Do you think it would be possible on DND beyond to make a list consisting of all treasure tables from across all books? I grow tired of having to select each individual book to randomly roll treasure from that table. It would be nice if we could put a one stop shop random treasure list that is constantly updated with all of the various magical items incorporated in all of the books. To me, because i have to choose each table it doesn't exactly feel random. I don't want some third party crap either as those sights are often loaded with malware. I don't need a generator just a list of all items similar to how the DMG is currently set up but with ALL of the magic items 5e has to offer from published first party content.

I agree it would be great, but it’s outside the scope of how dndbeyond works to date. They just use the published content, this would be essentially making their own new thing. Also, by now there’s got to be more than 100 items in each category, making a random table tough to pull off — not for a computer of course, but someone trying to use physical dice could have problems. 

I have to disagree. It could easily fall under the scope of tools with the map and encounter generator. It could be updated easily enough if the ground work is laid with what is currently available. Plus, i would only want the published official content. 

It's very possible. But it is also very time consuming to set up - even more so if you want it to be rollable with a click.

It will also be tricky, since you'd have to pull in those tables from separate sources into a separate page and have that check if you should be having access to those tables (do you have the book or having it shared with you, etc). 

You then have to make sure this is future-proof so new tables from new sources can be added without directly coding them up every time. This would involve creating a separate database table for the item tables and doing this means going back through every sourcebook and re-typing every, single, table. The database would have to then categorise those tables by content/source. You'd have to create a dev-access page for a form that would assist in entering these tables so it can speed up the process instead of relying on direct SQL and make it easier to create new entries when new books are published. 

And this is the 'shortest' period of the dev time, as most of it will be the request, prioritisation, signing off to start the project, delegating workload, setting up project milestones and deadlines, meetings, paperwork, documenting process, reviewing, signing off for acceptance, bug testing, reports, signing off for release, and then actual release. And all of this on top of the constant new books, evolving D&D mechanics, reprints, bug fixes and more they already have to do?

All to save you the couple of minutes it would take you to note which tables you want and book mark them in your browser.

As a codehead myself : respectfully, **** that.

That just seems lazy. I don't want to click and roll either I just want ONE list of all magic items broken down into similar categories as already listed in the DMG it is just one short step of taking each list and just layering them together filtering in the other items. I mean TABLE A in the DMG only has 8 items listed spread out from 1-100 how hard is it just to incorporate a new list with everything. They do it with the monsters available in each book this seems much more practical as it is all text based and the links to each item is already created. Is it that hard to copy and paste and  if you roll an 86 this is the item you get? I know absolutely nothing about coding but i do know that code is technically already made it would just need to be modified to fit onto one list. Just seems useful and allows it to be completely Random. I mean I get it is right now not that hard and really only takes a couple of minutes to jump books to roll on each table but isn't part of creating a successful business to listen to the consumers of your product and do what you can to provide the best possible product for the consumer? 

Quote from Avashi >>

That just seems lazy. 

 
The sheer hypocrisy is absurd. 🤣

Quote from Avashi >>

 I know absolutely nothing about coding 

 
Yeah, that is quite blatantly clear. 😂

Quote from Avashi >>

I mean I get it is right now not that hard and really only takes a couple of minutes to jump books to roll on each table but isn't part of creating a successful business to listen to the consumers of your product and do what you can to provide the best possible product for the consumer? 

 
Yeah, I've already gone over this. Please don't respond to me if you're not willing to read my post first.

This process is more complicated than you realise. It requires more work than you anticipate. It is not a cost effective use of developer's time. It's something you can already do, so they need to focus their very limited dev team on things that will benefit the majority of players and to support the new material and such. 

In addition to the issues Cybermind mentions, I'd add the list in question would be different for different people. They're only going to want to include items from books that people own, they won't just give the items for free. And a list will only be useful to a person if they can use all the items on it. Who wants to keep rolling because they land on something and don't know what it is?  So, one person who has everything, and another who has everything except Fizbans, and another who has everything except Bigbys will each have a different list. And then another with neither Fizbans nor Bigbys, etc. And then you buy a new book, so they have to re-make the list you had been using. There's dozens of books, and likely hundreds of combinations. And with each new book, the number of possible combinations will grow exponentially.

