Technologies

Best Online D&D Tools

If you want to play D&D online, these services will help you ditch the pen and paper.

Dungeons & Dragons has been around for decades, but we’re in the middle of a D&D renaissance that’s breathing new life and new players into the world’s best-known tabletop RPG. There’s a new movie coming out in April, and Amazon studios just inked a major deal in January to bring more Critical Role adventures, such as Legend of Vox Machina, to Prime Video.

Critical Role, along with similar tabletop RPG shows like Dimension 20, have introduced more people to the game, and online video chat apps have made it easier to pull a D&D group together. There are plenty of D&D tools that allow you to play the game online, but it can be a chore to go through each one and understand what it offers, what it doesn’t and how easy it is to use.

We looked at three of the most popular online D&D services — D&D Beyond, Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds — testing each one on a variety of basics:

How easy was it to build a character sheet?
How well did the service guide new players through the process?
How effective and easy to use was the map function, if it had one?
What does the service add to the D&D experience, and what does it limit?

Each service has different strengths and drawbacks, and we looked at them through the eyes of both experienced and inexperienced players to see how they compared.

If you’re new to the game and mainly interested in trying out a tabletop RPG, D&D Beyond makes it easy to get a character sheet and campaign up and running. If you want everything you need in one place with relatively little fuss, check out Roll20. And for D&D power gamers, Fantasy Grounds allows you amazing levels of automation and control once you invest the time to learn it.

So whether your play group has scattered to different cities, or maybe it’s just easier for everyone to jump on a Zoom call once a week (or month), here are our picks for the best D&D tools to use online.

Best online D&D tools

Fandom

D&D Beyond

Best for beginners and free accounts

Likes

Extremely easy to pick up and get started
Design is simple and easy to navigate
Impressive features for free accounts

Dislikes

No interactive map feature
Limited to Dungeons & Dragons

D&D Beyond was already a popular service long before it was bought by Hasbro, which also owns D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. It’s a straightforward tool that makes creating characters fun by simplifying most of the process. For people who are new to the game, there’s no easier way to get started.

D&D Beyond’s online character creator is free, allowing you to try different character builds without having to spend a dime. Free accounts only have access to the basic rules (including races and classes), and are limited to six characters, but that should be plenty for most new players.

If you want to invest in your D&D games, you can buy digital versions of official D&D books in a few different flavors. D&D Beyond offers sourcebooks, like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, which give you new settings and character options. It also offers adventure books, like Curse of Strahd and Candlekeep Mysteries, which DMs can use to run campaigns. Both types of books are typically $30 apiece, though some smaller packages cost less.

You can also buy a subscription at either the Hero tier ($3 per month) or the Master tier ($6 per month) to unlock extra features. The Hero tier allows you to make as many character sheets as you want and also opens up access to test new D&D Beyond tools. The Master tier adds the option to share content from any of your purchased books with the rest of the players in your campaign.

A Hero tier subscription isn’t great value unless you play in a lot of D&D groups (more than six). The real value of a subscription is sharing content with the Master Tier — that $6 per month allows you to share features from sourcebooks and adventure books with your entire group, rather than requiring everyone to buy their own copy. A DM with a Master-tier subscription can spend $6 per month and share purchased content with the rest of the group even if they have free accounts.

The primary drawback of D&D Beyond is that it focuses on character sheets, not other elements of a D&D table. Most notably, it lacks meaningful map features to help your group visualize combat and exploration. If your gaming sessions focus on those elements, you’ll need to supplement with your own maps or the map tools of our other top picks. Both Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds offer useful map features.

But of the tools we tested, D&D Beyond was far and away the simplest to get started with. It walks you through each step of the process — choosing a race and class for your character, constructing your build as you level your character, and navigating the rest of the starting options. For options and systems that are a little confusing, you’ll have the ability to read through more detailed explanations in popups. If you’re trying D&D for the first time or you just want an easy way to manage your character sheet, D&D Beyond should be your first stop.

See at D&D Beyond

Roll20

Best all-in-one tool

Likes

Character sheets, maps and dice in one tool
Interactive maps that are easy to learn
Includes video chat

Dislikes

Overall design is a little messy
DMs have to give other players character sheets to fill out

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop for all your D&D gaming, we recommend Roll20 for its versatility. Roll20 offers practically everything you could ask for in a virtual D&D tool: You’ll be able to make characters and play out epic battles on an interactive map, all without even needing an external service for video or voice chat. The tradeoff is a little more time spent figuring out how features work.

