Really looking to see if there is a plan on the docket for people to homebrew mundane items or even change the base of magic items and weapons to be specifically picked dice or numbers. As a DM big in homebrew, it is frustrating to simply not have the option.

In the end just curious if it will ever happen or if I should give up hope. If it will happen any chance there is an approximate time frame people can look to?

Thank you for taking your time to read this and hope it reaches some people

UPDATE:

I am very glad to see a number of people viewing and commenting on this thread. It is now rather apparent that the options we seek aren't available so my guess is what needs to happen is that DnD Beyond needs to see the demand for such a thing is very high. Looking back I saw there was a least one thread posted about this topic each year for the last couple of years, so I would like to keep the topic relevant in hopes it reaches someone capable of the changes ears.

If possible please share the thread with people and keep this being talked about. I am not sure how else to go about it? Possibly a poll? Either way, I will try and keep the thread relevant on the Forums! Thanks again everyone for your time!

There's been request for mundane items a few years ago, it's just been ignored.

Honestly, I've given up hope.

You can create custom items and actions on your sheet, directly, which can cover almost any mundane thing you can want to make.

So you could create a custom item for inventory/encumbrance tracking and then create the corresponding action to roll whatever you wanted. 

The benefits are you can track it easily and can have it roll almost anything you need for attack rolls, damage rolls and even info on any saving throws etc and have it populate the sheet correctly. Custom actions are quite flexible.

The downside is that the actions remain whether the custom item is equipped or not since they can't be linked. Also, there is no way to make it once and then everyone else can just click to add it. So if multiple characters are getting this homebrew mundane item it can be inconvenient.

You can also try using the magic item homebrew tool. It will be marked magical but this won't mean much on a character sheet. From a character sheet perspective it is literally just an 'item maker' as the sheet itself doesn't distinguish between magical items or non-magical - the only thing it impacts is that when searching for the item they need to have the "magical" checkbox checked, which is no biggie). So this can be a great way to make many mundane items which other players can easily add to their characters in a few clicks. The only drawback is weapons - you are limited to the base damage die for the weapon category with no way to change this. It therefore lacks the flexibility of using custom actions/items. 

--

Those are the only two methods for adding homebrew items. Both have pros and cons. The team have mentioned before they are looking into making a 'best of both' maker but no ETA can be given. Since you have two ways to add almost any kind of homebrew item, be it magical or mundane, you can think of to your character sheets, this new third method will be of extremely low priority. 

So if multiple characters are getting this homebrew mundane item it can be inconvenien

I wanted to expand on potion brewing for my players, so I added a bunch of plants with description of what they can be used for. Now I have a whole bunch of potion items that are just plants.

I wanted to make my own version of herbalist kit, now I have a homebew herbalist kit that uses potion as a base. I mean, whats up with inability of making homebrew tools?

Quote from ZingFreelancer >>

So if multiple characters are getting this homebrew mundane item it can be inconvenien

I wanted to expand on potion brewing for my players, so I added a bunch of plants with description of what they can be used for. Now I have a whole bunch of potion items that are just plants.

I wanted to make my own version of herbalist kit, now I have a homebew herbalist kit that uses potion as a base. 

My suggestions would be to just make a single document listing the plants and the kit. You might do this through Google Docs, so you can easily share with players. In the campaign you could put the link on the public notes box. If a player gets such plants in future they can open the Google Doc, and on their sheet create a custom item for that plant copy-and-pasting the gold, name and description (since most plants weigh next to nothing). Even if they run out the entry remains on the sheet even at Quantity 0. So if they get more in future, they can just increase quantity. Similar with the homebrew kit. 

Copy and pasting takes mere seconds. Inconvenient, perhaps, but still vastly superior to pen and paper. Any spellcasters in the party should be used to using the custom items anyway, for their costly material components for their spells. 

Quote from ZingFreelancer >>

I mean, whats up with inability of making homebrew tools?

Time. It takes a lot of time to code up, more testing, then more coding based on tests and repeat many times until you've got something that functions without breaking other things. Now you streamline to make it efficient with system resources. D&D beyond has millions of users with several hundred thousand active at any time, and a good hundred thousand or so could be using this tool at any given time. That's a very heavy draw on the server databases that's already seeing a massive amount of calls to it. If a server is trying to use too much memory or info at any time it can lag or crash entirely - this is actually the core of a DOS hacking attack - a hacker would use vulnerable code or a botnet to draw on the server resources to crashing point. So any new system that is heavily dependent on those databases - like any homebrew tools would be - needs to be streamlined to use those resources very efficiently and securely. That also takes time and more testing. 

