Seriously. They put Variant Human in already. What on earth is the rationale behind not supporting its almost identical cousin and forcing the work onto users?
You can already use the homebrew race tools to do precisely this.
I see no reason why the Devs should add a different way to do what you can already easily do. Seems counterproductive.
Just because it's a "homebrew tool" doesn't mean it's homebrew if what you create is using permitted rules.
Well just for starters, they're paid to do exactly that. I could easily print out character sheets, buy all the sourcebooks in physical form, and run my games without paying the developers here anything. However, they've offered a service to digitalize those sourcebooks and provide some additional tools to make running games easier.
If I have to sit there and manually manipulate features that are in official books when I'm paying for a service specifically so I don't have to, it changes the value proposition quite a bit. If I have to homebrew races, why not make me homebrew all the magic items? Or standard races? Or monsters, or or or... Where does it begin to be unacceptable for DDB to stop putting the source material into their service, and why does it begin there?
Honestly can't fathom why you would advocate for the developers of a web service to not do the job they literally are paid to do.
You misunderstand.
The devs have already implemented this feature. It's the Race creator. You can use that. If you want to create a custom lineage YOU CAN. Just use the race creator to copy the race and edit it. The result is exactly the same.
I honestly can't fathom why you would advocate for the developers to do what they've already done.
because some folks are too lazy to use the tools that are there. it's easier to just whine that people are expected to make a little effort on their own.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I understand not having everything you want sucks, I get it. Like others at DDB I've had ideas about how we could offer functionality like custom lineage, but there's been a few reality checks for us.
We only discovered that custom lineage existed for this book when we received the files from Wizards of the Coast, and that was less than 3 weeks ago.
This is the most rules heavy sourcebook since the players handbook. We've had to prioritize what we needed to do for release and people have been working some crazy hours to deliver that.
So from a personal perspective, it makes me sad to work 80 hour weeks, because I WANT this book to be as good as it can, but then something we had to sideline isn't there and people call us lazy.
I get that this isn't on the community though. I just wanted to shed some light on things.
When faced with expending development time to create a new feature, we have to look at various factors:
How many users will be affected by this feature being implemented or not?
It's it possible to do this if we don't develop a solution?
With the homebrew tools allowing full flexibility for creation of races, that means developing a solution for easy custom lineage had to be placed behind other rules content that doesn't have any form of workaround.
That said, I personally looked at other ways we could handle this, like creating a new race with appropriate options, but each of these suggestions still required development work to implement.
We're very aware that we've not finished work on developing tools and systems to support this sourcebook and we're going to be continuing to work on them for a while.
I'm not offering all of this as excuses, because I really want all of this stuff now myself.
I am just asking for some understanding before calling foul or lazy. ❤️
I wasn't calling you guys lazy, I was calling the folks who refuse to use the homebrew tools lazy. Sorry about the confusion on who I was criticizing.
EDIT: I'm a sysadmin who's worked at a software company, and half my D&D group are developers. I totally understand the level of effort that goes into things that some folks think you should be able to supply at the drop of a hat.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I really appreciate you taking the time to make this post. The impression I had gotten was that DDB simply were not interested in doing anything at all with Custom Lineages, so clarifying that you are looking at options immediately makes me feel better about the whole thing.
Indeed, my issue was with the OPs assertion (based on the post I admittedly haven't read) that DDB was simply not going to be supporting Custom Lineages at all. If this is implemented sometime in the future that is an entirely different matter. Don't think we are being critical of your work ethic; you do a wonderful job.
However, this is an official feature in a paid book that you offer for sale to use in your character builder. If you intend to never implement Custom Lineages, I and it seems several others do have an issue with that.
I thought the custom lineage was going to be a feature, you click race, has a big box option at the top where you click it, opens up pop in what your race is close to and fill in the rest, ya know kinda how you can quickly and easily do custom background. Seems like pretty idea to ya know implement with the book. I don't understand why you wouldn't wanna do it, makes it so much easier for the DM and player.
