I'm still somewhat new to the site and I've thought about picking up Tasha's but 30€ is quite the price. Also how essential is the PHB in terms of the features it adds, can you play classes fine without the features the book provides?

Best explanation on what one should buy is in this pinned thread:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/13989-a-buyers-guide-for-d-d-beyond

As for the title of this thread, sales happen.  Black Friday is usually a store wide sale.  Sometimes they have other store wide sales, other times a deal on select books.  Best way to stay apprised of that is follow DDB on social media, IIRC, Facebook usually has the most consistent announcement, and they're announced ahead of time by a week or so.

Quote from WildRage3000 >>

I'm still somewhat new to the site and I've thought about picking up Tasha's but 30€ is quite the price. Also how essential is the PHB in terms of the features it adds, can you play classes fine without the features the book provides?

 If you have access to the PHB (Eg you own a physical copy), then you'll be fine without buying it here. I don't think anyone should, in the long term, play without one. It just provides a lot of the rules that will be essential for you to understand for yourself and not rely on others for wording. I don't know how many spells the basic rules provide, but they might be a key point. If you want feats, only two are free. You can homebrew them in...but given the time it takes to do so, you're better off just working for that time and using the money you earn to buy them. You can buy each item piecemeal and not lose out because the whatever you spend gets credited towards the book as a whole.

We'll probably have a sale in the next month or so for Easter/release of the film. Usually, it's in the realm of 10-20%, but whether it will include Tasha's or other books you want we won't know until they announce it, and we can't even be sure there will be one until they do.

I would also like support with this question. I don’t want to pay 35€ for a digital only version, just so I can add the feats/spells I want to my online character sheet. Hopefully waiting for a bundle that at least gives me access to both the digital and physical copy. Does anyone know when bundles, sales or deals usually get announced? Am I waiting for Thanksgiving or Christmas is what I’m asking :) 

Quote from ShenaniGrin >>

I would also like support with this question. I don’t want to pay 35€ for a digital only version, just so I can add the feats/spells I want to my online character sheet. Hopefully waiting for a bundle that at least gives me access to both the digital and physical copy. Does anyone know when bundles, sales or deals usually get announced? Am I waiting for Thanksgiving or Christmas is what I’m asking :) 

Digital-physical bundles are only available through Wizard's main website. Digital-physical bundles have never been on sale as far as I know.

For digital only on Beyond, in my experience, the best sales are around Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Christmas would be the next best sales period.

If you want just feats and spells, you can purchase just those options instead of the entire book.

Cyber Monday is around the corner and there is usually a sale then. 

I would not recommend playing without the PHB. The "Essentials" thing they sell gives you just enough to play a boring premade character. It gives only one subclass for each Class. IMO, it doesn't even give you enough info to play a proper D and D game. 

Quote from JonasMott >>

I would not recommend playing without the PHB. The "Essentials" thing they sell gives you just enough to play a boring premade character. It gives only one subclass for each Class. IMO, it doesn't even give you enough info to play a proper D and D game. 

For super brand spanking new players, I do not recommend using the PHB at all. It makes no sense to have them shell out money for a book/hobby that they might not be into in the first place. Additionally, the PHB has way too much information and options, and will quickly overwhelm a new player.

For new players, BR/SRD is free and it contains enough information and options without being overwhelming. D&D can be played for free, and UA and homebrew are available for free too for more options. TTRPGs in general already has a hard time attracting and keeping new players, and the last thing we need is to promote an unnecessary paywall that might discourage people from joining the hobby. After a player has a campaign or two or three under their belt, and they are clearly interested in D&D, then getting the PHB is good idea.

If a new player specifically wants more options in a specific process of character creation (more species or more subclasses), or have some specific idea in mind, then sure, giving them more options outside of the BR/SRD to keep them interested and invested makes sense. But if a new player did not ask for it, we should not unload extra information and options onto them while they are still learning the basic mechanics of the game.