Staff resources. Somebody has to do all that. Even for a whole team dedicated to nothing but this it would take a couple of months.  But there's also all the new official releases which must be prioritised above everything else as per contract with WotC, being an official toolset and with minimal notice and high-pressure deadline. There's also new Unearthed Arcana releases which also need prioritising with no notice and even more high pressure deadline. There's more under the general management features being worked on - which recently resulted in the Life Domain Cleric patch, and will include containers like bags of holding and things like Epic Boons, Supernatural Gifts, and such. There's projects in alpha and beta like campaign logs, encounter builder, combat tracker and such that must be worked on as ongoing projects. There are more DM tools planned, more quality of life improvements, more background stuff towards an eventual homebrew overhaul to something more user-friendly and dynamic, and potential improvements as of yet unspecified but more highly demanded by the paying customers. There are still official systems that still need to be worked on and included - like Piety from the Mythos book. Then there are other things like optional alternatives from the DMG people want and are not yet available. These are all things that would take higher priority than adding a 3rd way for people to add something, just because it's slightly more convenient. They only have so many people in the dev team. They already have a massive list of things to do. 

Take it from a codehead: it's not as simple as you might think.

Awesome!  Send the staff of D&D Beyond your resume!  I'm sure they could use someone who can fix things so easy on their staff and they will hire you.  Maybe you could work part time?  Ought not to take much of your time for such an easy fix..

If things are as easy as people claim it to be, then I beg them to create a system that can rival Beyond. I am frustrated by Beyond's snail paced development too, but I also realize time and money does not grow on trees, and companies have to prioritize and plan how they spend their resources. It honestly does not even matter how hard or easy it is to do something, doing anything takes time and costs money. Based on my two years of observation here, Beyond is nowhere even remotely comparable to a Fortune 500 company, and they sure as hell does not have access to the amount of resources and manpower to do things at the snap of a finger. Just because Fandom is huge and massive does not mean they are going to funnel limitless resources into a subsidiary like Beyond. If anything, Beyond seems like it has very little support from higher ups and the team is being stretched very thin.

I would gladly help them, all they need to do is make their repo public and allow me to do a pull request and allow me to submit changes. Hell I would even include unit tests and I could probably improve their coding patterns.

Its not like it's a foreign concept to open a platform, it's a common practice, especially a web platform that already allows customization of content. The monetary gains are entirely from the sale of the sources, not the use of the platform itself.

And devs aren't stupid. I can code review thousands of lines in a hour and understand what's happening, so don't talk to me about manpower for that. It would take literally one person and not all of their day, and his salary would be offset from all the free features that are being created for them by the community.

And to be frank building a competing platform is impossible without breaking copyright of text unless you allow ONLY custom content. And no one will use two utilities, if it's electronic people want a single source of truth

What hit could you possibly think they would take exactly? Explain to me how you think coding works with multiple developers because I can tell you that you're wrong.

You don't just merge code in without a review, and all the unit and integration tests are passing. With professional code, especially with something like this that doesn't require operational calculations on variable text fields, this doesn't happen and it doesn't break randomly like you're suggesting.

How exactly do you think a development environment works on the corporate level? Lol

Like I said, devs aren't stupid and it's sad that you think they are

Quote from JSArrakis >>

I would gladly help them, all they need to do is make their repo public and allow me to do a pull request and allow me to submit changes. Hell I would even include unit tests and I could probably improve their coding patterns.

Its not like it's a foreign concept to open a platform, it's a common practice, especially a web platform that already allows customization of content. The monetary gains are entirely from the sale of the sources, not the use of the platform itself.

 

Opening up platforms is a nice idea, but I do not think Beyond is ready for that yet. From what I remember a while back, there were quite a few requests for Beyond to have a more open access to their API so small third party developers can more easily develop extensions like Beyond20 and AboveVTT. If I remember correctly, while the Beyond team seems open to the idea, they said they just do not have the resources and manpower to put that system/infrastructure in place to deal with third party developers.

Off the top of my head, at the bare minimum, Beyond will need to hire at least a few more people to laiason with third parties and oversee quality control, and it does not seem like they are in a position to hire people for anything other than their core operations right now.

Quote from JSArrakis >>

 And devs aren't stupid. I can code review thousands of lines in a hour and understand what's happening, so don't talk to me about manpower for that. It would take literally one person and not all of their day, and his salary would be offset from all the free features that are being created for them by the community.

I do not think you quite understand manpower. It does not matter if making homebrew mundane items only takes ten minutes to implment. Each person on the dev team has dozens or possibly even hundreds of little tasks and small projects to complete, so why should they spend ten minutes working on homebrew mundane items when it is not even on their priority list?

Beyond's primary goal right now seems to be finish implementing some of the core rules whenever they are not working on releasing and fixing newly published books. With three new books on the horizon, the dev team is scrambling right now to get all the epic boons, charms, piety, etc. in working order. Better inventory management also seems to be something they are working on or plan to work on.

