have. If you are looking for an alternative to DDB that has all the textual content and image content on top of everything else, I suspect those 2 VTTs are your main alternatives. Users of both VTTs will tell you that each one has its issues, and there are no perfect solutions.

Alternatively you could theoretically continue using DDB and import its content into a VTT like Foundry using an importer module and some chrome extensions. Whether that works for you will depend on just how much you want to untether from DDB. I can say for me, if Foundry ever gets a WOTC license like they have with Forbidden Lands, Warhammer, and SWADE, I will jump ship immediately and permanently. But so far, they only have SRD content and I have to manually import everything else, so it isn't quite practical to move over there yet (more so for my players, than for me).

Quote from Lyxen >>

Quote from JohnnyPi >>

Quote from Lamoon01 >>

The frustrating thing is, when new books are added with exciting new content, implementing that becomes the priority for the team as they have to almost 'keep pace' with what Wizards of the Coast are putting out to stay relevant. Unfortunately, and I could be wrong, but I feel that comes at the cost of effort that could be put into making a fully fledged Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker etc (and BOY do I need a fully working Combat Tracker - top of my wish list for this site)

 

 Worse still, is that those roll outs aren't even being done that well. TCoE was a disaster

 
No it was not. Sorry. Despite the very late warning given to the DDB staff from WotC about the actual content,  most of it was available extremely rapidly on DDB, and our groups were actually very pleased to have the content available so soon. There is no commitment to have everything available immediately, the bugs and missing features were extremely minimal and calling this a "disaster" is totally unjustified. And none of the alternatives followed that quickly either.

 That is certainly an opinion to which you are entitled. It's also wonderful to hear that your groups have low standards for the features they want. That must make it very easy to run casual games. You can focus on fun. Very relaxing.

You are, however, objectively incorrect, and even a cursory glance at the Tasha bug thread will prove that. Anyway, it's quite clear that you are have no interest in examining or evolving your opinions so I won't bother putting the energy into poking holes in your late notice theory. Like I said above, the dev team is trying to please everyone and in the process (I will amend to) only pleasing a small few. Good day.

Quote from JohnnyPi >>

Quote from Lyxen >>

Quote from JohnnyPi >>

Quote from Lamoon01 >>

The frustrating thing is, when new books are added with exciting new content, implementing that becomes the priority for the team as they have to almost 'keep pace' with what Wizards of the Coast are putting out to stay relevant. Unfortunately, and I could be wrong, but I feel that comes at the cost of effort that could be put into making a fully fledged Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker etc (and BOY do I need a fully working Combat Tracker - top of my wish list for this site)

 

 Worse still, is that those roll outs aren't even being done that well. TCoE was a disaster

 
No it was not. Sorry. Despite the very late warning given to the DDB staff from WotC about the actual content,  most of it was available extremely rapidly on DDB, and our groups were actually very pleased to have the content available so soon. There is no commitment to have everything available immediately, the bugs and missing features were extremely minimal and calling this a "disaster" is totally unjustified. And none of the alternatives followed that quickly either.

 That is certainly an opinion to which you are entitled. It's also wonderful to hear that your groups have low standards for the features they want. That must make it very easy to run casual games. You can focus on fun. Very relaxing.

You are, however, objectively incorrect, and even a cursory glance at the Tasha bug thread will prove that. Anyway, it's quite clear that you are have no interest in examining or evolving your opinions so I won't bother putting the energy into poking holes in your late notice theory. Like I said above, the dev team is trying to please everyone and in the process (I will amend to) only pleasing a small few. Good day.

I would pump the brakes on validating your opinion as truth. D&D Beyond, like all things, has a section of itsconsumer base that is unhappy with the product for various reasons, which is fine, but it's a tiny part of the whole. It only seems larger because people site criticism far more than praising something for being right or working the way it should.

If the VTT part is your main concern than literally anything else is going to fit that need and probably for a couple of years. D&D Beyond was never meant to be a VTT, they had to make a hard turn onto that road last year.

I'll close out with this: you, and all of us, should be grateful for what we have here. And that isn't having low standards as you put it either.

