I had intended to ditch this thread after voicing my initial dissapointment, but the people arguing against even the most basic customer rights in here is making me reconsider that option.
For the record: I am dissapointed that it did not make the initial cut, but eager to see them seem to take a standpoint that they can, and will, come around to suppoorting this feature. From the initial presentation of the information there was every implication that it was simply never going to be done, and I am glad that that seems to have simply been poor communication.
That said?
Anybody that says 'you bought it and the homebrew tool exists therefore it is delivered' really needs a reality check on what was advertised and, consequently, paid for. You know what thet argument could equally apply to? Almost everything in the entire book. Every single race from every book to date. Hell, why even have published content in the character builder? You can homebrew it all!
Would it be a pleasant experience? No. Would it be intuitive and tidy and easy? No. It would be a terrible option and nobody in their right mind would pay for it. But it would be true! And it would, equally, be a massive middle finger to their customers, who come here and pay for source books (often on top of physical copies) purely because of the tools that D&DB offer.
That is why people were justifiably angry that the initial post suggested that the feature was simply being written off. As they should be. I look forwards to when D&DB can catch up with the book's full content and rightly add this option (one of the flagship features of the book, no less, in all of its advertising!) to their tools directly.
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.
The same reason you update already published books with errata or new information, because it is what you paid for in the published material, and no just because it is possible to mimic the feature using the homebrew tools, it isn't the same thing. Just like the character creator makes choosing race and features seamless with the source materials, there should be the option for custom lineage that is in line with the limited features presented by TCoE. Homebrew is an open canvass. Your logic is no different than providing no character creation support at all and telling everyone to just do it themselves with homebrew. That isn't the purpose of this website. It's almost common sense to expect, while the ability to do so is clear, that this option would be present in character creation, especially since it is one of the core features of the new source book. They already have that you say? Then why bother adding custom backgrounds for Descent into Avernus?
Well lyxen, perhaps we have different perceptions. You saw many people being an *** to the devs and I only saw a few. In the end, yes some people called you lazy and vice versa but I truly think most people on this thread aren't attacking devs, they are just frustrated that expectations weren't met and in my job, which is in fact an international company not just an american one, someone would be in trouble for letting down this many people as the contract between the consumer and company says that money=good service. I agree that the dev has responded and that should be the end of it. There was more to the story and hopefully Wizards does better next time. They definitely got the short end of the stick but nobody knew that until mid way through this post. Most people were understanding after.
Being frustrated is still not an excuse for being an ***, and it's exactly why I reacted that way to the criticism at the start, which were particularly annoying because if people had just read the support thread instead of firing from the hip, it would have been avoided.
And don't get me wrong in general, I have worked all over the world for a company whose very first motto is "customer first". Still ***** happens, we had a driver console explode near the driver seat of a bus in New Zealand because of a combination of factors (it's always combinations that causes real problems), and the mobilisation of the company was immediate. But this was something grave, there were hundreds of busses in circulation, potential risk to travellers and drivers as well, etc. But we also deliver software with millions of lines of code, there are bugs and missing functionality sometimes, it's an industrial process, etc. And our customers understand this.
Just as gamers who nowadays receive games with hundreds of bugs and missing features and are even happy to buy early access versions which are even worse should be at least a bit understanding of the process and the fact that it's not a personal insult not to have all the features on day 0, especially when it's explained. DDB could have delayed the release as well, you know, sometimes it's just an impossible deadline...
Even if I agree with you, DNDBeyond is not entirely innocent of the whole situation.
Since it is not noted in the marketplace that certain features will only be added to the Character Builder in the coming weeks, expectations are generated among customers that do not correspond to what they are currently getting. It is no surprise that this leads to frustration and anger among some customers. Of course, that is no excuse for the behavior of some people here.
The comparison with early access games is incorrect for the same reason. With early accses it is clear that an unfinished product is being sold. This is not the case here.
