Hello everyone,

Myself and my players are currently on the free tier of DND Beyond. I'm DMing a play through of Stormwreck Island and the characters have advanced to level 3. However, when trying to use the level up "wizard" on DND Beyond to add their level, they only have 1 choice for Archetypes. For instance, the Fighter can only choose Champion.

I assume it's because none of us "own" the Player's Handbook. So they can't choose the other Archetypes.

I have no problem spending money on the books. However I'd like to know what is the best way to do this. Should I buy the PHB... and then what? 

The goal is to let all my group mates be able to see all the PHB content so they can level up their character sheets. Thanks for any tips!

You have 3 options: 

-Someone in the campaign gets a master tier subscription and turns on content sharing for the campaign.

-The players to tell you what choices they want to make, and then they would (from the campaign page) unassign their characters from themselves, then you could assign it to yourself, make the relevant changes, and then unassign it from yourself so they can pick it back up again. For prepared-spell casters, they'll still be limited to the basic rules spells when swapping out spells after a long rest.

-You buy the book, then make homebrew copies of the relevant subclasses. Homebrew is shared within a campaign without publishing it for the larger world to use. This is an allowed use of the tools. You could also do the same with any spells in the PHB that players wanted.

In order for everyone to be able to access the PHB content, the following conditions must be met:

• Any one person in the campaign (it need not be the DM) must have purchased a license for the “Full Version” of the digital PHB from this website: (https://www.dndbeyond.com/marketplace/sourcebooks/players-handbook). It is currently on sale for $18, so it’s a good time to buy it.
• Any one person in the campaign (it need not be the DM) must have purchased a “Master Tier Subscription” for this site: (https://www.dndbeyond.com/store/subscribe). Subscriptions can be purchased month to month, but some year sub for s more cost effective. And they are offering a free one month trial right now, so a one year sub would technically last 13 months, a baker’s dozen.
• The DM must create a campaign here on DDB, and all players must join the campaign.
• Whoever has the Master subscription must activate Content Sharing for the campaign.

Quote from pocketmouse >>

You have 3 options: 

-Someone in the campaign gets a master tier subscription and turns on content sharing for the campaign.

-The players to tell you what choices they want to make, and then they would (from the campaign page) unassign their characters from themselves, then you could assign it to yourself, make the relevant changes, and then unassign it from yourself so they can pick it back up again. For prepared-spell casters, they'll still be limited to the basic rules spells when swapping out spells after a long rest.

-You buy the book, then make homebrew copies of the relevant subclasses. Homebrew is shared within a campaign without publishing it for the larger world to use. This is an allowed use of the tools. You could also do the same with any spells in the PHB that players wanted.

 
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Quote from pocketmouse >>

 

-The players to tell you what choices they want to make, and then they would (from the campaign page) unassign their characters from themselves, then you could assign it to yourself, make the relevant changes, and then unassign it from yourself so they can pick it back up again. For prepared-spell casters, they'll still be limited to the basic rules spells when swapping out spells after a long rest.

 
I think pocketmouse is a bit confused here. Since you, Devias43473 don't have the PHB either and you're the DM, you can ignore this option. Pocketmouse's option would work if you bought the PHB but were not the DM.

As the DM you don't need them to unassign anything to edit characters. Given you don't have the PHB there's no point in you editing anything.

Either you, as the DM, buy the PHB and can then make copies of stuff OR can just edit their sheets to add stuff. OR somebody buys the PHB and somebody buys the Master Tier Subscription.

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In addition to their other options and Sposta's suggestions you can also have people just buy what they want piecemeal. For example the Fighter can go purchase the archetype they want for $1.99. 

Thanks for all the replies. With the books on sale, I just went ahead and bought myself the PHB, MM, and DMG. Then, even tho I don't have the Master sub, I loaded up the characters in the DM view on my account. Then we advanced to 3rd level and I was able to choose everything I needed!

So we're all set for now. Unfortunate about the Master tier for book sharing, I have no problem supporting DND Beyond but I just don't really need anything on the Master tier. We use Owlbear Rodeo for battle maps, a separate DM-screen type website for initiateve, encounters and notes, and I don't do home brew. Basically we just use DND Beyond for the character sheets and for rolling dice by clicking on the skill (which is super helpful!).

If my gaming group gets bigger then maybe it's worth it for the content sharing. My other two players get together physically at a table in their state, and I DM from my home state while we talk over Zoom and share screens. They also have the physical books so in my case, either of the Paid tiers are probably not worth it for me unless I get ANOTHER player in another remote location.