For some time, now, D&D Beyond has been providing easy access to Dungeons and Dragons content, and has been running the most effective character creation tool for 5e. Combined with forums, new players’ guides, and the player-focused campaign manager, players have had the best experience using D&D Beyond.
Now, though, they’re turning their eyes to providing powerful new tools for DMs. Enter the D&D Beyond Encounter Builder, now in beta.
Image: Rory Bristol
What Does Encounter Builder Do?
The Encounter Builder is a tool which allows DMs to prepare for their encounters in advance, complete with all of the monsters’ stat blocks just a click away. DMs can save each encounter for future use, and can search their created encounters, even sorting by date created, name, or difficulty.
How Is Encounter Builder Unique?
The main thing that draws me to the Encounter Builder is the difficulty calculator. This built-in tool helps you set the difficulty class for an encounter, with your players’ levels in mind. For example, if I want to make an encounter of medium difficulty for a party of 5 level 1 characters, I select those numbers in the “Manage Characters” area, and that programs the tool to consider the correct numbers of players.
In this case, I set up an encounter with three Acolytes, and D&D Beyond tells me that this is a medium difficulty, with each of the characters earning 30 xp. If I used multiple kinds of monsters, I can toggle through them, on the left, and see the relevant stat blocks for each monster.
You can also add comprehensive descriptions to your encounter. You can include everything from notes to yourself, loot, descriptions of the monsters, or just flavor text to read out when the encounter begins. Of course, you can type up and print out all of these things, but it saves a lot of paper and ink to use the digital tool, which makes the Encounter Builder the eco-friendly option.
What Does It Replace?
The D&D Beyond Encounter Builder replaces your stack of monster books. This includes the Monster Manual, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, or even the adventure book you’re running, like Tyranny of Dragons. You can own these books on your D&D Beyond account, allowing you to sort through all of your content with a click of the mouse.
Using D&D Beyond this way means you’ll always have a quick reference to any relevant stat blocks, hovertext, and even full monster descriptions, all within your device (I use my iPad). No pile of books, no countless bookmarks, no delay when a question comes up. Just the iPad and me.
What’s the drawback?
The only downside to the Encounter Builder is that you cannot yet export the encounters you build. If your wifi goes out, you’re out of luck. But how many times have we forgotten books or lost a bookmark? It’s not more complicated than that, and once the wifi is back on, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.
