I am generating characters for my group using the DND beyond character creator (free basic)
I currently own a physical copy of most of the books so i haven't bitten the bullet yet on the digital copies.
However forest gnome is a default subclass in the player's handbook which appears to be available for free now, it shows the gnome race with 3 subclasses on the race page, but only shows deep gnome and rock gnome when you go to the race page. Also it appears that deep gnome and rock gnome are only available in the character creator as well.
I'm just curious if I'm missing something here or not, or if this just hasn't been included yet. I just discovered this tool today after watching the Season 2 episode 1 of Critical Role. So i'm not super familiar with how old/new this feature is.
I wasn't sure if that was the reason i was missing it as it allows you to select source of player's handbook in the character creator or not. I'll worry about this character separately when i end up purchasing the books digitally later on.
Thank you for the fast reply and answering my question!
Not using the PHB as default player rules? Lame. Or, perhaps, BEYOND lame. But hey, I can understand rules.
Just means that I can't use your service to build my character that I've been playing with for well over a year and a half. Which means I also won't be using your service at all. Kinda strange how that little limitation negates overall usage from a consumer standpoint.
Please work with Wizards of the Coast to at least access all core races. I mean, you offer Deep Gnomes, and not Forest Gnomes at default?
Not using the PHB as default player rules? Lame. Or, perhaps, BEYOND lame. But hey, I can understand rules.
Just means that I can't use your service to build my character that I've been playing with for well over a year and a half. Which means I also won't be using your service at all. Kinda strange how that little limitation negates overall usage from a consumer standpoint.
Please work with Wizards of the Coast to at least access all core races. I mean, you offer Deep Gnomes, and not Forest Gnomes at default?
Then make a purchase to use the services of this site. All you have to buy is a PHB, or even just the races section of the PHB. You should be happy with all the free tools they grant you access to without paying a dime. Invest some money in your hobby, it is not all that expensive. Alternatively find someone who is hosting a campaign and sharing their content to grant you access to anything that they have purchased.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Not using the PHB as default player rules? Lame. Or, perhaps, BEYOND lame. But hey, I can understand rules.
Just means that I can't use your service to build my character that I've been playing with for well over a year and a half. Which means I also won't be using your service at all. Kinda strange how that little limitation negates overall usage from a consumer standpoint.
Please work with Wizards of the Coast to at least access all core races. I mean, you offer Deep Gnomes, and not Forest Gnomes at default?
Everything that WotC provides for free is provided for free here as well. Anything that you would normally have to purchase a book to access, you also have to purchase here. If you have to pay for the PHB in physical form, WotC is not going to allow you a free copy of it here.
Then make a purchase to use the services of this site. All you have to buy is a PHB, or even just the races section of the PHB. You should be happy with all the free tools they grant you access to without paying a dime. Invest some money in your hobby, it is not all that expensive. Alternatively find someone who is hosting a campaign and sharing their content to grant you access to anything that they have purchased.
Everything that WotC provides for free is provided for free here as well. Anything that you would normally have to purchase a book to access, you also have to purchase here. If you have to pay for the PHB in physical form, WotC is not going to allow you a free copy of it here.
I appreciate the feedback and information here. The point is I'm dissatisfied -as a potential customer- with my first attempt at character creation.
In terms of site design; nothing informed me of this. You are prompted to add a character (which, let's be honest isn't really a cost... right? We do that for FREE). You can even add homebrew content, or critical role content (suggesting that a vast wealth of information will be here). You can pick an avatar for your dude that has art pulled from various books. And then you can pick a race... Nothing on the race page suggests you might have to buy a missing race, nor why you would have to. You are never prompted to purchase unlockable content on these pages.
So, two solutions for D&D Beyond; Work with WotC to get access to those final few races that are absent. It's literally a movement of stat points or addition of class features, hardly a loss of income. Or, edit your page to show that there are limitations in character options and you may have to buy digital versions of manuals.
As for the statement of funding a hobby. Believe you me, I do. I'd rather purchase minis, monsters, paints, brushes, set pieces, maps, and other content from content creators beyond WotC, than digital ephemeral stat sheets. I'll just resort to pen and paper for that, or even play around in InDesign instead, thank you! Furthermore, books are available in local libraries, or even borrowed from a friend! Shocking! I get it though, gotta pay to keep this site running. So have fun supporting your hobby in your way! Best of luck to D&D Beyond, feel free to use or dismiss my advice as you wish. May your community grow.
