D&D Beyond 9+

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: buying physical copies of the books does not entitle you to all the content on DnDBeyond. I am amazed that I am still seeing that nonsense, years after they started licensing the digital content. This is a companion app for DnDBeyond and you only have access to what you have purchased through DnDBeyond. Okay? Get it? Alright, let’s move on. Yeesh.

The new app update is absolutely fantastic. The app is stable, the book downloads look great, the listing section allows to specify by spell, magic item, equipment, monsters, races, classes, backgrounds, and feats. There is also a separate search function for anything not found in listing and of course there is a bookmark option too, to keep tabs on any relevant piece of information you had been reviewing. It’s an amazing resource tool.

My one complaint comes from the character sheet side of things. It is incredibly frustrating that an offline app for D&D Beyond does not allow you to store your characters on the app. The only way I can have a character pulled up on the app is if I load it while I am online before disconnecting. Why is this an issue? I can only have one pulled up at a time, which is problematic when you are playing two characters. If I can store the entire library of D&D books on my phone, why can’t I store more than one character sheet at a time? It loses 1 star for that, in my opinion.

For a player, this is great. For a DM? Not so much. You can’t browse any homebrew content. You can’t make or view custom items or spells that you create from a desktop/laptop device. The website and mobile platform are very different in scope. You can’t view encounters either. I still give it a four in hopes that it will arrive at the desired function for a dm, and thus become a 5, but until then, it’s basically a character sheet/dice roller. The non-mobile capacity is awesome. Love what they’ve done with the DNDBeyond site; however, as a dm, there’s soooo much you’re having to look at that an app that only gives you source books, means it’s not really a solution. Let me view my campaign, or the PC’s within it (that have joined). I can’t research backstories, or plan encounters, or tweak magic items from my web-based content!

So I love the D&D beyond website for making characters for my campaigns, but since the app is still in it’s sort of early stages, there are some (but not many) problems I’ve had, more or less just tedious little things.
One thing, not currently able to edit anything on a completed character, such as their inventory, gold amount, notes, etc. The only way to do it is to click the website link to do it from there. It isn’t much of a problem, just would be easier and smoother if you didn’t have to go to load the website to edit something or add XP.
Another thing is there are a few bugs if you try to create a character on the phone sometimes. I can’t recall what I was doing exactly, but while helping a player create a character, the option they chose pretty much froze the whole process, and then closed the app. When they got back on, a little of their work was saved, but the past 5-10 minutes of work wasn’t.
Outside of those problems, I think it is a great app and is still very helpful for running campaigns so no one has to carry around the paper version! Can’t wait for the app to progress even further!