Maps is the official D&D VTT that seamlessly integrates with your digital library on D&D Beyond. Using Maps, you can easily prep encounters by adding maps and tokens from your digital D&D books, then bring your players in for all the action!
New to Maps is the ability to build and run combat encounters directly within the Maps tool. You can create encounters using the tokens on your map, roll Initiative, and track turns, all without leaving the Maps tool—no additional tabs required!
Combat Encounters in Maps
With the release of combat encounters on Maps, the virtual tabletop (VTT) has officially moved from Alpha to Beta, bringing it one step closer to an all-in-one experience for in-person and digital D&D sessions. We’ll continue to add new functionality and refine current features, so check back to see what future updates will bring.
Maps is available for Master Tier subscribers, and you can try it for free with a 30-day trial subscription. Your input is invaluable as we progress with Maps, so enjoy exploring the latest features and we encourage you to provide feedback as you play!
Build and Balance Your Encounters
The goal of Maps has always been to allow Dungeon Masters to prep less, play more. Now that you can build encounters directly within the VTT, that’s never been more true. Creating an encounter in Maps is as simple as adding your monsters' and players' tokens to the map and then clicking "Add All Tokens."
This will not only add all tokens present on the map to the Combat Encounter menu, but also sort them into party members or enemies. From there, all that's left is to roll Initiative!
Planning Your Encounters
If you're running a massive dungeon crawl or multi-step encounter and don't want to add all the tokens on the map to Initiative at once, no problem!
Creatures can be added to Initiative directly from the map using the token context menu. Just select any token you wish to add and click the "Add to Encounter" button. This option can be combined with the Select tool to add multiple creatures at once, allowing you to quickly start combat when your players enter a new room and encounter their foes.
Balancing Your Encounters
At the bottom of the Combat Encounter menu, you’ll see the difficulty rating of the encounter based on the encounter balancing rules in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. With this, you’ll always have an idea of how challenging your encounter is going to be.
Track and Change Initiative On the Fly
Once you’re happy with your encounter, you can click the "Start Combat" button to begin Initiative. This turns the Combat Encounter menu into the Initiative Order menu, and starts a player-facing Initiative track.
Run Encounters with Ease
The Dungeon Master’s Initiative Order menu displays all the crucial information DMs need to run combat efficiently: The names of each creature–including hidden ones–along with their AC, Hit Points, and Initiative.
Display Encounter Order to Your Players
When running encounters in Maps, players will be able to see the Initiative order, along with whose turn it is, on their instance of Maps. This makes it easy to strategize and stay involved in the battle, even when running complex combat encounters.
Don’t worry about the player-facing Initiative track spoiling any surprises you may have, though. Hidden creatures aren’t displayed until they’re revealed, at which point they appear on the player-facing Initiative track.
Adjust Encounters on the Fly
Encounters within Maps are also flexible; the DM can modify an encounter on the fly, either adding or removing creatures without stopping the encounter.
If you add a new creature token to the map, or a group of monsters, you can add them to the Initiative order from the token context menu.
Removing a creature from the Initiative is just as simple as adding it. The first option is to simply delete the token, removing it from both the map and Initiative order. However, if you wish to leave the token on the map–say to mark a corpse carrying an important item–you can remove it from just the Initiative order.
Take Initiative with Maps
Building and running encounters directly within Maps makes managing combat easier than ever. As one of the more complex, rules-heavy aspects of D&D, combat can now be streamlined by loading maps and tokens from your D&D Beyond library and seamlessly transforming them into dynamic encounters—allowing you to craft unforgettable battles in no time!
Dive into Maps with a Master Tier subscription and share the adventure with your players, no matter their subscription status.
Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including his daughter Willow (well, one day). The three of them live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in south of England.
Awesome! Can't wait to use maps more!
We just need to be able to edit HP on each monster on the initiative tracker, visualize their stat blocks and be able to roll by click their attack roll & damage roll like we can on the encounter tool and this will be amazing. Still going in the right direction, congrats to the team working on this 👍🏻
Now this is what i was waiting for, thank you!