Everything in Roll20 is run through its Games feature, and your DM will need to create a game for everyone to get started. The DM can then invite players to join through emailed invitations or simple copy-and-paste links. Once everyone’s in, the DM can create blank character sheets and assign those characters out to players for them to customize.

Players can create their characters using Roll20’s Charactermancer tool, which walks them step by step through the character creation process, similar to D&D Beyond. You’ll see snippets from the core rules to help explain any new or confusing features. At the end of the process, your character sheet will be set up and ready to go. You also have the option of pulling up a blank character sheet and filling it out directly, which may be appealing for more experienced players, but the Charactermancer is generally the simpler option.

The Roll20 character sheets don’t feel quite as stylish or easy to navigate as D&D Beyond’s, but Roll20 makes up for it with a variety of other features you won’t find on D&D Beyond. The biggest one is interactive maps. DMs can create maps for their campaigns, allowing your group to traverse dungeons and engage in battles more tactically. DMs can use fog of war to limit map vision to what players can actually see, and players can move tokens representing their characters around the map, just like you would at a physical table.

Like the other online D&D tools we reviewed, Roll20 has a marketplace where you can buy digital versions of sourcebooks and adventure books, which unlock new features for your character sheets and maps. The costs will generally match what you see in D&D Beyond and Fantasy Grounds, so don’t worry too much about bargain hunting. The biggest difference is that Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds also offer books from other tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, whereas D&D Beyond is strictly based on Dungeons & Dragons.

Roll20 offers free accounts and two subscription options that unlock additional features. Like D&D Beyond, you can pay $6 per month (discounted to $50 annually if you pay upfront) to share purchased content with other players in their game. That subscription also unlocks features like dynamic lighting and the ability to transfer characters between games. For $10 per month ($100 annually if you pay upfront), you can also copy other materials between games, unlock additional customization options and get a monthly reward.

Roll20 is a good middle ground between the other tools we tested. It’s not quite as slick as D&D Beyond, but it offers more features like interactive maps, and it works with other game systems. It’s not quite as robust as Fantasy Grounds, but it’s generally easier to pick up and use. If you want a tool that lets you run a whole tabletop RPG virtually, and you’re less interested in learning how to customize or automate your gameplay, try Roll20.

See at Roll20

SmiteWorks

Fantasy Grounds

Best for ultimate control and automation

Likes

Takes care of rules so you can focus on play
Enables homebrew content
One-time purchase option

Dislikes

Steep learning curve just to get started
Less beginner-friendly than other services

Fantasy Grounds is a powerful but complex tool that requires a lot of work upfront to be able to get the most out of the service. It allows the most customization of the tools we reviewed, but it also took the longest to get started. If you want a tool that’s easy to pick up and get started with, you’re better off with D&D Beyond or Roll20, but if you want ultimate control over your session and want something that will handle most of the rules for you, Fantasy Grounds is the most complete option we tested.

Before we get into the good parts of Fantasy Grounds, it’s important to understand the barrier to entry. Fantasy Grounds is not intuitive or beginner-friendly. It does offer video guides to help you get started, but you’ll need to spend about an hour just watching those to get a handle on the barest basics. Even after watching the tutorial, it was sometimes a struggle to operate the system’s mechanics. It also seems designed for a desktop setup — we had a hard time navigating the very small menu options on a laptop trackpad, which wasn’t a problem with the other services. Even with guides, Fantasy Grounds was sometimes frustrating to learn how to use.

The flip side of that coin is that Fantasy Grounds is astoundingly robust. It knows that some D&D players want to control every detail of their sessions. Just like the other tools we reviewed, Fantasy Grounds lets you build a digital character sheet. And like Roll20, it lets you use digital maps for combat and exploration. But Fantasy Grounds gives you the tools to customize your entire campaign in more ways than the other tools we tested.

Perhaps more importantly, Fantasy Grounds understands the rules of a system and will automatically apply them. If a player clicks an enemy on the map and chooses the weapon they want to attack with, Fantasy Grounds will roll a d20, add the appropriate attack roll modifier, then compare that to the enemy’s armor class and tell you whether the attack hits or misses. Other online D&D tools will do individual pieces of that (like adding the appropriate modifier to your attack roll), but won’t compare that to the enemy’s AC and translate it into a hit or miss. Once you’re up and running, Fantasy Grounds allows your play group to spend less time doing math or looking up rules and more time just playing the game.