Or you know you could read some of the FAQS about how the site functions and have known most of this before you even started making a character.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Then make a purchase to use the services of this site. All you have to buy is a PHB, or even just the races section of the PHB. You should be happy with all the free tools they grant you access to without paying a dime. Invest some money in your hobby, it is not all that expensive. Alternatively find someone who is hosting a campaign and sharing their content to grant you access to anything that they have purchased.
Everything that WotC provides for free is provided for free here as well. Anything that you would normally have to purchase a book to access, you also have to purchase here. If you have to pay for the PHB in physical form, WotC is not going to allow you a free copy of it here.
I appreciate the feedback and information here. The point is I'm dissatisfied -as a potential customer- with my first attempt at character creation.
In terms of site design; nothing informed me of this. You are prompted to add a character (which, let's be honest isn't really a cost... right? We do that for FREE). You can even add homebrew content, or critical role content (suggesting that a vast wealth of information will be here). You can pick an avatar for your dude that has art pulled from various books. And then you can pick a race... Nothing on the race page suggests you might have to buy a missing race, nor why you would have to. You are never prompted to purchase unlockable content on these pages.
So, two solutions for D&D Beyond; Work with WotC to get access to those final few races that are absent. It's literally a movement of stat points or addition of class features, hardly a loss of income. Or, edit your page to show that there are limitations in character options and you may have to buy digital versions of manuals.
As for the statement of funding a hobby. Believe you me, I do. I'd rather purchase minis, monsters, paints, brushes, set pieces, maps, and other content from content creators beyond WotC, than digital ephemeral stat sheets. I'll just resort to pen and paper for that, or even play around in InDesign instead, thank you! Furthermore, books are available in local libraries, or even borrowed from a friend! Shocking! I get it though, gotta pay to keep this site running. So have fun supporting your hobby in your way! Best of luck to D&D Beyond, feel free to use or dismiss my advice as you wish. May your community grow.
There are no missing races. Everything in those books are present here. You have to purchase anything that is in those books to be able to access use of them here. If physical books are more logical for you to use, then maybe D&D Beyond isn't for you. There's nothing wrong with that. But you should read through the FAQ.
Then make a purchase to use the services of this site. All you have to buy is a PHB, or even just the races section of the PHB. You should be happy with all the free tools they grant you access to without paying a dime. Invest some money in your hobby, it is not all that expensive. Alternatively find someone who is hosting a campaign and sharing their content to grant you access to anything that they have purchased.
Everything that WotC provides for free is provided for free here as well. Anything that you would normally have to purchase a book to access, you also have to purchase here. If you have to pay for the PHB in physical form, WotC is not going to allow you a free copy of it here.
I appreciate the feedback and information here. The point is I'm dissatisfied -as a potential customer- with my first attempt at character creation.
In terms of site design; nothing informed me of this. You are prompted to add a character (which, let's be honest isn't really a cost... right? We do that for FREE). You can even add homebrew content, or critical role content (suggesting that a vast wealth of information will be here). You can pick an avatar for your dude that has art pulled from various books. And then you can pick a race... Nothing on the race page suggests you might have to buy a missing race, nor why you would have to. You are never prompted to purchase unlockable content on these pages.
So, two solutions for D&D Beyond; Work with WotC to get access to those final few races that are absent. It's literally a movement of stat points or addition of class features, hardly a loss of income. Or, edit your page to show that there are limitations in character options and you may have to buy digital versions of manuals.
As for the statement of funding a hobby. Believe you me, I do. I'd rather purchase minis, monsters, paints, brushes, set pieces, maps, and other content from content creators beyond WotC, than digital ephemeral stat sheets. I'll just resort to pen and paper for that, or even play around in InDesign instead, thank you! Furthermore, books are available in local libraries, or even borrowed from a friend! Shocking! I get it though, gotta pay to keep this site running. So have fun supporting your hobby in your way! Best of luck to D&D Beyond, feel free to use or dismiss my advice as you wish. May your community grow.
There are no missing races. Everything in those books are present here. You have to purchase anything that is in those books to be able to access use of them here. If physical books are more logical for you to use, then maybe D&D Beyond isn't for you. There's nothing wrong with that. But you should read through the FAQ.
firehawk2324 - As a new user to this website as well, some of the character creation issues motku mentioned above are exactly the same issues I ran into.
