I'm remaking a character and it's asking for my divine domain and according to a sheet a friend helped me make, I'd choose nature, but my only option is life. Is this a bug or something that I just can't do?
Thank you for your post - we appreciate people taking the time to give us feedback. Unfortunately we're not able to giveaway all of the Wizards of the Coast D&D rules for free.
The subclass you are referring to is not part of the D&D 5th edition SRD and will need to be unlocked from the marketplace before you can use it on D&D Beyond.
You can unlock the Nature Domain for the Cleric class for just $1.99 if you wish. Also please note that if you wish to unlock the full Player's Handbook later, any money you have spent on content from it is applied as a discount to purchasing the full Player's Handbook.
If you have any other questions, please take a look at the Purchase and Pricing FAQ. If you can't find the answers you are looking for there, please ask and we'll do our best to answer.
I appreciate the quick response. I came here at the recommendation of Critical Role. I was initially very impressed by this site and have spent hours tonight excitedly poring through its information. I have a hard copy of the Player's Manual, of course, but I thought online character building would be better than pen and paper. I perused for hours, with building excitement for creating my character. I even posted a link to dndbeyond.com on my Facebook page a few hours ago saying how awesome this site was. Then I finally got to the point where I was ready to build my character when <sad trombone> I discovered that my domain didn't exist for no obvious reason. Nothing said that I needed to pay for the Nature Domain. The drop-down menu just inexplicably read "Life Domain" and nothing else. Confused, and thinking your character builder was broken, I removed my recommendation from my Facebook page and started brainstorming for a better way to build my Cleric. Discovering that creating a character requires random payments is even worse than your builder being buggy.
So, how much would it cost me total to use your site to build a Wood Elf Nature Cleric? Are there other important selections that require my credit card?
I know I'm carrying on and on, but, man, this was a really weird business decision for WotC to make while interest in their D&D is skyrocketing.Nickle and diming your players discourages use of what would otherwise be a fantastic, comprehensive, likely very popular website. Dispensing information in pieces, requiring payment to access vital character details, is confusing, difficult to navigate, and extremely offputting. People are going to go to 3rd party sites. What a shame.
Not that it matters in the big picture for WotC, but my opinion of your company has bombed tonight. Players like me already buy hard copies of your manuals, adventures, and necessary products. Nickle and diming us in the character builder is such a slimy, cheap trick and it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, reminiscent of the super gross EA Star Wars Battlefront debacle. WotC is better than this. I hope your company recognizes the flaws in this system and makes appropriate changes. This is so freaking disappointing.
And finally, I know none of this is your fault. These bad business decisions were made by your bosses and you have to deal with the fallout. That's a raw deal. I hope they fix their system so that your job as a CSR becomes more pleasant in the future.
I appreciate the quick response. I came here at the recommendation of Critical Role. I was initially very impressed by this site and have spent hours tonight excitedly poring through its information. I have a hard copy of the Player's Manual, of course, but I thought online character building would be better than pen and paper. I perused for hours, with building excitement for creating my character. I even posted a link to dndbeyond.com on my Facebook page a few hours ago saying how awesome this site was. Then I finally got to the point where I was ready to build my character when <sad trombone> I discovered that my domain didn't exist for no obvious reason. Nothing said that I needed to pay for the Nature Domain. The drop-down menu just inexplicably read "Life Domain" and nothing else. Confused, and thinking your character builder was broken, I removed my recommendation from my Facebook page and started brainstorming for a better way to build my Cleric. Discovering that creating a character requires random payments is even worse than your builder being buggy.
So, how much would it cost me total to use your site to build a Wood Elf Nature Cleric? Are their other important selections that require my credit card in order to use your character builder?
I know I'm carrying on and on, but, man, this was a really weird business decision for WotC to make while interest in their D&D is skyrocketing.Nickle and diming your players discourages use of what would otherwise be a fantastic, comprehensive, likely very popular website. Dispensing information in pieces, requiring payment to access vital character details, is confusing, difficult to navigate, and extremely offputting. People are going to go to 3rd party sites. What a shame.
