I've just discovered this tool and it looks amazing. Only thing, I bought the physical books a long time ago and I was wondering if there was a way to get credited for those books so I don't have to spend another 90$ for the books on this tool. I'm totally down to pay for a subscription, but paying again for books is not an option.
I'm currently using a homemade spreadsheet, it's working good, but it takes time to keep up to date.
Note that depending on how you want to use DDB, you don't necessarily need to spend $90--especially not if you primarily want to use it as a character sheet . You can homebrew everything you need, or purchase only the character options you need, or some combination of the two. The buyer's guide in my signature lays out several different scenarios and purchasing options for those.
Ok thanks. But I think this is pretty stupid though. I already spent a lot of money on books that I can't even use. I don't know if this product is doing well business wise, but they should revise this rule. I'm not willing to spend a single $ except for the membership.
At this time, all purchases on D&D Beyond are for content on D&D Beyond only. Unfortunately, there is not a way to unlock the digital content if you have purchased the books. We realize and understand the concerns over re-purchasing content, but the material in D&D Beyond is in a different format and platform.
You may purchase individual races, subclasses, feats & magic items from the marketplace, which can make it easy to get your character going on the site for only a few dollars! Should you later wish to purchase the full sourcebook that they came from, any such individual purchases are fully discounted from the price of the sourcebook. So if you spent $5.00 on spells, the full book will cost you $5.00 less. :)
You are also welcome to create your own content using the D&D Beyond homebrew tools, you can even use your physical copy as a guide and create content you own physically for yourself if you'd prefer to save the dollars. Just don't publish it, of course, as it's not your original content.
I hope this helps you see some of the options available to you, and hope you have a great day!
Business-wise, I'm sure they are doing fine. This model of digital supply is quite lucrative.
That being said, it's pretty much going to be like this at any and all other licensed digital distributors that you come across as they all have to follow WotC licensing agreements. And since Wizards doesn't put redemption codes in their books (for a myriad of logistical reasons), you won't find a happy marriage of physical and digital material any time soon.
Your best bet is to either buy a few things piecemeal, homebrew in a bunch of content, or find a friend who has bought into the digital books instead of the physical ones and borrow from them. Do note that all the basic rules content is already provided here for free, which includes a lot of the PHB (though it is a bit lacking in the character class department) and around 80% of the Monster Manual and a decent amount of magic items from the DMG.
except why not have a code with books that unlocks the digital content here if you buy the physical copy?
Or why not include the content in the subscription tier... Id imagine people would pay 10 bucks a month to have all the content. If I subscribe to Netflix I don't get the app and have to purchase movies.....
Logistically, adding a code with the books would increase the cost of the material beyond the current MSRP and also require WotC to shrink-wrap all of their books so that people can't just walk into a Barnes and Noble or a local game store and scan the code without buying the content. It would be a pain to handle and support.
As for subscriptions granting access to content, I too would love a system like that, as WotC proved that it was at least somewhat viable during the 4e era. However, as many people will likely point out, Curse is not WotC and they have to abide by the licensing restrictions set forth by WotC to sell their product. Basically, Wizards isn't offering that option to other distributors right now (or ever). D&D Beyond is less Nexflix and more Amazon Prime, where you get a set amount of stuff just for signing up, and then you have to pay for other content offerings as well.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
The D&D books don't ship shrink wrapped, thus there'd be no way to keep the codes secured. People would just steal them, the same being true for things like scratch off codes or whatever
Someone would have to pay the additional cost for the beyond content; WotC can't just give away products sold by DDB, they're separate companies. The cost would have to get passed on to someone, typically the consumer
If they did pass it on, it'd be wasted for people who don't want to use DDB.
As for subscription tier, WotC has done the subscription model and it didn't fair well. As such, they don't seem keen to do it again and thus DDB's license doesn't cover it. This isn't Netflix, the studios want to license movies to the platform.
Basically you're flogging a dead horse here; you have bought one product (the physical books), this is a different but similar product.
