there is an easy solution to the value problem that would make people buy, I get that you cant give people the digital version from the physical version. but what about the other way around, if I buy the digital version send me the physical one.
there is an easy solution to the value problem that would make people buy, I get that you cant give people the digital version from the physical version. but what about the other way around, if I buy the digital version send me the physical one.
again people who don't understand how this works, each compendium of a book is a license Curse needs to pay Wizards, same thing as with a phisical book, so you wish they'd pay 2x while you only pay once...
there is an easy solution to the value problem that would make people buy, I get that you cant give people the digital version from the physical version. but what about the other way around, if I buy the digital version send me the physical one.
again people who don't understand how this works, each compendium of a book is a license Curse needs to pay amazon, same thing as with a phisical book, so you wish they'd pay 2x while you only pay once...
there is an easy solution to the value problem that would make people buy, I get that you cant give people the digital version from the physical version. but what about the other way around, if I buy the digital version send me the physical one.
Sure, then they just have to jack up the price to double the amount. Now why didn't they think of that before? as stated, DNDbeyond is owned by Curse who is owned by Twitch which is an Amazon company. They have nothing to do with WotC other than licensing the content, same as Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds. If you need a better explanation, read the first post from the link in my signature and hopefully that will explain all. WotC is just a publisher, not a retailer. this is very important to remember when thinking about this.
Honestly, an easier "solution" if you want both is to just buy online. These books retail for 50 USD, but if you order from amazon they are usually 30 USD. Than if you buy the books here at DnDBeyond they run 25 to 30, meaning you are only paying 5 to 10 bucks more than MSRP for both physical and digital. Problem solved.
Or go Legendary Bundle, and then the price evens out to right at MSRP for both physical and digital.
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I use summon instrument to summon my kettle drum, hold it overhead like Donkey Kong, and chuck it at the nearest kobold.
I have bought the PHB from Barnes and Nobles, so I was wondering if I could get the stuff featured with that, or you guys could add a system where if you already own the books, then you can redeem them online in like a QR code or scanning the bar code. I thought it would be a good feature, and it would definitely increase my use of this site and definitely make me recommend it to others!
The short ansewer is that no, there is no way to get the PHB here for free because you bought the physical copy. read at least the first page or two of this thread for a longer answer, and some of the reasoning.
If you are unwilling (or unable) to pay for all the work the folks at Curse have done to turn the books into the extensive tools here, but you want to use the site, you can always homebrew what you need. If you are a player and want to create/track only a few characters, you could also just buy the pieces you need (e.g. A specifi subclass or race) for the characters you want to make here.
i understand it, curse cant make that decision because it would be hard to verify and they don't own the books (altho amazon has a large supply), but they belong to WOTC, but WOTC can make the decision to verify online and send you a copy. i want you to keep in mind that the digital copy does not have a continues production cost and that the book does not cost even $10 to make. so they could do it if WOTC wants to they would just need Amazon to give them proof of purchase and you get one per purchase. and depending on the number they get out of this deal more than normal it could be worth it to them
i understand it, curse cant make that decision because it would be hard to verify and they don't own the books (altho amazon has a large supply), but they belong to WOTC, but WOTC can make the decision to verify online and send you a copy. i want you to keep in mind that the digital copy does not have a continues production cost and that the book does not cost even $10 to make. so they could do it if WOTC wants to they would just need Amazon to give them proof of purchase and you get one per purchase. and depending on the number they get out of this deal more than normal it could be worth it to them
Curse is owned by Twitch which is owned by Amazon. WotC just licensed to Curse. You obviously don't have any concept of why things cost money, but I'll try anyway.
Let's say each book costs $10 to make. That book has to get to you, also the writers need to get paid if they're paid royalties, and if they aren't then they need to make back the money paid to the writers. Then WotC needs to make profit, and the store selling it as well. I'm pretty sure $10 doesn't cover all of that.
As for why they can't just give stuff on here for free? They have to format and input all the data, make sure everything is cross-linked, etc. They also had to build the entire website first, that costs a buttload as well.
Maybe now you understand why they're not giving you something it cost them money to produce because you bought a different yet similar product somewhere else.
Think about this. Let's say I buy a movie on iTunes, but now I've moved to Android. Should Google give me a free copy of that movie? Hell no. This is the same situation as here.