Fantasy Grounds uses similar subscription pricing to the other services. Players can create free accounts with limited functionality. Or you can pay $4 per month for a standard subscription that lets you play with other people who have a Fantasy Grounds subscription. You also have the option of an ultimate subscription for $10 per month, which allows you to host a campaign for players on free accounts and share content with them. That makes it a little more expensive than other services for DMs who want to share content with players on free accounts. Uniquely, Fantasy Grounds also offers one-time payment options: $39 for a standard license and $149 for an ultimate license. Players on standard or ultimate subscriptions or licenses will be able to purchase sourcebooks for their campaigns, and just like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds allows you to play multiple tabletop RPG systems in addition to D&D.

Fantasy Grounds is best suited for detail-oriented dungeon masters who want to be able to fine-tune every aspect of their campaign and their players’ experience. If you like to create your own campaign (aka «homebrew») or let your players run customized classes, you’ll have an easier time doing that in Fantasy Grounds than Roll20. D&D Beyond is also pretty capable with homebrew content, but again, it doesn’t offer a maps feature.

See at Fantasy Grounds

Online D&D FAQs

What do I need to play D&D online?

You can play Dungeons & Dragons online without investing in tools or game services. All you really need are a group of people to play with, an internet connection and a copy of the basic rules, which are available for free from Wizards of the Coast. Those three things are enough for you to run a basic session. The appeal of online D&D tools is the way they help you organize and automate the game. For example, D&D Beyond’s character sheets will automatically tally your proficiency bonus, your ability modifiers and your items’ stats and will calculate everything for you whenever you need to roll for something. Without those tools, you have to manually keep track of bonuses and add them to the appropriate rolls. D&D Beyond lets you sign up for a free account and start making character sheets if you want to try out the game without investing money into it. Roll20 and Fantasy grounds also offer free accounts, but it’s not as easy to start making characters with those accounts.

What are the best D&D map makers?

There are dozens of online tools to help you build a map for your Dungeons & Dragons campaign. However, of the services we tested, only Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds feature interactive maps. Both allow you to use maps from official Dungeons & Dragons adventures or make your own custom maps. You’ll be able to place player characters and enemies across the map to let your players visualize exploration and combat. Roll20’s map system was easier to use, but Fantasy Grounds had more features.

Which D&D service is best?

We tested three Dungeons & Dragons tools and found that each one had its own particular strengths and drawbacks. Roll20 might be the best option if you want a single solution for all your online RPG adventures. D&D Beyond has excellent digital character sheets and resources for beginners. Fantasy Grounds is the most powerful tool overall, but requires substantially more time to learn and set up than the other two. You can also mix and match — making character sheets in D&D Beyond, but using Roll20 for any combat encounters, for example. We recommend creating free accounts with different services to find out what you like or dislike and choose what works best for you.

Technologies

CNET Daily Tariff Price Tracker: I’m Watching 11 Key Products for Changes, Here’s What’s Happened

The deadline for the start of Trump’s heaviest tariffs has been delayed until next month, leaving consumers stuck with more uncertainty over prices.

For the last three months, tariffs have been a hot topic, leaving consumers and businesses alike worried: Will they hike prices and by how much? It’s a question more relevant than ever this week, as President Trump punts another major deadline down the road and price-slashing Amazon’s Prime Day sales wind down as the week ends.

Amid those worries, I’ve been tracking prices every day for 11 key products likely to be hit by tariff-induced price increases, and the answer I’ve come to so far is this: Not so much, at least not yet. The winding road of tariff inflation still stretches before us into an uncertain future, so the threat of price hikes continues to cloud the horizon.

To date, I’ve seen two noteworthy price increases, one for the Xbox Series X and the other for a popular budget-friendly 4K TV. Some other products — including Apple’s popular AirPods and printer ink — have gone on sale for brief periods.

CNET Tariff Tracker Index

Above, you can check out a chart with the average price of the 11 products included in this piece over the course of 2025. This will help give you a sense of the overall price changes and fluctuations going on. Further down, you’ll be able to check out charts for each individual product being tracked.

We’ll be updating this article regularly as prices change. It’s all in the name of helping you make sense of things, so be sure to check back every so often. For more, check out CNET’s guide to whether you should wait to make big purchases or buy them now and get expert tips about how to prepare for a recession.