Quote from JohnnyPi>>

Quote from Lyxen>>

Quote from JohnnyPi>>

Quote from Lamoon01>>

The frustrating thing is, when new books are added with exciting new content, implementing that becomes the priority for the team as they have to almost 'keep pace' with what Wizards of the Coast are putting out to stay relevant. Unfortunately, and I could be wrong, but I feel that comes at the cost of effort that could be put into making a fully fledged Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker etc (and BOY do I need a fully working Combat Tracker - top of my wish list for this site)

 Worse still, is that those roll outs aren't even being done that well. TCoE was a disaster

No it was not. Sorry. Despite the very late warning given to the DDB staff from WotC about the actual content,  most of it was available extremely rapidly on DDB, and our groups were actually very pleased to have the content available so soon. There is no commitment to have everything available immediately, the bugs and missing features were extremely minimal and calling this a "disaster" is totally unjustified. And none of the alternatives followed that quickly either.

 That is certainly an opinion to which you are entitled. It's also wonderful to hear that your groups have low standards for the features they want. That must make it very easy to run casual games. You can focus on fun. Very relaxing.

Is there another reason to play D&D?  Last I checked it was a game, and I believe games are played for fun.  This might be time to add the disclaimer from lottery and gambling websites:

You are, however, objectively incorrect, and even a cursory glance at the Tasha bug thread will prove that. Anyway, it's quite clear that you are have no interest in examining or evolving your opinions so I won't bother putting the energy into poking holes in your late notice theory. Like I said above, the dev team is trying to please everyone and in the process (I will amend to) only pleasing a small few. Good day.

 I'm not sure how any one opinion on other peoples opinions can be "objectively" anything.  The product is in a continuous state of improvement, like most softwares (why do you think you have to download updates every once in a while for half of anything you put on your computer?). the bug thread is a great communication tool for users to relay areas of the site that don't function correctly...it is not a judgement on the quality of the site at all.

And of course businesses try to please as many people as possible.  That is their business strategy to drive revenue into the company, so they can spend it on, I don't know, paying people to code and develop.  If you want something tailor made for you, then learn to code, and make it your self.  Either 1) you'll come up with a better product you can market to others, or 2) you'll learn the effort and work that goes into making an ASI register across 500 different mechanics and across 1000s+ of individual character option interactions, and then do it again when the 3rd party your company licenses as their primary revenue stream releases something that is a new paradigm across nearly all previously developed mechanics.

I'm not going to comment on the Tasha bugs because (a) that's not really the point of this thread, and (b) I have paid little attention to them. Nothing has come up regarding them, as far as I know, in my campaign, but my players are not heavily using most of these features, so we probably wouldn't notice the bugs such as they are.

However, the main point of the OP, which was to ask what else is available because this site has a very slow development cycle, simply cannot be refuted when one compares how slowly features are implemented here, to those implemented by much smaller dev teams with far less financial backing (Astral, World Anvil, and Foundry come to mind). World Anvil, for example, is basically a mom-and-pop operation run by a husband and wife team and some of their friends, and their development cycle goes at warp speed compared to here. They are also much more transparent about what is on the drawing board and why, and they lay out target deadlines for everything, and nearly always meet or beat them. The dev team here could learn a thing or two from Dimitris and Janet regarding both transparency and delivery. Foundry and Astral may not be World Anvil when it comes to dev cycle and transparency but they are way better in both departments than Fandom is with DDB.

The OP stated truthfully that there have been QoL changes in the "pipeline" for years and never implemented. That many features like the encounter builder have just sat in a perpetual beta state, never fully polished and completed. Whether Tasha in particular was "implemented well" is rather beside the point, as the fact remains that many features have been sitting around in limbo for literal years and other features have been in a perpetual "beta" state for nearly as long. The snail's-pace dev cycle and relative lack of transparency (compared to a site like World Anvil) as well as the refusal to ever set or meet target deadlines makes me want to look around for alternatives too... there just aren't any right now. Which is, IMO, the only thing preventing this site from hemorrhaging users already. They got here first, and remain the only game in town for this type of site, so they can afford (like all monopolies) to put out a messy and highly flawed product. If someone like Dimitris ever got hold of a WOTC license and started building a site to compete directly with DDB, this place would be in real trouble.

