D&D Beyond Encounter Builder Tutorial

Check out this tutorial for the D&D Beyond Character Builder tool!
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#dnd #dndbeyond #tutorial

[@GammaRaz]

Omg you’re like the only person on here talking about this… bless you child

[@annerichmond]

Yahtzee! So glad I could help.

[@GeneralSic66]

Big Ups to you young lady! Out of all possible explanatory videos, I chose yours, and was NOT disappointed. Tried following D&D's official walkthrough, but, as usual, it was convoluted with unnecessary talking.

[@annerichmond]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@davidneuschulz3464]

On topic: Very useful and informative -- exactly what I was hoping for when I Googled; and you did not disappoint. Off topic: You're production values (audio/video/editing) and clearly annunciated yet replete with personality delivery is so pro... I am left speechless. Completely beyond what I expected to find when I Googled. Very pleasant surprise.

[@annerichmond]

Thanks so much David! That means a lot

[@KraneJams]

Thank you so much !! I'm a new dungeon master and trying it out with my friends and when I saw the 50 minute video dndbeyond posted as a tutorial I was so confused and upset but thank you for this quick and informative video!! 😭😭

[@ShayBowskill]

Thank you so much! All the other tutorials when you search how to build encounters are like "mAkE sUrE yOu HaVe NaRrAtIvE sTaKeS" and I'm like I KNOW. HOW DO I ACTUALLY MAKE THE ENCOUNTER!?

[@ericwarner2475]

This has never made sense to me. Thank you so much Anne!

[@fredreichkarr1854]

This was super helpful. thank you very much. When you said asshat druid ... i laughed way to hard. Keep up the great work, and i hope you have a splendid week.

[@annerichmond]

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I am that druid... In all things.

[@ernietoast]

This was super useful. Thank you! I’ve been a DM for a little bit but this week will be my first time using DnD Beyond and it’s awesome how easy it makes some of the work for the DM :)

[@annerichmond]

It is so freakin' great - I cannot even tell you. Go forth - AND SLAY!

[@duhg599]

This tutorial was straightforward, clear, and helpful. Thank you! I wish D&D Beyond’s own tutorials and explanations were this good.

[@annerichmond]

Always here to help!

[@ThundarrTheBarbarian1]

Great video. Needed this as I am a new GM lesrning how to use beyond. We have started our own podcast and I am running our one shots. Thank you!

[@annerichmond]

I am so glad! I love this tool and I hope it serves you well

[@heavybeats2732]

Thank you so much!!! O have a game tonight and i was panicking cause its my very first time playing and being Dm so this was extremely helpful

[@annerichmond]

Ah I’m so glad! Let me know how it goes!

[@magickwalker]

Super helpful. I knew this feature existed, but little else about it; being able to create encounters for a specific campaign is really good to know. Thank you! I'm DMing for the first time in over twenty years and this is taking a lot of anxiety out of it.

[@annerichmond]

I’m so glad!

[@lepusmalignis1628]

This was useful. I'd created a couple of encounters already, but wasn't sure how to use the system to actually play. On an unrelated note, the circle light reflecting in your glasses was swooping around as you moved your head. Had to rewind a couple of times when I got distracted. :)

[@annerichmond]

Yeah this was a problem I learned to solve shortly after so I hope you’ll find the quality improved

[@limecrete5206]

This was extremely helpful. Thank you so much!

[@annerichmond]

I'm so glad! Thanks for tuning in. :)

[@RonClaypool]

This is insanely useful! Thanks!

[@ClydapusGotwald]

Omg I needed this. Thank you so much for explaining it so well!

[@annerichmond]

You're so welcome!

[@craftyasonline]

So glad our mutual tagged me. Wonderful tutorial! (I love the Encounter Builder.) Thank you!

[@annerichmond]

I’m so glad you enjoyed it!

[@danhallback]

This helped a ton! Thanks!

[@annerichmond]

Glad to be of assistance!

[@trooks40]

Love your cool looking PC! Thanks for the tutorial. I like to use the encounter tool outside of the game to gauge difficulty. But I think it’s a waste of time to roll and track init for every combat. So, I determine init for party members at the beginning of the session and stick with it for all encounters (monsters always go after the party unless an ambush occurred).

[@annerichmond]

Oh man as someone who sucks at rolling initiative (or atleast rolls character where that's not a key skill) that would drive me crazy - but it's definitely a cool way to cut down on time. I find who acts first in combat has a lot of key abilities to execute or stop the execution of various plans so I will probably stick with the auto rolling for the combat via D&D Beyond.

[@aperson9556]

I was confused, I watched, I became unconfused. Thanks!

[@annerichmond]

Hooray!

[@lukesz8459]

Great vid. Keep em coming!

[@annerichmond]

Thanks! Will do friend!

