You can now track monsters' Hit Points and roll directly from their stat blocks in Maps! This update to Maps' combat encounter capabilities is another big step toward freeing up work from Dungeon Masters so they can focus on the fun while running their session.
Excited to see how it works? Read on to learn more about this new functionality!
Ready? Fight!
New to using the official D&D virtual tabletop? The Maps VTT is available for Master Tier subscribers and allows you to populate your digital playspace with tokens and maps from your D&D Beyond library. Once your battle map is prepared, you can invite your players regardless of their subscription and play together in a digital environment! To help you get started, we have articles detailing how to set up encounters within Maps, as well as a comprehensive guide to using Maps.
Tracking monster Hit Points and rolling from their stat blocks is one of the latest improvements we've made to the Maps VTT, and more features are on the way!
Tracking Hit Points
Put down that pen and paper; you can now track monster Hit Points right in Maps' Initiative Order interface! Once you've hit "Start Combat" in the Combat Encounter menu, you’ll see that monster Hit Points have now become clickable. Clicking a monster's Hit Points will bring up the Hit Points management menu, where you can apply damage or healing on the go.
Customize Your Creatures on the Fly
If you have a particularly beefy–or feeble–monster and want to change its Hit Point maximum, you can enter the new value in the Override Max HP field. You can also give the monster Temporary Hit Points by using the Temp HP field. Now, if that Vampire Warlock you've cooked up activates its Regeneration ability and casts Armor of Agathys on the same turn, you won't be erasing and scribbling to try to keep track of their Hit Points!
Stat Blocks and Rolling
Want to handle Initiative without having multiple tabs open or consulting your rulebooks? Now, you can access all of your monsters' stat blocks inside the Maps VTT!
Quickly Roll Ability Checks and Saving Throws
When you select a monster in the Initiative Order, you'll be shown its six ability scores and their bonuses for ability checks and saving throws. Clicking any of the numbers will roll the applicable ability check or saving throw and display it in the Game Log. These rolls are only visible to the Dungeon Master and will be hidden from the Game Log in Spectator View.
Access the Entire Stat Block for Attacks and Abilities
If you need to access a monster's attacks or other abilities (as is often the case in a combat encounter), you can view the monster's full stat block by clicking the "Open Monster's Stat Block" button at the bottom of its summary.
From here, you can make attack and damage rolls for your monster. You can also click any other rollable aspect of the monster's stat block, such as ability recharges. If you need additional information about a monster's abilities, like when it imposes a condition you can't remember the rules for, you can access this by clicking on the associated link.
If you want to see the monster's stat block in its original form, click the "Go to full details page" button to the right of the monster's name to open its classic stat block in a new tab.
Run Your Encounters in Maps Today!
Maps continues to expand its features and fine-tune its functionality, always striving toward the goal of saving Dungeon Masters time and energy when it comes to preparing and running their games. You can start a free 30-day Master Tier trial and try out the official Dungeons & Dragons virtual tabletop for yourself, and, as always, stay tuned for more updates on the Maps Beta!

Davyd is a Dungeon Master living in the south of England with his wife Steph, daughter Willow, and two cats Khatleesi and Mollie. In addition to D&D, he loves writing, 3d printing, and experimenting home automation, often combining all four with varying degrees of success.
This is looking good, next, if I could tag conditions on the tokens and could see results on mouseover. Also I hope the Encounter Building feature of showing 50% health and 25% health can be an option for the Tokens as well. That has improved my games and really want that on showing somewhere on these tokens.
Thanks.
Need to see the dice rolling in the screen...until that function exits will continue with roll20
You guys are doing a great job! It’s really simple and easy to use. Roll 20 is a bit daunting and I don’t like their aesthetic.
Is there any plans in the future to develop a map builder, like inkarnate, that we could edit in real time.
Great update! My group has been using a combination of encounter builder and now maps since they came out. However, we have multiple DMs with a variety of content shared across them. We unfortunately cannot port over to maps completely until shared content is available. Are there any plans to add shared content to maps like the encounter builder?
Regarding monsters with no artwork: I agree this is something that has irked me for a very long time. It boggles the mind that after so many years, there are still a large number of monster manual creatures without artwork. Digitial tokens may indeed force this issue to finally change, but even so, this has continued to be an annoyance to this day. The same is true for magic items. It will be a really welcome change.
This is awesome and just cut setup time by great amounts!!!
That was an important missing link. THX!
This update made me switch over to D&D Beyond Maps from AboveVTT!
One other similar feature that would be really helpful would be the ability to view monster stat blocks from Maps without having to be in combat.
For those of us that have already created tons of Encounters in that tool, it would be a wonderful feature to be able to add an existing Encounter into a Map instead of having to essentially recreate it on the Map.
Especially since the Encounter Tool provides guidance on the difficulty level as well as calculating the XP.
The only thing we need now is a dm app for tablet ☺️
This is an awesome update, but we still need:
1. Conditions tracker
2. Pre-saved combats, which automatically adds all tokens, which are used in the combat
3. The stats of the monsters must load faster and should pop out, not overshadow the initiative order
4. And if we are honest: and update to the Encounter builder with the option to use the 2024 rules for combat difficulty for all our friends who play in person and use that tool.
Good progress tho.
Huge. The lack of this feature has been frustrating, glad to see it got added
Would be good if the players HP would show on the counter so we can see when someone is getting too hurt and might need healing etc.
Also can we get a grid function along with a snap to grid so it makes it easier to set up maps with no grids and helps aid in the movement of counters.
Auto colorization of counters with a coloured ring and also name adjustments like goblin 1, goblin 2 etc. so as to help see which monster is which on the map. and initiative etc.
Also why does it not let players roll their initiative to add to the initiative track? players love to roll their initiative!
Have noticed that when it comes to homebrew monsters, it has a hard time pulling up stat blocks, crashes the map for me every time.
Thank You! Love it! You guys have saved me so much prep time!!!
Roll to self or everyone in the settings(top right corner).
Agreed! I have to homebrew each and every commoner with image and name - which takes forever. I would like a drop-down menu with an image gallery to pick from.
I just used this and it is so good!
Definitely agree that HP health bars on the tokens would be useful.
Players can roll initiative from their regular D&D Beyond character sheet and if I recall from the one session I've done using Maps so far, it will show up on the initiative tracker in Maps.