Quote from Stormknight >>

Hey folks,

my response probably isn't going to be what you expect - if you feel that something is bad, or that a release was a disaster, we want to know please!

Here's the catch though - we need to know specifics, otherwise we can't change things.

• What is it that you don't like (and conversely, what is it you DO like)?
• What was it about a book release that made you feel it was disastrous? What do you think we could have done better.

We genuinely care about D&D Beyond - staff are all Dungeons & Dragons fans too and play the game regularly, using our own site.

Every time we release a new book and there's some feature or optional rule in it that we can't immediately support, and I am so disappointed and I am not the only one.

There's some great QoL (Quality of Life) improvements that we squeeze out when we can and there's more coming this year, including (but not limited to):

• Support for external spell modifiers - Life Domain cleric "Disciple of Life" automatically adding to healing spells.
• Generic Features System - will allow us to add blessings, curses, boons, supernatural gifts, lycanthropy and more.
• Inventory System - shared inventory in base/cart/loot-pile, functional bags of holding, saddlebags etc.

There's a bunch more things that haven't been announced, but please be assured we not slacking off - more people are being hired, teams are growing and our capacity to deliver is increasing.

Thank you for posting this....

Only providing overtly positive feedback makes it impossible to improve on anything.  Negative feedback is absolutely needed , however,  I think we can ALL be better at delivering it.

For me the biggest disappointment for me is the lack of development on the DM tools (encounter builder, combat tracker).   I would love to use them in IRL sessions to help me keep track of everything.  Its less of an issue right now as we are still doing Virtual thanks to COVID. 

I have provided what I would like from these tools in the appropriate forum threads though so I won't duplicate them here. 

I would say the QoL stuff is great and all...but the tools are the major reason I use the website.  I realize you are likely focusing on player tools as there are many many more players than DMs but to see such a small amount of work done on the DM tools in the time period they have been released is a bit demoralizing honestly. 

Bio,  World Anvil is not the same thing as D&D Beyond...honestly its not even close.  I've used it in the past, and at it's heart it is a general databasing and content management tool.  I do think it is well-made, but they don't have to worry about managing rules and mechanics of a game in addition to the rules and mechanics of their system.  Its like trying to compare growing Christmas Trees with growing Bonsai.  World Anvil is like a good Christmas Tree Farmer;  they meet a small number of basic criteria and do it really well, and the (relatively) low complexity of their product allows them speed and flexibility in making adjustments.  What they don't do is provide or design any of the actual content on their site;  just like consumers purchase the basic tree and decorate it themselves, users of WA subscribe to a basic system and load the entirety of the content by themselves.

D&DBeyond is more like bonsai.  There are a lot more rules and requirements of the product, because you have to address all of the requirements of the game's content before it goes to the consumer (you don't buy a bonsai and then decorate it like a Christmas Tree) in addition to the requirements of the system.  The development, naturally, is slower because 1) you don't dictate the performance metrics of the system (WotC does since they create the content the system has to manage), 2) the number of system options expands exponentially since the product manages them automatically, and 3) because the dictated performance metrics and subsequent system requirements may change periodically (typically with the release of new content), you have to be able to quickly allocate resources to manage those changes, sometimes at the expense of your own long term goals..  Finally, because the development is slower and the system significantly more complex, "grafting" new content is a much more laborious process, because you don't want the graft to fail, nor do you want it to cause the original to fail either.  A particularly large slate of rule and mechanics changes like Tasha's presents a lot more complexity to graft into the existing system. 

No offense to the creators of WA, but saying they could do a better job of managing a program/site like D&DBeyond without taking into account the significant jump in complexity that comes with managing the functions of the D&D rules and mechanics system, is not a fair comparison at all.