Your book is no less useable than the day you bought it (baring damage and other mishaps) now that this site exists. Should you wish to use your purchased content you're free to do so...provided you put in the same work that Curse put in. You do that by inputting and nicely formatting the info using the homebrew system.
Don't want to do that work? Well tough cookies buddy. You can just keep doing what you always have been doing, or you can partake in the lovely a la carte options to buy the bits and pieces you need along the way, thus paying for the hard work out into this site.
Q17: With the Master Tier subscription, how many players may a DM share their digital sourcebooks with?
The Master Tier subscription allows a subscriber to turn on content sharing for up to 3 campaigns in which she participates. Each campaign can have up to 12 participants (13 counting the DM).
Turning content sharing on for a campaign means that any content unlocked by any participant (player or DM) within that campaign is available for all players and the DM for use. We originally announced that a DM has to unlock the content in order to share, but that is no longer the case - anyone in that campaign can unlock content and share it with the other people in that campaign as long as one person (doesn't have to be the DM) has a Master Tier subscription and has used it to toggle content sharing on for that campaign.
Toggle Content Sharing means if a player leaves, and needs to be replaced by another, they can be removed from the campaign and/or removed from content sharing?
We plan on purchasing all content for a local group with the Master Subscription, but don't want people abusing it if they leave town (as an example)
Sure! The owner of the campaign can remove any characters they choose from the campaign. Those players won't lose those characters.
You could, in theory, have a pool of 20 people who all play in a single campaign, but the characters are added and removed as needed for sessions (assuming no more than 12 people in a session).
Sure! The owner of the campaign can remove any characters they choose from the campaign. Those players won't lose those characters.
You could, in theory, have a pool of 20 people who all play in a single campaign, but the characters are added and removed as needed for sessions (assuming no more than 12 people in a session).
As a tiny and insignificant request may I recommend using the phrasing "12 active characters" rather than "12 people" or "12 players". Players can actively play more than one character in campaigns, especially if they are done through Play by Post or Roll20 or Discord and are text-based. I am in two text-based campaigns and in both play 2 characters at once. This is quite common. This is nitpicky but wanted to say something to avoid confusion that I myself once had about the character limits for content sharing since it is worded as 12 players not as 12 characters and there can be a significant difference especially for DMs using the builder for NPCs not realising (since these are characters not players) every NPC they make and actively control is blocking access for a player.
let's check that derisive tone first. I have an MBA, and I am an Author. I am aware of how it works. they already paid the writer (except royalties if they are independent) and could use this as a sale towards royalty if required. They can force someone they license to like Curse to give a discount on one of their products, But what they can do is offer a discount at the least for their product when you buy the digital version from Curse. This could either be enough or slightly more than production or the license can contain some product settlement for compensation of goods.
let's check that derisive tone first. I have an MBA, and I am an Author. I am aware of how it works. they already paid the writer (except royalties if they are independent) and could use this as a sale towards royalty if required. They can force someone they license to like Curse to give a discount on one of their products, But what they can do is offer a discount at the least for their product when you buy the digital version from Curse. This could either be enough or slightly more than production or the license can contain some product settlement for compensation of goods.
Sorry, I wasn't aware this was some sort of measuring contest. Yes, your fancy degree and status as a human who publishes their written words are most impressive and I acquiesce to your superiority forthwith.
Now seriously, if you're done brandishing your qualifications and treating me like a rude child I'll continue.
So I assume for the most part their writers are paid staff, with the occasional consulting for stuff (like Matt Mercer for the upcoming Waterdeep books since apparently he contributed). Salaried staff is a sunk cost that comes off the initial profit of a product most of the time, same with consulting since they tend to be paid for the time they work. Any sort of royalty stuff is after the fact and factored into the cost of the book anyway.
Can they force Curse to discount stuff? Sure, if they'd asked for it as part of the terms of the contract they signed. Since it seems they didn't, unless Curse wants to do it, WotC can't do anything until renewal time since WotC doesn't own Curse. But would WotC do it? Probably not. See most of the cost of the book never even reaches them. They sell boxes full of books to stores, the stores then sell them for more so they make a profit. Once the books are bought by stores that's it, WotC has been paid. So if they were to compensate Curse for the lost sales or revenue from discounting/gifting books, they would be cutting into their own margins, not the margins of the stores you bought the books from, which would be much simpler. Therefore without increasing the price at distribution, WotC would need to take a loss as all the books shipped were paid for a long while ago.
