One person in our group will "own" all the "books": Then that person should purchase the books/materials your group needs. Someone in your group (the "owner" of the "books" or someone else) will also need to buy a Master Tier subscription, so you can share content. Keep in mind that while the compendium content will be available to everyone in the campaign, the paid content will be available in the character creation tools only for characters actually in the campaign. Players in your group who want to create characters that aren't part of your campaign will be limited to the free content or that content they purchase. Your group can pitch in together and help the "owner" pay for the purchases and/or the subscription if desired.
Am I correct in understadning that if one of the players in my campaign has content and a master subscription they can content share with the group even though I am the DM for the campaign, interested in teaching some new players the game and really want to have the ability to edit and influence their character sheets which is why I need to be the DM of the group?
Thank you for your always comprehensive and detailed posts
And ultimately this is where DND beyond fails. I'm one of those guys that 95% of what I own are physical books. [REDACTED] I have about $480 of physical books that I bought from Hastings. The fact is DND beyond refuses to implement any type of system where my purchased product, which has it's own individual product key assigned to it and written on the back of the book OR on the receipt, which would allow me to use my products on the website. [REDACTED] I would be able to use my physical XgtE, PHB, MM, DMG, VGTM, TcoE, ToD, MtoF's and NOT have to rebuy every single one of them. These very systems have been implemented in the past, have always been popular, and are also very lucrative for the companies as pro-consumer practices tends to attract consumers (go figure).
If you really want to whip out your wallet and brag about your measurements to the whole wide world, my spending is bigger than yours, and mine is not even that impressive ($705.05 on ebooks, $33.44 on edice, and I believe $114.97 on subscription, totalling $853.46). Some people on here bought everything without taking advantage of sales, and there is no doubt their size can easily be the triple of yours, especially those that bought both physical and digital versions. D&D is not even my main hobby and passion. The amount I spent on Fire Emblem in the past five years could get me a decent used car, and easily two or three if they were prepandemic prices.
What have you done for D&D that makes you entitled to the all the heart, sweat, and hard work that the Beyond team have put into this site? And it seems like you want it for free too? Do you demand that Amazon give you free ebooks and audiobooks of Harry Potter, Games of Thrones, or whatever you read simply because you bought the physical copies from Barnes and Noble? Do you demand that Wal Mart give you free movie DVDs because you paid for and watched movies at Regal or Century theaters? Do you demand that Apple let you download Taylor Swift's new remastered albums just because you bought the phsyical versions a decade ago? Do you also demand that Nintendo let you download a Pokémon game from their eShop just because you bought the physical version from Nintendo's own store at the Rockerfeller Center and lost it on the MTA on the way home?
From the way I see it, D&D consumers have not earned the perks and conveniences that videogame consumers have. The videogame industry is massive, and their consumers earned those perks and conveniences by growing the market, spending money, and being profitable. Those perks and conveniences are not free, and some of them are costly to maintain. Has it even crossed your mind that not every mom-and-pop gamestore can afford a POS system that can integrate their sales data with Wizards, Beyond, and a whole host of other companies and business entities? No? I do not expect most lay people to either. The TTRPG industry is peanuts at best, and based on some of the attitudes I see on here, peanuts is probably an overstatement. The consumer base here as a whole is nowhere near profitable enough to have something as ambitious as cross platform access being an industry standard. If videogamers are just barely scratching the seamless cross platform access and play and it is nowhere even near an industry standard yet, expecting to have more advanced perks and conveniences for TTRPGamers is just grossly absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding of how things work.
As a paying customer, I do not think Beyond should waste their time and effort to cater to people who are not even customers in the first place. With how rude and disruptive some people are in real life, I am appalled by some of the shit they can get away with in brick and mortar stores. I am totally okay with and I am happy that Beyond is not giving away free content and services just because some entitled stranger off the internet does not want to pay. What you do not understand is that what you want is not just mooching off of some imaginary legal entity on paper called Beyond. What you want is to mooch off of the employees who got bills to pay and families to feed, and are busting their asses to serve hard-to-please customers. What you want is to mooch off of the paying customers who support this site with their own hard earned money, and many also are busting their asses, got bills to pay, and family to feed. What you want is to essentially mooch off of ME, and I do not like it when strangers are mooching off of me.
One person in our group will "own" all the "books": Then that person should purchase the books/materials your group needs. Someone in your group (the "owner" of the "books" or someone else) will also need to buy a Master Tier subscription, so you can share content. Keep in mind that while the compendium content will be available to everyone in the campaign, the paid content will be available in the character creation tools only for characters actually in the campaign. Players in your group who want to create characters that aren't part of your campaign will be limited to the free content or that content they purchase. Your group can pitch in together and help the "owner" pay for the purchases and/or the subscription if desired.