Quote from Lyxen >>

Quote from OptimusGrimus>>

For me the biggest disappointment for me is the lack of development on the DM tools (encounter builder, combat tracker).   I would love to use them in IRL sessions to help me keep track of everything.  Its less of an issue right now as we are still doing Virtual thanks to COVID. 

I"m not sure what more you expect in terms of Encounter Builder, but for me it is more than enough, it gives me exactly what I want for building encounters. As for the combat tracker, I honestly don't care, most VTTs have it in a way that is integrated with the management of tokens and PCs. So for me, both of these are very low priority.

Encounter builder could be more robust in a lot of ways and as I alluded to I wouldn't go into the details here as that would be off-topic. 

Combat tracker, as I stated,  would be for IRL sessions where we do not use a VTT.  A lot of people do not even use a VTT for play but use DnD Beyond for their sheets and monsters so many people would want this and is evident by the amount of feedback for both features in their respective feedback threads.

Just because you personally wouldn't use a feature doesn't mean the majority wouldn't. 

Another thing to add....ability to remove 3D dice for rolling to just let folks roll without the 3D animations.  To me that's a day one thing to include but it seems they used some coding to make the rolls off the physical movement of the 3D dice I guess so its hard to remove it? I don't fully understand but seems odd. 

Bio,  World Anvil is not the same thing as D&D Beyond...honestly its not even close.  I've used it in the past, and at it's heart it is a general databasing and content management tool.  I do think it is well-made, but they don't have to worry about managing rules and mechanics of a game in addition to the rules and mechanics of their system.  Its like trying to compare growing Christmas Trees with growing Bonsai.  

None of which addresses my point about how WA, Astral, and Foundry are being managed.

My point about these websites/tools, and I used WA because of how well they do these things, is that they all have 3 things that D&D Beyond does not have: Transparency, Deadlines, and Delivery. Whether or not what WA is doing is "harder" or not is really beside the point. WA's owners also probably have something like 1% the operating budget and 5% the staff size of Fandom as well, so one would expect a whole lot more from a commercial site than from a mom-and-pop operation.

My comment about how WA is run has jack to do with what they are delivering and everything to do with how professional the WA dev team is. Literally, that is it -- professionalism. WA is 100% transparent about what they are working on and why, they provide hard and clear deadlines of what they intend to complete and when, often months out; and they deliver on what they say they are going to do, each and every time. There is absolutely no reason why every dev team can't behave the same way -- it just takes the proper leadership and mindset. Something I do not see coming out of DDB.

I"m not sure what more you expect in terms of Encounter Builder, but for me it is more than enough, it gives me exactly what I want for building encounters. As for the combat tracker, I honestly don't care, most VTTs have it in a way that is integrated with the management of tokens and PCs. So for me, both of these are very low priority.

I don't use either one any more either. I used them at first, when they were originally released, and found them lackluster and found that the various VTTs do them better (which is in and of itself a problem).

But... DDB itself has labeled these things "beta" for what now? A year plus right? It's not possible to claim, as a user, that "they are finished" when the company itself still calls them beta releases. Also, the fact that these are not features you currently use, does not have any bearing on the fact that they are still in beta phase and therefore, by definition, unfinished.

And that is the OP's complaint -- it takes  a very long time for things to reach "finished" status.

Quote from iconarising >>

Bio,  World Anvil is not the same thing as D&D Beyond...honestly its not even close.  I've used it in the past, and at it's heart it is a general databasing and content management tool.  I do think it is well-made, but they don't have to worry about managing rules and mechanics of a game in addition to the rules and mechanics of their system.  Its like trying to compare growing Christmas Trees with growing Bonsai.  World Anvil is like a good Christmas Tree Farmer;  they meet a small number of basic criteria and do it really well, and the (relatively) low complexity of their product allows them speed and flexibility in making adjustments.  What they don't do is provide or design any of the actual content on their site;  just like consumers purchase the basic tree and decorate it themselves, users of WA subscribe to a basic system and load the entirety of the content by themselves.

