So do I have to buy like 370$ worth of books like 5 times for 4 other players and myself while also having us all pay a monthly/yearly subscription to have a good collection of stuff to play with? or can this stuff be shared because me and my friends don't have the luxury of literal hundreds of dollars to spend.
You can share your purchased content with up to 5 campaigns (I believe the players are limited to 12 per campaign) with a Master level subscription, meaning you would only need to purchase the content you plan to use one time to share with up to 60 people. You also don't need to purchase everything unless you are just a completionist. Only buy that which you will use. I recommend the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Tasha's Cauldron, and Xanathar's Guide, plus whatever adventure you plan to run if you want to run something published. If you want to run a specific setting like Wildmount then of course that as well.
The total cost (at least where I live) is $150 for the books I just mentioned, plus $55 a year for the subscription with which you could conceivably share all of that material with up to 60 people through the various campaigns you could create with it. So $205 up front for the first year, $55 a year after.
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Goadfang leans forward in his seat, his ale gently sloshing in it's tankard, he says "Let me tell you a tale that will make the hairs on your head stand up and ask for the check..."
So do I have to buy like 370$ worth of books like 5 times for 4 other players and myself while also having us all pay a monthly/yearly subscription to have a good collection of stuff to play with? or can this stuff be shared because me and my friends don't have the luxury of literal hundreds of dollars to spend.
You can share your purchased content with up to 5 campaigns (I believe the players are limited to 12 per campaign) with a Master level subscription, meaning you would only need to purchase the content you plan to use one time to share with up to 60 people. You also don't need to purchase everything unless you are just a completionist. Only buy that which you will use. I recommend the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Tasha's Cauldron, and Xanathar's Guide, plus whatever adventure you plan to run if you want to run something published. If you want to run a specific setting like Wildmount then of course that as well.
The total cost (at least where I live) is $150 for the books I just mentioned, plus $55 a year for the subscription with which you could conceivably share all of that material with up to 60 people through the various campaigns you could create with it. So $205 up front for the first year, $55 a year after.
To piggy-back on this, if I were working with a tight budget, I wouldn't bother with buying the DMG here, especially not if I had access to it in print. The most I might do is purchase the magic items bundle from it.
Also, once campaign sharing is turned on, everyone who's in the campaign has their purchases shared. And you don't have to be the DM to turn on Content Sharing. So the DM buys the campaign module and the PHB, player 1 pays for the master tier subscription and turns on the content sharing, player 2 buys XGtE, player 3 buys Tasha's, etc. Then it's all shared, and can be used by any character in that campaign.
I agree and I wish I had thought of that, the only reason I included the DMG was for the magic items. I'm not sure what the price is for them, but it's likely worth it at any price cheaper than the DMG itself, which is honestly otherwise a skippable book.
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Goadfang leans forward in his seat, his ale gently sloshing in it's tankard, he says "Let me tell you a tale that will make the hairs on your head stand up and ask for the check..."
Good to know, I own the normal DMG, I want to only buy things that will offer a wide range of possibilities for characters and the like, so I may just but the magic items when I get around to buying these.
Good to know, I own the normal DMG, I want to only buy things that will offer a wide range of possibilities for characters and the like, so I may just but the magic items when I get around to buying these.
Keep in mind that you can also purchase individual magic items; I believe they are $1.99 a piece. Anything you spend on individual magic items gets deducted from the price of the magic items bundle. Eventually you will get to the point that the bundle price drops to close to $1.99, before you have purchased all the magic items. Watch for this—don’t let the price of the bundle drop below 3.97. Then buy the bundle to get the rest of the magic items. I say this because the minimum purchase charge at DDB is $1.99. They won’t charge less than that. So you don’t want to be in the position of buying another $1.99 item and dropping the remaining bundle below $1.99, because you will still have to pay $1.99. Granted, it’s only a couple of dollars at most, but still....
This is what I did with monsters from the Monster Manual: I slowly bought those I needed for upcoming encounters, until the price of the monster bundle was only a few dollars and then bought the rest of them by buying the bundle.
