I know I'm not the only one voicing my opinnion about this, but I feel like it is something worth bringing up as loudly as possible.
I'm a fairly casual D&D player. Mostly a player, but occasionally I also DM. I have purchased all the core books I deem necessary (physical copies, but out of convenience also digitally). I don't get the chance to play as often as I'd like, and because of that buying entire books feels very expensive. This is why being able to buy just the components I need was a huge selling point for using D&D Beyond. I was able to pick and choose things I needed for my campaigns, even on the fly if something came up mid-game. With the update, that option is gone, and I am not about to start buying entire books either. For the sake of other casual players with smaller budgets like me, please bring back the a la carte purchasing options.
I don't see myself making any future purchases from DDB or WOTC now that a la carte purchase options have been removed from D&D Beyond (even though I've always purchased the full books in both physical and digital formats). IMHO this change clearly shows that WOTC no longer cares about their fan base at all.
Even after all of your recent ludicrous shenanigans, missteps, bad press, and apologies, I've stuck with the D&D brand as a loyal fan (of over 40 years). I can no longer do that. WOTC is making it abundantly clear that fans are irrelevant to them and only deep-pocketed customers matter (though even their relevance seems to be limited to how recently they purchased anything). I had expected to spend a lot with WOTC this year due to the new sourcebooks coming out. Now, I think I'll spend that money on an entirely different system (even though I'm a legendary bundle owner, a master tier subscriber, and have an entire bookshelf full of official 5e physical books in my office).
Worse, this is yet another bad business decision. Most of the a la carte customers you had made those purchases because they either couldn't afford a full book or couldn't justify the cost when there were only a few things in it that they wanted. You may think this will turn a la carte purchasers into full-book customers, but in reality, I believe you'll likely just lose them all altogether. It will be interesting to see what WOTC / DDB revenues look like in a year. Even with the release of (most of) the updated 5e books (or whatever you're calling them this week) I suspect DDB's and probably WOTC's revenues will be significantly down by then.
Why would you throw away all those future purchases? You can't honestly believe you'll turn all of those customers into full book buyers.
It appears to me that WOTC is intent on pushing D&D fans away. Well congratulations, you succeeded. I'm done.
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Gideon Hawke Just a Valor Bard trying to find his way through D&D after a 20+ year "break". Enjoying being back and sharing with my RL family.
I'm in the same boat as you. I just started playing about a year ago and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on something that I'll barely if ever use. I've created several characters though by buying the individual components that I needed. I think that letting people buy the individual part sand pieces will only encourage them to eventually buy the whole book. If I bought $10 worth of stuff and can get a book for $20 instead of $30, that book now enter into the "Might as well buy it" territory. They are going to lose more money than they anticipate.
The official announcement is on the homepage of D&D Beyond. You can also look at the staff response on this thread - at the top of this thread, there is a “jump to staff post” button (you have to go to landscape mode in mobile to find it). That takes you to the first staff post on the subject - and each staff post has a button to jump to the next staff post.
Brand new player and subscribed member here. I bought the digital Handbook for $30 a few weeks ago and started my first campaign as a Barbarian. I'm loving the game so far and have just reached level 3 where I get to pick my primal path. I've spent the last week or so exploring and comparing the options for my character in great detail only to come back ready to purchase one a la carte and find the option has been removed. What an absolute disappointment this is, knowing I could have purchased the one I was considering a week ago but wanting, to my detriment, to learn more about this great game. I will NOT be spending another $30 on Xanthar's Guide just to be able to have a specific primal class. So now I'm stuck with my second option which came with the Handbook. So anyway, as a new member of this DDB platform I'm certainly starting with a sour taste in my mouth and now considering going the old pencil and paper route. Please DDB fix this.
Thank you so much for this perspective. I used to run youth D&D tables for my FLGS and am a huge evangelist of our Educator Resources program, so I can sympathize with how you feel about that.