Don't forget you can buy individual classes/subclasses among other things piecemeal from most books (there are exceptions mostly 3rd party) if there is something you want but do not want to buy the whole book at that time. Any parts of the book bought are deducted from the total price of the book if you decide to buy the whole thing at a later date. Just remember there is a 1.99 minimum purchase in the webstore marketplace even if you have bought enough to "pay" for the book, and buying through the website is the smoothest and fastest way to buy, (I don't think you can piecemeal through the app, and purchases made other than the web store marketplace may have delays for the content being available to you due to other places having to verify and send DDB the purchase info, at least that is my understanding.

Only the DM needs to own it. I didn't say everyone should buy it. The PH still gives only 3 options for each class. You think 3 choices is overwhelming? Most classes have at least 7 or 8 subclasses. My point was don't waste $ on the essentials thing. Its like almost the same price as the PH and the PH walks you step by step through making a character. Plus has all the basic spells. Why would anyone ever want to use a character someone else created? If you are the kind of person who is turned off by reading, than TTRPGs probably aren't for you anyway.

Quote from JonasMott >>

Only the DM needs to own it. I didn't say everyone should buy it. The PH still gives only 3 options for each class. You think 3 choices is overwhelming? Most classes have at least 7 or 8 subclasses. My point was don't waste $ on the essentials thing. Its like almost the same price as the PH and the PH walks you step by step through making a character. Plus has all the basic spells. Why would anyone ever want to use a character someone else created? If you are the kind of person who is turned off by reading, than TTRPGs probably aren't for you anyway.

Even if the GM has the PHB, I still would not recommend using it on new players, the GM definitely should not even buy it if the GM is brand new too, and the GM should not be expected and responsible for shouldering the cost of everything (if we GMs love the game, we will naturally spend the money cause we want to; being peer-pressured to spend money on the other hand is a no-no). It is not a good idea to spend money on a new hobby if you can try it out for free.

For a group of new players, their first session zero is already under heavy time crunch learning game mechanics. Some new players also have the habit of reading through every single option before making a decision, and new players are unlikely to have the discipline to do their homework on their own time before session zero starts. Cutting out subclass choice significantly speeds up the character creation process and lets new players get to the action quicker. Using premade characters skips the character creation process entirely, and allows new players to get to the action even sooner. Using premade characters significantly reduces the need for a second session zero before they start their first adventure.

If you are okay with GMing new players and giving them the entire PHB, more power to you. I did it once because I was a new GM, and I learned my lesson after going through three session zeroes just to get everyone on board.

im tryring to start a campaign called "The Whisperwoods Quarrel" and another one called "Drifters" before that (working on the plot of twwq while we play difters which has no plot) and i have none of the sourcebooks except whats free. when is the next sale after this, ive calculated the prices of everything i need (a total of ( $90 US excluding tax and monster manual which i wont be purchasing) and i should be able to pay for it, but i cant really afford to spend 90 dollars on a board game (even though i very much want to) and since the sale is ending, what should i do

Historically speaking books don't go below 40% off, except extremely rarely. For example, last Cyber Monday the DMG was 50% off for 24 hours. Previous Black Friday's/Cyber Monday's the Bundles would also be discounted to reflect the drop in prices of the individual books included within them, however WotC stopped doing that last year for some reason with no explanation. They also originally intended on providing a $20 discount code on the Player Bundle and $150 discount code for the Legendary Bundle as part of their Christmas 2023 Advent Calendar but scrapped the codes days before it went live.

There is one now, but you'll have to act quickly. When the next one is? Probably May, since they seem to have done Easter early this year.

Be aware that they are bringing out a new PHB, MM and DMG in September. Obviously up to you as to whether you get the current ones...but I don't want you to be upset when a new one comes out in a few months.

You can also play for free, I have links in my signature (if you can't see them, flip your phone to landscape and they'll appear). The Basic Rules, which contains some basic character choices, plus several adventures.

