- Hello everyone, and welcome
to the first development update
and community Q&A session for 2021.
We made it through 2020, we're not out of the woods yet,
but here's hoping that we're gonna have a much better year,
and I'm excited to get into latest updates,
what's upcoming on the roadmap for D&D Beyond.
We have a data update it's been a while since we've had one
of those, so some top fives for 2020,
and then we're gonna leave as much time
for questions as we possibly can
at the end if you have questions ask those in chat.
If you've joined us before you probably know the drill
but if you're new, just type the word question
and then follow that by the actual question itself
and then we're collecting those throughout
and we'll get to as many as we can at the end of our show.
Latest updates.
So back in the Saddle,
so the team is settling in
it was a whirlwind week.
Last week, how many weeks into this are we already?
So I guess this is the second week.
So last week, the team getting back
from our extended holiday break
and just getting our sea legs under us yet again
but we really are excited about everything
that's coming in 2021.
We've got a pretty great update coming probably
in the next month or two here that's gonna be pretty epic.
So we're excited about everything that's in store
for this year, and we're really happy
that you're riding along with us and excited to be back.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything,
so some of the post release fixes,
we had a very abbreviated time with the material
and content for Tasha's before the actual release,
and so we are playing a little bit of catch up here
but we do have Custom Lineage in place.
I am told that right now that the size on Custom Lineage
so medium or small is not quite working at this point
but we're gonna get that updated, but the rest of
that if you're playing a medium creature you are able
to use Custom Lineage.
Right now, we got Monk's Dedicated Weapon
in place for the optional class feature.
And then Artificer Infusion Limits are being respected now.
So we're gonna continue to chip away at all of those
that plethora of new rules content
the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything added to the game.
And we are very close on Class Feature Feats,
so that would be, what is it?
It's Eldritch Master or something like
I can't remember what it is.
I get it on virtually every warlock character
that I've been playing lately,
but all of those feats that provide maneuvers, invocations,
infusions et cetera, are also very close
and we'll keep you posted on that.
And if you were living under a rock
and didn't hear a new book is coming out on March the 16th
that is called "Candlekeep Mysteries" written
by an incredible cast of guest writers
that is going to be really exciting.
I love the concept of some bite sized,
one shot friendly adventures
that you can pop into pre-existing campaigns
or to just play for a single night
with your friends all of that really exciting,
and we're gonna have that on D&D Beyond
and you can pre-order
that today we will have pre-order bonuses
but probably factoring in the holiday break,
we kinda got this word
on this one a little bit later than typical
but you will see those pre-order bonuses come along as well,
and we'll reveal what those are as we get closer
to March 16th, check it out.
All right, upcoming.
General Features System, so this is this system
that we are making that is trying
to catch up some of the very kind of smaller priority rules
that have come up in the past Epic Boons those kinds
of elements to the game, but also the really big key
with this as we're trying to future proof
so as new rules like that come up we're wanting a system
that essentially can attach modifiers and everything else
so if you've used our homebrew functionality those kinds
of elements to other kinds of game mechanics,
and do that with a level of flexibility
that hopefully we're not having
to reinvent the wheel every time something new like
that is added to the game.
So that is a big part of what we're doing
with the General Feature System, Character Sheet Updates
for special rules and exceptions.
Life domain cleric is at the top of that list.
That is a focus here for us in Q1.
Shared Dice Rolling and the Game Log
that is coming very soon.
We're starting to look at it internally really excited about
what we're seeing here
and I think you're gonna be blown away
by how much easier it makes playing together,
seeing roles between everyone else in the party and so on,
so we'll keep you posted on that.
And then I'll mention Simplified Character Data.
So this is not incredibly exciting to many of you out there
but one of the things this is an infrastructure type update
that we're doing that will really unblock some of the work
that we've been trying to do on the Combat Tracker.
What we discovered is as we started adding
and integrating some of our character data
into the Combat Tracker i.e. tracking hit points,
even trying to get to a point where initiative
was being rolled all those elements
that need character data
we were pretty much killing our database
because that information was not streamlined enough
and so this is an effort
that we're going through our characters team
is focused on getting
that in a place where then it will unblock
what we're wanting to do to really get the Combat Tracker
and all of that ready for prime time.