Looking good! Great work everyone! I can't wait to see what the final product looks like.
Some down-the-road ideas to really make this VTT come to life -
Stat block access & HP trackers.
On the fly scalable tokens.
Integrated voice/video chat.
Integrated music, perhaps the ability to stream a playlist through the VTT?
Dynamic fog of war/vision.
Animated digital dice rolls.
Keep up the great work!
Will we also be able to do this in the Encounter builder at some point?
Heck yeah! Can't wait to try this out next week!
Don't forget to hit that feedback tab in Maps VTT to make sure your opinions are heard!!!!
Not impressed, why does it only use the 2024 rules and why can I not import the encounters from the encounter builder? In order to get the full use out of these tools on your site I as a DM would have to run 2 separate encounter trackers. This needs the ability to import current encounters as well as see and roll from the monster's sheets from the tracker.
I don't understand the purpose of this if I can't see monster stat blocks and use it to attack / track HP? Or am I missing something?
It definitely shows the Dragon using a breath attack in the gif, and in the tutorial it says 'roll from monster stat blocks' but I don't...see any of that?
Also folks: turn off your adblockers to see the feedback tab
Ooooh that's perfect !!!
I just created all the encounters for a session later this month before the update 🥲... But this is perfect for the campaign I'm preparing.
Next dynamic lightning with different vision mode please ?? And it'll be excellent and I won't have to go on another VTT ♥️
I like that they released the feature even if it's pretty much just cosmetic for the players, showing us where we're going and what to expect I love it! The full release is going to be legendary!
Yes, I can see the AC, HP, and Initiative Order on Maps
But I'm going to close that sidebar because I am still forced to have Another Window open with the Stats Block
So if I wish to use an attack, or ability, Change the HP, or Read anything about the Creatures or players
I have to go back to the Encounter builder we already had, this update adds nothing of value
Adding a creature to the Initiative order mid-fight on maps ? doesn't matter since you still need to Add it in the encounter builder, and maps and the encounter builder don't share the Initiative roll, so would still need to roll one and add it manually to the other place
now you have to do things twice as much as before, for the same result, or just ignore the "new" features as play as you did before
there are so many VVT to draw inspiration from, to learn what features work, and what don't
why has it taken so long to make the most basic, and then still, somehow failing?
was this made by 3 people in the basement, I would understand the delay, there are more important things to focus on
but...its Wizard's with Hasbro Money
Literally came to say this.
All improvements to the Maps tool are welcome, but please work on integrating Maps and the Encounter builder instead. Are these two tools being developped independently?
I'll still need to have two tabs open to run my pre-made emcounters.
I'm not even asking for targetting and auto-applied damage or things like that. I like that it's a very simple, lightweight VTT.
But definitely these 2 tools should become one sooner rather than later.
Now as far as full featured VTTs go, when is that SIGIL Beta launching? :)
Um... this is still beta and features are being added and modified all the time dont you? its not a finished product.
Great ideas! I would definitely double down on the "dynamic fog of war/ vision", since I find it really tedious hiding/ revealing parts of the maps by hand. Also, since maps clearly communicates with the statblocks of all players and monsters, no big deal to implement, I would guess
Also some stuff I really would love to see (on top of that):
Or to say in general: Maaany more automatic solutions for those "little annoying things" would be great :3
I like that there is this new tracking, but I now have to build and track the encounters in two places because I can't change hit points nor see monsters' actions.
I second this! Building it to not be linked just hamstrings us to either have to do twice the work to set everything up and twice the work to proceed initiatives during game play. Once they are linked, we should be able to easily just add all tokens for the creatures in the prebuilt encounter in a click or two.
I'd like to be able to use my encounters from the Encounter Builder in Maps so that I don't need to use / update multiple tabs to run encounters.
Let us know what are the next steps with the encounters in maps. It’s a great start, but I would like to have all the encounter builder features so can run all from the same window :)