Just imagine buying a book with a code and getting home and breaking open the shrink wrap only to find that you bought the book with the Roll20 code included. You call the store, but all they have in stock are the books with the Fantasy Ground code included. Also, since you opened the shrink wrap, you can't exchange it anyway. But they do have the "super code" version of the PHB, that includes codes for Roll20, FG, DnDBeyond, and all other licensed users. It will only cost you $124.99
Plus, the other issue with codes in books is that probably 90%+ of those complaining about this issue already bought the books. Between messages here, Facebook comments, tweets, etc., nearly every single times it is "I already own the books, so why do I have to buy them again?!!" and rarely "I'm thinking of buying a book later and don't want to have to buy it twice." That's because going forward after DDB's launch, people can just buy their preferred format. Sure, codes would be great if they can make it work, but it would do little to stop the people complaining about all the books they bought over the past several years, including before DDB even existed. Not sure how to go back in time and satisfy them! :)
If you purchase any one of the three Artificer Subclasses from E:RftLW, then they automatically unlock the base class for you without needing to purchase it separately.
I struggled with this for a while. It was the main thing that kept me from DDB for a long time. I finally decided that I had bought my PHB five years ago and I got my value out of it, so buying it again shouldn't be too painful. Plus the new one is kept up to date. My only real frustration was that I had bought Eberron: Rising just about a year ago or so when it came out, and I needed to buy it again. But so far it's just that one book. I canceled my pre-order of Tasha's Cauldron on Amazon and I'll just get it here when it comes out.
All these people saying... but then wed have to shrink wrap the books, the cost for them would go up....
what age are we in? the 80's? shrink-wrap? I mean.... I thought you all were nerds and would be inventive but y'all backwards looking mutha fers.
Maybe instead of shrink-wrap... or scratch off... you create an account, link email....buy book, get code sent to email??? I mean.... come on. Now I didn't know they were diff companies... but if they are... then they need to be one company... how you let a company use your property and you aren't part of that company? I mean what?
Now I didn't know they were diff companies... but if they are... then they need to be one company... how you let a company use your property and you aren't part of that company? I mean what?
Licensing agreement backed up by legally binding contracts.
Remember DDB is a digital book retailer. Like Barnes & Nobels is a book retailer. How does B&N get permission to sell books published by other companies? By paying those publishers for each copy they sell just like DDB has to do.
All these people saying... but then wed have to shrink wrap the books, the cost for them would go up....
what age are we in? the 80's? shrink-wrap? I mean.... I thought you all were nerds and would be inventive but y'all backwards looking mutha fers.
Maybe instead of shrink-wrap... or scratch off... you create an account, link email....buy book, get code sent to email??? I mean.... come on. Now I didn't know they were diff companies... but if they are... then they need to be one company... how you let a company use your property and you aren't part of that company? I mean what?
Firstly, there's no need for insults. It's not our fault you don't understand how commerce works.
It would indeed be great if it was all one company. But it's not. And it rarely ever is. Somebody makes a product, sells wholesale to a store, store resells to public with markup. This is the very basic sale of a general product.
Why is it done this way?
It's one thing to make the product but selling it to the public is a big messy ball of risk assessment. To market something the seller needs to understand the intended customer, the sales trend, to evaluate suppy and demand in order to ascertain a good selling price and risk the investment of making the product available. For a physical store there's a building to pay for, taxes to pay, insurance, staff, utilities like electricity, storage, display cases/shelves, security, tills, safes, and maintenance. Digital stores (and some physical) have shipping to consider for physical products and websites have to make a way to provide the content digitally. There's legal concerns, there's staffing, advertising, website needs hosting, internet, digital security, more. There's many, many things that the "store" has to deal with and so much of it is a risk because if you do all that and don't sell enough you'll quickly lose everything. Most people who make the product just really don't have the ability to properly deal with all that on top of their own stuff. It's why we have stores, supermarkets and stuff - so they can take care of all that selling while the makers can focus on the making.
With D&D it gets more complicated because the base product itself isn't something physical. Wizards of the Contents creates the content. They have this content produced physically by Hasbro (I think that's who makes the physical books) and digitally by online sites like D&D Beyond. The physical books are printed and then continue like any regular physical product: being sold on to a store that resells it to the public. The digital is remade by the online site, such as D&D beyond, to make it available digitally and also to make it work with their online toolsets. WotC will get their share whether the product is sold physically or digitally. For digital, D&D Beyond pay out the licensing for each product license they sell, meaning a % of the price you pay goes direct to WotC and D&D Beyond keep some of it.
WotC get paid each time the product is sold physically or digitally. Stores get paid when they sell to customer. Hasbro gets paid when a store sells a physical version of the product to the customer.