I will say that the goal of selling physical/digital bundles on DDB was never to jeopardize the FLGS. In fact, we've begun to incentivize shopping your FLGS by offering them the ability to sell physical copies early, similar to the digital early access program. I've always seen it as increasing the ways people can get their hands on D&D, but I agree that it can look differently from other perspectives.
I never bought D&D books from my FLGS that I already didn't specifically want to buy in completion. If I wanted the full contents of a book, I'd buy a phyiscal copy because if I'm spending full retail price then I want to actually own the media.
The strength of the a la carte feature is the way it works in tandem with the character creator. So many of us players regularly build out characters we may never even get a chance to play just to be able to visualize them more easily. I peronally have around 75-80 characters on D&D Beyond, most of which are just theoretical. I've previously deleted many beyond that. Whenever I wanted to build with a feature that I didn't have yet, I'd go purchase that feature a la carte.
Before D&DBeyond and the a la carte feature I'd just make characters on PDFs, because all the class features/spells/feats/etc exist on the internet somewhere. Or if I'm feeling really analog I could go see if my library has copies and scan/copy the pages I need. The value of D&D Beyond is that is provided a one-stop shop to do it all and the "convenience fee" of the a la carte purchases was manageable. The a la carte feature made it so I spend more time on D&D Beyond, which in the attention economy of today's world is only a boon for WotC.
This is all to say, at least based on my consumer habits, the a la carte feature was never taking away purchases from my FLGS.
Look, I know you're being genuine, and I appreciate you hearing us all out, but as long as WotC continues to make D&D Beyond more and more prominent in D&D and continues to offer zero digital support for in-store purchases whatsoever any talk of trying to "incentivize shopping your FLGS" is just meaningless corporate gas lighting.
All of your competitors offer some kind of digital support for their products, whether that is working through Bits and Mortar, providing PDFs with proof of in store purchase, putting digital access codes in the books, or just sending the PDFs to anyone that asks and shows proof of a physical copy. We're talking Paizo, Modiphius, Free League, Evil Hat, Goodman Games, Exalted Funeral, pretty much everyone else offers SOMETHING. WotC is the ONLY major RPG publisher that does not do this in any way whatsoever, and because of that it cannot be argued that D&D Beyond now direct selling all the books in exclusive physical + digital bundles isn't undercutting FLGS'. DDB isn't poaching sales from retailers because DDB ships a week earlier, it's poaching sales because WotC refuses to provide digital support for retailers, and WotC knows that and is still trying to eat the lunch of FLGS'.
The narrative, whether true or false, that pretty much the entire gaming community believes is that Hasbro is trying to find any way they can to turn D&D into a digital subscription product of some kind and to cut everyone else out; following up the OGL mess and the totally uncalled for mass firings in December with pulling all the a la carte options with no warning in the dark of night while at the same time pulling the rug out from local game stores with the secret roll out of DDB selling all the books direct now and with an exclusive digital plus physical bundle only feeds into that perception. Please tell your bosses to stop making the same choices that 80's movie villains would make.
Absolutely noted. Thank you.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
Brand new player and subscribed member here. I bought the digital Handbook for $30 a few weeks ago and started my first campaign as a Barbarian. I'm loving the game so far and have just reached level 3 where I get to pick my primal path. I've spent the last week or so exploring and comparing the options for my character in great detail only to come back ready to purchase one a la carte and find the option has been removed. What an absolute disappointment this is, knowing I could have purchased the one I was considering a week ago but wanting, to my detriment, to learn more about this great game. I will NOT be spending another $30 on Xanthar's Guide just to be able to have a specific primal class. So now I'm stuck with my second option which came with the Handbook. So anyway, as a new member of this DDB platform I'm certainly starting with a sour taste in my mouth and now considering going the old pencil and paper route. Please DDB fix this.
There is a workaround for you that I am mentioning not just for you, as you have probably already considered it, but so that everyone, including the WotC can see that the decision to remove a la carte is money lost to them.
You can google the option you want, then create a homebrew subclass and just enter all of the info you find on another site into your homebrew subclass. Yes...it would be far more convenient to spend $2 to just pick it up from DND Beyond, but since you can't...might as well hack it.