So all of that is also very near future
and kind of in the on-deck status
and we'll keep you updated on all that's going on here,
and as new things come along as we're listening
to the community and getting your feedback,
we'll add those changes in here as well.
All right, I think it's data.
Yeah, so we've got some data here.
So 2020 top five.
So just really quick what's going on
with this because you're reading ahead
and probably not listening too much
to me anyway right now, but top fives,
the asterisk there these are all
for characters created last year only.
So this is not historical data all the way back,
three years of D&D Beyond that we're looking at.
So this is what was hot in 2020 throughout that entire year.
So this one always is interesting
to me most popular character names, Bob, Jack,
Cleric, Ash, and Monk.
So you can read into those
how ever you would like I don't know.
I mean Bob and Jack maybe make a good bit
of sense there to me.
I'm not sure where all the Clerics are coming from
but maybe people are just naming generic Clerics
because nobody in their party is playing a Cleric.
(laughs loudly)
Then they named their character Cleric
in order to plug those gaps in parties sometimes,
and then Ash, I get that one a little bit there too.
And then same thing with Monk,
I'm not sure why people are calling
so many characters Monk, but I don't think
that this is the Adrian Monk variety
of investigator probably the kicky punchy kind,
but either way those are
the top five character names created during 2020.
Most popular races, human always is
at the top no matter what humans always there.
Half-Elf, Dragonborn maybe I can throw out a challenge
for 2021 let's see if something can unseat humans.
And now people are gonna go
and create 16,000 Elvis or something else
to try to unseat humans.
But a Human, Half-elf, Dragonborn, Tiefling
and Half-Orc most popular their.
Most popular classes.
This one is interesting to me
because this one is not following the trend
for the overall data that we have historically,
and it's not the original four like it typically is.
So at various points in the history
of D&D Beyond we have seen Fighter again
just like humans fighters, always at the top.
So challenged there too maybe,
but Fighters always at the top.
Typically Cleric is second place here.
And you'll notice
that Cleric characters created last year not even
in the top five, and then typically Rogue,
and then that fourth spot has been a Wizard historically
but then Warlocks actually unseated Wizard at some point
and year two somewhere if I'm remembering correctly.
But as of just last year the characters created,
Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard
and then Paladin and Clerics not in this list
and Warlocks not in this list either.
So I think there's pretty fascinating,
and I wonder what trends were happening
as characters were being created last year
that produced those kinds of results.
Most popular subclasses.
So this is again, regardless of class going down
to that subclass level Draconic Bloodline
is always a popular one.
I think up until recently
and it may still be very viable if you're going
with that sorcerer route, The Fiend on the warlock side,
Life Domain Cleric has typically historically been
the most created subclass on D&D Beyond,
but it's in the top five here Champion,
and the Hexblade always popular as well.
So those are specifically the most popular subclasses
and then most popular spells chosen
is what we're saying here,
because some of them are canned troops
but then some of them are selected or prepared,
so known spell or prepared spell
and you see Cure Wounds is again always at the top,
and we're seeing that play out here.
This is a dangerous world for these characters.
So Cure Wounds is always popular.
Mage Hand, I never leave home without Mage Hand.
If I'm playing a character
that cast any spells they always have Mage Hand
so I get that one.
Detect Magic is a helpful one, Prestidigitation
and Fire Bolt.
So those are the top five spells chosen in 2020.
So we may do some more of those, we will also take a look
at some of the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything subclass
and feed data at some point in the coming weeks,
because we're finally starting to get a good bit
of data with those.
So we'll have some further updates
with what's going on in the state of the metagame
and Dungeons and Dragons out there a little bit.
I'm kind of saying that jokingly
because that's a very video game thing
and we joke about it internally a lot,
but ultimately just seeing what are people playing
from the new options that were provided
in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
we'll take a look here in the near future on that as well.
If you have any requests
for some of this kind of data you can also let us know
and we'll see what we can do about that.
(upbeat music)