D&D Beyond Reader Reviews

I downloaded DDBeyondReader because of the partnership with Critical Roll, but I don’t really find DDBeyondReader to be as useful as they claimed to be. First you have to sign in through twitch which I find really annoying as I have no reason to use a twitch account. It is not needed for a service like this. You can’t actually view any of the information with out first either downloading the free books onto your device, which eats up available storage space, or purchasing the required books which are largely over priced for an electronic copy. Not to mention there are places online and apps that allows you to view the information for free. A feature I was hoping to see, as it was used in the Critical Roll campaign, was creating character sheets. That’s not even in DDBeyondReader ! How can you make a DnD app like this and not even provide a space for character creation? Overall I was largely disappointed.

The only redeeming quality I found for DDBeyondReader was that the ebooks are at least a little discounted, albeit still over priced. If you’re willing to spend the money then I am sure you’d get more use out of DDBeyondReader though.

This has been a life saver when I need to check rules, spells, or search for content. Great stuff.
Three things would make DDBeyondReader better:

1. Speedier-feeling search
It just feels a little clunky sometimes. The relevancy ranking could be improved, and it could be faster, or at least feel faster. We’re used to a Google-style search, and when it’s all local it seems like it could be a better algorithm or display its results in a way that makes it feel faster.

2. Reordering of content
When I view my compendium I’m there to read, not shop, 98% of the time. So put the stuff I’ve bought at the top where I can rearrange it, create a lined divider below it, and then display whatever you think I’d most like to buy below that. Feature new stuff.

3. Better descriptions so I buy your stuff
I don’t know what most of the content you’re selling is unless I leave DDBeyondReader and search your website. Tell me all about it, Tex. More than a sentence, please. Heck, imbed a video with an impassioned nerd telling me about how THIS campaign has Laser Bearsharks with complex politics. I’ll probably buy it now. Because I know what it is.

Anyway, good job getting your books on my iPad. Improve it and sell me more stuff, please.

The actual layout if DDBeyondReader is great! It’s functional and makes finding content very easy and snappy. I do wish there was a way to create characters on the mobile app.

The problems I’ve experienced are with the Customer Service department. I purchased a sourcebook from D&D Beyond through DDBeyondReader and was billed for it. However, The content was never made available to me. When I reached out to the customer support team (which was on a Sunday after business hours) it took them two days, which was understandable, to reply. They asked me what kind of OS I had used to purchase the content. I told them and offered to send them a copy of my app store receipt for proof of purchase. It’s been a full two days and I’ve yet to hear anything or receive any feedback. I’d like to know what my next course of action is since it seems like someone has gotten the ball rolling on D&D Beyonds end of things.

I love D&D Beyond. They make it easy as far as creating characters, accessing info, and keeping up with your character leveling up. That’s why I was stoked to discover they had developed an app. However, I couldn’t bring myself to give it more than three stars simply because of the disappointment about not having access to my characters in DDBeyondReader . I suppose it’s not a big deal, I can still access my characters online through my safari app and enjoy the lack of “what number do I add to this, wait is that right, how did I get that number again, what do I roll for damage, how much is this really worth” questions that use to plague me every session. It just would have been nice to have that access on an app and maybe not need the internet to use it.

I downloaded DDBeyondReader and bought the digital materials because I wanted to have a copy of the handbook to search through and keep a digital character sheet for my games. Well, offline access is awful, and you’ll frequently be forced to connect online and log back in, thus defeating the whole point of offline access. DDBeyondReader is very buggy, and downloads take very long. Often DDBeyondReader will freeze on the loading screen, probably while checking if you are logged in. Even once you do get access to DDBeyondReader , the materials are very slow to load, search, scroll through, or use. The physical copies of the books are better in this case, mostly because DDBeyondReader is so bad. Save your money and do not buy the digital materials on D&D Beyond, and don’t use DDBeyondReader.

A nice start: app for official content purchases and reading w/ a few other facets like quick content access (spells, feats, etc). Runs stable, quite useful, but painfully missing expected features and functionality.

The main missing features are character sheets and encounter/campaign management. These are limited to the website alone. On a phone browser I find using them clunky and jarring for navigating via the hamburger like menu along w/ the site header menus always eating up screen real estate.

This is what mobile apps are for! To give an optimized experience to the user outside of a browser based system. Please, PLEASE add these two items to the mobile app.

Overall I enjoy DDBeyondReader very much. It allows me to run no prep sessions faster than with my physical modules. An issue I had (which I kept below)was fixed, so I am now rating DDBeyondReader 5 stars. Great work App team!

Issue that was fixed when I rated DDBeyondReader 3 stars.

