Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I haven't dug in to this yet, but I have seen many videos that are reporting that these "Drops" are not shareable even with the highest level subscription. If this is true, it devalues the subscription. Is this just another cash grab from WOTC?
Yes, they're not shareable*
No, it doesn't devalue the subscription because the subscription hasn't changed in price. You don't pay more for a sub now, the drops are included at the current price.
*Automatically—the DM can however add the options to a character sheet on behalf of the player, or make a homebrew copy of any given option and share those
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You know their job is to produce content, sell that content, and produce revenue right?
If you don't like WOTC prices, go to DM's Guild, or buy from third party content providers. The money you give to WOTC goes into to producing more official content. You might have an argument if you were complaining that they were raising prices without providing any new content, but they're literally doing the opposite.
What sucks is that this is the first content all your friends have to buy into to access as intended. Yes yes, homebrew but if I'm doing that then where's the value. I don't hate drops, I just hate thats it's completely unsharable. I wouldn't mind it being time exclusive.
If your game is online and your players are using D&D Beyond for their sheets or you're just doing the whole game in the maps, you as the DM can go to their sheet and add the spell/feat/background/whatever yourself. Boom they can use it. Right there. Alternatively you can recreate it in The Homebrew creation and people can add it to their own sheets. Either way your players can use it.
If you're playing pen and paper just show them the spell off your phone or tablet or whatever and let them write it down. Boom your player can use it.
Also businesses are generally in the business of making money. Encouraging people to subscribe is not an out-of-pocket thing for a business to do. If they really were the greedy evil bastards everyone seems to want to make them out to be they would have gotten rid of Homebrew creations so the only spells and features available to use are the ones they sell and they would have made it so that DMS can't add things to players sheets only players can and they did neither of those things.
Leaving two entire loopholes to get around your cash grab is a pretty crappy cash grab in my opinion.
I would probably like the drops more if I could actually buy them at some point instead of just subbing. Say like they bundled the drops contents occasionally and then sold them. Like if I could buy all the drops that came from past year like it was a book. That would be cooler maybe I think.
This whole story is just kind of a bummer to me. I just can't feel excited about new content, if I can't share it with my friends. And jumping through all these loopholes to make it work, I mean they could just make it shareable.
Making backgrounds, feats, and spells that are not shareable is terrible. The perks like dice and sheet covers were fine being for individuals, but now it feels like you have to pay to optimize, and those with a subscription can have more powerful PCs. The devil’s sight and resistance to two popular damage types from one origin feat if you happen to pay for a subscription is crazy. Pay to win, aka have a much more durable and powerful character, shouldn’t be a thing for DnD.
You do realize this is how companies test the waters to see how far they can push the envelope, right? They’re banking on people caving and deciding to save time and effort by spending money. I’m willing to bet that’s going to be the majority of cases. Face it, if there isn’t enough pushback against this, they’re gonna try to get away with even more nonsense the next time they introduce something. And how much of a loophole is giving DMs even MORE stuff to do out of game, anyway?
For starters, Wizards staff already said they are reevaluating whether to make the player-facing content shareable. The fact they are open to reconsideration undermines the argument that this was a pure cash grab.
Second though, in more direct response to your post, so what? If someone is willing to pay for a subscription because they do not want to click four buttons to copy content, who actually cares? That player has options and they are choosing to spend money because they would rather pay. Fine, good for them - that is their money and they are not being forced to pay by anything other than their own choice. The rest of your post is yet another tired slippery slope argument.
The outrage over additional content at no additional price is so unbelievably manufactured that it would be laughable… if it did not reflect so badly on the community that it could color how the new development team views requesting feedback.
They sell me a service of convenience. That is all my subscription is.
When there is less convenience. There is less value.
I can get content and rules anywhere.
This additional content requires additional subscriptions to access conveniently.
Less value to a group. More value to an individual.
Getting more things exclusive to the subscribers... devalues the subscription?
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He's getting his 'information' from clickbait rage engines as per his post. It's not really worth 'debate'.
I mean you have to buy books to get their options also, so is that also "Pay to win"? And if it was shareable someone would still need to have a subscription, so isnt that also "Pay to win"? If the content isnt overpowered missing out on that stuff shouldnt make characters weaker. Missing out on some book content doesnt either in my experience.
Out of all the ridiculous things people are saying the most ridiculous to me is "pay to win." It makes no sense. There is no winning in D&D. If it's about killing monsters, you can do that with a simple cantrip or a bolt shot from a hand crossbow.