Or...DND Beyond can return a la carte sales and get the $2. I'm not a mathematician but I think this formula is accurate: $2 > $0
Look, I know you're being genuine, and I appreciate you hearing us all out, but as long as WotC continues to make D&D Beyond more and more prominent in D&D and continues to offer zero digital support for in-store purchases whatsoever any talk of trying to "incentivize shopping your FLGS" is just meaningless corporate gas lighting.
All of your competitors offer some kind of digital support for their products, whether that is working through Bits and Mortar, providing PDFs with proof of in store purchase, putting digital access codes in the books, or just sending the PDFs to anyone that asks and shows proof of a physical copy. We're talking Paizo, Modiphius, Free League, Evil Hat, Goodman Games, Exalted Funeral, pretty much everyone else offers SOMETHING.
I wouldn't lead with Paizo in your litany. You only get a free PDF if you enroll in a subscription program (which would also cuts out the FLGS).
And since they're probably the largest "competitor" ....
I also wouldn't call any of those other studios competitors of WotC either. None of those companies have anything close to a significant fraction of WotC's revenue or marketshare. After WotC the bulk of TTRPG production is basically cottage to small press industry. A sales blockbuster for them sells a tenth or less of a 5e release. The smaller studios need the free PDF program because it actually helps them move physical games too, and Bits and Mortar exists because those smaller companies know FLGS are close to vital to their significantly smaller cut of the TTRPG market.
Moreover DDB is not the equivalent of a PDF copy. The correct analog to DDB is Demiplane. Let me know how it goes asking for a Free League module for free on Demiplane because you have a receipt for a printed book.
DDB pulling piecemeal sales was a crappy move and I'd love to hear the official logic behind it (like Paizo provides their logic of not putting out free PDFs despite the existence of such programs). Like maybe they're going to start thinking of their post core books as the equivalent of "season passes" so you buy the whole deal or not. They can literally afford these experiments because the list of TTRPG makers under them are not coming after them. Have some D&D adjacent companies done well in light of various WotC missteps with the brand, yes; but not so much to bring any of those companies to the scale of D&D's place in the toys and games sector. Honestly, as someone who plays more non D&D than D&D, I actually prefer it that way.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
As a player, the microtransactions to buy just a section of a book was a key selling point in convincing me to buy into D&D Beyond. I could limit my spend to just the main character options books and then pick up any additional character options I wanted for new characters a la carte. I did that with VRGtR, buying the Lineages, and starting my little sub-hobby of making character builds. I later went on to buy the entire book, because I was going to DM and I was interested in using the book for that. I can't say if I ultimately would have bought that book or not, but I can say that I have gone on to buy other little pieces that I would not have bothered with if I had to buy the whole book. From the start, I think I would have been deterred that player options were locked away behind "DM spending". If these a la carte options are going to remain locked, I suggest at the very least to have the products allow separate purchase of DM resources and character options - classes, subclasses, races, backgrounds, spells, feats. One of the striking things about this change is that there was no other avenue to get character options introduced as an alternative to buying complete. Even a Q1 character options collection would have been something.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
This is crazy, I was really getting into character creating because I was told I can just buy small individual pieces I'd need instead of entire books I would never actually read. Guess I'm just not going to spend any money at all now :/
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
If you are new to D&D, I highly recommend not spending a single penny in the hobby until you got at least a campaign or two under your belt first. D&D can be played for free with the Basic Rules/Systems Reference Document, and there are enough options to last at least two or three campaigns and give you a taste of what D&D is like. D&D is a very niche hobby, and it is not for everyone. Even among my group of eleven nerdy friends, only half wanted to try it, and only half of that wanted to continue to play (total of four of us). If only a quarter of nerds likes to play D&D, that does not speak well of its appeal to the general public. Keep in mind there is also a huge boatload of Unearthed Arcana (playtest) content available completely for free from Wizard's website. And if you look on Google, there is practically an unlimited amount of free third-party homebrew for D&D. Only spend money on this hobby if you are really sure you like it. Do not pay for a hobby that you might not like.
