Welcome, far traveler! D&D Beyond is an official digital toolset for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the bestselling tabletop roleplaying game. You can use D&D Beyond to access the 2024 D&D Free Rules of the game, create characters for free, and more. Our marketplace has digitized versions of the official sourcebooks and adventures for D&D. These add additional character creation options and material you can use to play the game.
To get started, create a free account by clicking below:
- What is D&D?
- D&D Beyond Makes Playing Easier
- For Players: How to Create a Character
- For Dungeon Masters: How to Create a Campaign
Play With D&D's New Rules Today!
The 2024 D&D Free Rules allow you to create and play characters using the new core ruleset with updated, streamlined, and revised rules. These rules are free to access on D&D Beyond, and can be used in D&D Beyond's Character Builder with a free account, so sign up today to start building your new character!
If you want access to the full character building potential offered by the new 2024 Core Rulebooks, the 2024 Player's Handbook contains 12 classes, 4 subclasses for each class, and all the feats, spells, species, and backgrounds you need to create your next adventurous hero!
What is D&D?
Dungeons & Dragons is a roleplaying game where you and your friends collaboratively tell a story of heroism and adventure. It can be played online or in person. In D&D, you'll play as either a player or as the Dungeon Master:
As a player, you will act as a character who fights monsters and overcomes challenges, such as sneaking through a cultist's lair undetected or keeping your ship afloat in a storm. You decide who your character is and how they respond to the world around them. Over time, your character will level up, unlocking new abilities.
As a Dungeon Master, you are the world and the non-player characters that surround and interact with the player characters. You guide the player characters through the story and pit them against monsters and other obstacles. You are the quest-giver, the torrential storm, and the dragon whose keep the player characters must destroy!
Playing the Game
Rolling dice is central to D&D. You might be familiar with your typical six-sided dice. But D&D also uses four-, eight-, 10-, 12-, and 20-sided dice!
As a player, you will roll these dice to determine your character's success in a variety of situations. You will roll dice when you attack monsters, dodge an explosion of fire, and even to see how well you perform in a dance competition! As a Dungeon Master, you will roll dice for similar reasons, except you play the part of the monsters and non-player characters. You will also be responsible for telling your players whether or not their characters succeed based on how well they roll.
D&D Beyond Makes Playing Easier
The D&D Beyond toolset makes it easy to play D&D. Players can use the free Character Builder that guides you through the character creation process. D&D Beyond stores your character sheet and calculates bonuses your character gets to attack monsters and make ability checks. You can track spells, organize equipment, and even roll dice all from your character sheet. Dungeon Masters will enjoy the encounter builder when planning combat and can see their players' character sheets all in one place.
Here are some of the features you'll enjoy with D&D Beyond:
- Character Builder
- Integrated dice rolling
- Access to the 2024 D&D Free Rules
- Free app for making mobile play easier
- Combat tracker to help you keep tabs on the action
- Monster encounter builder to Dungeon Masters plan challenging fights
Is D&D Beyond free?
Signing up is free and grants you access to the 2024 D&D Free Rules, which contains everything you need to start playing. You can store up to six characters with a free account. As you purchase sourcebooks and adventures from the marketplace, you will unlock material that can add new character building options, as well as monsters and content to run your game.
D&D Beyond has two paid subscription tiers: Hero and Master. Learn about the perks of these options by clicking here.
For Players: How to Create a Character
Creating characters in D&D Beyond is easy! The character builder walks you through the character creation process. Quick Build is a great option when making your first character — you will simply choose a species and class and enter a name for your character:
If you would like full control over the character creation process, choose the Standard option. This is best for players who have played D&D before. You can turn on Help Text to walk you through the process, however. Characters you create can be found on the My Characters page.
Finding a Group to Play D&D With
Once you have created a character, it's time to play! Because D&D is a multiplayer experience, you will need to find a group of players and a Dungeon Master to play with. You can ask friends or family members to join you on an adventure. You can create a campaign for your game to keep track of all of the players' character sheets. (More details on this below.)
The D&D Beyond Discord and the Looking for Players & Groups section of the D&D Beyond forums are also a great place to start. You will find friendly Dungeon Masters who are willing to help new players learn how to play. The Discord and forums also offer places for you to ask rules questions and just chat with other people who love D&D!