Am I correct in understadning that if one of the players in my campaign has content and a master subscription they can content share with the group even though I am the DM for the campaign, interested in teaching some new players the game and really want to have the ability to edit and influence their character sheets which is why I need to be the DM of the group?
Thank you for your always comprehensive and detailed posts
Yes. The GM of the campaign does not need to be the one that has content and subscription. Anyone in the campaign can turn on content sharing, and everything that everyone in the campaign owns will be shared.
I would remind folks that I have specifically requested that arguments about the pricing structure not happen in this thread. If that discussion needs to continue, please take it to another thread.
That is the most astoundingly anti consumer view on business I've ever seen, while somehow being the most unrealistic and the most baseless assumptions I've ever seen.
If you really want to whip out your wallet and brag about your measurements to the whole wide world, my spending is bigger than yours, and mine is not even that impressive ($705.05 on ebooks, $33.44 on edice, and I believe $114.97 on subscription, totalling $853.46). Some people on here bought everything without taking advantage of sales, and there is no doubt their size can easily be the triple of yours, especially those that bought both physical and digital versions. D&D is not even my main hobby and passion. The amount I spent on Fire Emblem in the past five years could get me a decent used car, and easily two or three if they were prepandemic prices.
Well it's not a dick measuring contest, but you actually lost that too. I've bought dice, miniatures, physical copies of source books, monthly subscriptions to Dragon magazine, and other such products since 2004. I just spent responsibly, which I'm actually astounded that you would criticize anyone for ESPECIALLY in this economy. You do realize that the main issue I've brought up is that I distinctly do not want to spend another $600 to purchase all of my source books on dndbeyond when I already have a physical copy, right? No one is trying to compare anything except you, everyone else is making a point of how financially asinine and predatory it is to ask a customer to buy a player hand book, and then tell him to buy it again so he can use it on your website. And by the by, it's not a good thing that you've wasted thousands of dollars on Fire Emblem over the last 5 years. Especially in this economy. I hope you make decent money, cause that's bad for you.
What have you done for D&D that makes you entitled to the all the heart, sweat, and hard work that the Beyond team have put into this site? And it seems like you want it for free too? Do you demand that Amazon give you free ebooks and audiobooks of Harry Potter, Games of Thrones, or whatever you read simply because you bought the physical copies from Barnes and Noble? Do you demand that Wal Mart give you free movie DVDs because you paid for and watched movies at Regal or Century theaters? Do you demand that Apple let you download Taylor Swift's new remastered albums just because you bought the phsyical versions a decade ago? Do you also demand that Nintendo let you download a Pokémon game from their eShop just because you bought the physical version from Nintendo's own store at the Rockerfeller Center and lost it on the MTA on the way home?
I don't even know where to begin with this hot take. You are making astoundingly flawed comparisons but before that, are you insinuating that any, and I mean ANY consumer, has to justify their entitlement to buy a product at a fair price? Jesus christ. Yes, if I buy a product I expect to be able to use that product. And yes I expect any digital copy to cost me LESS than any physical copy. And yes, if the book club wants me to bring a book, and I already have the book, but they want me to REBUY IT FROM THEM in order to bring it to the book club, they are going to lose membership from anyone except the fanboy's with the least self control. If I buy a copy of XgtE, I expect to be able to use it at any game shop I walk into, and if any game shop tells me "Oh no, you can only use our copies of XgtE so you have to buy it again here" then they deserve to lose mine and anyone else's business. Yes by the way, Barnes and Noble allows you to use a product key to take any physical book you buy from them and get the ebook on audible for free, as long as you have an audible subscription. It encourages you to buy your physical product from them, and to use their paid subscription service. It's why they are still doing quite well despite being primarily based around printed works in the digital era.
From the way I see it, D&D consumers have not earned the perks and conveniences that videogame consumers have. The videogame industry is massive, and their consumers earned those perks and conveniences by growing the market, spending money, and being profitable. Those perks and conveniences are not free, and some of them are costly to maintain. Has it even crossed your mind that not every mom-and-pop gamestore can afford a POS system that can integrate their sales data with Wizards, Beyond, and a whole host of other companies and business entities? No? I do not expect most lay people to either. The TTRPG industry is peanuts at best, and based on some of the attitudes I see on here, peanuts is probably an overstatement. The consumer base here as a whole is nowhere near profitable enough to have something as ambitious as cross platform access being an industry standard. If videogamers are just barely scratching the seamless cross platform access and play and it is nowhere even near an industry standard yet, expecting to have more advanced perks and conveniences for TTRPGamers is just grossly absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding of how things work.