Additionally, GMs often provide all the resources necessary to play the game, so you and your wife would not need to pay to have access to the PHB if you join a GM's campaign. I assume you already opened the Starter Set box, so I would just keep it, but if I were in your position, I would not spend a single further penny on this hobby until I have played at least one or two campaigns. Even if it is just you and your wife and one of you is the GM, I still would not spend money on D&D until you have enough experience to determine whether you really like this hobby or not. Also check out your local game stores too and meet its people; some friendly GMs may even let you temporarily access all content that they have paid for on D&D Beyond even if you are not in their campaign.
And as you have just found out, Beyond does not have à la carte purchases anymore. I highly recommend checking out Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry and see if they suit your needs more. Beyond is not the only official toolset, and the other three platforms have a large following too. Wthout à la carte purchases, Beyond's only real edge compared to other platforms would be its intuitive and pretty character sheets, but that is a subjective metric in the eyes of the beholder. The other three platforms are VTTs (virtual table tops) focused more on digital online play, while Beyond's digital tools compliment and supplement physical in-person play more. Beyond has a VTT too, but Beyond got in the game late in that regard, and Beyond's VTT is still in alpha development, so it is nowhere near mature. I chose and plan to stick with Beyond because it is geared towards in-person play and I already spent a lot of money on here. But since you are new, make sure you check out all the official digital tools first. While the other three might focus more on digital online play, I am pretty sure they got digital tools for in person play too, so do not settle for Beyond if other platforms suit your needs better.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
It's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
I know I'm not the only one voicing my opinnion about this, but I feel like it is something worth bringing up as loudly as possible.
I'm a fairly casual D&D player. Mostly a player, but occasionally I also DM. I have purchased all the core books I deem necessary (physical copies, but out of convenience also digitally). I don't get the chance to play as often as I'd like, and because of that buying entire books feels very expensive. This is why being able to buy just the components I need was a huge selling point for using D&D Beyond. I was able to pick and choose things I needed for my campaigns, even on the fly if something came up mid-game. With the update, that option is gone, and I am not about to start buying entire books either. For the sake of other casual players with smaller budgets like me, please bring back the a la carte purchasing options.
I agree.
I don't see myself making any future purchases from DDB or WOTC now that a la carte purchase options have been removed from D&D Beyond (even though I've always purchased the full books in both physical and digital formats). IMHO this change clearly shows that WOTC no longer cares about their fan base at all.
Even after all of your recent ludicrous shenanigans, missteps, bad press, and apologies, I've stuck with the D&D brand as a loyal fan (of over 40 years). I can no longer do that. WOTC is making it abundantly clear that fans are irrelevant to them and only deep-pocketed customers matter (though even their relevance seems to be limited to how recently they purchased anything). I had expected to spend a lot with WOTC this year due to the new sourcebooks coming out. Now, I think I'll spend that money on an entirely different system (even though I'm a legendary bundle owner, a master tier subscriber, and have an entire bookshelf full of official 5e physical books in my office).
Worse, this is yet another bad business decision. Most of the a la carte customers you had made those purchases because they either couldn't afford a full book or couldn't justify the cost when there were only a few things in it that they wanted. You may think this will turn a la carte purchasers into full-book customers, but in reality, I believe you'll likely just lose them all altogether. It will be interesting to see what WOTC / DDB revenues look like in a year. Even with the release of (most of) the updated 5e books (or whatever you're calling them this week) I suspect DDB's and probably WOTC's revenues will be significantly down by then.
Why would you throw away all those future purchases? You can't honestly believe you'll turn all of those customers into full book buyers.
It appears to me that WOTC is intent on pushing D&D fans away. Well congratulations, you succeeded. I'm done.
Gideon Hawke
Just a Valor Bard trying to find his way through D&D after a 20+ year "break". Enjoying being back and sharing with my RL family.