Not that it matters in the big picture for WotC, but my opinion of your company has bombed tonight. Players like me already buy hard copies of your manuals, adventures, and necessary products. Nickle and diming us in the character builder is such a slimy, cheap trick and it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, reminiscent of the super gross EA Star Wars Battlefront debacle. WotC is better than this. I hope your company recognizes the flaws in this system and makes appropriate changes. This is so freaking disappointing.
And finally, I know none of this is your fault. These bad business decisions were made by your bosses and you have to deal with the fallout. That's a raw deal. I hope they fix their system so that your job as a CSR becomes more pleasant in the future.
I'm sorry for the rant. Have a good night.
Hi Anjerina. I am sure a mod will reply to you extremely soon (they are amazing, really), but I'd like to give you my impression as well, as a user of DDB since launch. It is true there is, currently, "need" to purchase manuals or at least pieces of them in order to be able to create every possible variation of a character, but that will not always be the case. It won't always be the case because as we have the possibility to create homebrew spells, items monsters, feats and backgrounds, quite soon the possibility of creating homebrew subclasses will also be added, giving you the possibility to virtually re-create anything that is in the physical books you own for private or campaign use.
Now, I know this sounds like a potential bummer, as you would still need to manually input the information, but you'd need to do that just once, they they'll be available to you or any campaign you are in. While I understand how the lack of the other options in the list or prompts for the purchase could be confusing at first, but, if I may ask, what gave you the impression the all information would be available for free? WotC allows access here to exactly what is (legally) freely available anywhere else (the basic rules). The problem is: how would they know who bought the books and who didn't (there is more than one lengthy thread on this, so this is a rhetorical question the answer to which is: currently they cannot know).
Also, I'd like to point out DDB is not owned by WotC, but it is owned and run by Curse, a subsidiary of Twitch, operating under license, so they are the first ones who have to pay WotC for their content. Also, if I may, the price of the content here, considering all the tools are completely free (right now you can create endless homebrew monsters and items and spells and backgrounds and feats, all integrated with the tools and system), is already lower than any the normal price you would pay elsewhere (short of Amazon), with a discount on the price suggested by WotC itself for their products of roughly 40%. But you can also buy just the bits and pieces you want to have, like single subclasses, feats, spelles etc.
I don't know if any of what I am saying is remotely relevant or interesting to you, I hope it is.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
As Lek has mentioned, the D&D Beyond website is owned, created & maintained by Curse, who license the D&D content from Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately the terms of the licensing deal require that users purchase the books digitally to be able to use their content. It's great that WotC are licensing out their game to 3rd party creators such as Curse to create amazing digital tools such as D&D Beyond, but WotC still need to be able to earn a living off sales of the D&D game.
The Curse team are committed to making this toolset as available and useful to the D&D community as they can, and have been able to implement the partial purchases, to make it less painful to unlock content for specific characters.
For your Wood Elf Nature Cleric, you would need to unlock the nature domain, which can be unlocked for only $1.99. There are additional backgrounds in the Player's Handbook that you may want to unlock, but they are not necessary - you can amend the background as you like during creation or create your own homebrew background. These are both free.
There are a few cleric spells in the Player's Handbook, Xanathar's Guide to Everything and other books. If you find specific spells you want, these can again be purchased individually.
So, how much would it cost me total to use your site to build a Wood Elf Nature Cleric? Are there other important selections that require my credit card?
That depends on how much you are willing to do yourself wood elf isn't in the free rules, but you can home brew the race, or pay $1.99. From a quick check, it looks like only 1 cleric spell in the PHB isn't in the free rules. If you need it, you could homebrew it or pay $1.99. If you want spells from Xanathars, many of them are free in the Elemental Evil Players companion. Any others would need to be homebrewed or purchased Subclasses can't yet be homebrewed, so that is 1.99. Similarly, feats and backgrounds can be homebrewed or purchased for 1.99 each.
In other words, total cost is between 1.99 and $10.95, depending on how much you are willing to spend. A bit more (but no more than $4.99 more) if you want spells from Xanathars.
Only you can decide if it's worth the cost to you. If it's not, no worries.
i do have a question, though, asked sincerely, not snarkily: under your preferred model, where all this would be free, how would the developers and other Curse staff get paid for their work on this service?