Everyone needs the slices of the pie they get in order to stay in business.
To do the "buy book get code for digital" that you suggest, that one time cost will have to: pay WotC for two products, pay Hasbro for a physical product, pay the store you're buying that physical product from, and pay the specific site where the code is unlocked like D&D Beyond. You're still going to have to pay twice. Maybe WotC can take a cut and only get paid for one version of the product instead of both, but why should they? and also it's not going to reduce the price by as much. Not to mention, the books in physical stores may need additional packaging, increasing cost, to ensure people don't steal the codes inside. Now remember that D&D Beyond isn't the only official toolset - the others are going to want in on this, so we now have a situation as Sigvard_Vigrid mentions above.
It'll be a hot mess and simply not financially viable. And this is me simplifying it as much as possible - it's actually quite a bit more complicated than what I'm describing here. It's simply not worth it. It's a high risk low reward move, so it's never going to happen. There can be one-offs, like Essentials Kit, but understand they're one-off's for a reason: they are most typically sold at loss in order to entice more players who will most likely end up buying more products. They can certainly work - but only as the one-offs. This method is not financially sustainable.
The current business model may not be what you like, but it is the best for the companies involved and is quite unlikely to ever change.
At the end of the day you still get the product (the words and pictures in the book), you still have a free-to-use digital service like D&D Beyond and you do have the option of recreating character sheet options, with exception of Artificer for time being, using this site's homebrewing tools so there's actually no need (again with exception of Artificer) to "pay again" for anything if you don't want.
I hope this explains it in a way you understand as it's currently the best I can do. My already glitchy brain is very much in the TGIF mode at this moment and I have a serious case of the neurofrazzles, so I'mma end here and hope for the best.
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 think the problem with the current model is that DDB is not the only place asking for money for digital versions of the game.
If for example you want physical books for your table sessions, DDB for organization, a PDF for your Ipad and for example Fantasy Grounds for your VT you would have to pay for the same content 3-4 times. Now I understand the business logic, but its a pretty big ask.
I don't understand, though. Just get a Masters sub. Everyone can then access the content on their character sheets, you can download the content for offline reading to your ipad, or whatever other device, you can use Beyond20 to roll stuff from the character sheet into Roll20 or Foundry (unsure if they do FG too, they've recently updated), you can copy maps etc from adventures bought on D&D Beyond to the VTT rather easily (especially Roll 20, as I've done that myself).
The only additional costs beyond paying for the book once is the sub which is less than a starbucks coffee. I've done this, myself, never having to pay more than once. I genuinely don't understand your example here.
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.
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Hi,
I've just discovered this tool and it looks amazing. Only thing, I bought the physical books a long time ago and I was wondering if there was a way to get credited for those books so I don't have to spend another 90$ for the books on this tool. I'm totally down to pay for a subscription, but paying again for books is not an option.
I'm currently using a homemade spreadsheet, it's working good, but it takes time to keep up to date.
Thanks !
For various reasons, the short answer is no. You will have to buy the digital content to use it here on this digital platform.
Note that depending on how you want to use DDB, you don't necessarily need to spend $90--especially not if you primarily want to use it as a character sheet . You can homebrew everything you need, or purchase only the character options you need, or some combination of the two. The buyer's guide in my signature lays out several different scenarios and purchasing options for those.
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
Ok thanks. But I think this is pretty stupid though. I already spent a lot of money on books that I can't even use. I don't know if this product is doing well business wise, but they should revise this rule. I'm not willing to spend a single $ except for the membership.
Hi OptimusSupernova,
At this time, all purchases on D&D Beyond are for content on D&D Beyond only. Unfortunately, there is not a way to unlock the digital content if you have purchased the books. We realize and understand the concerns over re-purchasing content, but the material in D&D Beyond is in a different format and platform.
You may purchase individual races, subclasses, feats & magic items from the marketplace, which can make it easy to get your character going on the site for only a few dollars! Should you later wish to purchase the full sourcebook that they came from, any such individual purchases are fully discounted from the price of the sourcebook. So if you spent $5.00 on spells, the full book will cost you $5.00 less. :)
You are also welcome to create your own content using the D&D Beyond homebrew tools, you can even use your physical copy as a guide and create content you own physically for yourself if you'd prefer to save the dollars. Just don't publish it, of course, as it's not your original content.