I wasn't calling you guys lazy, I was calling the folks who refuse to use the homebrew tools lazy. Sorry about the confusion on who I was criticizing.
EDIT: I'm a sysadmin who's worked at a software company, and half my D&D group are developers. I totally understand the level of effort that goes into things that some folks think you should be able to supply at the drop of a hat.
Calling people lazy for wanting official rules implemented is a petty character attack. People who order food from restaurants aren't accused of laziness, and if they don't get what they ordered no one tries to shame them for complaining. Your experience as a sysadmin doesn't change the business relationship between DDB and their customers.
I didn't demand the feature right now, I took issue with the idea that it's never needed. Frankly, your response to all of this was more lazy than anything.
I understand not having everything you want sucks, I get it. Like others at DDB I've had ideas about how we could offer functionality like custom lineage, but there's been a few reality checks for us.
We only discovered that custom lineage existed for this book when we received the files from Wizards of the Coast, and that was less than 3 weeks ago.
This is the most rules heavy sourcebook since the players handbook. We've had to prioritize what we needed to do for release and people have been working some crazy hours to deliver that.
So from a personal perspective, it makes me sad to work 80 hour weeks, because I WANT this book to be as good as it can, but then something we had to sideline isn't there and people call us lazy.
I get that this isn't on the community though. I just wanted to shed some light on things.
When faced with expending development time to create a new feature, we have to look at various factors:
How many users will be affected by this feature being implemented or not?
It's it possible to do this if we don't develop a solution?
With the homebrew tools allowing full flexibility for creation of races, that means developing a solution for easy custom lineage had to be placed behind other rules content that doesn't have any form of workaround.
That said, I personally looked at other ways we could handle this, like creating a new race with appropriate options, but each of these suggestions still required development work to implement.
We're very aware that we've not finished work on developing tools and systems to support this sourcebook and we're going to be continuing to work on them for a while.
I'm not offering all of this as excuses, because I really want all of this stuff now myself.
I am just asking for some understanding before calling foul or lazy. ❤️
I would never call you guys lazy, or that you were playing foul. And I really appreciate the update on this. Personally, I just wanted to make sure you guys knew this was important to us too.
I understand not having everything you want sucks, I get it. Like others at DDB I've had ideas about how we could offer functionality like custom lineage, but there's been a few reality checks for us.
We only discovered that custom lineage existed for this book when we received the files from Wizards of the Coast, and that was less than 3 weeks ago.
This is the most rules heavy sourcebook since the players handbook. We've had to prioritize what we needed to do for release and people have been working some crazy hours to deliver that.
So from a personal perspective, it makes me sad to work 80 hour weeks, because I WANT this book to be as good as it can, but then something we had to sideline isn't there and people call us lazy.
I get that this isn't on the community though. I just wanted to shed some light on things.
When faced with expending development time to create a new feature, we have to look at various factors:
How many users will be affected by this feature being implemented or not?
It's it possible to do this if we don't develop a solution?
With the homebrew tools allowing full flexibility for creation of races, that means developing a solution for easy custom lineage had to be placed behind other rules content that doesn't have any form of workaround.
That said, I personally looked at other ways we could handle this, like creating a new race with appropriate options, but each of these suggestions still required development work to implement.
We're very aware that we've not finished work on developing tools and systems to support this sourcebook and we're going to be continuing to work on them for a while.
I'm not offering all of this as excuses, because I really want all of this stuff now myself.
I am just asking for some understanding before calling foul or lazy. ❤️
I would never call you guys lazy, or that you were playing foul. And I really appreciate the update on this. Personally, I just wanted to make sure you guys knew this was important to us too.
Exactly, I only even made this thread, because I thought there were going to be a lot of people who wouldn't be allowed to use the content if it wasn't a character sheet option through DDB. Personally I could homebrew it. I won't unless a player asks as I am still going through Kobold Press PDFs and putting the content there into my homebrew library that myself and my groups other DM approves. Though if one of my players wants something it's at the top of my to do list.