I'm not a computer person, so maybe a coder on here will explain that's actually not that difficult, but it really seems like it would be a pain in the butt.

Quote from Xalthu >>

I'm not a computer person, so maybe a coder on here will explain that's actually not that difficult, but it really seems like it would be a pain in the butt.

 
As a coder (or maybe more accurate to say former code - it's been a while), but there are 2 methods:

Copy tables and paste them into the List page and divide them on the page with something to check source availability - like how the Races and Subclasses page only let you see the races/subclasses you've unlocked. 

Pro: easier to go through currently existing sources since it is largely just copy and pasting the tables. 

Con: It's going to require double the work every time a new book releases with a table in it since you now have to add it manually twice: once in the source and another in the List page. Because there's double the entry, there's double the chance of errors and things being missed. The design is going to be basic and cumbersome and that's just going to be a compounded effort as more and more books get released. 

The other method would be as I mentioned: creating a separate table in the database that will list all the items with tags for source and a reference to the table it is found in. This would be best done by creating a form you can use for the data entry that can create and edit these table of tables. 

Pro: Neater and more organised. Design will be better as will caching as you can provide filtering and other such things. Future releases will be easier because where those tables appear in the books you can just have a database call, so you only need to enter the table/items once. 

Con: You cannot copy-paste the tables from the books into the database, so you would need to basically remake every table from scratch. Bug testing will be more laborious to ensure the database calls are memory efficient and secure.

-

Neither method is effective and both will be annoying as heck that is simply not worth the effort at all.

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

It's very possible. But it is also very time consuming to set up - even more so if you want it to be rollable with a click.

It will also be tricky, since you'd have to pull in those tables from separate sources into a separate page and have that check if you should be having access to those tables (do you have the book or having it shared with you, etc). 

You then have to make sure this is future-proof so new tables from new sources can be added without directly coding them up every time. This would involve creating a separate database table for the item tables and doing this means going back through every sourcebook and re-typing every, single, table. The database would have to then categorise those tables by content/source. You'd have to create a dev-access page for a form that would assist in entering these tables so it can speed up the process instead of relying on direct SQL and make it easier to create new entries when new books are published. 

And this is the 'shortest' period of the dev time, as most of it will be the request, prioritisation, signing off to start the project, delegating workload, setting up project milestones and deadlines, meetings, paperwork, documenting process, reviewing, signing off for acceptance, bug testing, reports, signing off for release, and then actual release. And all of this on top of the constant new books, evolving D&D mechanics, reprints, bug fixes and more they already have to do?

All to save you the couple of minutes it would take you to note which tables you want and book mark them in your browser.

As a codehead myself : respectfully, **** that.

 I'd have to assume they have all the necessary data in lists already on their big server, and all it really takes is to join those lists together, and make an interface to present them - then set up a dice roller to pick randomly from them. I'm guessing that's all of an hour or two of work for someone who knows what they're doing.

Unless this website is some exceptionally crappy coding, and it required an inordinate amount of work to get simply stuff implemented. 

There is a medium quality implementation that is very easy to implement: just add a 'random' button to the search interface, and rather than showing you all items that match your search criteria, it shows you one item, randomly selected, with equal chance for each. There's some UI design work that might take a bit of time, but the actual database logic is nothing.

There's two major ways this could be improved

1. Assign items weights, so some of them show up more often than others. This isn't a significant coding challenge, but going through the database assigning weights would be a pain.
2. For generic items (scrolls, untyped weapons/armor, etc) generate details -- it's not "spell scroll" it's "spell scroll of stinking cloud", it's not "+1 weapon", it's "+1 bardiche".

The request isn't for choosing a random item. The request is a page that lists the item tables from multiple books in a single page, like the tables presented in the DMG. 

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

The request isn't for choosing a random item. The request is a page that lists the item tables from multiple books in a single page, like the tables presented in the DMG. 

The request is 'random treasure list'. There aren't any random treasure lists in books other than the DMG (that I know of, at least), and the item lists that are present are already covered by the existing search interface.