For Dungeon Masters: How to Create a Campaign
A campaign in D&D Beyond is a central hub for players in your game. You can create one with your free account and can include details on the adventure, store campaign notes, and review characters who will be part of your game. If you have a Master-tier subscription, you can enable content sharing, which unlocks for your players any content you have purchased in the marketplace.
To create a campaign, navigate to the My Campaigns page under Collections. Then, select Create a Campaign.
Inviting Players to Your Campaign
Once your campaign is created, click on the name of your campaign on the My Campaigns page. Near the top-right of your campaign's page, you will find an automatically generated URL. Share that URL with your players so that they can join your campaign. If your players have already created characters, they can choose a character to add to your campaign. If they haven’t created characters yet, they’ll have the option to create one and have it automatically added to your campaign.
Adding Notes to Your Campaign
On your campaign’s page, you can create both public and private Dungeon Master notes. Public notes are great for sharing campaign details or images with your players. Private notes are good for planning ahead, taking notes of consequential player character actions, and keeping tabs on your game.
Next Steps on D&D Beyond
The 2024 D&D Free Rules are a great way to get started playing Dungeons & Dragons. But if you're ready to learn more about the game, there are a few great books you can pick up.
For new players, the 2024 Player's Handbook is the first sourcebook you'll want to purchase. It includes information on the core races and classes of the game, in addition to spells, equipment, and all the rules you need to level up your play.
New Dungeon Masters will similarly want to snag a copy of the Player's Handbook, in addition to the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual. The Dungeon Master's Guide contains rules and resources you can use to run your game. This includes information on magic items, building encounters, creating non-player characters, and more. The Monster Manual is a collection of creatures you can throw at your players. Your purchase of these sourcebooks on D&D Beyond unlocks the material for your account.
If you're a Dungeon Master who is looking for a good starter adventure, I recommend Intro to Stormwreck Isle, which you can access for free with your D&D Beyond account. This adventure leads into Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and is a great way to get your table familiar with the game. Dragon of Icespire Peak is available in the marketplace and is a similarly good adventure for new DMs.
D&D is a great way to spend time with friends and to meet new people. You'll traverse through endless worlds on your adventures as player characters or as the Dungeon Master. As you begin your journey into D&D, you will find a lively and kind community that is excited to share in the joy that the game offers. Welcome, and happy dice rolling!
Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
Is a subscription required to create campaigns?
Not at all. They're free.
Thanks for the answer! I will check these options out :)
Is it planned for published adventures to include pre-built encounters in future?
I apologize for possibly misunderstanding your Question, Lord Oberon. Most adventures have pre-planned adventures as they represent soft points or mooks, or minions who are shifting the story in one way or another.
For example...two Fighting camps of goblins(Rebel&Empire) who are determining the fate of the region. You and your NPC wizard companion and your new sunsword given to you by a previous adventure you were related to ALL set out on a quest where the Empire is building a wagon with a massive apocryphal trebuchet that hovers over roads so it leaves no tracks. The goblin rebels want to take it down as it is interfering with the peaceful overpriced trading they have created with the local desert region and the capital city which gets wiped out by the trebuchet.
Preplanned encounter: The Rogue who wants a cut of the profits so he is willing to get you to the Capital City. (Without him to get you past the mountains, you could freeze your butt off. Plus he can ensure for a decent upcharge..no Empire entanglements.
Preplanned Encounter: The getting into and out of the makeshift brig where the capital city governor's daughter is being held. Now that Capital city is gone, she is going to vote the Empire way at meetings about goblins.
Preplanned encounter: the sneaking around the trebuchet camp when the wizard takes off, you pass by The Oathbreaker Paladin who killed the adventurer who bequeathed you the sunsword. The Wizard makes a daring battle with the Paladin and falls dramatically
Preplanned encounter: the wagon chase as goblins on warg steeds come after you. The Goliath Artificer is going to yell at you in a language you don't understand to fix the wagon or we are toast.
Preplanned encounter: Bringing back the plans for the trebuchet (You did see the monstrous thing, didn't you) to the rebel goblins so they can launch an assault force to take it down. Appeal to the goblins to trust you.
Preplanned encounter: Assaulting the monstrosity (various chase and tail maneuvers involving wargs) (Discovery of a weak point in the structure that is just in range for a fireball from the outer edges) The moment the bard (There should always be a bard) gives you bardic inspiration and the DM gives you Inspiration and you hurl your sunsword into the weak spot of the machine, causing it to come crumbling down on top of a medium/large portion of the Empire Goblins. The Oathbreaker is blown away from the wreckage by the concussive blast and limps away to return another day.