I'm in the same boat as you. I just started playing about a year ago and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on something that I'll barely if ever use. I've created several characters though by buying the individual components that I needed. I think that letting people buy the individual part sand pieces will only encourage them to eventually buy the whole book. If I bought $10 worth of stuff and can get a book for $20 instead of $30, that book now enter into the "Might as well buy it" territory. They are going to lose more money than they anticipate.
Any statement from WotC?
The official announcement is on the homepage of D&D Beyond. You can also look at the staff response on this thread - at the top of this thread, there is a “jump to staff post” button (you have to go to landscape mode in mobile to find it). That takes you to the first staff post on the subject - and each staff post has a button to jump to the next staff post.
Beyond that, nothing presently.
on regular PC web-browing, the jump to first staff post is the red 'B' at the top of the forum.
Brand new player and subscribed member here. I bought the digital Handbook for $30 a few weeks ago and started my first campaign as a Barbarian. I'm loving the game so far and have just reached level 3 where I get to pick my primal path. I've spent the last week or so exploring and comparing the options for my character in great detail only to come back ready to purchase one a la carte and find the option has been removed. What an absolute disappointment this is, knowing I could have purchased the one I was considering a week ago but wanting, to my detriment, to learn more about this great game. I will NOT be spending another $30 on Xanthar's Guide just to be able to have a specific primal class. So now I'm stuck with my second option which came with the Handbook. So anyway, as a new member of this DDB platform I'm certainly starting with a sour taste in my mouth and now considering going the old pencil and paper route. Please DDB fix this.
I never bought D&D books from my FLGS that I already didn't specifically want to buy in completion. If I wanted the full contents of a book, I'd buy a phyiscal copy because if I'm spending full retail price then I want to actually own the media.
The strength of the a la carte feature is the way it works in tandem with the character creator. So many of us players regularly build out characters we may never even get a chance to play just to be able to visualize them more easily. I peronally have around 75-80 characters on D&D Beyond, most of which are just theoretical. I've previously deleted many beyond that. Whenever I wanted to build with a feature that I didn't have yet, I'd go purchase that feature a la carte.
Before D&DBeyond and the a la carte feature I'd just make characters on PDFs, because all the class features/spells/feats/etc exist on the internet somewhere. Or if I'm feeling really analog I could go see if my library has copies and scan/copy the pages I need. The value of D&D Beyond is that is provided a one-stop shop to do it all and the "convenience fee" of the a la carte purchases was manageable. The a la carte feature made it so I spend more time on D&D Beyond, which in the attention economy of today's world is only a boon for WotC.
This is all to say, at least based on my consumer habits, the a la carte feature was never taking away purchases from my FLGS.
Absolutely noted. Thank you.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
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The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket

Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
You're the real MVPs.
There is a workaround for you that I am mentioning not just for you, as you have probably already considered it, but so that everyone, including the WotC can see that the decision to remove a la carte is money lost to them.
You can google the option you want, then create a homebrew subclass and just enter all of the info you find on another site into your homebrew subclass. Yes...it would be far more convenient to spend $2 to just pick it up from DND Beyond, but since you can't...might as well hack it.
Or...DND Beyond can return a la carte sales and get the $2. I'm not a mathematician but I think this formula is accurate: $2 > $0
I wouldn't lead with Paizo in your litany. You only get a free PDF if you enroll in a subscription program (which would also cuts out the FLGS).
https://paizo.com/paizo/faq#v5748eaic9niz
And since they're probably the largest "competitor" ....
I also wouldn't call any of those other studios competitors of WotC either. None of those companies have anything close to a significant fraction of WotC's revenue or marketshare. After WotC the bulk of TTRPG production is basically cottage to small press industry. A sales blockbuster for them sells a tenth or less of a 5e release. The smaller studios need the free PDF program because it actually helps them move physical games too, and Bits and Mortar exists because those smaller companies know FLGS are close to vital to their significantly smaller cut of the TTRPG market.
Moreover DDB is not the equivalent of a PDF copy. The correct analog to DDB is Demiplane. Let me know how it goes asking for a Free League module for free on Demiplane because you have a receipt for a printed book.