I want them to make existing homebrew tools easier and more intuitive to use, expand homebrew (homebrew invocations, pact boons, metamagic, fighting styles, maneuvers, etc.), allow users to deviate from the rules (going beyond level 20, multiclass into the same class and subclass, prepare any spell and any amount of spells, have a toggle that allows you to attune to as many magic items as you want, etc.), implement spell points, and yada yada yada, but I have to wait just like everyone else to have their favorite part of the game implemented/fixed, and I also know that some of the things I really want probably would not ever be implemented anyways.

Quote from JSArrakis >>

And to be frank building a competing platform is impossible without breaking copyright of text unless you allow ONLY custom content. And no one will use two utilities, if it's electronic people want a single source of truth

 

Since you are pretty high up in a Fortune 500 company, I do not see why you cannot just go to Wizards directly and propose to them that you can develop the fourth official digital toolset. Beyond is not the only official digital toolset, as Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are the other ones. If you throw enough money at Wizards, they cannot say no to the partnership.

Problems that seem simple and trivial to us outsiders is not always something that can be solved immediately. It took Beyond literally years to implement dark mode, and that dark mode is not even sitewide either. Dark mode may seem pretty trivial to you and me, but it seems like it is something that is kind of difficult.

Edit - I'm just gonna remove my previous post because it was not on topic. I do hope the feature is implemented one day. Making mundane items as common magic items works for me in some cases, but I'd love something that could do more.

I’d prefer they give us homebrew vehicles.

@XXXGammaRay

You have a very thought out reply here and thank you because I think you understand some of the actual challenges. And yes it's manpower, but I think it's more probably mismanagement of the project et al. And I do disagree with you on a few points.

It took me a couple of years in my company, even with the TPM hat to convince them that QoL improvements that seem like side tracks or tangents actually overall increase productivity as a whole. I predict they have quite a few tickets/stories of backlog items that require rewrites of underlying systems, and I can almost guarantee the devs are begging to rewrite it.

I developed a way to explain it to my company in monetary terms on a long term why bringing old projects up to new coding standards and patterns. One example was the push for Dependency Injection to increase the testing ability of integration tests. Which in turn created regression testing and reduced regression, which saved on rework which saved on money. And we're talking about the law of large numbers here as cumulative 'gains'. 

Now I know a company is not just going to turn on it's heels and change because some random dude on an internet forum said that they should, lord knows I had to write 5 different white papers over the course of 2 years to get my company to start listening to me.

BUT

Saying there are no solutions, or the solutions are too hard or too big is a best a dangerous way of thinking and at worse a complete lie. So it makes me mad when people who know nothing about project management or software development other than slapping some code into an IDE and pushing up into production try to tell me what can and can't be done. I get paid a LOT of money because I am good at my job. 

As far as making a competing company, I half considered this morning figuring out the work it would take. And I can tell you, the majority of the work wouldn't be the platform, with the exception on compounding or exclusion effects that would need some sort of object tagging that causes cascading changes in a character sheet. The majority of the work would be transferring the copy into the system. Assuming the tagging system is designed well you won't have to do many manual things. But it's just going to be an **** ton of typing for all the rules in all the books.

I don't know if I have it in me to type out all of that copy but I certainly have it in me to rework how a platform interacts with itself when you add data to it, or add modules to an existing project. Which brings me back to my original point.

It's not a lack of ability on a part of the devs. One of the first things I said is that devs are not stupid. I also said in a different post that I can imagine they are begging for a rewrite on some of the core parts of the platform. Stop putting words in my mouth.

I lay the blame on project management and business.

Modding was brought up because you said devs won't work for free, which is a lie.

Please return this conversation back to the topic of 'Homebrew Mundane Items'.  You are free to take all personal conversation or other off-topic content to Private Messages.

Thank you.

I would still like to see this feature added. Hopefully, with the recent acquisition, the team will have the additional resources needed to add features like this. 

For example, my game has a custom currency that exists alongside the normal gold/silver/copper pieces. The only way I could reliably add these coins was to create a custom potion for each coin type. This way the coins could become a "stackable" item instead of each individual coin showing up as a different magic item. It would be nice if my coins weren't referenced as potions, but this was the most reliable method I could find to add the mundane coins I wanted. 

We definitely need a homebrew mundane items section.

Just chiming in to agree wholeheartedly that I wish this was a feature. Adventuring gear, ingredients, tools, plants, weapons, armor, etc. I would very much love to be able to homebrew these as mundane items.

Hitting up this thread - Still want Mundane items! We just found some ancient gold coins and have to add them by hand to sheets instead of adding them as something the DM made. Normally okay, but we have 2 REALLY new players and it was an issue lol. Anyhoo, I hope this is added soon!

First time hitting this thread 3 years after!  How annoying!  I just wanted to add Cold Winter Clothes!!!!!!