Character creation

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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?). 

 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.