DDB pulling piecemeal sales was a crappy move and I'd love to hear the official logic behind it (like Paizo provides their logic of not putting out free PDFs despite the existence of such programs). Like maybe they're going to start thinking of their post core books as the equivalent of "season passes" so you buy the whole deal or not. They can literally afford these experiments because the list of TTRPG makers under them are not coming after them. Have some D&D adjacent companies done well in light of various WotC missteps with the brand, yes; but not so much to bring any of those companies to the scale of D&D's place in the toys and games sector. Honestly, as someone who plays more non D&D than D&D, I actually prefer it that way.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I concur...thank you.
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
As a player, the microtransactions to buy just a section of a book was a key selling point in convincing me to buy into D&D Beyond. I could limit my spend to just the main character options books and then pick up any additional character options I wanted for new characters a la carte. I did that with VRGtR, buying the Lineages, and starting my little sub-hobby of making character builds. I later went on to buy the entire book, because I was going to DM and I was interested in using the book for that. I can't say if I ultimately would have bought that book or not, but I can say that I have gone on to buy other little pieces that I would not have bothered with if I had to buy the whole book. From the start, I think I would have been deterred that player options were locked away behind "DM spending". If these a la carte options are going to remain locked, I suggest at the very least to have the products allow separate purchase of DM resources and character options - classes, subclasses, races, backgrounds, spells, feats. One of the striking things about this change is that there was no other avenue to get character options introduced as an alternative to buying complete. Even a Q1 character options collection would have been something.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
This is crazy, I was really getting into character creating because I was told I can just buy small individual pieces I'd need instead of entire books I would never actually read. Guess I'm just not going to spend any money at all now :/
If you are new to D&D, I highly recommend not spending a single penny in the hobby until you got at least a campaign or two under your belt first. D&D can be played for free with the Basic Rules/Systems Reference Document, and there are enough options to last at least two or three campaigns and give you a taste of what D&D is like. D&D is a very niche hobby, and it is not for everyone. Even among my group of eleven nerdy friends, only half wanted to try it, and only half of that wanted to continue to play (total of four of us). If only a quarter of nerds likes to play D&D, that does not speak well of its appeal to the general public. Keep in mind there is also a huge boatload of Unearthed Arcana (playtest) content available completely for free from Wizard's website. And if you look on Google, there is practically an unlimited amount of free third-party homebrew for D&D. Only spend money on this hobby if you are really sure you like it. Do not pay for a hobby that you might not like.
Additionally, GMs often provide all the resources necessary to play the game, so you and your wife would not need to pay to have access to the PHB if you join a GM's campaign. I assume you already opened the Starter Set box, so I would just keep it, but if I were in your position, I would not spend a single further penny on this hobby until I have played at least one or two campaigns. Even if it is just you and your wife and one of you is the GM, I still would not spend money on D&D until you have enough experience to determine whether you really like this hobby or not. Also check out your local game stores too and meet its people; some friendly GMs may even let you temporarily access all content that they have paid for on D&D Beyond even if you are not in their campaign.
And as you have just found out, Beyond does not have à la carte purchases anymore. I highly recommend checking out Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry and see if they suit your needs more. Beyond is not the only official toolset, and the other three platforms have a large following too. Wthout à la carte purchases, Beyond's only real edge compared to other platforms would be its intuitive and pretty character sheets, but that is a subjective metric in the eyes of the beholder. The other three platforms are VTTs (virtual table tops) focused more on digital online play, while Beyond's digital tools compliment and supplement physical in-person play more. Beyond has a VTT too, but Beyond got in the game late in that regard, and Beyond's VTT is still in alpha development, so it is nowhere near mature. I chose and plan to stick with Beyond because it is geared towards in-person play and I already spent a lot of money on here. But since you are new, make sure you check out all the official digital tools first. While the other three might focus more on digital online play, I am pretty sure they got digital tools for in person play too, so do not settle for Beyond if other platforms suit your needs better.
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It's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
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