I hope this helps you see some of the options available to you, and hope you have a great day!
Business-wise, I'm sure they are doing fine. This model of digital supply is quite lucrative.
That being said, it's pretty much going to be like this at any and all other licensed digital distributors that you come across as they all have to follow WotC licensing agreements. And since Wizards doesn't put redemption codes in their books (for a myriad of logistical reasons), you won't find a happy marriage of physical and digital material any time soon.
Your best bet is to either buy a few things piecemeal, homebrew in a bunch of content, or find a friend who has bought into the digital books instead of the physical ones and borrow from them. Do note that all the basic rules content is already provided here for free, which includes a lot of the PHB (though it is a bit lacking in the character class department) and around 80% of the Monster Manual and a decent amount of magic items from the DMG.
except why not have a code with books that unlocks the digital content here if you buy the physical copy?
Or why not include the content in the subscription tier... Id imagine people would pay 10 bucks a month to have all the content. If I subscribe to Netflix I don't get the app and have to purchase movies.....
Logistically, adding a code with the books would increase the cost of the material beyond the current MSRP and also require WotC to shrink-wrap all of their books so that people can't just walk into a Barnes and Noble or a local game store and scan the code without buying the content. It would be a pain to handle and support.
As for subscriptions granting access to content, I too would love a system like that, as WotC proved that it was at least somewhat viable during the 4e era. However, as many people will likely point out, Curse is not WotC and they have to abide by the licensing restrictions set forth by WotC to sell their product. Basically, Wizards isn't offering that option to other distributors right now (or ever). D&D Beyond is less Nexflix and more Amazon Prime, where you get a set amount of stuff just for signing up, and then you have to pay for other content offerings as well.
@bhrandon
As for subscription tier, WotC has done the subscription model and it didn't fair well. As such, they don't seem keen to do it again and thus DDB's license doesn't cover it. This isn't Netflix, the studios want to license movies to the platform.
Basically you're flogging a dead horse here; you have bought one product (the physical books), this is a different but similar product.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Just imagine buying a book with a code and getting home and breaking open the shrink wrap only to find that you bought the book with the Roll20 code included. You call the store, but all they have in stock are the books with the Fantasy Ground code included. Also, since you opened the shrink wrap, you can't exchange it anyway. But they do have the "super code" version of the PHB, that includes codes for Roll20, FG, DnDBeyond, and all other licensed users. It will only cost you $124.99
Plus, the other issue with codes in books is that probably 90%+ of those complaining about this issue already bought the books. Between messages here, Facebook comments, tweets, etc., nearly every single times it is "I already own the books, so why do I have to buy them again?!!" and rarely "I'm thinking of buying a book later and don't want to have to buy it twice." That's because going forward after DDB's launch, people can just buy their preferred format. Sure, codes would be great if they can make it work, but it would do little to stop the people complaining about all the books they bought over the past several years, including before DDB even existed. Not sure how to go back in time and satisfy them! :)
I want to buy just the Artificer class and subclasses. Can that be done, or are you going to make me buy rising from the last war?
So far that is the only way I have been able to find it
If you purchase any one of the three Artificer Subclasses from E:RftLW, then they automatically unlock the base class for you without needing to purchase it separately.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Ok, thanks
To make it more affordable, my group of 5 players split the cost with our DM.
As a person who has also used a spreadsheet as my character sheet, I can definitely say that DDB's character sheet is so much better.
I struggled with this for a while. It was the main thing that kept me from DDB for a long time. I finally decided that I had bought my PHB five years ago and I got my value out of it, so buying it again shouldn't be too painful. Plus the new one is kept up to date. My only real frustration was that I had bought Eberron: Rising just about a year ago or so when it came out, and I needed to buy it again. But so far it's just that one book. I canceled my pre-order of Tasha's Cauldron on Amazon and I'll just get it here when it comes out.
All these people saying... but then wed have to shrink wrap the books, the cost for them would go up....
what age are we in? the 80's? shrink-wrap? I mean.... I thought you all were nerds and would be inventive but y'all backwards looking mutha fers.
Maybe instead of shrink-wrap... or scratch off... you create an account, link email....buy book, get code sent to email??? I mean.... come on. Now I didn't know they were diff companies... but if they are... then they need to be one company... how you let a company use your property and you aren't part of that company? I mean what?
Licensing agreement backed up by legally binding contracts.