I wasn't calling you guys lazy, I was calling the folks who refuse to use the homebrew tools lazy. Sorry about the confusion on who I was criticizing.
EDIT: I'm a sysadmin who's worked at a software company, and half my D&D group are developers. I totally understand the level of effort that goes into things that some folks think you should be able to supply at the drop of a hat.
Calling people lazy for wanting official rules implemented is a petty character attack. People who order food from restaurants aren't accused of laziness, and if they don't get what they ordered no one tries to shame them for complaining. Your experience as a sysadmin doesn't change the business relationship between DDB and their customers.
I didn't demand the feature right now, I took issue with the idea that it's never needed. Frankly, your response to all of this was more lazy than anything.
you're welcome to think I am as lazy as I think you are.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Indeed, my issue was with the OPs assertion (based on the post I admittedly haven't read) that DDB was simply not going to be supporting Custom Lineages at all. If this is implemented sometime in the future that is an entirely different matter. Don't think we are being critical of your work ethic; you do a wonderful job.
However, this is an official feature in a paid book that you offer for sale to use in your character builder. If you intend to never implement Custom Lineages, I and it seems several others do have an issue with that.
To be fair, Stormknight, the issue was more that the 'Custom Lineage' system was cited as being ignored, or at least considered "already delivered", because of the homebrew species creation tool. While I can imagine the subset of people for whom both "My DM refuses to let me use anything homebrew, even when it's not homebrew" and "my DM is totally fine with me using Custom Lineage" is quite small percentile-wise, it still stuck in the craw to hear DDB ostensibly simply shrug the feature off as inconsequential and/or not worth delivering.
I would at least like the devs to go and tidy up the current custom race tools if they aren't going to support Tasha's lineage rules. It's like the biggest new feature of the book and ignoring it is taking the easy way out.
I get that it won't be easy, but it will pay for itself. People buy books on DND beyond because it streamlines their experience playing DND. Not supporting this new Tasha's stuff defeats the purpose. There's no reason to use anything but pen and paper if we just have to use the already-in-use race creator.
The issue you're seeing, Cybermind, is that DDB's homebrew editing tool is clunky, clumsy, obnoxious, annoying and difficult to use, extremely unintuitive, and overall just really bad.
Design your own, then. Once more, there is no money to be made here, and I think that everyone, yourself included, really hopes to be paid for their work. And despite this, they have produced something that some people find usable. If it were me, considering that all I get for this is abuse, I would just drop the feature, easier and cheaper to be criticised for doing nothing than for doing something like this. This is not really encouraging developers to put any effort into homebrew.
“If you don’t like it, do it yourself!” is the laziest argument to a criticism one can make. Nobody expects users to make money from homebrew. And if a service presents an option to all users, it should be able to be understood and used effectively by all users, not just some.
People were excited for Custom Lineage because it was presented as a quick and easy way for even newer players to make a character with unconventional characteristics. The homebrew tool on DDB is neither quick nor easy, and has enough options to make new players turn away. Asking people who want Custom Lineage to just use the homebrew tool is like asking someone who wants pasta with cheese to make the cheese from scratch themselves. It’s unnecessarily complicated, and we’ve paid for the cheese because it’s ready-made.
Public Mod Note
(Sillvva):
Please be respectful when replying.
Reminding everyone that the Compendium content is what you paid for. The tools are offered for free to use with that Compendium content. We didn't *need* to get the tools, Beyond wanted to offer them in addition to the digital book access. You aren't paying for the tools, you're paying for access to the content and (in the case of some subscriptions) the ability to share that content to your friends.
You didn't PAY for Custom Lineage to function right off the bat, you paid for the right to read that Custom Lineage is a thing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
Reminding everyone that the Compendium content is what you paid for. The tools are offered for free to use with that Compendium content. We didn't *need* to get the tools, Beyond wanted to offer them in addition to the digital book access. You aren't paying for the tools, you're paying for access to the content and (in the case of some subscriptions) the ability to share that content to your friends.