Next issue with this plan (excluding the option of including codes in new books, though the base price would likely need to increase to support this still). How do you verify purchases? Let's say I bought my book 3 years ago at my local board game shop. I definitely don't have a receipt. How do they know I paid for it? What if I'm lying and it's my friend's book? They all look the same. Even on Amazon or another online store, it's risky. What stops me from editing a receipt's text to say I bought something I didn't? Nothing! Press F12 and make anything on the page say anything you want temporarily for a screenshot. Meanwhile, Curse now needs to develop the support infrastructure to handle all these varied and inconsistent requests, entirely to give people discounts for buying stuff somewhere else.
I used to work in game support and let me tell you, we were very quick to dismiss any "proof of purchase" that was remotely sketchy, but honestly knowing that anyone can fake any webpage with 0 effort made me question how we trusted them at all. Additionally, I sincerely doubt you could stop people from using someone else's receipt multiple times since support can't sit there and scrutinize the order number of every single document. Sure for online stuff, there's the address and name, but what would you do for other stuff? Develop an OCR database to instantly cross-reference bills with existing ones logged? Currently, we're working on something similar for invoices and we've been spending over a year with part-time employees manually inputting sample data, and we're definitely not close to done with that, then we still need to develop the software to manage that OCR data. Let me tell you, automated processing of custom data is rough, and the stuff I'm dealing with is excel sheets and scraped web pages, I can't even imagine how much worse it'll be when we get to the OCR'ed stuff in a year or so.
Working in software development has made it easier for me to take a tiny question like "why don't they do this?" and extrapolate it into a huge terrifying multi-year project. Yes, the business reality of the relationship between Curse and WotC could make it easy to do something like that, but I've presented here some very good reasons as to why either company would be hesitant to want to do so due to the large costs involved. In the end, the easiest solution would be for all future books to either come with a code or to have the option to pay a bit more for a copy with one, similar to comic books now, but honestly I feel like Waterdeep would have been the first book they could have possibly done this with logistically speaking, and they couldn't easily do it to the older books reprinted from now on, as people would be pissed the hell off at missing out.
I seriously don't know why I wrote such a long thing since I doubt I've said anything not said in the last 40 pages of this discussion, but there you go.
But what they can do is offer a discount at the least for their product when you buy the digital version from Curse. This could either be enough or slightly more than production or the license can contain some product settlement for compensation of goods.
I agree with you that the general argument that such a thing is entirely impossible is, well, less than convincing. And I would love to see some sort of increased synergy between physical book purchases and their digital equivalents. In an ideal world, that would definitely be the case.
Where I disagree is that the lack of this synergy makes DDB a bad deal. Maybe that's not exactly what you're saying, but it's something that gets tossed around a lot, almost always by folks who either a.) aren't particularly familiar with the capabilities of DDB beyond a digital verison of the books, or even beyond being a character generator/manager, or b.) expect DDB to offer something unrealistic, which they used to get from third-party applications that were violating intellectual property laws (or c.) both). It's my opinion that the value added by DDB makes unlocking content here very worthwhile, even in addition to owning the physical books. (For what it's worth, I've stopped buying the physical books first--I unlock stuff here, and then if it seems like it'd be worth owning the physical book for whatever reason I'll pick it up.)
I fit in the category of not buying physical books for the future. I bought the big 3 then Guide to Everything in physical before I heard of D&D Beyond. I went ahead and rebought here with coupons. I share the books with the only DnD game I'm running with all the players so they can make characters. I picked up the guide to monsters and didn't even both buy a physical copy as I can download it and read it.
If money was tight I would probably home brew anything I needed from books I had using the existing things I've already paid for and tweak it for my campaign or if time was tighter I would pay for the character stuff I needed for the game.
I truly don't understand the argument that that work has no value. That is the basic assumption behind free access if they bought the book somewhere else. honestly I find D&D Beyond to be a good value. I add the reader and download the books to my tablet and I read and I also get the smooth character creator and I get to share that with up to 18 people (split into 3 campaigns).
There are a few minor tweaks I wish they would make to the way the sharing works but paying $6 a month for that seems reasonable.