Remember DDB is a digital book retailer. Like Barnes & Nobels is a book retailer. How does B&N get permission to sell books published by other companies? By paying those publishers for each copy they sell just like DDB has to do.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Firstly, there's no need for insults. It's not our fault you don't understand how commerce works.
It would indeed be great if it was all one company. But it's not. And it rarely ever is. Somebody makes a product, sells wholesale to a store, store resells to public with markup. This is the very basic sale of a general product.
Why is it done this way?
It's one thing to make the product but selling it to the public is a big messy ball of risk assessment. To market something the seller needs to understand the intended customer, the sales trend, to evaluate suppy and demand in order to ascertain a good selling price and risk the investment of making the product available. For a physical store there's a building to pay for, taxes to pay, insurance, staff, utilities like electricity, storage, display cases/shelves, security, tills, safes, and maintenance. Digital stores (and some physical) have shipping to consider for physical products and websites have to make a way to provide the content digitally. There's legal concerns, there's staffing, advertising, website needs hosting, internet, digital security, more. There's many, many things that the "store" has to deal with and so much of it is a risk because if you do all that and don't sell enough you'll quickly lose everything. Most people who make the product just really don't have the ability to properly deal with all that on top of their own stuff. It's why we have stores, supermarkets and stuff - so they can take care of all that selling while the makers can focus on the making.
With D&D it gets more complicated because the base product itself isn't something physical. Wizards of the Contents creates the content. They have this content produced physically by Hasbro (I think that's who makes the physical books) and digitally by online sites like D&D Beyond. The physical books are printed and then continue like any regular physical product: being sold on to a store that resells it to the public. The digital is remade by the online site, such as D&D beyond, to make it available digitally and also to make it work with their online toolsets. WotC will get their share whether the product is sold physically or digitally. For digital, D&D Beyond pay out the licensing for each product license they sell, meaning a % of the price you pay goes direct to WotC and D&D Beyond keep some of it.
WotC get paid each time the product is sold physically or digitally. Stores get paid when they sell to customer. Hasbro gets paid when a store sells a physical version of the product to the customer.
Everyone needs the slices of the pie they get in order to stay in business.
To do the "buy book get code for digital" that you suggest, that one time cost will have to: pay WotC for two products, pay Hasbro for a physical product, pay the store you're buying that physical product from, and pay the specific site where the code is unlocked like D&D Beyond. You're still going to have to pay twice. Maybe WotC can take a cut and only get paid for one version of the product instead of both, but why should they? and also it's not going to reduce the price by as much. Not to mention, the books in physical stores may need additional packaging, increasing cost, to ensure people don't steal the codes inside. Now remember that D&D Beyond isn't the only official toolset - the others are going to want in on this, so we now have a situation as Sigvard_Vigrid mentions above.
It'll be a hot mess and simply not financially viable. And this is me simplifying it as much as possible - it's actually quite a bit more complicated than what I'm describing here. It's simply not worth it. It's a high risk low reward move, so it's never going to happen. There can be one-offs, like Essentials Kit, but understand they're one-off's for a reason: they are most typically sold at loss in order to entice more players who will most likely end up buying more products. They can certainly work - but only as the one-offs. This method is not financially sustainable.
The current business model may not be what you like, but it is the best for the companies involved and is quite unlikely to ever change.
At the end of the day you still get the product (the words and pictures in the book), you still have a free-to-use digital service like D&D Beyond and you do have the option of recreating character sheet options, with exception of Artificer for time being, using this site's homebrewing tools so there's actually no need (again with exception of Artificer) to "pay again" for anything if you don't want.
I hope this explains it in a way you understand as it's currently the best I can do. My already glitchy brain is very much in the TGIF mode at this moment and I have a serious case of the neurofrazzles, so I'mma end here and hope for the best.
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 don't understand, though. Just get a Masters sub. Everyone can then access the content on their character sheets, you can download the content for offline reading to your ipad, or whatever other device, you can use Beyond20 to roll stuff from the character sheet into Roll20 or Foundry (unsure if they do FG too, they've recently updated), you can copy maps etc from adventures bought on D&D Beyond to the VTT rather easily (especially Roll 20, as I've done that myself).
The only additional costs beyond paying for the book once is the sub which is less than a starbucks coffee. I've done this, myself, never having to pay more than once. I genuinely don't understand your example here.
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.