The biggest one being that when you are creating your 1st character, there is nothing that tells you there are missing options like the ability to purchase extra races, backgrounds, etc. Right now it just looks like you only have a few options and that's it. I'm sure many users will just assume they messed up, or they won't even know there are more options to choose from and just like Motku will just not use the website anymore. This is something you absolutely should address for long term customer retention.
Here are 2 specific examples.
1 - Background - I wanted to choose Urban Bounty Hunter as my background. That is not part of the free option so it's missing from the dropdown menu. There is nothing that indicates this background can be purchased or which add on I have to purchase in order to get it. It just doesn't appear at all. This is a pretty obvious UI oversight that I'm sure your team could fix in order to get more sales.
2 - Sorcerous Origin - I wanted to choose "wild magic" as my origin instead of picking the standard Draconic Bloodline option. Once again the dropdown only shows Draconic Bloodline with no other info hinting that I possibly had other choices if I purchased add ons. If there are other options I can purchase here there should be something I can click on that sends me to the correct purchasing page, or at least the "wild magic" option should be in the dropdown, but greyed out indicating it's an add on purchase.
On another note, when it comes to FAQ pages....yes, in an ideal world people should read the FAQ in it's entirety, but we all know a lot of people don't. The website should still work correctly even if they don't read the FAQ.
I know this website is still pretty new, and I'm very happy something like this exists, but this is clearly a UI issue that should be addressed in future updates.
HeroZero - I hope in the future if someone voices their concerns for how the site runs, instead of passive aggressively dismissing their concern like you did, maybe try asking more questions to figure out what went wrong. Motku is 100% correct that the character creator section is missing some UI options and will be frustrating for many new users, but I think you just missed that.
I just actually took the time research how this site functioned first. That is all.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Most standard customer's won't research first how this site functions to the fullest extent. They'll just start fiddling with it and see what they can do with it. For example, I'm a casual customer that had overlooked the as an option of expanded content by purchase for the character creator. I didn't visit the FAQ section of the site as most of the time that area isn't useful information on other pages. (this site being an exception)
What this site provides for free is an amazing value, and I agree if I want to further unlock functionality a purchase makes 100% sense. Though I would say I did directly run into the issue where I thought I was miss-using the tools available because I misunderstood what I was seeing. So the route I took was I asked a question on the forums, and might I add, It was almost INSTANTLY answered. That's amazing customer support right there!
If i was new to D&D and hadn't purchased any physical copies already I would already have purchased content through this site. Sadly, I have invested physically so it will be a while before I double invest digitally. Although I'll be suggesting this site instead to other players I interact with to see if it fits them better, especially if they are new or haven't purchased any books yet.
Lastly, I do appreciate that the character creator doesn't try to stuff buy now link on whatever I am missing in every category. It keeps the UI simple and I appreciate that. If I want additional functionality I'll search for it. (even if not very effectively.)
I'm glad motku and I weren't the only ones who bumped into some problems with the character creator...as awesome as it is.
I can see your POV on not wanting to be prompted to purchase something in every category through a "buy now" link, but I wonder if there is some other way to inform a user that there are expansion options vs it just not showing anything. I imagine there must be a way to present all of the options so people know the full extent of what each section is capable of?
I can even see a situation where someone is creating a new character and were planning on using just whatever the standard settings are, but then they discover some optional add on setting and purposely go out of their way to purchase that additional option. I feel like that is a win/win for everyone!
Either way...this site is fantastic now and I'm sure it will get better as time goes on.
As you may or may not know, there is a big revamp in the works for the character builder and character sheets among other things. I can't speak for the developers on what will and will not be included, but it just so happens the developers are speaking soon for themselves - the next live dev update is only a few days away.
Hi,
I am generating characters for my group using the DND beyond character creator (free basic)
I currently own a physical copy of most of the books so i haven't bitten the bullet yet on the digital copies.
However forest gnome is a default subclass in the player's handbook which appears to be available for free now, it shows the gnome race with 3 subclasses on the race page, but only shows deep gnome and rock gnome when you go to the race page. Also it appears that deep gnome and rock gnome are only available in the character creator as well.
I'm just curious if I'm missing something here or not, or if this just hasn't been included yet. I just discovered this tool today after watching the Season 2 episode 1 of Critical Role. So i'm not super familiar with how old/new this feature is.
Forest Gnome is in the Player's Handbook and is not in the Basic Rules.