[@non-playercharacterradio5989]

Great info! We desperately need more tutorials like this. Its a really cool app but not as intuitive as I would like. Case and point, I believe they took out the rolling feature for monster actions. I didn't even know rolling for those were an option till I saw this vid.

[@annerichmond]

It's important to remember that it's still in Beta - which I should have mentioned in the video. So things are always in flux. I remember when the original character builder felt really useless - and now look at it!

[@uzvisheni]

OMG is that Jester and Liam in the corner!

[@annerichmond]

Yes it is! Try hard refreshing. The Encounter Builder is in beta so sometimes things fall apart as they push updates. I noticed that happen to me in my game Sunday.

[@uzvisheni]

@@annerichmond I figured it out, I had to subscribe xD Tnx for the video, it really helped.

[@craigchaotic]

Informative, thank you

[@annerichmond]

Glad it was helpful!

[@charlesschneider7769]

This explains the layout very well thank you! My question is why are the player's health greyed out? Why can't I select in the encounter if they are taking damage or being healed?

[@annerichmond]

It should draw that info from their character sheets - or at least that's what I had goin' on this weekend.

[@charlesschneider7769]

@@annerichmond oh! That makes a lot more sense, thank you very much!

[@admiral_Bard]

Thanks this realy helped me out, now to shove 2 weeks of prep into less than an hour lol, help

[@annerichmond]

You got this!

[@NorthTexasEagle1989]

Love it

[@mauangriff]

I saw a glimpse of "The Night of 1000 Hours" on your campaigns (at 1:31). I've been wanting to run this adventure for a really long time, but haven't had much luck finding written material about it online. Do you perhaps happen to have something to share, please? Thank you! Cheers!

[@annerichmond]

Oh man - I had to create it from scratch from listening to conversations with Jerry and then how he ran it at PAX Unplugged.

[@mauangriff]

@@annerichmond I thought about doing exactly that as well 😛. I guess that would be the best course of action for now, at least until some official material is issued at some point in time, hopefully (fingers crossed!) Thank you very much for your response!

[@AustinsEdits]

Why Is there no one else talking about this feature? This is amazing for DMs

[@annerichmond]

I seriously don’t get why more folks don’t cover it.

[@danielmcdougall6662]

Really useful thnx

[@annerichmond]

Glad I could help!

[@dimofamo]

Thanks for this! Being new to DDB, can you or anyone else point out a tutorial showing how this reflects onto players screens? Are dice rolls and turn order shared with anyone participating to a given campaign?

[@annerichmond]

It doesn’t share turn order (yet - though who knows what’s in the future). Player rolls are typically shared if everyone is in the same campaign on DnDB.

[@Phlegethos]

Hi, thanks for the video! I saw that you can roll the dice of the monsters in order to attack from their same stats sheets, but I don't have that option. In monsters of the basic rules like for example zombie ogre, it does not give me the option to roll to the monster to attack, you know why?

[@annerichmond]

If you download the Beyond20 Chrome extension, it will give you that option.

[@Xammox]

I also experienced the same issue. Not sure why they do not integrate this into the system and why we have to download an additional app...

[@MertBert]

One wish I have is to be able to adjust the difficulty PR MONSTER so if the baseline for Harpy is 1, I'd like to add lets say two "1/4" harpies and one "1" harpy

[@utopia2112]

Seems like this is especially useful for tabletop play and less so with VTTs. I'm already dealing with two to four screens. Thoughts?

[@annerichmond]

Depends on how much you use D&D Beyond with your VTT I suppose. But if you're looking at organizing combat order in say, Roll20, if you have the Beyond20 extension installed, it ports your combat order into the initiative tracker there. But I totally get hating having a million windows. It's totally "a thing."

[@darthdrow5120]

Great vid. I use Encounter Builder but the learning curve was high. This helps a lot. My only question (as I haven’t found a definitive answer) is if I buy the Compendium Content version of a book, can I use the monsters in Encounter Builder? Or do I have to purchase the full book?

[@annerichmond]

I honestly am not sure, but I think as long as you have access through the compendium it should work. That might be a question for D&D Beyond on Twitter!

[@cts2922]

Just liked and subscribed it was so helpful! Question though - It does not appear to pull over my player characters sheets and stats only the monsters…Looks like it did it in your video to where the character sheets are showing 0/0 HP for example. Is this just the way it is and you can only really run/use the monster sheets?

[@annerichmond]

The product is in beta so improvements come every so often. Just noticed it pulled my player's HP over on Sunday! Before that, I was only using the monster sheets.

[@ericwarner7254]

Well explained! Do you use experience points advancement or tiered advancement or both? I was finding I was including combat encounters just for XP so I have moved toward tiered.

