I'm not sure if this has been discussed or brought up yet, I'm new to the forums here and to D&D Beyond, and truth be told D&D as a whole (Played Pathfinder), I was wondering if there was a possibility of some sort of cross buy, where if I bought the physical books I'd be able to unlock them here as well for free or at least a big discount. 

I'd like to get a set of the basic books physically, but the ease of digital would be great.

Thoughts on this? Is this already a thing and I didn't know?

No, this is not a option, for several reasons. The pricing announced in DDB is arguably the lowest anywhere and for the first week there will be a discount for the core books.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/news-announcements/5335-release-date-august-15th-pricing-details-announced?page=20#c395

So... If I already bought the books I wasted a bunch of money. Coooool.

Quote from Kuranes >>

So... If I already bought the books I wasted a bunch of money. Coooool.

True but with more difficulty then if I had just waited. 

(reply deleted: reason: relevance)

Wizards didn't make DDB. Curse did. Curse deserves to be paid for their work. End of story. 

I guess the deal is like this.
WotC wants money for the license and they get it when people buy the digital books.
DDB get money for the software from the subscriptions.
DDB is not allowed to give the digital books away for free as it is the property of WotC.

They might have gone in another direction and had only a subscription on the software.
Nothing for free and a monthly cost of $15 instead.
But that is not the road they have taken and i for one is happy with that.

my issue is that WotC has already gotten money from me for their product once (for a physical copy), and since this is an officially licensed  venture, they are in effect asking for another round of money to use their after-thought-because-others-have-been-doing-this business venture. It is in effect punishing people for supporting them by purchasing their physical products who also want to use their digital products. 
Hell, I'd happily scan and email off photographic proof in the form of receipts that I have purchased every WotC  D&D 5e release to date if it would mean not having to shell out another equivalent cost to use their digital media. 

All their campaign planning stuff is icing on the cake. what i'm mainly after is a good, well-put-together character generator, which they have here (and which has remarkable similarity to other online sources). 

Allow me to repeat myself: I specifically want to /not/ pirate anything from WotC, as I want them to continue to make games that I enjoy and which have a special place in my heart. I want WotC to rethink their pricing structure or come up with some way for those who already own physical books to have access to that material digitally through proprietary websites. I'd pay their sub price if it gave me access to all of the published books that I own, but *just* to use their character creater and SRD? im not paying for that.  

Quote from filcat >> Those money are not wasted. You still have the books ;-) In here you can do a lot of things for free.

Quote from Lanc3rz3r0 >>

 

 

 

Quote from filcat >> Those money are not wasted. You still have the books ;-) In here you can do a lot of things for free.

 True, but their character creator uses only SRD (which has very, very limited information and thus limited options) unless you purchase the books via the interface, which in turn means paying a 2nd time for those who already own the books

Your reply is kind of irrelevant because you're directing your issues at WotC and talking about how you've already paid WotC for their physical books. DDB isn't made by WotC, it is made by Curse and is only licensing content from WotC. Curse deserve to be paid for their work. And WotC isn't going to give out a license to books here because they'd have to do the same for all of the other official licensed resources. Which I guess they could do from here on out, which wouldn't help you anyways, and would probably mean increasing the book price to $100 or more so each company whose product is being given away still gets paid. 

A comparison that I find quite fitting to try and give a bit of perspective on the issue: how many recreational books have you recently bought that came with a voucher or code for the e-book, pdf or any other digital version of the book itself?
Because if you have found a company that does that, I most definitely want to know it.

There are examples of digital content being bundled with physical products. This has been done with DVDs for ages, with iTunes codes bundled in Blu-Rays. Theft prevention is a concern, of course -- DVDs are notoriously difficult to open, and people like to flip through books before buying them. If paper and digital D&D products were to be bundled, I think it would actually make more sense to go the other way -- receive a hardcover when you buy the digital content. But that would probably raise the price of the digital product, and people wouldn't like that either.

EDIT: Maybe some form of discount to get the content in both formats, kind of like Amazon Kindle Matchbook? It would still require some kind of proof of purchase which is why keying it to a digital purchase first probably makes the most sense.

If this will change i would really like this.
The biggest cost on Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are the books.
Buy a physical book and get the book on DnD beyond, Fantasy Grounds and Roll20.
That would be amazing if WotC would shoot themselves in the foot and do that.  :)

This was my response in a previous similar thread that seemed to help it click for some people, hope it helps:

The analogy I like to use for this is the game Monopoly. 

I have a copy of Monopoly, it's a great game for causing family upset and breaking friendships. Monopoly has been released on the iPad. It's the exact same game but with some fancy automation and tools to help facilitate playing quicker. I don't expect to get the iPad version for free.

I'm not being conned out of "something I already bought" as I have what I bought, I have a physical copy of the game, that was never taken away from me and it is still 100% playable in the manner I expected it to be when I purchased it. The iPad version may be the same game but I'm aware that the cost for that pays for the licencing that the game developer paid to make a Monopoly game to begin with, the development time to build a game engine, the time and effort for a team of developers to convert the game to use the tools that the digital version provides, their ongoing development to fix bugs and ongoing server costs for online components. 

Monopoly is also available for Xbox, Playstation, PC, Gameboy, etc. I am aware that each version is different and although the end game I am playing is the same what I'm paying for is actually different in each case. 

DnD Beyond is a product. You can use it for free with the SRD content alone. If you choose to pay you are paying for the licencing costs that Curse pay to WotC for using the content you have access to, you are paying for their developer's time to convert that to use the site and all it's features, you are paying partly for the past and continued development of that system, you are paying partly for server costs, storage costs and staff wages to keep the site up, bug free & running. 

When you buy the book you buy the book, you get the book, no one can take that away from you & you can always use it just how you always have. If you like you can buy the book digitally on DnD Beyond for a similar price, have all the content you would have from the book (including the ability to have this offline as soon as the app is released) with the added extra of having all that content expanded and converted so that it can use an expanding set of digital tools that make running & playing the game a lot easier. 

All this is optional. 

Personally I had the holy trinity (PHB/MM/DMG) & a couple of adventures before DnD Beyond launched, I now fully intend to go digital only with my purchases (in fact Volo's Guide was the first content I've ever bought digital only) because I like the system and also "only want to pay once". It's a shame that DnD Beyond wasn't available at 5e launch so that the option to go digital only wasn't always present meaning some people have to buy the trinity & a few more on more than one platform if they want to go all in on Beyond but for new content the choice is there for anyone, buy twice if you want to or just go with the system that suits your game better. 

Great analogy. Well said. "Nice to have" and "owed to us" are completely different things.

Quote from DaddyTheBarbarian >>

There are examples of digital content being bundled with physical products. This has been done with DVDs for ages, with iTunes codes bundled in Blu-Rays. Theft prevention is a concern, of course -- DVDs are notoriously difficult to open, and people like to flip through books before buying them. If paper and digital D&D products were to be bundled, I think it would actually make more sense to go the other way -- receive a hardcover when you buy the digital content. But that would probably raise the price of the digital product, and people wouldn't like that either.

EDIT: Maybe some form of discount to get the content in both formats, kind of like Amazon Kindle Matchbook? It would still require some kind of proof of purchase which is why keying it to a digital purchase first probably makes the most sense.