You didn't PAY for Custom Lineage to function right off the bat, you paid for the right to read that Custom Lineage is a thing.
This is not true, and there's two evidence for this.
1. The Compendium content is a separate purchasable line item that is cheaper than buying it with digital tools integration. 2. This is stated on every sourcebook, including Tashas: "This purchase unlocks the contents of this source for use with D&D Beyond, including the book in digital format in the game compendium and access to all of the book's options in the searchable listings, character builder, and digital sheet."
I understand not having everything you want sucks, I get it. Like others at DDB I've had ideas about how we could offer functionality like custom lineage, but there's been a few reality checks for us.
We only discovered that custom lineage existed for this book when we received the files from Wizards of the Coast, and that was less than 3 weeks ago.
Wow that is a really short amount of time to implement all the rules, but then again homebrewers have already implemented Custom Lineage so it is definitely doable without any major system changes (are you allowed to just copy the homebrew race and make it available to all?).
Nevertheless, the book should have been ready for printing months ago, I guess you would need to surface to DDB management to secure the files from Wizards much earlier, especially for heavy undertakings such as a player-centric options book.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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People have already made the "Custom Lineage" race in Homebrew, if you have a subscription. But it is a *massive* pain to make on your own.
Seriously. They put Variant Human in already. What on earth is the rationale behind not supporting its almost identical cousin and forcing the work onto users?
because some folks are too lazy to use the tools that are there. it's easier to just whine that people are expected to make a little effort on their own.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
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D&D Beyond FoundersI understand not having everything you want sucks, I get it. Like others at DDB I've had ideas about how we could offer functionality like custom lineage, but there's been a few reality checks for us.
We only discovered that custom lineage existed for this book when we received the files from Wizards of the Coast, and that was less than 3 weeks ago.
This is the most rules heavy sourcebook since the players handbook. We've had to prioritize what we needed to do for release and people have been working some crazy hours to deliver that.
So from a personal perspective, it makes me sad to work 80 hour weeks, because I WANT this book to be as good as it can, but then something we had to sideline isn't there and people call us lazy.
I get that this isn't on the community though. I just wanted to shed some light on things.
When faced with expending development time to create a new feature, we have to look at various factors:
With the homebrew tools allowing full flexibility for creation of races, that means developing a solution for easy custom lineage had to be placed behind other rules content that doesn't have any form of workaround.
That said, I personally looked at other ways we could handle this, like creating a new race with appropriate options, but each of these suggestions still required development work to implement.
We're very aware that we've not finished work on developing tools and systems to support this sourcebook and we're going to be continuing to work on them for a while.
I'm not offering all of this as excuses, because I really want all of this stuff now myself.
I am just asking for some understanding before calling foul or lazy. ❤️
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 wasn't calling you guys lazy, I was calling the folks who refuse to use the homebrew tools lazy. Sorry about the confusion on who I was criticizing.
EDIT: I'm a sysadmin who's worked at a software company, and half my D&D group are developers. I totally understand the level of effort that goes into things that some folks think you should be able to supply at the drop of a hat.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I really appreciate you taking the time to make this post. The impression I had gotten was that DDB simply were not interested in doing anything at all with Custom Lineages, so clarifying that you are looking at options immediately makes me feel better about the whole thing.
Indeed, my issue was with the OPs assertion (based on the post I admittedly haven't read) that DDB was simply not going to be supporting Custom Lineages at all. If this is implemented sometime in the future that is an entirely different matter. Don't think we are being critical of your work ethic; you do a wonderful job.
However, this is an official feature in a paid book that you offer for sale to use in your character builder. If you intend to never implement Custom Lineages, I and it seems several others do have an issue with that.
I thought the custom lineage was going to be a feature, you click race, has a big box option at the top where you click it, opens up pop in what your race is close to and fill in the rest, ya know kinda how you can quickly and easily do custom background. Seems like pretty idea to ya know implement with the book. I don't understand why you wouldn't wanna do it, makes it so much easier for the DM and player.