[@annerichmond]

I prefer milestone. I haaaate tracking fiddly stuff. It's just not why I'm here. I'm here for moments and stories. :)

[@ericwarner7254]

@@annerichmond I guess milestone is the better way to describe it? Well said, who needs all that math stuff? Unfortunately when I got back to D&D and DMed for the first time I did realize milestone was even an option....then I was like...whoops!

[@ericwarner7254]

I have been enjoying your videos as I work from home. Keep up the good work and hopefully its warm where you are.

[@annerichmond]

@@ericwarner7254Aw I'm so glad! Thanks so much for watching :) I'm currently cooking up a concept for THIS WEEK'S video ::anxious eyeball tweaking.::

[@ericwarner7254]

@@annerichmond I will look forward!

[@yup7727]

is there anything about the creature's condition?

[@annerichmond]

I still mark conditions in my vtt. It would be a nice addition tho!

[@sonic76373]

Quick question, so I just added the Chrome Extention for Beyond 20 and I mainly just wanted it, so I could roll monsters Atts, HP, Etc. from their actual stat sheets during combat that part works just fine. However, I was wondering if there was any way you could turn off the pop-up window that shows up when you roll it should up in your video at about 5:48 just so you know what I'm talking about. I would rather just use the D&D beyond results instead of having the pop-up window show up. It's not the biggest problem in the world, but if there is a way to turn it off I would like to.

[@annerichmond]

I am not sure how to turn it off, honestly - but I would have a look at your dice rolling settings on D&D Beyond itself. My pop up window only comes up if I don't also have a virtual tabletop window open through Roll20 or Foundry with a game running in it.

[@sonic76373]

@@annerichmond interesting I'll take a look into it thank you for responding!

[@EliasElliot]

Very Helpful! One question: is there a way to add Friendly NPCs?

[@annerichmond]

I do manual add - but there isn’t a way to add them for balance beyond that.

[@EliasElliot]

@@annerichmond ok, Thank you!

[@tomkuphal1902]

Thanks for putting this together! Perhaps I missed it, but is it possible to get my own characters I created in DnD Beyond into the builder? It seems like I can only get random presets.

[@annerichmond]

Add them to a campaign - and and then select the campaign from the manage characters menu. Have fun!

[@CaberUp]

Is there a way to link magical items and monsters into the summary text box?

[@annerichmond]

I don't think there's a way to link magical items - but you should be able to click on the name of the creature in the summary box to open the monster's full page on DnDBeyond. Hope that helps.

[@Keoncx]

How do I end it, and is there a way to automatically give the XP?

[@Fayethefaevods]

hi sorry but I don't see the start encounter button on my encounter

[@dakota7134]

I don't have access to having the monster roll their dies with the monster page for some reason :/ how can i enable the feature? I have the digital dices enabled alreadh

[@annerichmond]

If you check the other comments, we already got to the bottom of this. Long story short, you have to have the beyond20 extension installed. :)

[@dakota7134]

@@annerichmond thank youuuu

[@araysspot778]

how do you end the combat when all the enemies die

[@annerichmond]

There’s no end. You just stop using the page. If you need to use the encounter again later you should be able to do that on the run encounter page I believe.

[@eekbal2018]

I'm not sure why but everytime I click save encounter, I don't see the "RUN ENCOUNTER" option to click. Am I doing something wrong?

[@annerichmond]

Have you tried looking at your list of encounters to see if you can open it from there?

[@eekbal2018]

@@annerichmond No :(, do I have to be subscribed to D&D beyond?

[@annerichmond]

@@eekbal2018 You might have to be - but I have no idea. That might be a good question for them via twitter!

[@eekbal2018]

@@annerichmond yeahhh, I checked further and found out I have to be. So yeah but thx a lot though! :)

[@zephy-bj5lh]

the run encounter button won't show up for me, any idea why?

[@annerichmond]

Have you saved the encounter and opened it?

[@zephy-bj5lh]

@@annerichmond yeah i have but it just won't show up for some reason

[@genterdustin]

Questions. Do you have to own the monster manual to be able to roll off the monster stat block

[@annerichmond]

I believe that you need the book with the monster in it to have them show up in your content in the encounter builder - but I have every book so that’s hard to test.

[@genterdustin]

@@annerichmond Thx for the reply i want to get all the books . But im buying them one at a time .i only have the players handbook and dmg . I play with my kids . And im trying to do it in a way that they can learn it easyer .

[@annerichmond]

@@genterdustin Totally makes sense. It took me a while to build the collection. Playing with your kids is awesome. I actually have DM'd my dad from time to time and I use D&D Beyond to make it easier for him because he's a grouchy noob. :P

[@genterdustin]

@@annerichmond that's awesome you play with your dad. Mine is not interested in dnd. Its not that he doesn't like dnd its he doesn't want to learn a new thing. Old dog new trick kind of thing. I was wondering if you know of any dnd beyond tutorials that are not 2+years old when the feature they are talking about just came out. I would love some tutorials on tips and tricks on dnd beyond that make it easyer. Alot has change in 2 year on dnd beyond and i watch some vids and the site doesn't even look the same. If you could help me out i would be very happy and thankful and if you can't its no problem🙂

[@annerichmond]

@@genterdustin That’s very true. I made a dnd beyond character creator tutorial on my channel. I haven’t made any other tutorials for the platform yet.