For that matter, you could do that with character options from the other books. It’s probably not worth it with the PHB, as the total of character options is—if I remember correctly—close to the cost of the whole book. But that might be different for Tasha’s and/or Xanathar’s. If you want to use the optional class or race options in Tasha’s, though, you have to buy the whole book. There’s no way to buy those à la carte.
Well, considering I already have most of the content from 5E when D&D Beyond was in the Beta, it's insane to pay nearly full price for digital goods that you're only buying rights to use, rather than owning a physical copy.
If there were a Digital voucher when you got a hardcopy, it wouldn't be so bad, but they wouldn't even do that.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but it doesn't seem to me that your books come with a character builder that will do any maths you will ever have to do during your campaign for you. Or with a automatic spell lists with only the appropriate spells you can pick from and easy and quick access to them, so that if you decide to wake up and prepare other spell you can do it in literally mere seconds instead of flipping through pages and pages of spell. Or that they regroup information from new books you buy into the more appropriate place (such as with subclass) so that you don't have to look through your 5 books for this specific monk subclass you wanted to play or for this one spell or magic items that looked really cool but you're not sure what book it was in anymore. Or with a phone app that allows you to take t h o u s a n d s of pages of rules and information with you wherever you're going to play without having to carry 3 bags around. Doesn't seem to me either that you're paper character sheet can instantly tell you if you're encumbered or allows you to take a rest without spending 5 minutes checking you haven't forgotten to reset that racial feature you use every 3 sessions.
Maybe you have no clue of how informatic tools work, but big news, code doesn't write itself. It's complex and time-consuming work that needs a constant process of testing, bug-fixing and improving in order to satisfy users. That is what you pay for. You pay for accessibility, for ease of access, for simplicity. You pay to not spend the majority of your session on maths and rule checking. You pay so that it will be easier to introduce the game to your less nerdy friends or to those who have less motivation to read pages and pages of rules before getting started. And you pay so that the people who don't have enough money for it can still use the most essential parts of the tool for free.
And if you're not interested by all that, that's okay. But don't come saying the prices are too high when you have no idea of the work, knowledge and time creating a tool like that takes.
P.S. : Love you dndbeyond, your tool isn't always perfect, but it eases my life so much when playing the game and I've been having lots of fun using it <3 keep doing a wonderful job!
Just revisiting old condos but im now using foundry and i can NOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH, incredible software, buy once cry once, and I can get all information I need and even host my own server. No 700 dollar buy in, no monthly subscription and mods galore. (Also moved over to pf2e for our new campaign after dnds constant money hungry and anti player moves.) Looks like there was a happy ending for some of us players.:)
Just going to note that Foundry does not have the right to distribute the non-free D&D books without cost. Meaning if the platform is providing you access without cost it is doing so illegally.
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Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
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You can share your purchased content with up to 5 campaigns (I believe the players are limited to 12 per campaign) with a Master level subscription, meaning you would only need to purchase the content you plan to use one time to share with up to 60 people. You also don't need to purchase everything unless you are just a completionist. Only buy that which you will use. I recommend the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Tasha's Cauldron, and Xanathar's Guide, plus whatever adventure you plan to run if you want to run something published. If you want to run a specific setting like Wildmount then of course that as well.
The total cost (at least where I live) is $150 for the books I just mentioned, plus $55 a year for the subscription with which you could conceivably share all of that material with up to 60 people through the various campaigns you could create with it. So $205 up front for the first year, $55 a year after.
Goadfang leans forward in his seat, his ale gently sloshing in it's tankard, he says "Let me tell you a tale that will make the hairs on your head stand up and ask for the check..."
To piggy-back on this, if I were working with a tight budget, I wouldn't bother with buying the DMG here, especially not if I had access to it in print. The most I might do is purchase the magic items bundle from it.
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;
Check your entitlements here. | Support Ticket LInk
Also, once campaign sharing is turned on, everyone who's in the campaign has their purchases shared. And you don't have to be the DM to turn on Content Sharing. So the DM buys the campaign module and the PHB, player 1 pays for the master tier subscription and turns on the content sharing, player 2 buys XGtE, player 3 buys Tasha's, etc. Then it's all shared, and can be used by any character in that campaign.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
I agree and I wish I had thought of that, the only reason I included the DMG was for the magic items. I'm not sure what the price is for them, but it's likely worth it at any price cheaper than the DMG itself, which is honestly otherwise a skippable book.