Earned the conveniences? What? Dude, any customer has a right to a fair price for a quality product. That isn't a "Perk" that is baseline business. And for the record, yes it is easy to build and maintain. It's also MUCH more financially lucrative. Imagine, there are around 600,000 people who use dndbeyond's free services, either for the forum to find groups or the character builder. 99% of people use dndbeyond exclusively for the character builder, which is it's most significant feature, which is ultimately a luxury. Only around 10% of those 600,000 people buy much on dndbeyond, most of us just create the baseline character, then port it to a VTT, and then make whatever changes we need to. Take my Wizard I was playing in a campaign that just finished up. She was a Chronurgy wizard, but I don't have that source book on dndbeyond. So what did I do? I went through the character builder, made Shtek'shaa Spellscale the Kobold Evocation Wizard, and then when I ported it to roll20 I just changed evocation to Chronurgy, and the +2 dex to +2 int instead. Oh no, 2 minutes of extra work, and to remedy that 2 minutes of extra work dndbeyond wants me to spend $29.99 for Tasha's and $29.99 for EgtW, ONLY so I can use it on their site in the character builder. So you think I'm acting entitled because I don't want to spend another $60 JUST so that I can save 2 minutes of work? THAT is why barely 10% of the community pays for any of the books and less and less of us use the service at all. The character builder is the only thing it gives me. The paid subscription is also a bad deal to the point of being borderline criminal. You pay a monthly fee for vanity name plates, the ability to share the things you buy on the website, unlimited character creation slots, and the ability to use homebrew content someone else makes. The only part of that with any use is the character creation slots, and the homebrew should ALREADY be free. Imagine if instead of this predatory business model that IS, by the way, failing spectacularly, your $5 subscription allowed to to register the product key on the back of your physical copy of the books and use them in the character builder and get 12 to 20 slots for character creation. Do you know how many people would buy that subscription, ESPECIALLY if dndbeyond was to integrate itself properly with VTT's? They would likely bring in MORE than just the 600,000 users they have and at least 500,000 would probably pay the monthly subscription for that. It has ACTUAL value and use. So sit down and kindly screw off.
As a paying customer, I do not think Beyond should waste their time and effort to cater to people who are not even customers in the first place. With how rude and disruptive some people are in real life, I am appalled by some of the shit they can get away with in brick and mortar stores. I am totally okay with and I am happy that Beyond is not giving away free content and services just because some entitled stranger off the internet does not want to pay. What you do not understand is that what you want is not just mooching off of some imaginary legal entity on paper called Beyond. What you want is to mooch off of the employees who got bills to pay and families to feed, and are busting their asses to serve hard-to-please customers. What you want is to mooch off of the paying customers who support this site with their own hard earned money, and many also are busting their asses, got bills to pay, and family to feed. What you want is to essentially mooch off of ME, and I do not like it when strangers are mooching off of me.
So buying a physical copy of a book means I'm not a paying customer then, but repurchasing all the physical books I have already bought just to use in the character builder for ease of use is somehow what makes me a paying customer. Flawless victory, my dude. Flawless. And don't pull that tripe bs with me, something you somehow forget is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has bills to pay, families to feed, and lives to live, and a lot of us DO NOT have the financial stability to repurchase every source book just for the character builder. I'm going to be blunt, I do not believe that you have ever had to pay your own bills, you have the very distinct bourgeois mentality of a nimbyest trust fund baby.
Thanks though, for providing to anyone and everyone who needed reasons to NOT buy dndbeyond with the most glaring example imaginable. It's a luxury utility product, vastly overpriced, with a predatory business model that COULD be so much more, but for some reason won't. And I'll be honest, I suspect it's because of WotC and their famous aggressive deals, as someone else already pointed out it's a miracle that we even got PDF's at all, since they are famously anti-PDF, and that comes at dndbeyond buying the license from WotC to sell and host their product on their website as a distributor, which in and of itself means dndbeyond had to agree to contractual terms and obligations with WotC just to get that license, and I would bet you a thousand dollars that the contract includes language which requires them to NEVER allow the pdf's to be downloadable and to never integrate any type of subscription like the one I mentioned, since WotC absolutely wants you to keep buying the product over and over and over. It's not a good thing when WotC's business model appears to be a worse and more predatory version of Todd Howard repackaging Skyrim for the umpteenth time, especially when even Todd Howard isn't stupid enough to try and sell you Skyrim on your fridge for more than 1/10th of it's original price instead of full price.