Methodology

We’re checking prices daily and will update the article and the relevant charts right away to reflect any changes. The following charts show a single bullet point for each month, with the most recent one labeled «Now» and showing the current price. For the past months, we’ve gone with what was the most common price for each item in the given month.

In most cases, the price stats used in these graphs were pulled from Amazon using the historical price-tracker tool Keepa. For the iPhones, the prices come from Apple’s official materials and are based on the 128-gigabyte base model of the latest offering of the iPhone 16. For the Xbox Series X, the prices were sourced from Best Buy using the tool PriceTracker. If any of these products happen to be on sale at a given time, we’ll be sure to let you know and explain how those price drops differ from longer-term pricing trends that tariffs can cause.

The 11 products we’re tracking

Mostly what we’re tracking in this article are electronic devices and digital items that CNET covers in depth, like iPhones and affordable 4K TVs — along with a typical bag of coffee, a more humble product that isn’t produced in the US to any significant degree.

The products featured were chosen for a few reasons: Some of them are popular and/or affordable representatives for major consumer tech categories, like smartphones, TVs and game consoles. Others are meant to represent things that consumers might buy more frequently, like printer ink or coffee beans. Some products were chosen over others because they are likely more susceptible to tariffs. Some of these products have been reviewed by CNET or have been featured in some of our best lists.

iPhone 16, 128GB
Duracell AA batteries, 24-pack
Samsung DU7200 65-inch TV
Xbox Series X
Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C case
HP 962 CMY Printer Ink
Anker 10,000-mAh, 30-watt power bank
Bose TV speaker
Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook, 256GB
Starbucks 28-ounce ground dark roast coffee

Below, we’ll get into more about each individual product, and stick around till the end for a rundown of some other products worth noting.

iPhone 16

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone brand in the US, so this was a clear priority for price tracking. The iPhone has also emerged as a major focal point for conversations about tariffs, given its popularity and its susceptibility to import taxes because of its overseas production, largely in China. Trump has reportedly been fixated on the idea that the iPhone can and should be manufactured in the US, an idea that experts have dismissed as a fantasy. Estimates have also suggested that a US-made iPhone would cost as much as $3,500.

Something to note about this graph: The price listed is the one you’ll see if you buy your phone through a major carrier. If you, say, buy direct from Apple or Best Buy without a carrier involved, you’ll be charged an extra $30, so in some places, you might see the list price of the standard iPhone 16 listed as $830.

Apple’s been taking a few steps to protect its prices in the face of these tariffs, flying in bulk shipments of product before they took effect and planning to move production for the US market from China to India. A new Reuters report found that a staggering 97% of iPhones imported from the latter country, March through May, were bound for the US. This latter move drew the anger of Trump again, threatening the company with a 25% tariff if they didn’t move production to the US, an idea CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly shot down in the past. This came after Trump gave a tariff exemption to electronic devices including smartphones, so the future of that move seems in doubt now.

Duracell AA batteries

A lot of the tech products in your home might boast a rechargeable energy source but individual batteries are still an everyday essential and I can tell you from experience that as soon as you forget about them, you’ll be needing to restock. The Duracell AAs we’re tracking are some of the bestselling batteries on Amazon.

Samsung DU7200 TV

Alongside smartphones, televisions are some of the most popular tech products out there, even if they’re an infrequent purchase. This particular product is a popular entry-level 4K TV and was CNET’s pick for best overall budget TV for 2025. Unlike a lot of tech products that have key supply lines in China, Samsung is a South Korean company, so it might have some measure of tariff resistance.

After spending most of 2025 hovering around $400, this item has now seen some notable upticks on Amazon, most recently sitting around $450. This could potentially be in reaction to Trump’s announcement of 25% tariffs against South Korea this week.

Xbox Series X

Video game software and hardware are a market segment expected to be hit hard by the Trump tariffs. Microsoft’s Xbox is the first console brand to see price hikes — the company cited «market conditions» along with the rising cost of development. Most notably, this included an increase in the price of the flagship Xbox Series X, up from $500 to $600. Numerous Xbox accessories also were affected and the company also said that «certain» games will eventually see a price hike from $70 to $80.

Initially, we were tracking the price of the much more popular Nintendo Switch as a representative of the gaming market. Nintendo has not yet hiked the price of its handheld-console hybrid and stressed that the $450 price tag of the upcoming Switch 2 has not yet been inflated because of tariffs. Sony, meanwhile, has so far only increased prices on its PlayStation hardware in markets outside the US.