Thanks for the screenshots. I see now that it says to go to the Marketplace if you want to play any elven subrace besides High Elves. At the time, I clicked on the Marketplace link and saw a bunch of digital books for sale. I don't need any books and I didn't see my Wood Elf. It's probably buried in there somewhere. I guess I was blinded by the absurdity of a pretty standard subrace being pay to play... well, not even to pay to play. Just to create? But, hey, if that's how they want to run their business, that's how they will run their business.
It's no big deal in the end. It was really frustrating at the time because I thought the site was promising up to that point, but ultimately, I got out my Player's Manual and found another site that didn't have nickel and diming restrictions on their builder and, alas, my feisty little Wood Elf Cleric was born.
Thanks for the screenshots. I see now that it says to go to the Marketplace if you want to play any elven subrace besides High Elves. At the time, I clicked on the Marketplace link and saw a bunch of digital books for sale. I don't need any books and I didn't see my Wood Elf. It's probably buried in there somewhere. I guess I was blinded by the absurdity of a pretty standard subrace being pay to play... well, not even to pay to play. Just to create? But, hey, if that's how they want to run their business, that's how they will run their business.
It's no big deal in the end. It was really frustrating at the time because I thought the site was promising up to that point, but ultimately, I got out my Player's Manual and found another site that didn't have nickel and diming restrictions on their builder and, alas, my feisty little Wood Elf Cleric was born.
The main difference is, if the builder you used in the end has automated sections presenting you with choices that auto-populate parts of the sheet, that one is most probably illegal, and not licensed by WotC, while DDB is. Not saying you are wrong in using such tools, everyone here did at one point or another before DDB launched, just be ready to the possibility that that site might be closed for copyright violation (or not, maybe it won't but it's a possibility) without much notice.
If, on the other hand, the site you are currently using is "simply" a prettier interactive sheet where you manually enter the data from the books, then I am happy you found a satisfying alternative that suits your needs :)
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
i do have a question, though, asked sincerely, not snarkily: under your preferred model, where all this would be free, how would the developers and other Curse staff get paid for their work on this service?
Don't they have dozens of digital books, paper books, and lots of merch for sale? Dinging players for access to 5e races just seems wrong. If they were asking for money for Mercer's Bloodhunter or something, that would make sense. But for a Wood Elf? She's nothing super special. I just really like trees and coppery hues.
I'm not opposed to buying their products. I am opposed to paying to gain access to relatively standard characters.
i do have a question, though, asked sincerely, not snarkily: under your preferred model, where all this would be free, how would the developers and other Curse staff get paid for their work on this service?
Don't they have dozens of digital books, paper books, and lots of merch for sale? Dinging players for access to 5e races just seems wrong. If they were asking for money for Mercer's Bloodhunter or something, that would make sense. But for a Wood Elf? She's nothing super special. I just really like trees.
I'm not opposed to buying their products. I am opposed to paying to gain access to more diverse characters.
Curse and WOTC are not the same company. Curse is paying for licensing from WOTC to provide an official D&D tool. They get 0 money from WOTC's sales of other products.
i do have a question, though, asked sincerely, not snarkily: under your preferred model, where all this would be free, how would the developers and other Curse staff get paid for their work on this service?
Don't they have dozens of digital books, paper books, and lots of merch for sale? Dinging players for access to 5e races just seems wrong. If they were asking for money for Mercer's Bloodhunter or something, that would make sense. But for a Wood Elf? She's nothing super special. I just really like trees.
I'm not opposed to buying their products. I am opposed to paying to gain access to more diverse characters.
Again, you do realise that Curse (owner of DDB) =/= WotC (owner of the D&D IP), don't you? (honestly asked, because your reply leaves me in doubt)
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Thanks for the information on the companies, Lek and MellieDM. I didn't know the company history at all; I just wandered in here after hearing the Critical Role folks plug the site. Curse being a subsidiary of Twitch, which is a subsidiary of Amazon actually makes this whole situation make a lot more sense to me.
You're both right that I am confused. When I follow the marketplace link, I see a bunch of digital books and bundles for sale, so I assumed that was where the money was really being made.
The builder site I found as an alternative to this one had slots to manually type in my girl's Wood Elf specific information, which I just copied out of my Player's Manual, and the rest of the character sheet was easily populated with drop-down menus. I don't think that is copyright infringement? but I know nothing about copyright law, so I honestly don't know. The internet is tricky.