The communication from DNDBeyond is very unprofessional in this case. No matter how well the situation is documented in the forum. A company must not assume that customers will look around the forum to see if there is a problem before making a purchase.
Anecdotally, all the people I actually play with have been in support of the new content and appreciate it. The only people I ever seem to find complaining about it are in forum threads online. It isn't a complete ideal system - but those people I play with also appreciate that we likely won't see a PF2 style free-form lineage option until we get a new edition of D&D. It seems like the best option to allow a RAW system to incorporate any bespoke history with minimal fuss.
Nobody is doing large scale surveys on the matter, so we can hardly say for sure either way. However, it was considered important enough to be given pride on place in the marketing materials for the new book - it's not some casually included side note, it was a headline feature and should be treated as such.
Glad to know that the dev team intend to include it. Their original post made out that they considered it 'done because the homebrew tools exist, which (as covered in the thread already) fell well short of expectations.
This is horribly lazy, I can't believe the devs screwed us like this. I just made a template for both the skill & darkvision-version, but there isn't even a smooth way of cloning as far as I can see?! So each time I have to go in and do it manually? It's stuff like this that makes me regret buying into D&DBeyond.
I came here because I was also disappointed I couldn't create a custom lineage in the character creator.
People calling the team lazy clearly do not understand how software development works. That being said, the communication should probably be a bit clearer as it is something I assumed would be available immediately. If the official stance was that it is never going to be added, then I'd be asking for a refund. Seeing as that is clearly not the case, the development team just have it on their to-do list, I'll wait for it instead.
I highly recommend stickying Stormknight's post, so that people who arrived here the same way as me don't have to crawl through the entire conversation.
I tried to create a custom race as a placeholder until Custom Lineage gets implemented but I found doing so to be painfully clunky and unintuitive. Fortunately, there's an easy workaround. Just go with variant human, leave your racial skill unselected (you lose that in return for Darkvision) and tack on a manual -1 and +1 at the abilities screen to turn your racial +1 into a +2 and to get rid of your other +1. Then just note somewhere that you've got Darkvision, which doesn't have any mechanical effect on the character sheet anyway, and you're good to go with an ad hoc Custom Lineage character pending official implementation.
I don't know if it's been posted here, because there is just so much nonsense in this thread, but they have announced on the dev update that they are working on adding support for custom lineage.
There’s a bunch of stuff from Tasha’s that isn’t implemented yet (or not fully implemented) but I’ll cut the D&D Beyond people some slack on that as Tasha’s is still brand new and these things take time. The basics of the new subclasses, spells, feats, and items are in there and that’s the most important stuff.
I tried to create a custom race as a placeholder until Custom Lineage gets implemented but I found doing so to be painfully clunky and unintuitive. Fortunately, there's an easy workaround. Just go with variant human, leave your racial skill unselected (you lose that in return for Darkvision) and tack on a manual -1 and +1 at the abilities screen to turn your racial +1 into a +2 and to get rid of your other +1. Then just note somewhere that you've got Darkvision, which doesn't have any mechanical effect on the character sheet anyway, and you're good to go with an ad hoc Custom Lineage character pending official implementation.
The homebrew creator tool may be a little confusing but if you 'reverse engineer' things it becomes a lot more simpler. Just duplicate the Variant Human (use it as a template instead of creating from scratch). See how they add the ASIs and how they allow you to choose languages/feats/etc. You can also duplicate another race with darkvision or another trait you like to see how they got it done then copy it where you want (TIP: add new modifier>Set Base>darkvision. Value (60 or 120)).
Yeah, I was curious about this too. Don't get me wrong, the team did a fantastic job with Beyond and I really do enjoy using it, but it's been almost 2 months now, seems like a long time to not even have an estimate.
Adam said today on the Twitch stream that Custom Lineage was now on DDB but I don't see it anywhere in the character creator. Anyone know what's up?