Now dndbeyond mods and staff, you can do whatever you want at the end of the day, but I'm going to be blunt I'm not going to purchase any of your products until you get a product worth buying and that's the boat most people are in, if this thread, the forums, and your sales numbers are any indicator at all. At the end of the day, you can have $600,000 normies like me who pay you, hell, I'm sure most of us would pay a $9 subscription to add and use our physical books and use them in the character builder, instead of roughly 10,000 people rebuying the product once. Even Richie Rich here can and will likely only will buy the digital books once from you, so you get one single instance of revenue per person. Sure, the revenue from 10,000 people buying, oh let's assume the standard fare so PHB, MM, DMG, XgtE, VgtM, TcoE, SCAG, VgtR, MtoF, MoT, EgtW and Fizban for good measure... 12 books at $29.99 each, which is $359.88 before taxes, of which I'm sure WotC takes at least 60% of the revenue from these sales but we'll assume 100% of it goes to dndbeyond. That's $3,598,800 you make in grand total, and then you won't make anymore money off them unless you come out with another book for them to buy. If you only get 400,000 subscribers to dndbeyond using a service that allows us to register our physical books and use them in the character creator at $5 monthly, you would earn 2,500,000 in a month. It's pretty obvious which one is the more reliable business model, and it helps that it's far less predatory. Hell, you could make a multi tier subscription, where Bronze gets the basics (register their books and use the character creator) silver gets medium benefits (Discounts of some kind and more character slots, and the encounter builder) and gold gets the best (all of the aforementioned plus unlimited character slots, potentially access to any official published book even ones they don't have). Price them at $5.99, $9.99 and $15.99, you'll ACTUALLY have a business model.
Or you can keep calling literally anything and everything Piracy and run a glorified, semi functional character builder. It's your choice at the end of the day, and someone else will inevitably do it better if you fail. /shrug.
Oh, and I'd add the sharing of content in campaigns to Silver tier if I were you. That encourages all customers to buy the product in the first place, but doesn't require every single person to buy every single book. Most players still only have the PHB +2 or 3 other books, usually Tasha's and XgtE. If Bob and Steve both have a Silver tier and play in Tim's CoS campaign, and Bob has Tasha's while Steve has XgtE, then they can share that content with each other. This allows Bob to guy buy VgtR when he likes the setting that much, and lets him show it to Steve, improving the chances Steve will buy it too since now he actually gets to see it and the chances are Bob and Steve will both join separate games of their own at varying points of their time as vitriolic best buds. This also does mean that most DM's would ultimately be Silver tier, and players Bronze, which already matches the pay dynamic (we DM's put more money, time and effort into the game than any player, fight me).
This is a reminder that the OP has repeatedly specified this is not the place to debate the merits or lack thereof of the D&D Beyond pricing model:
I would remind folks that I have specifically requested that arguments about the pricing structure not happen in this thread. If that discussion needs to continue, please take it to another thread.
If you wish to have that discussion, please do so in a different thread
Is it possible to buy a race or class/subclass? If so how?
Also I have been buying the hardback books from Barnes and noble or Amazon. Is there a way to access the races/subclasses from those books I've bought from those stores here via a promo code or something and if so where would I find that code?
Is it possible to buy a race or class/subclass? If so how?
Also I have been buying the hardback books from Barnes and noble or Amazon. Is there a way to access the races/subclasses from those books I've bought from those stores here via a promo code or something and if so where would I find that code?
Probably better to do this in reverse order.
"Is there a way to access the races/subclasses from those books I've bought from those stores here via a promo code or something "
Nope.
Closest would be to use the Homebrew tools to recreate it for free. The tools are a bit clunky but will do the job for everything except whole Classes (which only affects Artificer). But worth noting everything in the Basic Rules (under Sources menu) is free and available.
"Is it possible to buy a race or class/subclass? If so how?"
Yes. Go to Marketplace in the top menu, then Store. Find the book the race/subclass/whatever first appeared in and click on the title. Scroll down and you will see where you can add individual items (race/subclass/whatever) to your cart and then checkout and buy them. Anything you pay this way will be deducted from the main sourcebook should you later decide to go digital fully.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
I was wondering if the hive had any insight on if the Wild Beyond the Witchlight would be handy to own. We are running it in December and as a player I don't intend on using the races. Is there anything from the digital book that I'd need or just let this one slide?