I think the thing that made me overreact here initially was how much time I spent digging into D&D Beyond to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with my cleric without any sign that there is a price structure for access to certain parts of character creation, and further, not knowing if more fees would pop up as I continued to build my character. I didn't see the Wood Elf in the store when I clicked the Merchandise link, I didn't see her on the drop-down menu, but I was told accessing that info would cost $1.99. Now let's be real, $1.99 is literally pocket change, but if I paid the $1.99, would more fees crop up as my building went along? A little fee transparency and a drop-down list that directs us to the specific item being sold and not a bunch of digital books would be less confusing and frustrating, I think. But honestly, I'm just a rando on the internet. I'm sure they put the site through focus group tests or something before launch.
The site is very cool, all that being said, and I hope they figure out a good business plan.
The builder site I found as an alternative to this one had slots to manually type in my girl's Wood Elf specific information, which I just copied out of my Player's Manual, and the rest of the character sheet was easily populated with drop-down menus. I don't think that is copyright infringement? but I know nothing about copyright law, so I honestly don't know. The internet is tricky.
To this doubt I can only answer that if the sheet is automatically populated with anything that is not specifically in the free Basic Rules (for example, the Nature Domain features) then it's most probably breaking copyright. I hope for you that I am wrong.
In any case, I can understand the initial confusion. Most people here (until Critical Role started being sponsored by DDB at least) were here before the actual lunch, during the beta, and very active in the forums (those sticky threads with endless replies are mostly from that time) and therefore were mostly aware of this and knew where to find what. The site could definitely use an improvement in the information-feeding to first-time users, but I am not sure how it could be done without "bulking" already experienced users (I am not a dev or programmer, unfortunately).
Also, I'd like to personally thank you for being so reasonable and nice in your criticism, it's extremely refreshing :)
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
If you'd like to enter in the Wood Elf information yourself, you absolutely can here as well! If you hover over "My Content" and go into "My Creations" you'll be able to create races, backgrounds, magic items, feats, and spells. You could use this to homebrew original content - but you can also use it to create content from books that you already own, just like you did on that other character builder/app. There's a bit of a learning curve to it, but folks on the forums are happy to help you! The only thing, make sure you don't try to 'publish' any content that you create in this way, publishing is only for original content that you own.
One of the nice things if you do choose to buy say, just the Wood Elf, the cost of that purchase will come off of the purchase of the PHB should you choose to later buy it.
I agree with you, I think DDB could be a bit clearer with features, as I know I found it difficult when I started to sort out where everything was, and was coming from, and still have some issues with parts of the UI.
Can you please link the website because i want to make a war cleric but *surprise surprise* ,you have to pay just for a subclass. Thanks and don't stop talking for whats right.
i was just reading though this entire section and it just helped me answer a lot of question thank you community for being respectful and not being narky
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I'm remaking a character and it's asking for my divine domain and according to a sheet a friend helped me make, I'd choose nature, but my only option is life. Is this a bug or something that I just can't do?
Thank you for your post - we appreciate people taking the time to give us feedback.
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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Does this mean that we have to buy another copy of the Player's Handbook in order to be allowed to select our proper domain?
That is ridiculous.
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D&D Beyond FoundersHi Anjerina,
Thank you for your post - we appreciate people taking the time to give us feedback. Unfortunately we're not able to giveaway all of the Wizards of the Coast D&D rules for free.
The subclass you are referring to is not part of the D&D 5th edition SRD and will need to be unlocked from the marketplace before you can use it on D&D Beyond.
You can unlock the Nature Domain for the Cleric class for just $1.99 if you wish. Also please note that if you wish to unlock the full Player's Handbook later, any money you have spent on content from it is applied as a discount to purchasing the full Player's Handbook.
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.
If you have any other questions, please take a look at the Purchase and Pricing FAQ. If you can't find the answers you are looking for there, please ask and we'll do our best to answer.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I appreciate the quick response. I came here at the recommendation of Critical Role. I was initially very impressed by this site and have spent hours tonight excitedly poring through its information. I have a hard copy of the Player's Manual, of course, but I thought online character building would be better than pen and paper. I perused for hours, with building excitement for creating my character. I even posted a link to dndbeyond.com on my Facebook page a few hours ago saying how awesome this site was. Then I finally got to the point where I was ready to build my character when <sad trombone> I discovered that my domain didn't exist for no obvious reason. Nothing said that I needed to pay for the Nature Domain. The drop-down menu just inexplicably read "Life Domain" and nothing else. Confused, and thinking your character builder was broken, I removed my recommendation from my Facebook page and started brainstorming for a better way to build my Cleric. Discovering that creating a character requires random payments is even worse than your builder being buggy.