Since Roll20 has now released their digital version of the PHB and are also selling it for $29.99 reg price (on sale atm for $19.99) I assume every one of you complaining here about having to pay "again" or "too much" will immediately hop over to the Roll20 forums and yell at them as well? Surely Roll20 should also validate your physical book purchase? I mean, it's not impossible, right? And while you're at it, head over to Fantasy Grounds and demand that they also validate your physical book. You should get FREE access to every digital version of the physical book everywhere it appears.
I'll wait here for you to supply links to your posts on the Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds forums so we can see that you are being consistent, and not the least bit hypocritical.
To make it easier for you, I'll even provide links to their forums so you can go right over and complain loudly and rudely.
If you don't go there to demand free/discounted digital copies because you have the physical book, I'm sure we won't hear any of you complain about it here any more.
I don't think its a bad deal, i know its allot. i just wish for as you said "increased synergy" and added value for the future. also i thin it would increase sales much more then it would cost
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there is an easy solution to the value problem that would make people buy, I get that you cant give people the digital version from the physical version. but what about the other way around, if I buy the digital version send me the physical one.
again people who don't understand how this works, each compendium of a book is a license Curse needs to pay Wizards, same thing as with a phisical book, so you wish they'd pay 2x while you only pay once...
Edit: corrected
You mean WotC right? Amazon owns D&D Beyond.
Sure, then they just have to jack up the price to double the amount. Now why didn't they think of that before? as stated, DNDbeyond is owned by Curse who is owned by Twitch which is an Amazon company. They have nothing to do with WotC other than licensing the content, same as Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds. If you need a better explanation, read the first post from the link in my signature and hopefully that will explain all. WotC is just a publisher, not a retailer. this is very important to remember when thinking about this.
I just want to tell everyone "happy gaming" and actually mean it. Whatever your game is, just have fun with it, it is after all, just a game.
Honestly, an easier "solution" if you want both is to just buy online. These books retail for 50 USD, but if you order from amazon they are usually 30 USD. Than if you buy the books here at DnDBeyond they run 25 to 30, meaning you are only paying 5 to 10 bucks more than MSRP for both physical and digital. Problem solved.
Or go Legendary Bundle, and then the price evens out to right at MSRP for both physical and digital.
I use summon instrument to summon my kettle drum, hold it overhead like Donkey Kong, and chuck it at the nearest kobold.
I have bought the PHB from Barnes and Nobles, so I was wondering if I could get the stuff featured with that, or you guys could add a system where if you already own the books, then you can redeem them online in like a QR code or scanning the bar code. I thought it would be a good feature, and it would definitely increase my use of this site and definitely make me recommend it to others!
The short ansewer is that no, there is no way to get the PHB here for free because you bought the physical copy. read at least the first page or two of this thread for a longer answer, and some of the reasoning.
If you are unwilling (or unable) to pay for all the work the folks at Curse have done to turn the books into the extensive tools here, but you want to use the site, you can always homebrew what you need. If you are a player and want to create/track only a few characters, you could also just buy the pieces you need (e.g. A specifi subclass or race) for the characters you want to make here.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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i understand it, curse cant make that decision because it would be hard to verify and they don't own the books (altho amazon has a large supply), but they belong to WOTC, but WOTC can make the decision to verify online and send you a copy. i want you to keep in mind that the digital copy does not have a continues production cost and that the book does not cost even $10 to make. so they could do it if WOTC wants to they would just need Amazon to give them proof of purchase and you get one per purchase. and depending on the number they get out of this deal more than normal it could be worth it to them
Curse is owned by Twitch which is owned by Amazon. WotC just licensed to Curse. You obviously don't have any concept of why things cost money, but I'll try anyway.
Let's say each book costs $10 to make. That book has to get to you, also the writers need to get paid if they're paid royalties, and if they aren't then they need to make back the money paid to the writers. Then WotC needs to make profit, and the store selling it as well. I'm pretty sure $10 doesn't cover all of that.
As for why they can't just give stuff on here for free? They have to format and input all the data, make sure everything is cross-linked, etc. They also had to build the entire website first, that costs a buttload as well.
Maybe now you understand why they're not giving you something it cost them money to produce because you bought a different yet similar product somewhere else.
Think about this. Let's say I buy a movie on iTunes, but now I've moved to Android. Should Google give me a free copy of that movie? Hell no. This is the same situation as here.