Goadfang leans forward in his seat, his ale gently sloshing in it's tankard, he says "Let me tell you a tale that will make the hairs on your head stand up and ask for the check..."
Good to know, I own the normal DMG, I want to only buy things that will offer a wide range of possibilities for characters and the like, so I may just but the magic items when I get around to buying these.
Keep in mind that you can also purchase individual magic items; I believe they are $1.99 a piece. Anything you spend on individual magic items gets deducted from the price of the magic items bundle. Eventually you will get to the point that the bundle price drops to close to $1.99, before you have purchased all the magic items. Watch for this—don’t let the price of the bundle drop below 3.97. Then buy the bundle to get the rest of the magic items. I say this because the minimum purchase charge at DDB is $1.99. They won’t charge less than that. So you don’t want to be in the position of buying another $1.99 item and dropping the remaining bundle below $1.99, because you will still have to pay $1.99. Granted, it’s only a couple of dollars at most, but still....
This is what I did with monsters from the Monster Manual: I slowly bought those I needed for upcoming encounters, until the price of the monster bundle was only a few dollars and then bought the rest of them by buying the bundle.
For that matter, you could do that with character options from the other books. It’s probably not worth it with the PHB, as the total of character options is—if I remember correctly—close to the cost of the whole book. But that might be different for Tasha’s and/or Xanathar’s. If you want to use the optional class or race options in Tasha’s, though, you have to buy the whole book. There’s no way to buy those à la carte.
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;
Check your entitlements here. | Support Ticket LInk
Maybe I'm mistaken, but it doesn't seem to me that your books come with a character builder that will do any maths you will ever have to do during your campaign for you. Or with a automatic spell lists with only the appropriate spells you can pick from and easy and quick access to them, so that if you decide to wake up and prepare other spell you can do it in literally mere seconds instead of flipping through pages and pages of spell. Or that they regroup information from new books you buy into the more appropriate place (such as with subclass) so that you don't have to look through your 5 books for this specific monk subclass you wanted to play or for this one spell or magic items that looked really cool but you're not sure what book it was in anymore. Or with a phone app that allows you to take t h o u s a n d s of pages of rules and information with you wherever you're going to play without having to carry 3 bags around. Doesn't seem to me either that you're paper character sheet can instantly tell you if you're encumbered or allows you to take a rest without spending 5 minutes checking you haven't forgotten to reset that racial feature you use every 3 sessions.
Maybe you have no clue of how informatic tools work, but big news, code doesn't write itself. It's complex and time-consuming work that needs a constant process of testing, bug-fixing and improving in order to satisfy users. That is what you pay for. You pay for accessibility, for ease of access, for simplicity. You pay to not spend the majority of your session on maths and rule checking. You pay so that it will be easier to introduce the game to your less nerdy friends or to those who have less motivation to read pages and pages of rules before getting started. And you pay so that the people who don't have enough money for it can still use the most essential parts of the tool for free.
And if you're not interested by all that, that's okay. But don't come saying the prices are too high when you have no idea of the work, knowledge and time creating a tool like that takes.
P.S. : Love you dndbeyond, your tool isn't always perfect, but it eases my life so much when playing the game and I've been having lots of fun using it <3 keep doing a wonderful job!
Moved to foundry and havent looked back, incredible system and no you do not have to buy the dnd books.
Just revisiting old condos but im now using foundry and i can NOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH, incredible software, buy once cry once, and I can get all information I need and even host my own server. No 700 dollar buy in, no monthly subscription and mods galore. (Also moved over to pf2e for our new campaign after dnds constant money hungry and anti player moves.) Looks like there was a happy ending for some of us players.:)
Foundry does all of this and costs 40 bucks, also allows you to download mods and create mods and market your items. :p
Just going to note that Foundry does not have the right to distribute the non-free D&D books without cost. Meaning if the platform is providing you access without cost it is doing so illegally.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.