In order to set up a racial prerequisite for a feat, or place homebrew variants under their parent race, a race must have a race group. At this time, a large quantity of races still do not have race groups. Is there any reason why they don't, or perhaps an ETA on when they will get them?
My guess for a reason: they weren't (and aren't) necessary to implement officially published stuff from WotC, so if they even are on the to-do list it's probably pretty low. The homebrew tools exist to implement non-homebrew mechanics first and foremost, not to enable broad homebrewing options.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Its just another one of those things that seems like it would be pretty easy to do (seeing as the framework for it all ready exists and they would simply need to apply to these races) and would benefit many, but just hasn't been done for some reason.
My guess for a reason: they weren't (and aren't) necessary to implement officially published stuff from WotC, so if they even are on the to-do list it's probably pretty low. The homebrew tools exist to implement non-homebrew mechanics first and foremost, not to enable broad homebrewing options.
I mean, they did it for tortle, and as far as i know there is nothing official that pre-reqs tortles. Same for Aarakocra, Bugbear, Firbolg, Goblin, Goliath, Hobgoblin, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Tabaxi, Triton and Yuan-ti. Even Custom Lineages have a race group, yet other official races do not. None of these races have subraces or variants or magic items or feats... It just feels so inconsistent, and its so painful having the character builder feats dropdown cluttered with racial feats that cant be tied to their respective races.
With the leaks of the upcoming overhauls to player races, DMs who want to use the older versions of the races are now going to need to preserve more than 60% of the race lineup with homebrew copies.
Please, DDB, reconsider granting DMs the ability to control what does and does not appear in the character builder for our players. It is going to be so clustered seeing homebrew copies of half the races (all of them once 2024 rolls around and the game gets reworked). Between the unsolicited homebrew flooding our campaigns and all the official content we don't want to use, players are going to be more overwhelmed than ever about what they can and cannot use.
Please, let us control what appears in the character builder for our campaigns, I BEG! (If you could at least let us ban by type of content per book, instead of just books wholesale, that would be amazing, your website already filters content by type in the marketplace, just extend that to the content bans. And give us custom race groups while your at it, or at least groups for every official race)
Seconding this, and adding that it's already very frustrating to have lost access to the previous versions of the books I bought here, like Volo's and the PHB. My Drow's racial lore blurb is now the updated version, and I preferred the lore blurb from the previous one.
But that's only a short lore blurb and while frustrating, I can at least go back and find .pdfs and an older physical copy, though it is still frustrating that I even should consider having to do that after content has been outright removed/completely rewritten and I can't access it anymore from DnD Beyond.
However, that pales in comparison to these leaks and how I worry DnD Beyond will handle them because we will outright lose character abilities entirely. This can be extremely disruptive to anyone like myself whose main or only option to playing DnD is online through platforms like DnD Beyond. DM's and players will lose functionally mid-game, forced to use old pdf's or physical material to continue using the version of the game they were already playing.
This is a result of Wizards treating DnD like it's a video game they can haphazardly patch and override, when it is not, but because of how DnD Beyond currently handles such things we are effectively stuck with it if we use DnD Beyond.
I strongly agree that DnD Beyond needs to start adding ways to preserve the original versions, perhaps a toggle besides the race in the builder, and going a step further to preserve versions of the books that don't have entire paragraphs of text erased or rewritten entirely.
At the moment, I'm not only uninterested in future content from Wizards due to disagreeing with the direction their books have taken recently and their frustratingly hasty-looking errata's that now rewrite and remove entire portions of existing books, but I'm strongly discouraged from continuing to use DnD Beyond to run my games and create my characters because I will more than likely lose access to that content mid-use with no way to go back to using it. This includes purchasing older sourcebooks on DnD Beyond, because i've already lost the ability to use the versions I had been using for over a year prior to these sweeping changes.
The alternative for the player races portion is that I painstakingly go through every single player race I own and copy it into the Homebrew editor and re-label it to preserve having that functionality on DnD Beyond - which already does not interact well with everybody's homebrew being shared with Content Sharing turned on, and all of my homebrew automatically being shared in campaigns I host. I'll effectively have to fill my character creator with clutter just to preserve the versions I and I my players are currently using. I should not have to do any of that.
