Condition Tracking Comes to the Maps VTT

It's nice for the VTT players that they get all their goodies. But the people who signed up back in the day with the promise of having all this stuff in the tools they're now abandoning, feels a bit like a slap in the face.

They can't keep on hiding behind the fact that "it's another team dealing with legacy code bla bla bla..." There's no way that they can't update the encounters using the VTT-stuff

Quote from Perringaiden >>

Quote from Ke20 >>

The encounter tracker is not low priority. It's deprecated.

 

Hopefully they'll release a standalone of the one in maps soon.

 

So I gotta wonder: is mapless use of the VTT EB a roadmapped use case and design consideration?

WOTC_Zac: As I said in my response to the OP, we made no changes to the functionality, ux, or number of clicks as part of this update. The goal of the token menu refresh was parity with the old menu, so I wouldn't read too much into the design intent here. I even reverted to the old menu on my local version to double check. There are no additional clicks necessary to do anything.

As I've said in other places, the standalone and encounter builder does a lot of things really really well, but is incredibly difficult to work. Meanwhile, the encounter manager in maps does a lot of other things really really well, but I understand it is not currently a drop-in replacement for the Old Encounter Builder.

This is a thing we're aware of, and want to tackle. I've been collecting a lot of the reasons why people like the old encounter Builder, and before we start building, I fully intend to do a bunch of open research with the community to make sure what we build is something that works well for as many people as possible.

Ultimately, we want to build tools that support you in playing the way that you want to play. If that's on a virtual tabletop, sweet. If you want to play fully analog with a physical map and physical minis and physical dice, but the DM still wants some digital assistance- sweet. We want to help with that too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1u2hiy3/comment/oqymy6f/

 People *like* the old encounter builders because it's the only one we have. Because we use offline maps at the table. This surely isn't rocket science.

I also somehow fail to see how this is coded in such way that they "need" to tie in the vtt maps so much. 

Seconded, I really do hope we can get an audio player so we can play music. Has WoTC ever done music scores though of their own?

Quote from LapisRose1176 >>

Seconded, I really do hope we can get an audio player so we can play music. Has WoTC ever done music scores though of their own?

 It has happened! 

https://www.polygon.com/23309840/dnd-spelljams-album-free-download-decembrists-reggie-watts/

Nice! Now add concentration! 

That is what i really want.. but i think im just going to use Discord for now... just have to work on my soundtrack

Baned and Blessed please. 

Two toned icon rings would be nice. I've been using colored rings to indicate special conditions, and sometimes they get stacked.

Quote from Kuchimoo >>

 People *like* the old encounter builders because it's the only one we have. Because we use offline maps at the table. This surely isn't rocket science.

I also somehow fail to see how this is coded in such way that they "need" to tie in the vtt maps so much. 

 I think you miss the point.

Right now (pre-rebuild) the only stack that isn't spaghetti code, is the Maps VTT.  Fixing or improving the old encounter builder would take more effort than it would take to extract the VTT's combat tracker and provide it in a separate page, which is what they intend to do.

They're going to give you what you want, but they have to rebuild the engine behind the site first.

It isn't rocket science.  It's software architecture, which can be far worse to deal with, because the original rockets were made by scientists, where as the original site was thrown together at high speed to serve a singluar purpose with no understanding of where D&D was going in a few years.  

Everyone says "Why doesn't WOTC fix it?".  That's precisely what they're doing, but it takes time, unless you want it to be vibe coded.

Any chance for dynamic lighting?

This is great, but can we get condition symbols that go with it that get added to the token? That way it would be way more obvious to both the DM and the players which tokens have what conditions at a glance. 

Looks great!  I'd love to see "Bloodied" and "Concentrating" also.

I'd really like to see these added to rings around the character.  So we can tell at a glance what's going on.  Also would love to see DM only condition rings and everyone condition rings.  The players don't necessarily need to know that an enemy is invisible, they may think he teleported away.  But giving them the invisible condition (that hides that token) would be great instead of just hiding the token. 

Also, when a character/enemy is bloodied they get a red mask over the token... just a thought...

I know I know, I ask for way too much... but I'm just thinking how I use the tokens, and rings and such.

I agree--it would be really nice if, from the map, you could see which tokens have conditions on them. Either a universal sign, like a ring, or, since each condition already has its own little symbol, that symbol also hovers over the token on the map?

After my last game, I realized I had a hodgepodge of colored rings and marked conditions, where I marked one poisoned character with a green ring and another one with the condition, and another with both.

Also agree on the bloodied red mask, and that we're asking for a lot! But the progress and communication from the Maps team has been so great that I don't mind at all asking for more!!! :D

Would it be possible to add condition icons directly to the outer ring/border surrounding character tokens?

Having conditions displayed on the token border would make active effects instantly visible at a glance for both players and Dungeon Masters during combat.

In addition to standard negative conditions (e.g., Poisoned, Stunned), it would be great to support positive and negative states and temporary buffs on the token border as well, such as:

• Bardic Inspiration

• Heroic Advantage / Advantage

• Silvery Barbs

• Concentrating / Blessed / Baned

This visual cue would streamline combat tracking and keep the game moving smoothly without having to open token menus to double-check status effects.

will we be able to see an icon for the conditions on the tokens instead of having to click on the token to see current conditions?

the condition tracking needs to also include spell effects like bless and detect magic! 

I’m really enjoying the updates so far. If I had to ask for anything more for token conditions I would absolutely love it if there was a way to put the concentration status on a token and when damage is entered on it it would pop a notification for the player and dm to roll a concentration check and if it could calculate the dc based on the damage entered that would be amazing too. It seems to be one of the most forgotten things at my table so it would be so nice to have it integrated (though my players might prefer me forgetting theirs still 😂)

Yes, but...it doesn't show up on the map for the players.  So, great, but not great at the same time.  AND...what about adding conditions/effects from spells, like Bless, Hunter's Mark, and so on...

This is definitely a step in the right direction, well done. I see it is going to be improved in the future, in my opinion the priority should be:

• Add "Concentration" as condition. It is SO important to track it.
• Add Dead, with a visual aid (e.g. a red cross over the token)
• Add visual aids to conditions over the token (colored rings, or small icons that shows quickly which conditions are in place)
• Add at least the most common buff and debuff from spell effects (Hexed, Hunter's Mark, Blessed, Bane, Invisible, Hasted etc...)
• Add Bloodied, with a red mask over the token as suggested

Thanks for your work!

Dead (X) and Bloodied are already live! You just have to go into Setting on the VTT for each campaign and enable "Players can see when tokens have been bloodied."

wow great. Thanks! I missed it. I just started playing around with Maps, I run a live 5e game and I usually use the old Encounters tool, but I am considering to move to the new one, as we are now starting a 5.5 campaign.