[@Adrock_U]

Is there a way to add your players into an encounter if they are not using D&D beyond? Thanks!

[@annerichmond]

You can say “manage characters” and add a character of a particular level. Or when you get ready to launch the encounter you can manually add them.

[@theprinterdude9687]

How can my players interact with the encounter with their charackters?

[@annerichmond]

This is not a VTT with a map, but if you connect your campaign to the encounter, it will show you any rolls they make directly on the encounter builder and it will add their initiatives and track their HP.

[@theprinterdude9687]

@@annerichmond but my campaign is on dnd beyond free version

[@annerichmond]

@@theprinterdude9687 Gotchya, well this might only be a paid feature. I'm not sure, I don't work for them. Just a hobbyist like you sharing some cool stuff.

[@xerosilvrmun]

I wish it was more interactive

[@GelatinousGesticulation]

Any word on when the encounter builder features are going to be added to mobile? Or is it already there and I'm just missing it? lol

[@annerichmond]

No idea! I don’t work for them heh

[@GelatinousGesticulation]

@@annerichmond Darn, I wish it on the app that'd be great!

[@voldlifilm]

This is very helpful, but how can I end the encounter? Reducing all monsters to 0 health doesn't do the trick.

[@annerichmond]

Just back out of the page? There's no "end encounter" button. What would the purpose of that be, out of curiosity?

[@voldlifilm]

@@annerichmond Mainly to display XP gains, and log of all the rolls. And when I back out of the page now the encounter stays open, telling me I can continue it. It feels a bit loosy-goosy to me. I would prefer if it closed the encounter at the end. I wished there was an end-screen that distributed the XP and the like, like in old final fantasy games. Maybe I'm lazy, but I was so sure there had to be a button like that somewhere. What I'm saying in way too many words is that I'd like a summary screen.

[@annerichmond]

@@voldlifilm That makes sense. I believe that information can be found in the encounter creation page.

[@voldlifilm]

@@annerichmond That's true, I can find it easily now but starting out I found it more cumbersome than I would have preferred. But I really love what they are doing with the site, and I am very happy I found it. And I'm happy people like you are making videos like this as well. By and large, I'm mostly happy as a clam. Sidenote, are clams happy? How do we know this?

[@jamesg.675]

Love your video, but do not have the Innitiative Tracker (Free user). Encounter builder is not very useful without the Intiative Tracker.

[@annerichmond]

I actually did not realize that the Combat Tracker was a separate feature that required a subscription to the application. You taught me something new! I do feel like I would still use the encounter builder to check balance on things and to sort monsters for appropriate encounters.

[@thankyouforthevenom459]

My only question is how did they know I was a bard???

[@annerichmond]

MAGIC and a high insight score. :)

[@biggusbeardus]

A little constructive criticism: Your ring light is reflecting off your glasses pretty bad. Your eyes are surrounded by little glowing circles and one moves all around your glasses as you move your head. It is REALLY distracting. I suggest a regular photo light with a softbox that will create a less focused light and give you a nice even soft light that should reflect less in your glasses. Great video. Thanks for the tips. I've been curious about the Encounter Builder, but I haven't fooled around with it. Now I will :)

[@annerichmond]

Super helpful! I've fixed this since I filmed this I believe but it was the bane fo my existence.

[@OLYMPICHELLO]

Q1. How to add hp to pc in encounter builder & combat tracker: m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1851389451688903&id=100004535987480

[@SaintUgfuglio]

Hey. Probably not the place for this question, but are you guys still doing The Lost Mountain Saga?

[@annerichmond]

Hey! I don't know how I missed this - yes! We should have more episodes out by the end of January! We're already back to recording.

[@SaintUgfuglio]

That's the best news I've heard all week! Lol. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been jonesing.

[@annerichmond]

@@SaintUgfuglio It’s gonna get WEIRDER. I’m scared.

[@SaintUgfuglio]

@@annerichmond You should be! After poor, sweet Franzibald. Aaaagh. I had to rewind that scene like 3 times cause I couldn't believe it. Will all the new episodes be in present time? Like in the game world. Lol. Not 2021.

[@annerichmond]

@@SaintUgfuglio You'll have to wait and see!!!

[@arkhamcreed4326]

Uh....yeah; no. There is no run encounter button.

[@annerichmond]

They might have been pushing an update at the time. This is in Beta so sometimes you'll run into that.