I was wondering if the hive had any insight on if the Wild Beyond the Witchlight would be handy to own. We are running it in December and as a player I don't intend on using the races. Is there anything from the digital book that I'd need or just let this one slide?
If you are a player and don’t need the character options, there’s no need to purchase it. (Even if you are player who does want to use the character options in a Witchlight campaign, if the campaign will be sharing content, there’s no reason to)
I love that they let you buy individual races, subclasses, etc. It's so helpful, as someone who owns a bunch of the books and mostly wants the digital content for the site. My wallet thanks you.
Question: I own three d&d books on paper, is there anyway to unlock them digitally? Because I don't want to pay again for the books, just to unlock them digitally.
Question: I own three d&d books on paper, is there anyway to unlock them digitally?
No.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I personally didn't own any dnd stuff so I decided to go all in and go digital with d&d beyond. I made sure to take advantage of the good deals plus legendary bundle. Depending on the group I recommend buying what you personally would use. Or if the whole group uses dnd beyond perhaps discussing as a group content purchases.
I have a master tier subscription and DM for a group that share my books. I would prefer the players on my campaign not know all the adventure books that I have so I have purchased some as gifts to redeem later as they become relevant in the campaign or in offshoots from it. I have a couple of questions:
1. I don't think there's any way to hide the names of the titles I have from my players is there? I can see I can hide the contents but I can't find a way to hide the posession of the title entirely. 2. Is there an expiry date beyond which you can no longer redeem a book bought as a gift?
I have a master tier subscription and DM for a group that share my books. I would prefer the players on my campaign not know all the adventure books that I have so I have purchased some as gifts to redeem later as they become relevant in the campaign or in offshoots from it. I have a couple of questions:
1. I don't think there's any way to hide the names of the titles I have from my players is there? I can see I can hide the contents but I can't find a way to hide the posession of the title entirely. 2. Is there an expiry date beyond which you can no longer redeem a book bought as a gift?
If you are content sharing in a campaign as a player, the DM of the campaign can see all the “books” that are being shared in the campaign in the Content Management screen. But otherwise, I don’t think content sharing allows players to see a list of books that others own. (And, for that matter, the Content Management screen/page doesn’t say who in the group “owns” the content.). I can’t think of any place where such a list would be visible.
You can turn off books, but it only turns off the compendium content, not character options for the builder. So, for example, I could turn off access to Tomb of Annihilation, and my players would not be able to see the content (unless they purchased a copy themselves). But they would still have access to the backgrounds, magic items, and monsters from TOA, although—as far as I know—only on the character sheet. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t use the magic items or monsters listing function (Game Rules>Magic Items and Game Rules>Monsters) to look them up.
Does anyone know when the next sale is? I want to buy Fizban, but when it is on sale.
They don’t generally announce sales in advance, so you’ll just have to watch for them. They are usually announced with a banner on the forum and I typically get emails about them.
Am I correct in understadning that if one of the players in my campaign has content and a master subscription they can content share with the group even though I am the DM for the campaign, interested in teaching some new players the game and really want to have the ability to edit and influence their character sheets which is why I need to be the DM of the group?
Thank you for your always comprehensive and detailed posts
If you really want to whip out your wallet and brag about your measurements to the whole wide world, my spending is bigger than yours, and mine is not even that impressive ($705.05 on ebooks, $33.44 on edice, and I believe $114.97 on subscription, totalling $853.46). Some people on here bought everything without taking advantage of sales, and there is no doubt their size can easily be the triple of yours, especially those that bought both physical and digital versions. D&D is not even my main hobby and passion. The amount I spent on Fire Emblem in the past five years could get me a decent used car, and easily two or three if they were prepandemic prices.
What have you done for D&D that makes you entitled to the all the heart, sweat, and hard work that the Beyond team have put into this site? And it seems like you want it for free too? Do you demand that Amazon give you free ebooks and audiobooks of Harry Potter, Games of Thrones, or whatever you read simply because you bought the physical copies from Barnes and Noble? Do you demand that Wal Mart give you free movie DVDs because you paid for and watched movies at Regal or Century theaters? Do you demand that Apple let you download Taylor Swift's new remastered albums just because you bought the phsyical versions a decade ago? Do you also demand that Nintendo let you download a Pokémon game from their eShop just because you bought the physical version from Nintendo's own store at the Rockerfeller Center and lost it on the MTA on the way home?
