Tools
Best Discord bots for D&D and TTRPG (2026)
8 min read
Search for the best Discord bots for D&D and you get long lists promising a bot for every job. Most of those jobs are already handled better somewhere else. If you run on a virtual tabletop like Roll20 or Foundry, it does your dice, character sheets, maps, and initiative. D&D Beyond holds your characters. So the honest question is narrower: which jobs does a Discord bot genuinely do better than the tools you already use?
The clear answers are voice recording and recaps. A couple of small helpers earn a slot too. This guide is built around where a bot actually helps, and points you at the right tool for everything else.
Voice recording and recaps: where Discord bots earn their place
Your virtual tabletop does not record the table talking, and that is the gap a Discord bot fills best. If you play over voice, a recorder captures the session so you can settle "what did we actually decide" later and hand an absent player a recap.
Craig is the well-known standalone recorder. You invite it, it records each speaker to a separate track, and it gives you a download link. Per-speaker tracks matter because clean separation makes any later transcription far more accurate than one mixed file.
A recording or a raw transcript only gets you so far, though. The player who missed last week is not going to sit through four hours of audio or read a 25,000-word transcript, and neither are you. Someone still has to turn it into something short and readable, which is the recap.
Recap Raven covers the whole job end to end. Its own Discord bot records the session (or ingests a Craig link), transcribes per speaker, and produces a player-safe recap shared in Discord after the game, plus GM-only notes. It also builds a searchable campaign memory you ask with /ask and /askprivate, with answers cited from the transcript, and adds spotlight analytics, open hooks, and prep. So one bot takes you from voice to recap to memory instead of stitching a recorder to a transcriber to a summary tool. It is in private beta with billing not yet live; the planned tiers are Free with one trial session, Premium at $10, Studio at $20, and Pro at $40.
- Craig: standalone multitrack recorder that hands you the audio files.
- Recap Raven: records end to end, then writes the player-safe recap and the searchable memory.
- Either way, get everyone’s consent and say you are recording at the start of the session.
Dice and character sheets: use a VTT or D&D Beyond
If you are reaching for a dice-roller bot, check what your tabletop already does first. Roll20 and Foundry roll dice, apply the modifiers from the character sheet, and keep the result next to the map and tokens. D&D Beyond rolls straight from your real sheet. For most groups a separate Discord dice bot just duplicates that and splits your attention across two windows.
A dice bot earns its place in one situation: theatre-of-mind play with no virtual tabletop, where Discord is the only shared surface. If that is your table, pick a roller with clean notation, advantage and disadvantage, and saved characters so players are not retyping modifiers. Otherwise, roll where your sheet and map already live.
- On Roll20 or Foundry: roll there and skip the dice bot.
- On D&D Beyond: roll from the character sheet.
- No VTT, pure voice and theatre-of-mind: a dice bot makes sense.
Initiative and combat: your VTT, sharpened with macros
Initiative and combat are squarely a virtual tabletop job. Roll20 and Foundry track turn order, hit points, and conditions next to the battle map, which a Discord bot cannot match because it has no view of the board.
Where you can speed things up is with macros. Roll20 lets you script common actions, like rolling an attack and its damage together or applying a status, so combat moves faster without leaving the table. A short library of personal macros often does more for your combat pace than any bot. We are putting together a guide of combat macros you can drop into Roll20, so if you have favourites we would like to include them.
Music and ambience: Kenku FM
For music and ambient sound, most DMs reach for Kenku FM. It runs on your own machine and pipes a soundboard and playlists into Discord through a virtual microphone, so you control tavern noise, rain, and combat tension from one board without a copyright takedown stopping the music mid-session.
Self-hosting means it keeps working regardless of what public music bots are allowed to do in a given month, which is why it has become the steady choice. Keep ambience low enough that it does not bury voices, especially if you are recording the session.
One thing worth knowing if you record: Recap Raven detects other bots in the channel and ignores their audio, so the music and any song lyrics coming from Kenku never land in your transcript and muddle your canon. A recorder that captures everything will happily transcribe the soundtrack, which is one more reason to record with a bot that knows to leave it out.
Scheduling: Discord Events or your VTT
You probably do not need a scheduling bot. Discord has built-in scheduled Events that post a time, send reminders, and let people mark whether they are coming, which covers most tables. Roll20 also has a calendar if your group lives there.
Reach for a dedicated scheduling bot only if you juggle several groups across time zones and want availability polls in one place. For a single weekly game, native Discord Events is the simpler answer.
Putting it together
A realistic D&D-on-Discord stack is smaller than the bot lists suggest. Discord carries voice. A virtual tabletop or D&D Beyond carries dice, sheets, maps, and initiative. Kenku FM carries audio. Discord Events carries scheduling. That leaves one job for a bot to genuinely own: recording the session and turning it into a recap and a memory.
So if you add one bot, make it the one that saves the most time after the game. Give each bot only the permissions it needs, name your channels for their purpose, and resist stacking a second tool that just repeats what your VTT already does.
Frequently asked questions
Do I even need Discord bots if I use Roll20 or Foundry?
For dice, sheets, maps, and initiative, no, your VTT already does those better. Where a Discord bot still helps is recording your voice session and turning it into a recap and searchable memory, which the VTT does not do. That is the one slot worth filling.
What is the minimum useful setup?
Discord for voice, a virtual tabletop or D&D Beyond for the rules and sheets, and Kenku FM if you want music. Add a recording and recap bot if you want a record of what happened. Most tables need nothing more.
Do I need Craig if I use a recap bot?
Not necessarily. Craig is a solid standalone recorder, but Recap Raven records on its own bot and can also ingest a Craig link. Use Craig if you want to keep the raw audio yourself, or let the recap bot handle recording end to end.
What do most DMs use for music on Discord?
Kenku FM is the common pick. It self-hosts on your machine and feeds a soundboard and playlists into Discord through a virtual mic, so you avoid the takedowns and outages that hit public music bots.
Run your dice and maps where they already live, then add the one bot that earns its slot: Recap Raven records your session end to end and turns it into a player-safe recap and a searchable, cited campaign memory.