Calling people lazy for wanting official rules implemented is a petty character attack. People who order food from restaurants aren't accused of laziness, and if they don't get what they ordered no one tries to shame them for complaining. Your experience as a sysadmin doesn't change the business relationship between DDB and their customers.
I didn't demand the feature right now, I took issue with the idea that it's never needed. Frankly, your response to all of this was more lazy than anything.
Uuuuuh, please don't remind me of Weird Business Stuff. Uuuuugh. Getting retail ptsd.
I would never call you guys lazy, or that you were playing foul. And I really appreciate the update on this. Personally, I just wanted to make sure you guys knew this was important to us too.
Exactly, I only even made this thread, because I thought there were going to be a lot of people who wouldn't be allowed to use the content if it wasn't a character sheet option through DDB. Personally I could homebrew it. I won't unless a player asks as I am still going through Kobold Press PDFs and putting the content there into my homebrew library that myself and my groups other DM approves. Though if one of my players wants something it's at the top of my to do list.
you're welcome to think I am as lazy as I think you are.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
It's the post here https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/87774-tashas-cauldron-of-everything-issues-and-support
To be fair, Stormknight, the issue was more that the 'Custom Lineage' system was cited as being ignored, or at least considered "already delivered", because of the homebrew species creation tool. While I can imagine the subset of people for whom both "My DM refuses to let me use anything homebrew, even when it's not homebrew" and "my DM is totally fine with me using Custom Lineage" is quite small percentile-wise, it still stuck in the craw to hear DDB ostensibly simply shrug the feature off as inconsequential and/or not worth delivering.
Please do not contact or message me.
I would at least like the devs to go and tidy up the current custom race tools if they aren't going to support Tasha's lineage rules. It's like the biggest new feature of the book and ignoring it is taking the easy way out.
I get that it won't be easy, but it will pay for itself. People buy books on DND beyond because it streamlines their experience playing DND. Not supporting this new Tasha's stuff defeats the purpose. There's no reason to use anything but pen and paper if we just have to use the already-in-use race creator.
“If you don’t like it, do it yourself!” is the laziest argument to a criticism one can make. Nobody expects users to make money from homebrew. And if a service presents an option to all users, it should be able to be understood and used effectively by all users, not just some.
People were excited for Custom Lineage because it was presented as a quick and easy way for even newer players to make a character with unconventional characteristics. The homebrew tool on DDB is neither quick nor easy, and has enough options to make new players turn away. Asking people who want Custom Lineage to just use the homebrew tool is like asking someone who wants pasta with cheese to make the cheese from scratch themselves. It’s unnecessarily complicated, and we’ve paid for the cheese because it’s ready-made.
Reminding everyone that the Compendium content is what you paid for. The tools are offered for free to use with that Compendium content. We didn't *need* to get the tools, Beyond wanted to offer them in addition to the digital book access. You aren't paying for the tools, you're paying for access to the content and (in the case of some subscriptions) the ability to share that content to your friends.
You didn't PAY for Custom Lineage to function right off the bat, you paid for the right to read that Custom Lineage is a thing.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
This is not true, and there's two evidence for this.
1. The Compendium content is a separate purchasable line item that is cheaper than buying it with digital tools integration.
2. This is stated on every sourcebook, including Tashas: "This purchase unlocks the contents of this source for use with D&D Beyond, including the book in digital format in the game compendium and access to all of the book's options in the searchable listings, character builder, and digital sheet."
Wow that is a really short amount of time to implement all the rules, but then again homebrewers have already implemented Custom Lineage so it is definitely doable without any major system changes (are you allowed to just copy the homebrew race and make it available to all?).
Nevertheless, the book should have been ready for printing months ago, I guess you would need to surface to DDB management to secure the files from Wizards much earlier, especially for heavy undertakings such as a player-centric options book.