OboeLauren responded in another thread that some pieces of it are still being finalized and it isn’t live quite yet.
I just saw the Developer's Update, is that just a replay of the Twitch stream? I only ask because in the DU (released today) they said that custom lineage is available but i can't find it. Is it still unavailable or am I just blind?
Adam said today on the Twitch stream that Custom Lineage was now on DDB but I don't see it anywhere in the character creator. Anyone know what's up?
OboeLauren responded in another thread that some pieces of it are still being finalized and it isn’t live quite yet.
I just saw the Developer's Update, is that just a replay of the Twitch stream? I only ask because in the DU (released today) they said that custom lineage is available but i can't find it. Is it still unavailable or am I just blind?
To clarify: Yes, Adam said it was "live" on the developer's update (on twitch), but afterwards, in response to a question along the lines of Solaries in another thread, OboeLauren said there was still some finish work to do on it. So either Adam misspoke or the release timeline shifted and Adam wasn't informed about that shift before the developer's update. (Likely the latter, since the slides seemed to say it was released).
I had intended to ditch this thread after voicing my initial dissapointment, but the people arguing against even the most basic customer rights in here is making me reconsider that option.
For the record: I am dissapointed that it did not make the initial cut, but eager to see them seem to take a standpoint that they can, and will, come around to suppoorting this feature. From the initial presentation of the information there was every implication that it was simply never going to be done, and I am glad that that seems to have simply been poor communication.
That said?
Anybody that says 'you bought it and the homebrew tool exists therefore it is delivered' really needs a reality check on what was advertised and, consequently, paid for. You know what thet argument could equally apply to? Almost everything in the entire book. Every single race from every book to date. Hell, why even have published content in the character builder? You can homebrew it all!
Would it be a pleasant experience? No. Would it be intuitive and tidy and easy? No. It would be a terrible option and nobody in their right mind would pay for it. But it would be true! And it would, equally, be a massive middle finger to their customers, who come here and pay for source books (often on top of physical copies) purely because of the tools that D&DB offer.
That is why people were justifiably angry that the initial post suggested that the feature was simply being written off. As they should be. I look forwards to when D&DB can catch up with the book's full content and rightly add this option (one of the flagship features of the book, no less, in all of its advertising!) to their tools directly.
The same reason you update already published books with errata or new information, because it is what you paid for in the published material, and no just because it is possible to mimic the feature using the homebrew tools, it isn't the same thing. Just like the character creator makes choosing race and features seamless with the source materials, there should be the option for custom lineage that is in line with the limited features presented by TCoE. Homebrew is an open canvass. Your logic is no different than providing no character creation support at all and telling everyone to just do it themselves with homebrew. That isn't the purpose of this website. It's almost common sense to expect, while the ability to do so is clear, that this option would be present in character creation, especially since it is one of the core features of the new source book. They already have that you say? Then why bother adding custom backgrounds for Descent into Avernus?
Even if I agree with you, DNDBeyond is not entirely innocent of the whole situation.
Since it is not noted in the marketplace that certain features will only be added to the Character Builder in the coming weeks, expectations are generated among customers that do not correspond to what they are currently getting. It is no surprise that this leads to frustration and anger among some customers. Of course, that is no excuse for the behavior of some people here.
The comparison with early access games is incorrect for the same reason. With early accses it is clear that an unfinished product is being sold. This is not the case here.
The communication from DNDBeyond is very unprofessional in this case. No matter how well the situation is documented in the forum. A company must not assume that customers will look around the forum to see if there is a problem before making a purchase.
It is hugely disappointing that this feature hasn't been implemented because its honestly the best thing in the book
Agreed, the ability to further customize character builds is a great boon for the hobby. Most of the main players and the majority of the base agree.
Anecdotally, all the people I actually play with have been in support of the new content and appreciate it. The only people I ever seem to find complaining about it are in forum threads online. It isn't a complete ideal system - but those people I play with also appreciate that we likely won't see a PF2 style free-form lineage option until we get a new edition of D&D. It seems like the best option to allow a RAW system to incorporate any bespoke history with minimal fuss.