Depending on how DnD Beyond handles this, I may cancel my subscription and switch entirely to other methods or resources that don't run the risk of overwriting my current content entirely. I'm already dissatisfied with how WOTC is handling their new content, and I'm waiting to see how DnD Beyond continues to handle WOTC's rapid changes before I continue to support this platform.
Once again I second the above post - please add a proper method to support preserving the previous versions of the content instead of forcing us to resort to these time-consuming, unintuitive methods, DnD Beyond staff. We will be extremely greatful.
In another thread on this, a mod mentioned that the reason there is no "old version" toggle is because of the licensing agreement Fandom/DDB has with WotC. It *requires* them to have the DDB version be the most recently errata'd version of it. It's dumb, but it's not DDB's fault.
A workaround would be to creature homebrew races and subclasses that fix the changed character options. I know I'll be doing that for my Fire Genasi character.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
I saw that thread too, and also commented on it. It's unfortunate if DDB legally lacks the ability to provide that, and in that case the blame falls on WOTC. I get the impression WOTC ties DDB's hands quite a bit with their licensing agreements.
It's unfortunate, but if WOTC is going to be taking the eraser to their existing content and completely rework player races instead of making new versions that can exist alongside them, then I'll probably have to stop using DnD Beyond for my games. I can't imagine I'm the only one that will do this.
Yeah, the workaround exists, it's just going to be very time-consuming and annoying, not to mention will clutter up homebrew collections and character builders.
Ill be seeking a refund for many books once the updates drop. My ability to use the content as i purchased it is being revoked. I feel for peps outside australia, at least we have good consumer laws when it comes to refunds.
I haven't kept up on the other thread where this was discussed so I don't know if the licensing agreement prohibits this, but perhaps a middle ground is archiving the current races like they did with kobold a couple years back? For those who want to preserve current character builds, their basic mechanics would be saved, and anyone who wants to adopt the new ones can do so. While this won't be a comprehensive solution in the slightest, at least subscribers won't lose content we paid for to use in active campaigns.
Its not really about letting people use what they currently use, its about that i cant make a new character with it a year from now after they take that option away.
As discussed in the main post, the issue im mainly upset about is how cluttered the character builder will get with all these duplicates of the old races, without the ability to to either filter out the new ones so my players cant see them (or at least being unable to hide the duplicates with race groups for every race).
I'm aware of that, hence why I said it wasn't a comprehensive solution. It would at least provide a small means of preserving what currently exists, which could be stored in character collections for future use provided the person who creates said character has the space or a subscription.
To bring this thread back to the original topic though: Content banning in campaigns should definitely be a thing.
I own a load of Sourcebooks, but sometimes I like to run campaigns for people that haven't played very often, and in those cases I would like to only allow subclasses, races and spells from the PHB. I can filter by sourcebook in the character creator for races, but I can't do that for subclasses and spells.
When I have a campaign, I'd like to be able to go to the "content sharing" options and share the character builder options for only the books I want them to use, and not one of the other 9 sourcebooks I own. I can already ban Compendium access, so It's strange to me that I can't ban Character Builder access.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
More granular content toggles for the character builder, including allowing the DM to set content toggles at the campaign level that'll be then flagged in any character within that campaign, is something the team is aware of the desire for (it's been asked for many times both in suggestion threads and on the dev update).
It is important to understand it's not a simple feature to implement though. The UI/UX of toggling the vast amount of character options alone is a daunting task. Then there's handling how restricted content should be messaged to the player?
Should they be blocked from accessing restricted options, or just alerted that they're picking something disallowed by the DM?
What about if a player wants to import a character that has restricted options, should that character be blocked from being imported into the campaign, have the restricted options removed automatically, or the player messaged that they have restricted options?
What should happen if a DM changes the restrictions after players have made or imported their characters?
There are a lot of messy questions surrounding how this should work, which the team would have to investigate. No simple undertaking.
Should they be blocked from accessing restricted options, or just alerted that they're picking something disallowed by the DM?
What about if a player wants to import a character that has restricted options, should that character be blocked from being imported into the campaign, have the restricted options removed automatically, or the player messaged that they have restricted options?
What should happen if a DM changes the restrictions after players have made or imported their characters?
I think answering that first question would answer all the other ones: I would suggest alerting players they're picking something the DM has filtered out, for 3 reasons.
The problem with imported characters won't be there. Everything will still be on the sheet, just marked with a warning.
Same goes for if restrictions are changed after
Some DMs will allow exceptions to their filters if, for example, a character idea is particularly cool but requires a subclass the DM doesn't "allow" the rest of the party to use.
I think it would also be much easier to implement than a hard block of content would be, but again, not a developer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
Should they be blocked from accessing restricted options, or just alerted that they're picking something disallowed by the DM?
What about if a player wants to import a character that has restricted options, should that character be blocked from being imported into the campaign, have the restricted options removed automatically, or the player messaged that they have restricted options?
What should happen if a DM changes the restrictions after players have made or imported their characters?
I think answering that first question would answer all the other ones: I would suggest alerting players they're picking something the DM has filtered out, for 3 reasons.
The problem with imported characters won't be there. Everything will still be on the sheet, just marked with a warning.
Same goes for if restrictions are changed after
Some DMs will allow exceptions to their filters if, for example, a character idea is particularly cool but requires a subclass the DM doesn't "allow" the rest of the party to use.
I think it would also be much easier to implement than a hard block of content would be, but again, not a developer.
This then invites a lot of interesting new questions:
How do you message the invalid options?
Do we have a dialogue box that lists everything? If so, should it be dismissible? Should it pop up every time? Should you be able to access it again?
Do you highlight every option that is invalid? Is there a centralised flag that says "you still have invalid selections"? How do you handle exceptions like you mentioned without things getting obnoxious
Do we add a section to the character sheet for validity checks that lists everything that's invalid on the sheet?
Basically this is an interesting case study in the rabbit hole you can go down implementing what seems to be a simple feature. And this is assuming the messaging option is considered the best by the community and dev team.
You already have the capability programming wise to do this. This done with the sharing capability of Master Tier accounts with what books are shared. So yes it is well within your current capability to do this. Yes I understand the work involved, I have over thirty years of programming experience to rely on for that. This was capable in the days of Assembler so it is quite doable nowadays.
Far as your other questions.
Imported characters: Highlight what is currently not allowed, DM can be given a dialogue option on import to allow or disallow character as a whole. This is minor as we can easily recreate a character using what is allowed. This gets covered in a DM’s Session 0.
Should they blocked from choosing disallowed. Short answer is yes. We all know some DMs allow exceptions. That’s where individual versioning should apply. This would come into play more with PHB +1 games. Goliath would than be three versions (ex. Goliath(Volo) / Goliath (Iceeind Dale) / Goliath (MMoM). Those choices would be in your Races table. But the base entry can have all three on same listed page with the changes notated within the base stat blocks. With “English “ explanation below that detailing the changes from each book. This takes a little more data entry at the front end but future updates and changes flow easier.
DM changes restrictions after Session 0. Again since most DMs and players talk something like that out I would say it updates automatically after all the DM can change things on sheets now. At least with Master a tier I can.
Validity checks. This can be done in following cases. 1. Character creation invalid selections shouldn’t be shown. This already done for unavailable sourcebooks. 2. Character Builder opened. This is a little more difficult for a post creation change but an error message saying an option is no longer valid should be given saying which option that is. Honestly I would just return the first error to start and give a full list with a later patch. 3. At time of Import.
This all on the surface is easy to say. The main thing is what your contract with WOTC may or may not prevent you from doing. In other posts you have stated that you have to provide the latest option. This I wholeheartedly support my question is if it contract that prevents you from past support being available to tell us. As customers we will understand where your hands are tied and proceed with hammer WOTC directly on things such as this.
Thanks for the responses it’s good to have civil interaction. Who knows we might stumble on a solution to all this.
Should they be blocked from accessing restricted options, or just alerted that they're picking something disallowed by the DM?
What about if a player wants to import a character that has restricted options, should that character be blocked from being imported into the campaign, have the restricted options removed automatically, or the player messaged that they have restricted options?
What should happen if a DM changes the restrictions after players have made or imported their characters?
I think answering that first question would answer all the other ones: I would suggest alerting players they're picking something the DM has filtered out, for 3 reasons.
The problem with imported characters won't be there. Everything will still be on the sheet, just marked with a warning.
Same goes for if restrictions are changed after
Some DMs will allow exceptions to their filters if, for example, a character idea is particularly cool but requires a subclass the DM doesn't "allow" the rest of the party to use.
I think it would also be much easier to implement than a hard block of content would be, but again, not a developer.
This then invites a lot of interesting new questions:
How do you message the invalid options?
Do we have a dialogue box that lists everything? If so, should it be dismissible? Should it pop up every time? Should you be able to access it again?
Do you highlight every option that is invalid? Is there a centralised flag that says "you still have invalid selections"? How do you handle exceptions like you mentioned without things getting obnoxious
Do we add a section to the character sheet for validity checks that lists everything that's invalid on the sheet?
Basically this is an interesting case study in the rabbit hole you can go down implementing what seems to be a simple feature. And this is assuming the messaging option is considered the best by the community and dev team.
Addressing all 6 of your questions in order, here is my opinion:
I think the most important part of this change is reducing clutter in the character builder, so i say blocked options shouldnt appear at all. If the player wishes to inquire about a piece of content they cant see, they should go straight to the DM.
No restrictions on importing characters is necessary, i think. So long as there is an appropriate flag on the character in the campaign viewer that something is arrie, and any banned options are highlighted (perhaps by the name being highlighted in red text for simplicity) when looking at it in the sheet or builder, then all other micromanaging can be done by the DM themselves or in co-ordination with the player.
Same with an imported character. The characters card in the campaign is flagged, and the issue highlighted in the sheet and builder.
While I think a list of all the issues would be helpful, a dialog box is probably too obnoxious. Perhaps the list could be at the bottom of the first page of the character builder, somewhere it can be found easily and ignored if necessary. However, such a list is secondary to the actual functionality I as a DM am looking for in my own case, so it isnt something i think the team should bog themselves down with if they don't have to. I myself have no issue pouring over a sheet to find the issue, but I understand that other DMs may not feel that way.
Both, a centralised flag on the character card, and highlight the individual options in the sheet. For exceptions, i don't believe any special functionality is necessary, as the DM can temporarily disable to ban to add the exception to the character in question. If you were to include special functionality, maybe a toggle for the DM when viewing the character builder (not the player) that allows them to see and add banned content.
That comes back more to point 4, but i think no special functionality is required here, at least not immediately.
Ultimately, yes, this is something subject to feature creep. The main function we need is A) the ability to stop unwanted homebrew being shared from players collections (by player preferably), and B) to decide which type of content from each book can be used (doing it in the same way they are portioned on the marketplace might be easier, since that framework exists already, but if i had to choose content types by category; Races and Subraces, Classes, Subclasses, Feats, Backgrounds, Magic Items, and Equipment). While i would like to be able to pick and choose every little piece of content, that is asking far too much and i can micro manage that myself by making homebrew copies of what i will allow from any given catagory, then ban the whole category. The main thing is that the banned content doesn't appear, at least in my opinion.
To speak in terms i used in Uni, dont hard boil the code. So long as you set the code up to be modular and accept changes in future, focusing on the base functionality and moving from there will be the most beneficial in the short term, as opposed to working on a fully developed and intricate content ban system that wont come out for 5 years. Meaning, if you can at least allow us to pick and choose what appears, we as end-users could probably jury rig the rest in the meantime, using the tools we have.
That at least is my opinion. Im aware you guys arent working with the best foundations for this site, which is why changes take so long, but as i said in the main post, even something simple to help declutter the builders for our campaigns will be a god-send.
Should they be blocked from accessing restricted options, or just alerted that they're picking something disallowed by the DM?
What about if a player wants to import a character that has restricted options, should that character be blocked from being imported into the campaign, have the restricted options removed automatically, or the player messaged that they have restricted options?
What should happen if a DM changes the restrictions after players have made or imported their characters?
I think answering that first question would answer all the other ones: I would suggest alerting players they're picking something the DM has filtered out, for 3 reasons.
The problem with imported characters won't be there. Everything will still be on the sheet, just marked with a warning.
Same goes for if restrictions are changed after
Some DMs will allow exceptions to their filters if, for example, a character idea is particularly cool but requires a subclass the DM doesn't "allow" the rest of the party to use.
I think it would also be much easier to implement than a hard block of content would be, but again, not a developer.
This then invites a lot of interesting new questions:
How do you message the invalid options?
Do we have a dialogue box that lists everything? If so, should it be dismissible? Should it pop up every time? Should you be able to access it again?
Do you highlight every option that is invalid? Is there a centralised flag that says "you still have invalid selections"? How do you handle exceptions like you mentioned without things getting obnoxious
Do we add a section to the character sheet for validity checks that lists everything that's invalid on the sheet?
Basically this is an interesting case study in the rabbit hole you can go down implementing what seems to be a simple feature. And this is assuming the messaging option is considered the best by the community and dev team.
Now that I think about it, there are already content filters in the Character Builder: You can set to allow Eberron, MTG and Critical Role content already. If such toggles were available for each separate source you own this would make life already a lot better. A DM can just *tell* a player to toggle certain things on or off.
The content banning doesn't necessarily have to be DM-side, I think. If you add those toggles for each possible source instead of the broader categories there are now, the DM can just make verbal agreements on what to toggle or not. That's how we have to do it now, anyway. It'll just hide the options similar to how I can't use the Blood Hunter if I don't have CR content turned on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
This is my Irregularly Scheduled Reminder for the DDB team that we need better ways to filter content for characters in our Campaigns, and Race Groups for every race in the game so that we can homebrew prerequisites for them.
As it stands, my campaigns are overflowing with absurd homebrew from my players collections, and i would like to be able to decide who can and cannot share homebrew in the campaign. I don't mind if they can always see the homebrew in their own collections, but at least let me decide what they can see from other peoples collections. Also, we need to be able to hard-ban sourcebooks, or content categories from sourcebooks (races, subclasses, spells, etc), so that they do not appear in the builder and cause a constant barrage of inquiries to what can and cant be used, or require extensive external lists of the such. Both of these things will go miles in reducing clutter in the Character Builder, especially for players with attention disorders who can be overwhelmed and confused by this clutter.
Next, we need Race Groups for every race. Most of the races from Eberron, Ravnica, Theros, and other setting guides like Witchlight do not have race groups, and any feats or magic items prerequisite'd for them will appear for every character, further cluttering the Character Builder. Likewise, any variant or subrace we make for a race without a Race Group appears as its own race, not under a dropdown for the parent race like it should. Further, the inability to make homebrew race groups is rather inconvenient, though it might be harder to implement this, compared to how simple it should be to create race groups for existing races.
In order to set up a racial prerequisite for a feat, or place homebrew variants under their parent race, a race must have a race group. At this time, a large quantity of races still do not have race groups. Is there any reason why they don't, or perhaps an ETA on when they will get them?
Races without race groups; Centaur, Changeling, Fairy, Grung, Harengon, Kalashtar, Leonin, Locathah, Loxodon, Minotaur, Satyr, Simic Hybrid, Vedalken, Verdan
My guess for a reason: they weren't (and aren't) necessary to implement officially published stuff from WotC, so if they even are on the to-do list it's probably pretty low. The homebrew tools exist to implement non-homebrew mechanics first and foremost, not to enable broad homebrewing options.
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Its just another one of those things that seems like it would be pretty easy to do (seeing as the framework for it all ready exists and they would simply need to apply to these races) and would benefit many, but just hasn't been done for some reason.
I mean, they did it for tortle, and as far as i know there is nothing official that pre-reqs tortles. Same for Aarakocra, Bugbear, Firbolg, Goblin, Goliath, Hobgoblin, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Tabaxi, Triton and Yuan-ti. Even Custom Lineages have a race group, yet other official races do not. None of these races have subraces or variants or magic items or feats... It just feels so inconsistent, and its so painful having the character builder feats dropdown cluttered with racial feats that cant be tied to their respective races.
With the leaks of the upcoming overhauls to player races, DMs who want to use the older versions of the races are now going to need to preserve more than 60% of the race lineup with homebrew copies.
Please, DDB, reconsider granting DMs the ability to control what does and does not appear in the character builder for our players. It is going to be so clustered seeing homebrew copies of half the races (all of them once 2024 rolls around and the game gets reworked). Between the unsolicited homebrew flooding our campaigns and all the official content we don't want to use, players are going to be more overwhelmed than ever about what they can and cannot use.
Please, let us control what appears in the character builder for our campaigns, I BEG! (If you could at least let us ban by type of content per book, instead of just books wholesale, that would be amazing, your website already filters content by type in the marketplace, just extend that to the content bans. And give us custom race groups while your at it, or at least groups for every official race)
Seconding this, and adding that it's already very frustrating to have lost access to the previous versions of the books I bought here, like Volo's and the PHB. My Drow's racial lore blurb is now the updated version, and I preferred the lore blurb from the previous one.
But that's only a short lore blurb and while frustrating, I can at least go back and find .pdfs and an older physical copy, though it is still frustrating that I even should consider having to do that after content has been outright removed/completely rewritten and I can't access it anymore from DnD Beyond.
However, that pales in comparison to these leaks and how I worry DnD Beyond will handle them because we will outright lose character abilities entirely. This can be extremely disruptive to anyone like myself whose main or only option to playing DnD is online through platforms like DnD Beyond. DM's and players will lose functionally mid-game, forced to use old pdf's or physical material to continue using the version of the game they were already playing.
This is a result of Wizards treating DnD like it's a video game they can haphazardly patch and override, when it is not, but because of how DnD Beyond currently handles such things we are effectively stuck with it if we use DnD Beyond.
I strongly agree that DnD Beyond needs to start adding ways to preserve the original versions, perhaps a toggle besides the race in the builder, and going a step further to preserve versions of the books that don't have entire paragraphs of text erased or rewritten entirely.
At the moment, I'm not only uninterested in future content from Wizards due to disagreeing with the direction their books have taken recently and their frustratingly hasty-looking errata's that now rewrite and remove entire portions of existing books, but I'm strongly discouraged from continuing to use DnD Beyond to run my games and create my characters because I will more than likely lose access to that content mid-use with no way to go back to using it. This includes purchasing older sourcebooks on DnD Beyond, because i've already lost the ability to use the versions I had been using for over a year prior to these sweeping changes.
The alternative for the player races portion is that I painstakingly go through every single player race I own and copy it into the Homebrew editor and re-label it to preserve having that functionality on DnD Beyond - which already does not interact well with everybody's homebrew being shared with Content Sharing turned on, and all of my homebrew automatically being shared in campaigns I host. I'll effectively have to fill my character creator with clutter just to preserve the versions I and I my players are currently using. I should not have to do any of that.
Depending on how DnD Beyond handles this, I may cancel my subscription and switch entirely to other methods or resources that don't run the risk of overwriting my current content entirely. I'm already dissatisfied with how WOTC is handling their new content, and I'm waiting to see how DnD Beyond continues to handle WOTC's rapid changes before I continue to support this platform.
Once again I second the above post - please add a proper method to support preserving the previous versions of the content instead of forcing us to resort to these time-consuming, unintuitive methods, DnD Beyond staff. We will be extremely greatful.
#OpenDnD
In another thread on this, a mod mentioned that the reason there is no "old version" toggle is because of the licensing agreement Fandom/DDB has with WotC. It *requires* them to have the DDB version be the most recently errata'd version of it. It's dumb, but it's not DDB's fault.
A workaround would be to creature homebrew races and subclasses that fix the changed character options. I know I'll be doing that for my Fire Genasi character.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
#OpenDnD
DDB is great, but it could be better. Here are some things I think could improve DDB
I saw that thread too, and also commented on it. It's unfortunate if DDB legally lacks the ability to provide that, and in that case the blame falls on WOTC. I get the impression WOTC ties DDB's hands quite a bit with their licensing agreements.
It's unfortunate, but if WOTC is going to be taking the eraser to their existing content and completely rework player races instead of making new versions that can exist alongside them, then I'll probably have to stop using DnD Beyond for my games. I can't imagine I'm the only one that will do this.
Yeah, the workaround exists, it's just going to be very time-consuming and annoying, not to mention will clutter up homebrew collections and character builders.
#OpenDnD
Ill be seeking a refund for many books once the updates drop. My ability to use the content as i purchased it is being revoked. I feel for peps outside australia, at least we have good consumer laws when it comes to refunds.
I haven't kept up on the other thread where this was discussed so I don't know if the licensing agreement prohibits this, but perhaps a middle ground is archiving the current races like they did with kobold a couple years back? For those who want to preserve current character builds, their basic mechanics would be saved, and anyone who wants to adopt the new ones can do so. While this won't be a comprehensive solution in the slightest, at least subscribers won't lose content we paid for to use in active campaigns.
Its not really about letting people use what they currently use, its about that i cant make a new character with it a year from now after they take that option away.
As discussed in the main post, the issue im mainly upset about is how cluttered the character builder will get with all these duplicates of the old races, without the ability to to either filter out the new ones so my players cant see them (or at least being unable to hide the duplicates with race groups for every race).
I'm aware of that, hence why I said it wasn't a comprehensive solution. It would at least provide a small means of preserving what currently exists, which could be stored in character collections for future use provided the person who creates said character has the space or a subscription.
Which is also bad, because that is basically DDB requiring us to pay them continuously in order to preserve the options.
To bring this thread back to the original topic though: Content banning in campaigns should definitely be a thing.
I own a load of Sourcebooks, but sometimes I like to run campaigns for people that haven't played very often, and in those cases I would like to only allow subclasses, races and spells from the PHB. I can filter by sourcebook in the character creator for races, but I can't do that for subclasses and spells.
When I have a campaign, I'd like to be able to go to the "content sharing" options and share the character builder options for only the books I want them to use, and not one of the other 9 sourcebooks I own. I can already ban Compendium access, so It's strange to me that I can't ban Character Builder access.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
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DDB is great, but it could be better. Here are some things I think could improve DDB
More granular content toggles for the character builder, including allowing the DM to set content toggles at the campaign level that'll be then flagged in any character within that campaign, is something the team is aware of the desire for (it's been asked for many times both in suggestion threads and on the dev update).
It is important to understand it's not a simple feature to implement though. The UI/UX of toggling the vast amount of character options alone is a daunting task. Then there's handling how restricted content should be messaged to the player?
There are a lot of messy questions surrounding how this should work, which the team would have to investigate. No simple undertaking.
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While I know nothing about programming and implementation, I think some other practical problems you state would solve itself.
I think answering that first question would answer all the other ones: I would suggest alerting players they're picking something the DM has filtered out, for 3 reasons.
I think it would also be much easier to implement than a hard block of content would be, but again, not a developer.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
#OpenDnD
DDB is great, but it could be better. Here are some things I think could improve DDB
This then invites a lot of interesting new questions:
Basically this is an interesting case study in the rabbit hole you can go down implementing what seems to be a simple feature. And this is assuming the messaging option is considered the best by the community and dev team.
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You already have the capability programming wise to do this. This done with the sharing capability of Master Tier accounts with what books are shared.
So yes it is well within your current capability to do this. Yes I understand the work involved, I have over thirty years of programming experience to rely on for that. This was capable in the days of Assembler so it is quite doable nowadays.
Far as your other questions.
Imported characters: Highlight what is currently not allowed, DM can be given a dialogue option on import to allow or disallow character as a whole. This is minor as we can easily recreate a character using what is allowed. This gets covered in a DM’s Session 0.
Should they blocked from choosing disallowed. Short answer is yes. We all know some DMs allow exceptions. That’s where individual versioning should apply. This would come into play more with PHB +1 games. Goliath would than be three versions (ex. Goliath(Volo) / Goliath (Iceeind Dale) / Goliath (MMoM). Those choices would be in your Races table. But the base entry can have all three on same listed page with the changes notated within the base stat blocks. With “English “ explanation below that detailing the changes from each book. This takes a little more data entry at the front end but future updates and changes flow easier.
DM changes restrictions after Session 0.
Again since most DMs and players talk something like that out I would say it updates automatically after all the DM can change things on sheets now. At least with Master a tier I can.
Validity checks. This can be done in following cases.
1. Character creation invalid selections shouldn’t be shown. This already done for unavailable sourcebooks.
2. Character Builder opened. This is a little more difficult for a post creation change but an error message saying an option is no longer valid should be given saying which option that is. Honestly I would just return the first error to start and give a full list with a later patch.
3. At time of Import.
This all on the surface is easy to say. The main thing is what your contract with WOTC may or may not prevent you from doing. In other posts you have stated that you have to provide the latest option. This I wholeheartedly support my question is if it contract that prevents you from past support being available to tell us. As customers we will understand where your hands are tied and proceed with hammer WOTC directly on things such as this.
Thanks for the responses it’s good to have civil interaction. Who knows we might stumble on a solution to all this.
Addressing all 6 of your questions in order, here is my opinion:
Ultimately, yes, this is something subject to feature creep. The main function we need is A) the ability to stop unwanted homebrew being shared from players collections (by player preferably), and B) to decide which type of content from each book can be used (doing it in the same way they are portioned on the marketplace might be easier, since that framework exists already, but if i had to choose content types by category; Races and Subraces, Classes, Subclasses, Feats, Backgrounds, Magic Items, and Equipment). While i would like to be able to pick and choose every little piece of content, that is asking far too much and i can micro manage that myself by making homebrew copies of what i will allow from any given catagory, then ban the whole category. The main thing is that the banned content doesn't appear, at least in my opinion.
To speak in terms i used in Uni, dont hard boil the code. So long as you set the code up to be modular and accept changes in future, focusing on the base functionality and moving from there will be the most beneficial in the short term, as opposed to working on a fully developed and intricate content ban system that wont come out for 5 years. Meaning, if you can at least allow us to pick and choose what appears, we as end-users could probably jury rig the rest in the meantime, using the tools we have.
That at least is my opinion. Im aware you guys arent working with the best foundations for this site, which is why changes take so long, but as i said in the main post, even something simple to help declutter the builders for our campaigns will be a god-send.
Now that I think about it, there are already content filters in the Character Builder: You can set to allow Eberron, MTG and Critical Role content already. If such toggles were available for each separate source you own this would make life already a lot better. A DM can just *tell* a player to toggle certain things on or off.
The content banning doesn't necessarily have to be DM-side, I think. If you add those toggles for each possible source instead of the broader categories there are now, the DM can just make verbal agreements on what to toggle or not. That's how we have to do it now, anyway. It'll just hide the options similar to how I can't use the Blood Hunter if I don't have CR content turned on.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
#OpenDnD
DDB is great, but it could be better. Here are some things I think could improve DDB
This is my Irregularly Scheduled Reminder for the DDB team that we need better ways to filter content for characters in our Campaigns, and Race Groups for every race in the game so that we can homebrew prerequisites for them.
As it stands, my campaigns are overflowing with absurd homebrew from my players collections, and i would like to be able to decide who can and cannot share homebrew in the campaign. I don't mind if they can always see the homebrew in their own collections, but at least let me decide what they can see from other peoples collections. Also, we need to be able to hard-ban sourcebooks, or content categories from sourcebooks (races, subclasses, spells, etc), so that they do not appear in the builder and cause a constant barrage of inquiries to what can and cant be used, or require extensive external lists of the such. Both of these things will go miles in reducing clutter in the Character Builder, especially for players with attention disorders who can be overwhelmed and confused by this clutter.
Next, we need Race Groups for every race. Most of the races from Eberron, Ravnica, Theros, and other setting guides like Witchlight do not have race groups, and any feats or magic items prerequisite'd for them will appear for every character, further cluttering the Character Builder. Likewise, any variant or subrace we make for a race without a Race Group appears as its own race, not under a dropdown for the parent race like it should. Further, the inability to make homebrew race groups is rather inconvenient, though it might be harder to implement this, compared to how simple it should be to create race groups for existing races.
Please and Thank-you, keep up the good work.