Traditionally Dungeons & Dragons involves getting together with friends, gathering around a large table, and sharing snacks and drinks. Nowadays, the space requirement for Dungeons & Dragons has had to evolve with the busy lives of its players, and there are many different resources out there for modern campaigns that might have players in different time zones. Among the most popular of which is D&D Beyond, which has a place to store character sheets, rule books, and the recent addition of an auto-dice roller. The site gives fans access to official Dungeons & Dragons content for free, but it can be complicated and sometimes hard to use.
D&D Beyond launched in 2017 and started as an online compendium that included character building and digital character sheets for D&D players. Dungeon Masters could then set up a campaign group that players could join with their characters. This gave the DM access to all players’ sheets without the tedious process of scanning and emailing every piece of paper. While this, and rule checking, was the main draw for some time, the site has continued to add new features and content. Over the course of the last couple years D&D Beyond has added the Encounter Builder, Combat Tracker, and the My Dice feature that allows players to perform a dice roll at the click of a button.
Of course, every campaign has its own needs, and some DMs will find D&D Beyond a bit restraining, as most subclasses and optional class features are behind a paywall, and some features just do not work. While the site’s interface is fairly straightforward, if the user wants to use all the default settings for their character as soon as more customization is introduced, it can become complicated. Fans of Dungeons & Dragons that have already sunk money into physical copies of the source material may be disappointed to learn that if they wish to use D&D Beyond to its full extent, they will have to invest in digital copies of the sourcebooks as well.
D&D Beyond Still Has Bugs That Need Fixing
One of the more recent releases in the Dungeons & Dragons universe is Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, which brought with it tons of new content for players to explore. Since it’s inclusion to the meta, many players have encountered issues using the new content. For example, a new subclass for sorcerer should allow the player to swap their sorcerer spells out for other class’s spells, but D&D Beyond does not yet allow for this. It seems the developers are well aware of all the issues that came with this new sourcebook, and even have a dedicated forum for support, so hopefully they will all be fixed soon.
Overall, D&D Beyond is incredibly useful once the user learns the ins and outs, and it can even make combat more streamlined than in person. The Encounter Builder alone outshines traditional play, with the ability to select monsters and receive a difficulty rating from the Encounter Builder based on the characters that have joined in that campaign. For fans that don’t enjoy doing math, the Dice Roller auto-adds any needed bonuses, and keeps a record of the last 3 dice rolls. Even avid fans of traditional Dungeons & Dragons will have a hard time passing up this efficient substitute.
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