D&DBeyond is more like bonsai.  There are a lot more rules and requirements of the product, because you have to address all of the requirements of the game's content before it goes to the consumer (you don't buy a bonsai and then decorate it like a Christmas Tree) in addition to the requirements of the system.  The development, naturally, is slower because 1) you don't dictate the performance metrics of the system (WotC does since they create the content the system has to manage), 2) the number of system options expands exponentially since the product manages them automatically, and 3) because the dictated performance metrics and subsequent system requirements may change periodically (typically with the release of new content), you have to be able to quickly allocate resources to manage those changes, sometimes at the expense of your own long term goals..  Finally, because the development is slower and the system significantly more complex, "grafting" new content is a much more laborious process, because you don't want the graft to fail, nor do you want it to cause the original to fail either.  A particularly large slate of rule and mechanics changes like Tasha's presents a lot more complexity to graft into the existing system. 

No offense to the creators of WA, but saying they could do a better job of managing a program/site like D&DBeyond without taking into account the significant jump in complexity that comes with managing the functions of the D&D rules and mechanics system, is not a fair comparison at all.

I would compare something like Pathbuilder 2e or Herolab Online for PF2e to be more of a comparator for Beyond at least from the character creation perspective. It has a robust character building application that has an interactive character sheet.  They are both small teams that generally have the content out on the same day as release. 

They have a dedicated archive website that is free for all to use as references called Archives of Nethys. It has a search function that works about 10X better than beyond as well. 

Beyond is a bit more polished in appearance but Herolab has it beat in function and base structure.  They can churn out new content extremely quickly based on how the database is built.  

They even have a campaign roller similar to beyond but had it several months before beyond did.  It also integrates extremely easy into VTTs like Foundry so its been extremely easy to build characters in the VTT when we do use it. 

Overall it offers more than DnD Beyond and has extremely quick turn around on new content due to the way the infrastructure was built. 

 All this for a system that by all accounts is more complicated than 5e.

Quote from OptimusGrimus >> 

All this for a system that by all accounts is more complicated than 5e.

 Not defending DDB, the development pace here bugs me too, but isn't necessarily a good argument. A lot of DDB's issues with implementing new features don't stem from D&D as a system, they stem from some of those features being incongruous and not meshing with the base system. That isn't always the problem and isn't always a valid excuse either, but the complexity or simplicity of the base system doesn't determine how hard it is to add something to it in general. There are many separate considerations there.

Quote from pangurjan >>

Quote from OptimusGrimus >> 

All this for a system that by all accounts is more complicated than 5e.

 Not defending DDB, the development pace here bugs me too, but isn't necessarily a good argument. A lot of DDB's issues with implementing new features don't stem from D&D as a system, they stem from some of those features being incongruous and not meshing with the base system. That isn't always the problem and isn't always a valid excuse either, but the complexity or simplicity of the base system doesn't determine how hard it is to add something to it in general. There are many separate considerations there.

Thats fair I am just saying that PF2e has more "crunch" and sources of debuffing/buffing comes from a wide variety of features/abilities/spells and is all handled well in the builder and in the VTT integration. 

There is even a way to build custom Class/Race/General feats right in the system. 

Its the best comparison I can think of and its pretty new compared to DnD Beyond (roughly a year or so old) and in that time frame has had a massive amounts of updates/changes/overhauls that  creates an experience that is at least 90% of what is offered for 5e on Beyond. 

Its more the fact they have had consistent improvements and are very engaged with the community to test new features and give outlines for completion.

Its a VERY small team (Basically one or two people I think...but I could be wrong) and the amount of progress is amazing to me. 

They have a very similar model to Beyond as well where you pay a subscription and a per book basis to share with a campaign of players so there is that.  

Overall I feel its a fair enough comparison. 

The comparison's totally fair. All I'm saying is, base system complexity or lack thereof is not really a pertinent argument for handling of later, additional features.

Quote from pangurjan >>

The comparison's totally fair. All I'm saying is, base system complexity or lack thereof is not really a pertinent argument for handling of later, additional features.

Fair enough.  Just more of a comparison to overall complexity but that makes sense.