Your book is no less useable than the day you bought it (baring damage and other mishaps) now that this site exists. Should you wish to use your purchased content you're free to do so...provided you put in the same work that Curse put in. You do that by inputting and nicely formatting the info using the homebrew system.
Don't want to do that work? Well tough cookies buddy. You can just keep doing what you always have been doing, or you can partake in the lovely a la carte options to buy the bits and pieces you need along the way, thus paying for the hard work out into this site.
Toggle Content Sharing means if a player leaves, and needs to be replaced by another, they can be removed from the campaign and/or removed from content sharing?
We plan on purchasing all content for a local group with the Master Subscription, but don't want people abusing it if they leave town (as an example)
Sure! The owner of the campaign can remove any characters they choose from the campaign. Those players won't lose those characters.
You could, in theory, have a pool of 20 people who all play in a single campaign, but the characters are added and removed as needed for sessions (assuming no more than 12 people in a session).
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
As a tiny and insignificant request may I recommend using the phrasing "12 active characters" rather than "12 people" or "12 players". Players can actively play more than one character in campaigns, especially if they are done through Play by Post or Roll20 or Discord and are text-based. I am in two text-based campaigns and in both play 2 characters at once. This is quite common. This is nitpicky but wanted to say something to avoid confusion that I myself once had about the character limits for content sharing since it is worded as 12 players not as 12 characters and there can be a significant difference especially for DMs using the builder for NPCs not realising (since these are characters not players) every NPC they make and actively control is blocking access for a player.
My Homebrew: Races | Subclasses | Backgrounds | Spells | Magic Items | Feats
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See My Youtube Videos for Tips & Tricks using D&D Beyond
this is good to know, never thought of the NPC aspect taking up slots. I just keep them in my character queue and do not add them to the campaign.
I just want to tell everyone "happy gaming" and actually mean it. Whatever your game is, just have fun with it, it is after all, just a game.
let's check that derisive tone first. I have an MBA, and I am an Author. I am aware of how it works. they already paid the writer (except royalties if they are independent) and could use this as a sale towards royalty if required. They can force someone they license to like Curse to give a discount on one of their products, But what they can do is offer a discount at the least for their product when you buy the digital version from Curse. This could either be enough or slightly more than production or the license can contain some product settlement for compensation of goods.
Sorry, I wasn't aware this was some sort of measuring contest. Yes, your fancy degree and status as a human who publishes their written words are most impressive and I acquiesce to your superiority forthwith.
Now seriously, if you're done brandishing your qualifications and treating me like a rude child I'll continue.
So I assume for the most part their writers are paid staff, with the occasional consulting for stuff (like Matt Mercer for the upcoming Waterdeep books since apparently he contributed). Salaried staff is a sunk cost that comes off the initial profit of a product most of the time, same with consulting since they tend to be paid for the time they work. Any sort of royalty stuff is after the fact and factored into the cost of the book anyway.
Can they force Curse to discount stuff? Sure, if they'd asked for it as part of the terms of the contract they signed. Since it seems they didn't, unless Curse wants to do it, WotC can't do anything until renewal time since WotC doesn't own Curse. But would WotC do it? Probably not. See most of the cost of the book never even reaches them. They sell boxes full of books to stores, the stores then sell them for more so they make a profit. Once the books are bought by stores that's it, WotC has been paid. So if they were to compensate Curse for the lost sales or revenue from discounting/gifting books, they would be cutting into their own margins, not the margins of the stores you bought the books from, which would be much simpler. Therefore without increasing the price at distribution, WotC would need to take a loss as all the books shipped were paid for a long while ago.
Next issue with this plan (excluding the option of including codes in new books, though the base price would likely need to increase to support this still). How do you verify purchases? Let's say I bought my book 3 years ago at my local board game shop. I definitely don't have a receipt. How do they know I paid for it? What if I'm lying and it's my friend's book? They all look the same. Even on Amazon or another online store, it's risky. What stops me from editing a receipt's text to say I bought something I didn't? Nothing! Press F12 and make anything on the page say anything you want temporarily for a screenshot. Meanwhile, Curse now needs to develop the support infrastructure to handle all these varied and inconsistent requests, entirely to give people discounts for buying stuff somewhere else.