AirPods Pro 2

The latest iteration of Apple’s wildly popular true-wireless earbuds are here to represent the headphone market. Much to the chagrin of the audiophiles out there, a quick look at sales charts on Amazon shows you just how much the brand dominates all headphone sales. For most of the year, they’ve hovered around $199, but ahead of Prime Day sales this week they are currently on sale for $149.

HP 962 CMY printer ink

This HP printer ink includes cyan, magenta and yellow all in one product and recently saw its price jump from around $72 — where it stayed for most of 2025 — to $80, which is around its highest price over the last five years. We will be keeping tabs to see if this is a long-term change or a brief uptick.

This product replaced Overture PLA Filament for 3D printers in this piece, but we’re still tracking that item.

Anker 10,000-mAh, 30-watt power bank

Anker’s accessories are perennially popular in the tech space and the company has already announced that some of its products will get more expensive as a direct result of tariffs. This specific product has also been featured in some of CNET’s lists of the best portable chargers.

Bose TV speaker

Soundbars have become important purchases, given the often iffy quality of the speakers built into TVs. While not the biggest or the best offering in the space, the Bose TV Speaker is one of the more affordable soundbar options out there, especially hailing from a brand as popular as Bose. You can currently get this model at a healthy discount for Prime Day, down to $200 from $280.

Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush

They might be a lot more expensive than their traditional counterparts but electric toothbrushes remain a popular choice for consumers because of how well they get the job done. I know my dentist won’t let up on how much I need one. This particular Oral-B offering was CNET’s overall choice for the best electric toothbrush for 2025.

While this product hasn’t seen its price budge one way or another most of the year, there is a $10 coupon listed on Amazon right now.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook

Lenovo is notable among the big laptop manufacturers for being a Chinese company making its products especially susceptible to Trump’s tariffs.

Starbucks Ground Coffee (28-ounce bag)

Coffee is included in this tracker because of its ubiquity —I’m certainly drinking too much of it these days —and because it’s uniquely susceptible to Trump’s tariff agenda. Famously, coffee beans can only be grown within a certain distance from Earth’s equator, a tropical span largely outside the US and known as the «Coffee Belt.»

Hawaii is the only part of the US that can produce coffee beans, with data from USAFacts showing that 11.5 million pounds were harvested there in the 2022-23 season — little more than a drop in the mug, as the US consumed 282 times that amount of coffee during that period. Making matters worse, Hawaiian coffee production has declined in the past few years.

All that to say: Americans get almost all of their coffee from overseas, making it one of the most likely products to see price hikes from tariffs.

Other products

As mentioned, we occasionally swap out products with different ones that undergo notable price shifts. Here are some things no longer featured above, but that we’re still keeping an eye on:

Nintendo Switch: The baseline handheld-console hybrid has held steady around $299 most places — including Amazon — since it released in 2017. Whether that price will be affected by tariffs or the release of the Switch 2 remains to be seen. This product was replaced above with the Xbox Series X.
Overture PLA 3D printer filament: This is a popular choice on Amazon for the material needed to run 3D printers. It has held steady around $15 on Amazon all year. This product was replaced above by the HP 962 printer ink.

Here are some products we also wanted to single out that haven’t been featured with a graph yet:

Razer Blade 18 (2025), 5070 Ti edition: The latest revision of Razer’s largest gaming laptop saw a $300 price bump recently, with the base model featured an RTX 5070 Ti graphics card now priced at $3,500 ahead of launch, compared to the $3,200 price announced in February. While Razer has stayed mum about the reasoning, it did previously suspend direct sales to the US as Trump’s tariff plans were ramping up in April.
Asus ROG Ally X: The premium version of Asus’s Steam Deck competitor handheld gaming PC recently saw a price hike from $799 to $899, coinciding with the announcement of the company’s upcoming Xbox-branded Ally handhelds.

Technologies

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for July 12 #496

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 12 No. 496.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

If you love attending baseball games in summer, you’ll hit a home run with today’s NYT Strands puzzle. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: In the ballpark.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Play ball!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

TEER, MEER, MEET, TEEM, ROAD, STALL, TALL, BEST, PEAT, LUNH, CULT, BUMP, BILE, PEAL, METE, BULL, STUN, NUTS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers: