Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
I've been a D&D player for decades. Character creation in D&D beyond is absolutely awful. There is zero room for creativity. It feels like picking a from a list of pre made characters. A very limited list of pre made characters. So fat this is just as bad as 4.0
I have shelves of D&D books at home. I will not be buying even 1 D&D Beyond book
I used to the character builder on this site. It has very limited options. And for a fighter that I was making, it forces three weapon proficiencies with feats linked to the weapons. Also I wanted an axe because it fit my hunter slash woodsman.Aesthetic, because it can be used as a tool. And it forces me to get a featThat knocks people prone, which I don't want. The new character creation system is just awful. It strips all the creativity and personalization out of making characters. I don't wanna play a character.I wanna play my character.
I am willing to bet that i've been playing dungeons & dragons longer than you've been alive. The problem is that whistles of the coast has stripped the soul and creativity out of the game, in favor of over simplistic balance and backwards compatibility to other platforms. But you're right after decades of playing dungeons & dragons, it is no longer the game for me. Also a woodsman's axe is not a hatchet.
I bet my home brew campaign setting is older than you.
I don't know about wagnarokkr, but I've been playing since THAC0 and I while I generally prefer 5E / 5.5E over any of the other editions on my bookshelf I'm not interested in any "it was better in the old days" or "they changed it and now it sucks" edition wars silliness.
In all honesty, I'm having trouble understanding the roadblock you're running into when you try to create characters on D&D Beyond. If your options are limited it sounds like maybe you're just using the free rules and you don't have the PHB or any other books in your library that would give you access to more than just the free rules' character options. If you have the PHB in your library, D&D Beyond's character creator options are as robust as having a physical copy of the PHB, a pencil, and a character sheet in front of you.
If you have the physical book you can replicate most stuff.
You can also just customise the sheet. For example there is no woodman's axe but nothing stops you from taking the closest match and renaming it. Or just add the action on the sheet. Still better than pen and paper.
But as it has been pointed out already, your issue isn't D&D Beyond, it's that you prefer older editions. So, go play those. Nobody's stopping you.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
No posts for replies for 6 years until they come to complain about the character creator they should be used to. Are we sure they aren’t just trying to garner attention?
The character builder follows the rules for character creation in D&D 5th edition, but also includes a lot of room for customisation.
Are you talking about there being limited options to pick from? If so, that's likely because you don't own any books on DDB—you can only use the options you own (or are being shared with you)
How long you've been playing D&D is absolutely irrelevant to any of this.....
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Doesn't buy any options and then complains they've got no options. Yeah, you're just attention seeking.
I'm betting you haven't been playing D&D longer than I've been alive, and you're missing a fundamental point of the character builder.
This is a paid site. You're only seeing the free options from the 5.2 or 5.1 SRD, because you haven't bought the PHB or any of the expansion books digitally on the site. You're expecting some home made "I put all copyrighted data in for free" site, and that isn't what this is.
If you don't like it, don't use it. Your pencil is always there, no need to be a boastful to a room of people who have just as much or more experience as you.
This is a weird, vastly undeserved and unprovoked amount of hostility to wagnarokkr who was only trying to help you. 🤨
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I've played since the Red Box set in the mid-seventies (not that it's relevant) but it appears that your complaints are based in misunderstanding the way DDB offers options. I last counted about 217 species available through Beyond, 37 classes (each with several subclass options), a couple hundred feats, several hundred spells and it just goes on. Homebrew offers innumerable options (though not everything can be changed/added) as well.
Your snarky reply to wagnarokkr is completely indefensible as they were trying to help and is one of the most helpful and least judgemental members of these forums.
Don't get me wrong, this edition has it's flaws and I recall fondly the good old days when Elf was a race and a class but bringing that flavor into the new edition is completely possible.
Regarding the character creation:
When creating a new character and only having access to a single archetype (fighter - champion, rogue - thief) is pretty limiting. For a new player, that could cripple their character fantasy.
-- And that's because they haven't paid for the Players Handbook, I suppose. Even though that user/gamer/player owns physical copies of those books.
The loyal customers that have purchased physical copies of books should have the option to add those books to DNDBeyond and enable the access to that content. There needs to be a 'credit' system.
I get it. DNDBeyond is 'digital'. But... for the gamers that have been paying for decades and have spent thousands of dollars and have created a substantial DnD library, it sure would be nice if DNDBeyond offered some enablement for those gamers.
Again, I'm sure I'll be flamed to death.
Today is Wednesday. At least here in the US that means it's the day new comic books are released. Every Wednesday on my lunch break I make the trek over to my friendly local comic shop and buy my new comics for the week. Marvel has this neat thing where there's a peel-away label inside with a code to register on Marvel Unlimited and have a digital copy of the comic. I've mentioned before that I would love if the D&D books worked like that.
Buuuut... The services are more than a little different. With my purchased comics on Marvel Unlimited I'm only opening an app, downloading the comics from an online database, and reading them. There's a whole lot more going on in the backend and in the user interface with D&D Beyond. So I understand why the digital version of a D&D book isn't just thrown in as a freebie with physical purchase. I don't love it, but I understand it. I do appreciate being able to buy the physical+digital bundles on the D&D Marketplace though.
Genuine question: Is there anything preventing someone from going to the store, grabbing the comic, peeling the sticker back, scanning the code, and then putting the comic back without paying? I know one of the hang-ups with the "interior code" for WotC has been (suggested) that to ensure people don't just use it at the store without purchasing the book, they would have to "wrap" the books to make them unable to be opened easily without purchase. Because people want to flip through the books to see the art, look at character options, or other things to see if they might want to buy it, keeping the books sealed has been cited as a net negative for WotC and so listed as why they don't do the interior book code thing. I'm curious how the comics deal with that issue, or if they just accept a certain amount of "theft" (D&D books in store can sell for about $50, while comics are what, $5-10?).
Let alone stealing the code & scalping it on Ebay.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I'm not sure how bigger stores handle loss prevention issues like this, but my local comic shop has a pretty small footprint. The staff either have line of sight or camera angles on people in the store at all times. Not to mention other customers would immediately call someone out for doing something like that.
Again, I'd love it if it getting a digital copy on DDB with an in-store purchase were that easy, but at scale I don't think giving away free digital copies of DDB content would be sustainable long-term. Admittedly I don't know the ins and outs of either platform, but I suspect Marvel Unlimited takes fewer person hours to maintain and update than D&D Beyond, and probably generates less server-side activity. I'm assuming DDB is costlier to run and maintain as a service.
I do wonder though if there isn't some way to take the bundle aspect of buying on the D&D Beyond Marketplace and approximate that in friendly local game stores. Like maybe a code a customer can purchase at the register to unlock the DDB content at the bundle discount price. But I suppose that would require the retailers to be running point of sale software that can work with those codes, and getting who knows how many independent small business retailers to use the same system to make that work would be an enormous challenge.