(There is a frustrating bug when viewing monsters or magic items. I’m able to view one or two different monsters or items, after that everything else I try to view is blank, I have to close and re open DDBeyondReader to make it work again. If that gets fixed I’ll rate DDBeyondReader 5 stars.)

I downloaded DDBeyondReader and it has been really helpful for the most part, but it is buggy and just not up to date. I see duplicates of features and abilities and get confused because I realize that I am rereading the same sentence I literally just read one paragraph before. No Artificer or anything new to that extent on DDBeyondReader which is extremely disappointing if you play that class. Also I purchased the Changeling info on the website and it is the only purchase that no matter what DDBeyondReader doesnt think Ive bought it and wont download. Overall helpful, but looootttss of little and fixable problems need to be seen to.

Finding spells, looking up monster stats, doble checking that one ability your PC’s keep saying one shots a black dragon... D&D Beyond is good at what it does, and that is providing information, and an easy way to access it. I love how easy it is to use DDBeyondReader, navigate the different books, and if you’re lost, just click that table of contents and you’re back to the cover. But we NEED character sheets. It’s just a pain having to close DDBeyondReader , go online, and then go back into DDBeyondReader cause you forgot wha your plus to hit was...
Good job to the devs, but character sheets would be like getting a deck of many things and drawing a Jester!

The DND Beyond character creator is fantastic, and one of the best things about having an account. Also access to the digital copies of the books is great too.

Sadly, the character creator is restricted to only the website, and isn’t available in DDBeyondReader . What’s odd is that there are tools on the website for tracking spells, inventory, hit points, conditions, etc. But this isn’t available for DDBeyondReader . Why should every player have to bring a laptop to access these things, or use the less than optimal web browser on their phone instead of just having it in DDBeyondReader ? Baffling, really.

DDBeyondReader crashes constantly. Just tried to look up “Red Dragon” in the monster section and it showed me one dragon, I clicked the icon, opened up a description, then went to click the next one, and blank screen.

Restarted app (which resets my filters) and same issue.

This happens for all aspect of DDBeyondReader . It is extremely frustrating, especially after spending a significant amount of money on the Player’s Handbook, only for it to not work.

DDBeyondReader has a huge potential to be an amazing tool, but it simply crashes constantly.

I love this game but this is down right disrespectful. Wizards has plenty of money to hire well trained programmers to fix these issues, but they don’t care.

They took my money and gave me a product that doesn’t work.

That’s called false advertising, and I know it’s not just me because as of this writing DDBeyondReader ’s rating is 2.7.

I would not recommend DDBeyondReader or spending money on it.

Bookmarks with your browser of choice is easier than working with this frustrating in-complete product.

I love the game this company has built, but this is pathetic.

It’s a good app for looking up rules but I really wish you could access your character sheets from it. The mobile website is fairly buggy and when I’m playing it gets in the way. Another complaint with Beyond in general is that I own almost every companion book and really don’t want to spent hundreds of dollars to buy them again so even if I use DnD Beyond I still have to look stuff up in the books. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to implement something that allows me to prove I own the books but I know it’s not that hard to add character sheets come on guys

Semi new to dnd this has been a phenomenal resource. Having access to the books at any given time without having to carry 20 textbooks is very convenient. I hope DDBeyondReader start to add more capabilities and tools from the website. An issue I’ve been running into are the books get stuck on a page. When you press go back it takes you to the compendium instead of your current book. Then if you press the book it takes you back to the stuck page. Closing and opening DDBeyondReader doesn’t help (using iPad Pro 11 inch)

DDBeyondReader works perfectly for our D&D sessions if using my iPhone. If using my iPad I have issues where you click the triple hash at the top right It does not give you a table of contents option and you just go to listing option only and I have had to bookmark each book table of contents.

It is much nicer then lugging around 5-6 books to our game night.

For those whining yes you have to buy the digital content. Any monkey could go and scan barcodes and get free stuff. They make things with revenue in mind stop being cheap.

DDBeyondReader has, overall, been great.

Few problems:

1) page loading errors/crashes: I have in the past month or so experienced an increased frequency in having issues loading specific pages from my downloaded supplements and then either crashin or just never loading. This is especially common when trying to access specific content such as classes or monsters or spells under the menu accessed when pressing “more” in the bottom toolbar.

2) inconsistency: in my phone, I can easily access the table of contents from any of the books by tapping the ellipsis in the top right corner. On my iPad, it instead brings up a rather lacking series of pages I could choose to tap on. I really just want to be able to return to the table of contents. That’s all I want. Instead, on my tablet, I am essentially trapped in the middle of some of my books and cannot get out easily.