Last week, the Executive Producer of D&D Beyond, Brian Perry, posted an article entitled “D&D Beyond 2025 Wrap Up.” In this article, he stated that:

In the past, we haven’t been clear about our mission or priorities—or shown up to the table to talk with you, our players. That’s going to change.

I personally appreciate that he acknowledged this fact and is wanting to change, giving more credence to what Dan Ayoub, the Head of the Dungeons & Dragons Franchise, stated at GenCon earlier this year. Hopefully this will be a change we will see in the community that they will follow through and commit to, but only time will tell. But that said, it seems like Brian is trying to take it in the right direction by stating in the article their purpose, the year’s wrap up, and what’s been delayed to 2026, which I do appreciate. Additionally, they hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) Reddit posting where they answered many of the questions posted about D&D Beyond. Although a lot of the answers were still surface level and noncommittal, they did seem to have plans in the work for D&D Beyond and they did share in the article what they are planning to release, such as Localized SRDs for the game. So it’s been overall reassuring to me is that they are opening up this direct line of communication to the community, and hopefully this will continue, and with regularity. (They also shared plans for the official VTT, D&D Beyond Maps, as well.)

Now, I’m an avid user of D&D Beyond. I used it when I first started to get into the hobby, and I currently use it for all of the D&D games I run. I’ve been a big fan of the tool and think that it has done the best job so far compared to the other digital tools I’ve used for D&D character sheets, sources, encounters, etc. But that doesn’t mean that I think it’s a perfect tool. In fact, it’s far from it. So in the spirit of holidays and at the request of Bryan Perry, I thought I would share what’s on my D&D Beyond Wish List, in no particular order..

Encounters Tool

Overall, I really enjoy the Encounters Tool in D&D Beyond. You can bring in your monsters, look up their stats, roll initiative and turn it into an Initiative tracker, and make your rolls from the tool. But I still have a few issues with it.

First of all, the Encounters Tool is not available on the D&D Beyond app, which I constantly on my phone and tablet. Having this in the app would allow me to be able to free up my screen when I run my online games, as well as run it at my in-person games without needing to copy or print it elsewhere. Updating it so that it’s available on the app will go a long way.

Second, the 2024 Encounter builder is tied to the Maps VTT, meaning that if you do want to use it to get a feel for the level of difficulty an encounter may pose, you have to use Maps for this. I currently use Owlbear Rodeo and don’t use Maps, so having to open up a separate place to be able to use this function of the Encounters tool for 2024 monsters makes it extremely inconvenient and is a bit perplexing why they wouldn’t just make it a toggle feature in the tool itself anyways.

Third, I want to be able to rename a monster in the Encounters Tool so that way my players can see the character name in the dice log rather than the monster stat block I’m using when I do my rolls. There’s not a way to do this unless you create an homebrew monster, but that can take up a lot of time to do just to make something like this work when I could have the option to just rename a Monster.

Give PDF Versions Of D&D Beyond Materials

If you didn’t know, buying a book on D&D Beyond doesn’t make it yours to keep. Like most digital products, what you’re buying is a license to use the product on their platform for as long as they make it available, and they can take it away at any point. So buying a book on D&D Beyond is only good if you use their website or app and if it is made available to use. Don’t get me wrong, it integrates with their other tools and buying the D&D Beyond option works great for that. But if it were to ever go away, then we no longer have access to that product.

Most tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) companies provide the purchaser a PDF version of the book when someone buys the physical copy. For whatever reason, Wizards Of The Coast has not made this an option, which I would presume because they’re afraid that no one would use D&D Beyond if they did that. But given the fact that D&D Beyond is much more than accessing the digital version of the book and that it provides a lot of useful digital tools, this is something I don’t think they should be worried about.

I think providing a PDF version is a no brainer, but I think they could meet us halfway. What if Wizards of the Coast makes an agreement that says if they were to ever make a product unavailable on D&D Beyond for whatever reason, then they would provide the subscriber who bought the book a PDF copy? I think that would be a somewhat fair compromise, but of course my option A would be: just give us a damn PDF copy of the book we bought already.

Unifying The Website And App Experience

I use both the website and the D&D Beyond App and although most of it is pretty similar in how they operate, they also have very distinct and stark differences that I think becomes a hinderance at times. For example, if I go to the “Campaign” tab of the app, I can see at a glance my player characters’ Armor Class, Hit Points, Passive Perception, etc. in a single view so you don’t have to tap on each individual character to see this. But we don’t have that experience on the website itself – just listing the player characters and what you want to do with their sheet. Conversely, on the website I can add a lot more things that would be helpful on my character sheet in the “Extras” section, such as Beast Companions, Wild Shape forms, etc. but we can’t add these options in the Extras section through the app.

I would also love to see a way for us to save or export our Bookmarks that we made in the app so that if we have to get a new device or reinstall the app, we don’t lose those.

Update The User Interface

Again, as I mentioned, I think this has been the best character sheet I’ve used. I’m sure there are digital character sheets that I haven’t tried out, but I honestly love a lot that the digital character sheet has to offer. But I think there are still a lot of updates that the character sheet needs. Here’s just a list of things I would love to see in regards to the Character Sheet.

• Providing a linked description to what it means if you have Proficiency in something like Tools
• Turning off information about Unarmed Strike and Weapon Master Properties if someone is using the 2014 version of 5th Edition
• Making True Strike an attack and damage roll in the Actions section
• More granular control on sources you want to pull in for your character sheet (e.g. don’t just have Expanded Rules and that’s it – allow me to select which books I want to be able to use)
• Improve the Short Rest feature in the Character Sheet. Currently I do not receive all of the benefits back when I take a Short Rest for things I should be getting back, and it is absolutely the most frustrating thing to try to make it work to roll for healing and apply it to a character’s hit points (it’s gotten to the point where I’ve told my players to just use the normal dice roller and we’ll add it manually)

Again, I love the D&D Beyond Character Sheet and I use it constantly because it’s still my preferred choice, but I’d love it even more if these issues were addressed.

What’s On Your D&D Beyond Wish List

If you’re someone that regularly use D&D Beyond, I too want to hear from you what you think would be a great feature for them to add or update. What do you love about it? What are you currently frustrated by? What do you think is missing from it that could make it better?

I am looking forward to seeing how they plan to improve the platform and I hope it continues to grow and improve.