From the way I see it, D&D consumers have not earned the perks and conveniences that videogame consumers have. The videogame industry is massive, and their consumers earned those perks and conveniences by growing the market, spending money, and being profitable. Those perks and conveniences are not free, and some of them are costly to maintain. Has it even crossed your mind that not every mom-and-pop gamestore can afford a POS system that can integrate their sales data with Wizards, Beyond, and a whole host of other companies and business entities? No? I do not expect most lay people to either. The TTRPG industry is peanuts at best, and based on some of the attitudes I see on here, peanuts is probably an overstatement. The consumer base here as a whole is nowhere near profitable enough to have something as ambitious as cross platform access being an industry standard. If videogamers are just barely scratching the seamless cross platform access and play and it is nowhere even near an industry standard yet, expecting to have more advanced perks and conveniences for TTRPGamers is just grossly absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding of how things work.
As a paying customer, I do not think Beyond should waste their time and effort to cater to people who are not even customers in the first place. With how rude and disruptive some people are in real life, I am appalled by some of the shit they can get away with in brick and mortar stores. I am totally okay with and I am happy that Beyond is not giving away free content and services just because some entitled stranger off the internet does not want to pay. What you do not understand is that what you want is not just mooching off of some imaginary legal entity on paper called Beyond. What you want is to mooch off of the employees who got bills to pay and families to feed, and are busting their asses to serve hard-to-please customers. What you want is to mooch off of the paying customers who support this site with their own hard earned money, and many also are busting their asses, got bills to pay, and family to feed. What you want is to essentially mooch off of ME, and I do not like it when strangers are mooching off of me.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Yes. The GM of the campaign does not need to be the one that has content and subscription. Anyone in the campaign can turn on content sharing, and everything that everyone in the campaign owns will be shared.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I would remind folks that I have specifically requested that arguments about the pricing structure not happen in this thread. If that discussion needs to continue, please take it to another thread.
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
That is the most astoundingly anti consumer view on business I've ever seen, while somehow being the most unrealistic and the most baseless assumptions I've ever seen.
Well it's not a dick measuring contest, but you actually lost that too. I've bought dice, miniatures, physical copies of source books, monthly subscriptions to Dragon magazine, and other such products since 2004. I just spent responsibly, which I'm actually astounded that you would criticize anyone for ESPECIALLY in this economy. You do realize that the main issue I've brought up is that I distinctly do not want to spend another $600 to purchase all of my source books on dndbeyond when I already have a physical copy, right? No one is trying to compare anything except you, everyone else is making a point of how financially asinine and predatory it is to ask a customer to buy a player hand book, and then tell him to buy it again so he can use it on your website. And by the by, it's not a good thing that you've wasted thousands of dollars on Fire Emblem over the last 5 years. Especially in this economy. I hope you make decent money, cause that's bad for you.
I don't even know where to begin with this hot take. You are making astoundingly flawed comparisons but before that, are you insinuating that any, and I mean ANY consumer, has to justify their entitlement to buy a product at a fair price? Jesus christ. Yes, if I buy a product I expect to be able to use that product. And yes I expect any digital copy to cost me LESS than any physical copy. And yes, if the book club wants me to bring a book, and I already have the book, but they want me to REBUY IT FROM THEM in order to bring it to the book club, they are going to lose membership from anyone except the fanboy's with the least self control. If I buy a copy of XgtE, I expect to be able to use it at any game shop I walk into, and if any game shop tells me "Oh no, you can only use our copies of XgtE so you have to buy it again here" then they deserve to lose mine and anyone else's business. Yes by the way, Barnes and Noble allows you to use a product key to take any physical book you buy from them and get the ebook on audible for free, as long as you have an audible subscription. It encourages you to buy your physical product from them, and to use their paid subscription service. It's why they are still doing quite well despite being primarily based around printed works in the digital era.