So, how much would it cost me total to use your site to build a Wood Elf Nature Cleric? Are there other important selections that require my credit card?
I know I'm carrying on and on, but, man, this was a really weird business decision for WotC to make while interest in their D&D is skyrocketing.Nickle and diming your players discourages use of what would otherwise be a fantastic, comprehensive, likely very popular website. Dispensing information in pieces, requiring payment to access vital character details, is confusing, difficult to navigate, and extremely offputting. People are going to go to 3rd party sites. What a shame.
Not that it matters in the big picture for WotC, but my opinion of your company has bombed tonight. Players like me already buy hard copies of your manuals, adventures, and necessary products. Nickle and diming us in the character builder is such a slimy, cheap trick and it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, reminiscent of the super gross EA Star Wars Battlefront debacle. WotC is better than this. I hope your company recognizes the flaws in this system and makes appropriate changes. This is so freaking disappointing.
And finally, I know none of this is your fault. These bad business decisions were made by your bosses and you have to deal with the fallout. That's a raw deal. I hope they fix their system so that your job as a CSR becomes more pleasant in the future.
I'm sorry for the rant. Have a good night.
It won't always be the case because as we have the possibility to create homebrew spells, items monsters, feats and backgrounds, quite soon the possibility of creating homebrew subclasses will also be added, giving you the possibility to virtually re-create anything that is in the physical books you own for private or campaign use.
While I understand how the lack of the other options in the list or prompts for the purchase could be confusing at first, but, if I may ask, what gave you the impression the all information would be available for free?
WotC allows access here to exactly what is (legally) freely available anywhere else (the basic rules). The problem is: how would they know who bought the books and who didn't (there is more than one lengthy thread on this, so this is a rhetorical question the answer to which is: currently they cannot know).
Also, if I may, the price of the content here, considering all the tools are completely free (right now you can create endless homebrew monsters and items and spells and backgrounds and feats, all integrated with the tools and system), is already lower than any the normal price you would pay elsewhere (short of Amazon), with a discount on the price suggested by WotC itself for their products of roughly 40%. But you can also buy just the bits and pieces you want to have, like single subclasses, feats, spelles etc.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
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D&D Beyond FoundersAs Lek has mentioned, the D&D Beyond website is owned, created & maintained by Curse, who license the D&D content from Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately the terms of the licensing deal require that users purchase the books digitally to be able to use their content. It's great that WotC are licensing out their game to 3rd party creators such as Curse to create amazing digital tools such as D&D Beyond, but WotC still need to be able to earn a living off sales of the D&D game.
The Curse team are committed to making this toolset as available and useful to the D&D community as they can, and have been able to implement the partial purchases, to make it less painful to unlock content for specific characters.
For your Wood Elf Nature Cleric, you would need to unlock the nature domain, which can be unlocked for only $1.99. There are additional backgrounds in the Player's Handbook that you may want to unlock, but they are not necessary - you can amend the background as you like during creation or create your own homebrew background. These are both free.
There are a few cleric spells in the Player's Handbook, Xanathar's Guide to Everything and other books. If you find specific spells you want, these can again be purchased individually.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
That depends on how much you are willing to do yourself wood elf isn't in the free rules, but you can home brew the race, or pay $1.99. From a quick check, it looks like only 1 cleric spell in the PHB isn't in the free rules. If you need it, you could homebrew it or pay $1.99. If you want spells from Xanathars, many of them are free in the Elemental Evil Players companion. Any others would need to be homebrewed or purchased Subclasses can't yet be homebrewed, so that is 1.99. Similarly, feats and backgrounds can be homebrewed or purchased for 1.99 each.
In other words, total cost is between 1.99 and $10.95, depending on how much you are willing to spend. A bit more (but no more than $4.99 more) if you want spells from Xanathars.