I used to work in game support and let me tell you, we were very quick to dismiss any "proof of purchase" that was remotely sketchy, but honestly knowing that anyone can fake any webpage with 0 effort made me question how we trusted them at all. Additionally, I sincerely doubt you could stop people from using someone else's receipt multiple times since support can't sit there and scrutinize the order number of every single document. Sure for online stuff, there's the address and name, but what would you do for other stuff? Develop an OCR database to instantly cross-reference bills with existing ones logged? Currently, we're working on something similar for invoices and we've been spending over a year with part-time employees manually inputting sample data, and we're definitely not close to done with that, then we still need to develop the software to manage that OCR data. Let me tell you, automated processing of custom data is rough, and the stuff I'm dealing with is excel sheets and scraped web pages, I can't even imagine how much worse it'll be when we get to the OCR'ed stuff in a year or so.
Working in software development has made it easier for me to take a tiny question like "why don't they do this?" and extrapolate it into a huge terrifying multi-year project. Yes, the business reality of the relationship between Curse and WotC could make it easy to do something like that, but I've presented here some very good reasons as to why either company would be hesitant to want to do so due to the large costs involved. In the end, the easiest solution would be for all future books to either come with a code or to have the option to pay a bit more for a copy with one, similar to comic books now, but honestly I feel like Waterdeep would have been the first book they could have possibly done this with logistically speaking, and they couldn't easily do it to the older books reprinted from now on, as people would be pissed the hell off at missing out.
I seriously don't know why I wrote such a long thing since I doubt I've said anything not said in the last 40 pages of this discussion, but there you go.
I agree with you that the general argument that such a thing is entirely impossible is, well, less than convincing. And I would love to see some sort of increased synergy between physical book purchases and their digital equivalents. In an ideal world, that would definitely be the case.
Where I disagree is that the lack of this synergy makes DDB a bad deal. Maybe that's not exactly what you're saying, but it's something that gets tossed around a lot, almost always by folks who either a.) aren't particularly familiar with the capabilities of DDB beyond a digital verison of the books, or even beyond being a character generator/manager, or b.) expect DDB to offer something unrealistic, which they used to get from third-party applications that were violating intellectual property laws (or c.) both). It's my opinion that the value added by DDB makes unlocking content here very worthwhile, even in addition to owning the physical books. (For what it's worth, I've stopped buying the physical books first--I unlock stuff here, and then if it seems like it'd be worth owning the physical book for whatever reason I'll pick it up.)
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I fit in the category of not buying physical books for the future. I bought the big 3 then Guide to Everything in physical before I heard of D&D Beyond. I went ahead and rebought here with coupons. I share the books with the only DnD game I'm running with all the players so they can make characters. I picked up the guide to monsters and didn't even both buy a physical copy as I can download it and read it.
If money was tight I would probably home brew anything I needed from books I had using the existing things I've already paid for and tweak it for my campaign or if time was tighter I would pay for the character stuff I needed for the game.
I truly don't understand the argument that that work has no value. That is the basic assumption behind free access if they bought the book somewhere else. honestly I find D&D Beyond to be a good value. I add the reader and download the books to my tablet and I read and I also get the smooth character creator and I get to share that with up to 18 people (split into 3 campaigns).
There are a few minor tweaks I wish they would make to the way the sharing works but paying $6 a month for that seems reasonable.
Since Roll20 has now released their digital version of the PHB and are also selling it for $29.99 reg price (on sale atm for $19.99) I assume every one of you complaining here about having to pay "again" or "too much" will immediately hop over to the Roll20 forums and yell at them as well? Surely Roll20 should also validate your physical book purchase? I mean, it's not impossible, right? And while you're at it, head over to Fantasy Grounds and demand that they also validate your physical book. You should get FREE access to every digital version of the physical book everywhere it appears.
I'll wait here for you to supply links to your posts on the Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds forums so we can see that you are being consistent, and not the least bit hypocritical.
To make it easier for you, I'll even provide links to their forums so you can go right over and complain loudly and rudely.
https://app.roll20.net/forum/
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/
If you don't go there to demand free/discounted digital copies because you have the physical book, I'm sure we won't hear any of you complain about it here any more.
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I don't think its a bad deal, i know its allot. i just wish for as you said "increased synergy" and added value for the future. also i thin it would increase sales much more then it would cost