Quote from confusedintrovert61253 >>

im tryring to start a campaign called "The Whisperwoods Quarrel" and another one called "Drifters" before that (working on the plot of twwq while we play difters which has no plot) and i have none of the sourcebooks except whats free. when is the next sale after this, ive calculated the prices of everything i need (a total of ( $90 US excluding tax and monster manual which i wont be purchasing) and i should be able to pay for it, but i cant really afford to spend 90 dollars on a board game (even though i very much want to) and since the sale is ending, what should i do

How new are you to D&D? If you are brand spanking new, just stick with the free stuff first and finish a campaign or two before you spend a penny on this hobby. Since it seems like you volunteered to be the GM, you are probably the one who is most enthusiastic about D&D in your group, and be prepared that you are also very likely the one who spends the most on this hobby. And finally, be aware that while D&D Beyond is an amazing tool and platform, it is not without issues and flaws. For casual D&D players just starting out, Beyond is pretty good, but as you get more experience with the game, Beyond's flaws would get more glaring and frustrating over time. For me personally, the lack of support for some optional/variant rules (spell points, epic boons, etc.) and lack of implentation of some critical core rules (temporary status effects, some feats and subclasses do not work right, certain magic items need further manual customization to work right) would be the biggest flaw of Beyond. There are work arounds, but you will be doing a lot of extra work.

If you have a campaign or two under your belt already and you are ready and okay to spend money, the PHB would give you the most bang for your buck. If you are short on money, you can skip the DMG and MM; these two are nice to have, but they are not necessary. However, as Linklite has said, keep in mind these three original 2014 core rule books will probably be discontinued and replaced later this year and early next year, so if you know you suffer from severe FOMO, you may want to get them all soon before they get discontinued, and their sale right now is probably be the best time to get it. Getting all three for less than $60 is not a bad deal in my opinion, and while they may eventually be outdated options, they are options nonetheless that you and your players may appreciate as you get more familiar with the rules.

If you are really short on money and you can only get one version of the PHB, I recommend waiting for the new PHB to come out and get that one, since that would be the most updated one, have a longer shelf life down the road, and it will be what most players will eventually use.

The DMG's most important content would be its optional and variant rules. The amount of magic items is nice, but the free BR/SRD already gives you all the most important and iconic ones. In terms of actual usefulness, this is the least useful out of the three. If you want to skip a book, this is the one to skip.

For MM, it is useful, but not necessary. If you are running mostly homebrew adventure, you can completely skip this book. If you are running official adventures and you plan to get the digital adventure books, you can skip the digital MM too, since digital adventure books will give you database access to the relevant monsters. If you plan to get the physical adventure books, but you want to reference and/or run your monsters digitally, then you will need to get MM digitally. As an actual tool, the digital MM book is pretty good, but the physical MM book is kind of ass due to the clunky book format taking up way too much space at the table. If you want to use MM physically, I would recommend skipping the book format, and I would intead recommend getting the physical monster cards by Galeforce 9 since they are compact and easy to use.

What Gamma said. 100%. Well, almost.

The only thing I'd quibble is running homebrew adventures, MM might be useful. You may well want a collection of monsters to populate your world, and the MM has a lot of the common monsters and wide range of them. There is another official monster compendium on DDB (Monsters of the Multiverse), so I'd check out which monsters suit you better, but MM is a useful book for that. Or you can make up your own.

The thing I'd add is that you can, on DDB, buy options individually for $1.99. That means that if you only want, say, the Beholder from the MM, then you can spend just two bucks on that and bot get the entire book. Whatever you spend on an individual option gets discounted on the whole book later - so if you then decide you want the whole MM a few weeks later, it will be discounted by $1.99 and you haven't lost anything.

Quote from Linklite >>

The only thing I'd quibble is running homebrew adventures, MM might be useful. You may well want a collection of monsters to populate your world, and the MM has a lot of the common monsters and wide range of them. There is another official monster compendium on DDB (Monsters of the Multiverse), so I'd check out which monsters suit you better, but MM is a useful book for that. Or you can make up your own.

If the GM is running homebrew adventures, they might as well get all their monsters for free too, since their homebrew does not need the official monsters to work. BR/SRD provides enough classic monsters at low levels, and if the GM needs more creative or interesting ones, there is like an ocean of free homebrew stuff online for that.

It is definitely nice to have if you are lazy, but if you are lazy enough to just make up the adventure as you go, I think the GM would be better off being lazy using the internet for free than paying to use a book.