Earned the conveniences? What? Dude, any customer has a right to a fair price for a quality product. That isn't a "Perk" that is baseline business. And for the record, yes it is easy to build and maintain. It's also MUCH more financially lucrative. Imagine, there are around 600,000 people who use dndbeyond's free services, either for the forum to find groups or the character builder. 99% of people use dndbeyond exclusively for the character builder, which is it's most significant feature, which is ultimately a luxury. Only around 10% of those 600,000 people buy much on dndbeyond, most of us just create the baseline character, then port it to a VTT, and then make whatever changes we need to. Take my Wizard I was playing in a campaign that just finished up. She was a Chronurgy wizard, but I don't have that source book on dndbeyond. So what did I do? I went through the character builder, made Shtek'shaa Spellscale the Kobold Evocation Wizard, and then when I ported it to roll20 I just changed evocation to Chronurgy, and the +2 dex to +2 int instead. Oh no, 2 minutes of extra work, and to remedy that 2 minutes of extra work dndbeyond wants me to spend $29.99 for Tasha's and $29.99 for EgtW, ONLY so I can use it on their site in the character builder. So you think I'm acting entitled because I don't want to spend another $60 JUST so that I can save 2 minutes of work? THAT is why barely 10% of the community pays for any of the books and less and less of us use the service at all. The character builder is the only thing it gives me. The paid subscription is also a bad deal to the point of being borderline criminal. You pay a monthly fee for vanity name plates, the ability to share the things you buy on the website, unlimited character creation slots, and the ability to use homebrew content someone else makes. The only part of that with any use is the character creation slots, and the homebrew should ALREADY be free. Imagine if instead of this predatory business model that IS, by the way, failing spectacularly, your $5 subscription allowed to to register the product key on the back of your physical copy of the books and use them in the character builder and get 12 to 20 slots for character creation. Do you know how many people would buy that subscription, ESPECIALLY if dndbeyond was to integrate itself properly with VTT's? They would likely bring in MORE than just the 600,000 users they have and at least 500,000 would probably pay the monthly subscription for that. It has ACTUAL value and use. So sit down and kindly screw off.
So buying a physical copy of a book means I'm not a paying customer then, but repurchasing all the physical books I have already bought just to use in the character builder for ease of use is somehow what makes me a paying customer. Flawless victory, my dude. Flawless. And don't pull that tripe bs with me, something you somehow forget is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has bills to pay, families to feed, and lives to live, and a lot of us DO NOT have the financial stability to repurchase every source book just for the character builder. I'm going to be blunt, I do not believe that you have ever had to pay your own bills, you have the very distinct bourgeois mentality of a nimbyest trust fund baby.
Thanks though, for providing to anyone and everyone who needed reasons to NOT buy dndbeyond with the most glaring example imaginable. It's a luxury utility product, vastly overpriced, with a predatory business model that COULD be so much more, but for some reason won't. And I'll be honest, I suspect it's because of WotC and their famous aggressive deals, as someone else already pointed out it's a miracle that we even got PDF's at all, since they are famously anti-PDF, and that comes at dndbeyond buying the license from WotC to sell and host their product on their website as a distributor, which in and of itself means dndbeyond had to agree to contractual terms and obligations with WotC just to get that license, and I would bet you a thousand dollars that the contract includes language which requires them to NEVER allow the pdf's to be downloadable and to never integrate any type of subscription like the one I mentioned, since WotC absolutely wants you to keep buying the product over and over and over. It's not a good thing when WotC's business model appears to be a worse and more predatory version of Todd Howard repackaging Skyrim for the umpteenth time, especially when even Todd Howard isn't stupid enough to try and sell you Skyrim on your fridge for more than 1/10th of it's original price instead of full price.
Now dndbeyond mods and staff, you can do whatever you want at the end of the day, but I'm going to be blunt I'm not going to purchase any of your products until you get a product worth buying and that's the boat most people are in, if this thread, the forums, and your sales numbers are any indicator at all. At the end of the day, you can have $600,000 normies like me who pay you, hell, I'm sure most of us would pay a $9 subscription to add and use our physical books and use them in the character builder, instead of roughly 10,000 people rebuying the product once. Even Richie Rich here can and will likely only will buy the digital books once from you, so you get one single instance of revenue per person. Sure, the revenue from 10,000 people buying, oh let's assume the standard fare so PHB, MM, DMG, XgtE, VgtM, TcoE, SCAG, VgtR, MtoF, MoT, EgtW and Fizban for good measure... 12 books at $29.99 each, which is $359.88 before taxes, of which I'm sure WotC takes at least 60% of the revenue from these sales but we'll assume 100% of it goes to dndbeyond. That's $3,598,800 you make in grand total, and then you won't make anymore money off them unless you come out with another book for them to buy. If you only get 400,000 subscribers to dndbeyond using a service that allows us to register our physical books and use them in the character creator at $5 monthly, you would earn 2,500,000 in a month. It's pretty obvious which one is the more reliable business model, and it helps that it's far less predatory. Hell, you could make a multi tier subscription, where Bronze gets the basics (register their books and use the character creator) silver gets medium benefits (Discounts of some kind and more character slots, and the encounter builder) and gold gets the best (all of the aforementioned plus unlimited character slots, potentially access to any official published book even ones they don't have). Price them at $5.99, $9.99 and $15.99, you'll ACTUALLY have a business model.
Or you can keep calling literally anything and everything Piracy and run a glorified, semi functional character builder. It's your choice at the end of the day, and someone else will inevitably do it better if you fail. /shrug.