Nobody is doing large scale surveys on the matter, so we can hardly say for sure either way. However, it was considered important enough to be given pride on place in the marketing materials for the new book - it's not some casually included side note, it was a headline feature and should be treated as such.
Glad to know that the dev team intend to include it. Their original post made out that they considered it 'done because the homebrew tools exist, which (as covered in the thread already) fell well short of expectations.
This is horribly lazy, I can't believe the devs screwed us like this. I just made a template for both the skill & darkvision-version, but there isn't even a smooth way of cloning as far as I can see?! So each time I have to go in and do it manually? It's stuff like this that makes me regret buying into D&DBeyond.
I came here because I was also disappointed I couldn't create a custom lineage in the character creator.
People calling the team lazy clearly do not understand how software development works. That being said, the communication should probably be a bit clearer as it is something I assumed would be available immediately. If the official stance was that it is never going to be added, then I'd be asking for a refund. Seeing as that is clearly not the case, the development team just have it on their to-do list, I'll wait for it instead.
I highly recommend stickying Stormknight's post, so that people who arrived here the same way as me don't have to crawl through the entire conversation.
Trying to find out why this feature wasn't in the book was one of my first introductions to this community.
This dumpster fire of a thread reminds me of the worst of the early 2000s forum flame wars.
Any new news on this?
I tried to create a custom race as a placeholder until Custom Lineage gets implemented but I found doing so to be painfully clunky and unintuitive. Fortunately, there's an easy workaround. Just go with variant human, leave your racial skill unselected (you lose that in return for Darkvision) and tack on a manual -1 and +1 at the abilities screen to turn your racial +1 into a +2 and to get rid of your other +1. Then just note somewhere that you've got Darkvision, which doesn't have any mechanical effect on the character sheet anyway, and you're good to go with an ad hoc Custom Lineage character pending official implementation.
I don't know if it's been posted here, because there is just so much nonsense in this thread, but they have announced on the dev update that they are working on adding support for custom lineage.
There’s a bunch of stuff from Tasha’s that isn’t implemented yet (or not fully implemented) but I’ll cut the D&D Beyond people some slack on that as Tasha’s is still brand new and these things take time. The basics of the new subclasses, spells, feats, and items are in there and that’s the most important stuff.
The homebrew creator tool may be a little confusing but if you 'reverse engineer' things it becomes a lot more simpler. Just duplicate the Variant Human (use it as a template instead of creating from scratch). See how they add the ASIs and how they allow you to choose languages/feats/etc. You can also duplicate another race with darkvision or another trait you like to see how they got it done then copy it where you want (TIP: add new modifier>Set Base>darkvision. Value (60 or 120)).
Any word on when this will be added? It's been a few months now and I've been hoping to use the Custom Lineage in the character creator.
[REDACTED]
Yeah, I was curious about this too. Don't get me wrong, the team did a fantastic job with Beyond and I really do enjoy using it, but it's been almost 2 months now, seems like a long time to not even have an estimate.
Adam said today on the Twitch stream that Custom Lineage was now on DDB but I don't see it anywhere in the character creator. Anyone know what's up?
OboeLauren responded in another thread that some pieces of it are still being finalized and it isn’t live quite yet.
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
I just saw the Developer's Update, is that just a replay of the Twitch stream? I only ask because in the DU (released today) they said that custom lineage is available but i can't find it. Is it still unavailable or am I just blind?
To clarify: Yes, Adam said it was "live" on the developer's update (on twitch), but afterwards, in response to a question along the lines of Solaries in another thread, OboeLauren said there was still some finish work to do on it. So either Adam misspoke or the release timeline shifted and Adam wasn't informed about that shift before the developer's update. (Likely the latter, since the slides seemed to say it was released).
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