As is clear, I liberally borrowed from Frozen II.
Is it possble for me to create the characters all on my account and add them to a campaign? I can't seem to figure out how to do that... or does each player require their own account?
If my players want to play pen and paper, and I want to use ddb campaigns, can I as the DM add the characters I'VE created to the campaign?? I really don't want to remake all of them for an individual campaign if I don't have to .. nor create logins for each of my family members.
the official answer is that you have an account for each person who wishes to view digitally.
But if you are playing a Pen-&-Paper game, just make them all on one account and print them up.
If you are looking to have everyone view, you could try to see if your account is system-dependant. I don't know about the capabilities of such things.
You can create all the characters.
a) then keep them yourself
b) add them as "unused" characters to the campaign. If you go the pre-gen route, then make a couple extras so nobody gets stuck with the "last guy left" no player wants to be the unpopular guy in gym class picked last.
c) Everyone can make their own free account (or pay) and have an account that will have 6 character slots with SRD content (which CAN be enough) and can interact with your campaign.
If you have a Master account for like 7 bucks amonth, you can share ANY/ALL/SOME/NONE of your books and character creation options.
Or you can go free and homebrew anything you need. The 7bucks a month just goes to maintenance of the servers and the shared book access with the free accounts. You can share your homebrews on a free account if you are willing to go through the work to do so.
Would I be able to get your permission to turn this article into a video format?
Don't forget the new character trinket!~
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/equipment#Trinkets
"When you make your character, you can roll once on the Trinkets table to gain a trinket, a simple item lightly touched by mystery. "
Is it new? I hadn't noticed. I probably wasn't paying attention. It seemed older to me for some reason.
I don't mean that it is a new or old practice, but that it's not in the article's character creation instructions.
This is a really helpful guide, it goes into detail on the things that need detail, good job.
Is there a way to use Books you already have physically and be able to make an accurate character? I keep trying to make a Ranger Outlander and have the 3 core books but can't get the Outlander features in D&D beyond.
You must buy the content on D&D beyond, just like any other online provider. This is due to many reasons including: there is no way to prove you actually purchased the physical copy and D&D beyond didn't get a cut of it.
You can use the site's homebrew functionality to recreate features from books you own for personal use. You are not allowed to share published content with the community using homebrew tools. That is, in effect, stealing Wizards of the Coast's intellectual property, and our mods will rightfully take down any official content published in this way.
Of course, I encourage you to purchase this content on D&D Beyond. You're not paying for the words in the book per se, but for the convenience of using this content with the D&D Beyond digital toolset. This digital toolset is something our developers work hard on to create and maintain, and the money you pay goes towards paying our developers what they're worth. Cheers!
For backgrounds, the easy solution is just to add it as a "custom" background - I don't think you even need to use the homebrew system for that, since it's literally just a matter of picking 2 skill proficiencies, 2 tool or language proficiencies, a background feature (I think you can customize the text), and for equipment you can just add the outlander's equipment to your sheet manually.
I believe account-sharing (the suggestion in your last line) is against D&D Beyond's terms of service. But yeah, if it's an in-person game, it's easy enough to make the characters and then print them out.
DnDBeyond is maybe the common way to get a first impression of the game in 2020 too for consideration. My FLGS is closed currently under executive order. So to follow up on this topic aside from the also awesome community moderation and engagement; are there plans to make a uniform license that would essentially unlock across all the partner applications-similar to a cell phone experience? In other words if I pay once for a thing (book/digital content) is there ever a way to get that unlocked on all the ways I'd want to login to that content through other mediums (physically/digitally as content providers are partnered? ) Just like if I buy an app on the Google Playstore using my Motorola phone, it doesn't mean later that I can't login or use that application later on an Asus phone. At least has been my experience. Also how DMsGuild allows you to pay for another printing to be sent based on a previous purchase so not at full price on subsequent physical orders. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally happy to be a supportive customer/consumer and I have now wound up paying for official dnd content on different platforms mostly due to ExtraLife, but I wonder if there's enough of a selling point at some point of market saturation to get a significant amount of remaining market buy-in to a buy it once concept.