[REDACTED]
Oh, and I'd add the sharing of content in campaigns to Silver tier if I were you. That encourages all customers to buy the product in the first place, but doesn't require every single person to buy every single book. Most players still only have the PHB +2 or 3 other books, usually Tasha's and XgtE. If Bob and Steve both have a Silver tier and play in Tim's CoS campaign, and Bob has Tasha's while Steve has XgtE, then they can share that content with each other. This allows Bob to guy buy VgtR when he likes the setting that much, and lets him show it to Steve, improving the chances Steve will buy it too since now he actually gets to see it and the chances are Bob and Steve will both join separate games of their own at varying points of their time as vitriolic best buds. This also does mean that most DM's would ultimately be Silver tier, and players Bronze, which already matches the pay dynamic (we DM's put more money, time and effort into the game than any player, fight me).
This is a reminder that the OP has repeatedly specified this is not the place to debate the merits or lack thereof of the D&D Beyond pricing model:
If you wish to have that discussion, please do so in a different thread
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Is it possible to buy a race or class/subclass? If so how?
Also I have been buying the hardback books from Barnes and noble or Amazon. Is there a way to access the races/subclasses from those books I've bought from those stores here via a promo code or something and if so where would I find that code?
Probably better to do this in reverse order.
"Is there a way to access the races/subclasses from those books I've bought from those stores here via a promo code or something "
Nope.
Closest would be to use the Homebrew tools to recreate it for free. The tools are a bit clunky but will do the job for everything except whole Classes (which only affects Artificer). But worth noting everything in the Basic Rules (under Sources menu) is free and available.
"Is it possible to buy a race or class/subclass? If so how?"
Yes. Go to Marketplace in the top menu, then Store. Find the book the race/subclass/whatever first appeared in and click on the title. Scroll down and you will see where you can add individual items (race/subclass/whatever) to your cart and then checkout and buy them. Anything you pay this way will be deducted from the main sourcebook should you later decide to go digital fully.
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.
I was wondering if the hive had any insight on if the Wild Beyond the Witchlight would be handy to own. We are running it in December and as a player I don't intend on using the races. Is there anything from the digital book that I'd need or just let this one slide?
If you are a player and don’t need the character options, there’s no need to purchase it. (Even if you are player who does want to use the character options in a Witchlight campaign, if the campaign will be sharing content, there’s no reason to)
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;
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I love that they let you buy individual races, subclasses, etc. It's so helpful, as someone who owns a bunch of the books and mostly wants the digital content for the site. My wallet thanks you.
Question: I own three d&d books on paper, is there anyway to unlock them digitally? Because I don't want to pay again for the books, just to unlock them digitally.
gurg
No.
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.
DraconisKing
For you and anyone else who hasn't seen the stickied thread - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
My work here is done!! (*Vanishes*)
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I personally didn't own any dnd stuff so I decided to go all in and go digital with d&d beyond. I made sure to take advantage of the good deals plus legendary bundle. Depending on the group I recommend buying what you personally would use. Or if the whole group uses dnd beyond perhaps discussing as a group content purchases.
I have a master tier subscription and DM for a group that share my books. I would prefer the players on my campaign not know all the adventure books that I have so I have purchased some as gifts to redeem later as they become relevant in the campaign or in offshoots from it. I have a couple of questions:
1. I don't think there's any way to hide the names of the titles I have from my players is there? I can see I can hide the contents but I can't find a way to hide the posession of the title entirely.
2. Is there an expiry date beyond which you can no longer redeem a book bought as a gift?
If you are content sharing in a campaign as a player, the DM of the campaign can see all the “books” that are being shared in the campaign in the Content Management screen. But otherwise, I don’t think content sharing allows players to see a list of books that others own. (And, for that matter, the Content Management screen/page doesn’t say who in the group “owns” the content.). I can’t think of any place where such a list would be visible.
You can turn off books, but it only turns off the compendium content, not character options for the builder. So, for example, I could turn off access to Tomb of Annihilation, and my players would not be able to see the content (unless they purchased a copy themselves). But they would still have access to the backgrounds, magic items, and monsters from TOA, although—as far as I know—only on the character sheet. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t use the magic items or monsters listing function (Game Rules>Magic Items and Game Rules>Monsters) to look them up.
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;
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Does anyone know when the next sale is? I want to buy Fizban, but when it is on sale.
They don’t generally announce sales in advance, so you’ll just have to watch for them. They are usually announced with a banner on the forum and I typically get emails about them.
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;
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