Only you can decide if it's worth the cost to you. If it's not, no worries.
i do have a question, though, asked sincerely, not snarkily: under your preferred model, where all this would be free, how would the developers and other Curse staff get paid for their work on this service?
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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Thanks for the screenshots. I see now that it says to go to the Marketplace if you want to play any elven subrace besides High Elves. At the time, I clicked on the Marketplace link and saw a bunch of digital books for sale. I don't need any books and I didn't see my Wood Elf. It's probably buried in there somewhere. I guess I was blinded by the absurdity of a pretty standard subrace being pay to play... well, not even to pay to play. Just to create? But, hey, if that's how they want to run their business, that's how they will run their business.
It's no big deal in the end. It was really frustrating at the time because I thought the site was promising up to that point, but ultimately, I got out my Player's Manual and found another site that didn't have nickel and diming restrictions on their builder and, alas, my feisty little Wood Elf Cleric was born.
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D&D Beyond FoundersIt's worth noting that any sites that offer Wood Elves, Nature Domain etc for free are illegally using copyrighted work.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Not saying you are wrong in using such tools, everyone here did at one point or another before DDB launched, just be ready to the possibility that that site might be closed for copyright violation (or not, maybe it won't but it's a possibility) without much notice.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Don't they have dozens of digital books, paper books, and lots of merch for sale? Dinging players for access to 5e races just seems wrong. If they were asking for money for Mercer's Bloodhunter or something, that would make sense. But for a Wood Elf? She's nothing super special. I just really like trees and coppery hues.
I'm not opposed to buying their products. I am opposed to paying to gain access to relatively standard characters.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Thanks for the information on the companies, Lek and MellieDM. I didn't know the company history at all; I just wandered in here after hearing the Critical Role folks plug the site. Curse being a subsidiary of Twitch, which is a subsidiary of Amazon actually makes this whole situation make a lot more sense to me.
You're both right that I am confused. When I follow the marketplace link, I see a bunch of digital books and bundles for sale, so I assumed that was where the money was really being made.
The builder site I found as an alternative to this one had slots to manually type in my girl's Wood Elf specific information, which I just copied out of my Player's Manual, and the rest of the character sheet was easily populated with drop-down menus. I don't think that is copyright infringement? but I know nothing about copyright law, so I honestly don't know. The internet is tricky.
I think the thing that made me overreact here initially was how much time I spent digging into D&D Beyond to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with my cleric without any sign that there is a price structure for access to certain parts of character creation, and further, not knowing if more fees would pop up as I continued to build my character. I didn't see the Wood Elf in the store when I clicked the Merchandise link, I didn't see her on the drop-down menu, but I was told accessing that info would cost $1.99. Now let's be real, $1.99 is literally pocket change, but if I paid the $1.99, would more fees crop up as my building went along? A little fee transparency and a drop-down list that directs us to the specific item being sold and not a bunch of digital books would be less confusing and frustrating, I think. But honestly, I'm just a rando on the internet. I'm sure they put the site through focus group tests or something before launch.
The site is very cool, all that being said, and I hope they figure out a good business plan.
The site could definitely use an improvement in the information-feeding to first-time users, but I am not sure how it could be done without "bulking" already experienced users (I am not a dev or programmer, unfortunately).
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Happy to help clarify!
If you'd like to enter in the Wood Elf information yourself, you absolutely can here as well! If you hover over "My Content" and go into "My Creations" you'll be able to create races, backgrounds, magic items, feats, and spells. You could use this to homebrew original content - but you can also use it to create content from books that you already own, just like you did on that other character builder/app. There's a bit of a learning curve to it, but folks on the forums are happy to help you! The only thing, make sure you don't try to 'publish' any content that you create in this way, publishing is only for original content that you own.
One of the nice things if you do choose to buy say, just the Wood Elf, the cost of that purchase will come off of the purchase of the PHB should you choose to later buy it.
I agree with you, I think DDB could be a bit clearer with features, as I know I found it difficult when I started to sort out where everything was, and was coming from, and still have some issues with parts of the UI.
Can you please link the website because i want to make a war cleric but *surprise surprise* ,you have to pay just for a subclass. Thanks and don't stop talking for whats right.
i was just reading though this entire section and it just helped me answer a lot of question thank you community for being respectful and not being narky