D&D Beyond can be used for free and contains information from the following "free to use" sources published by Wizards of the Coast: D&D 5th edition SRD, D&D 5th edition Basic Rules, and Elemental Evil Companion.
Content from other sources, such as the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, or Monster Manual, will need to be purchased from the Marketplace or accessed via another user sharing content with you via their Master Tier Subscription.
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If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
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I wasn't sure if that was the reason i was missing it as it allows you to select source of player's handbook in the character creator or not. I'll worry about this character separately when i end up purchasing the books digitally later on.
Thank you for the fast reply and answering my question!
Oh i hadn't discovered that feature yet! I'll have to look into that.
Thank you!
Not using the PHB as default player rules? Lame. Or, perhaps, BEYOND lame. But hey, I can understand rules.
Just means that I can't use your service to build my character that I've been playing with for well over a year and a half. Which means I also won't be using your service at all. Kinda strange how that little limitation negates overall usage from a consumer standpoint.
Please work with Wizards of the Coast to at least access all core races. I mean, you offer Deep Gnomes, and not Forest Gnomes at default?
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
A dwarf with a canoe on his back? What could go wrong?
So, two solutions for D&D Beyond; Work with WotC to get access to those final few races that are absent. It's literally a movement of stat points or addition of class features, hardly a loss of income. Or, edit your page to show that there are limitations in character options and you may have to buy digital versions of manuals.
As for the statement of funding a hobby. Believe you me, I do. I'd rather purchase minis, monsters, paints, brushes, set pieces, maps, and other content from content creators beyond WotC, than digital ephemeral stat sheets. I'll just resort to pen and paper for that, or even play around in InDesign instead, thank you!
Furthermore, books are available in local libraries, or even borrowed from a friend! Shocking! I get it though, gotta pay to keep this site running. So have fun supporting your hobby in your way! Best of luck to D&D Beyond, feel free to use or dismiss my advice as you wish. May your community grow.
Or you know you could read some of the FAQS about how the site functions and have known most of this before you even started making a character.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
A dwarf with a canoe on his back? What could go wrong?
I just actually took the time research how this site functioned first. That is all.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Most standard customer's won't research first how this site functions to the fullest extent. They'll just start fiddling with it and see what they can do with it. For example, I'm a casual customer that had overlooked the as an option of expanded content by purchase for the character creator. I didn't visit the FAQ section of the site as most of the time that area isn't useful information on other pages. (this site being an exception)
What this site provides for free is an amazing value, and I agree if I want to further unlock functionality a purchase makes 100% sense. Though I would say I did directly run into the issue where I thought I was miss-using the tools available because I misunderstood what I was seeing. So the route I took was I asked a question on the forums, and might I add, It was almost INSTANTLY answered. That's amazing customer support right there!
If i was new to D&D and hadn't purchased any physical copies already I would already have purchased content through this site. Sadly, I have invested physically so it will be a while before I double invest digitally. Although I'll be suggesting this site instead to other players I interact with to see if it fits them better, especially if they are new or haven't purchased any books yet.
Lastly, I do appreciate that the character creator doesn't try to stuff buy now link on whatever I am missing in every category. It keeps the UI simple and I appreciate that. If I want additional functionality I'll search for it. (even if not very effectively.)
Hey RedilRed!
I'm glad motku and I weren't the only ones who bumped into some problems with the character creator...as awesome as it is.
I can see your POV on not wanting to be prompted to purchase something in every category through a "buy now" link, but I wonder if there is some other way to inform a user that there are expansion options vs it just not showing anything. I imagine there must be a way to present all of the options so people know the full extent of what each section is capable of?
I can even see a situation where someone is creating a new character and were planning on using just whatever the standard settings are, but then they discover some optional add on setting and purposely go out of their way to purchase that additional option. I feel like that is a win/win for everyone!
Either way...this site is fantastic now and I'm sure it will get better as time goes on.
Hey folks,
As you may or may not know, there is a big revamp in the works for the character builder and character sheets among other things. I can't speak for the developers on what will and will not be included, but it just so happens the developers are speaking soon for themselves - the next live dev update is only a few days away.
Some of your questions/suggestions might be addressed there - or you can ask the question yourself in this thread: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/11140-d-d-beyond-live-dev-update-q-a-stream-fri-19th-jan
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Looks like making a "custom" WOOD Gnome race is on my to-do list :p
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