This has probably been asked and answered, I just want to make sure I understand correctly. I am running the LMoP campaign pen and paper right now with my family (who are all new to D&D and I am new to 5E). We played every night for a week and now my daughter is back home so we will be running D&D as a weekly game night. When we are done with LMoP I want to run them through the Essentials Kit. I want better online access for my daughter and am trying to understand the best way.

I created a campaign and invited all to join it. I know they can then recreate their premade characters and add them so I can see them on my tablet, which is fine for now. When we start our next campaign, however, I'd like them to be able to create their characters from scratch properly, but other than that I am unsure what the benefit of buying the Essentials Kit on D&D Beyond would be? And I guess my main question is ensuring that I understand that my buying the Essentials Kit here does not mean I can run that campaign online unless I also pay for a Master Tier subscription? I really am struggling to understand the utility of buying campaigns at all, especially without the extra expense of subscriptions.

I do not mind paying for D&D gear. My 3.5 book collection is quite extensive, but I could buy them once and share them with the table at any time. Maybe I should just buy the books outright and buy my girl her own PHB and just stick to pen and paper. I looked through the buyer's guide and have read the new player guide, etc. I just want to be sure I have all of the information clear and at hand before making a decision. Thank you in advance for any and all help!

If you want your players to be able to create their characters "from scratch" here, they will need access to the character options they want to use here on DDB.  There are several ways to do that:

-each person could buy the a la carte options they want for their character (e.g. Sue buys the tabaxi race and the path of the storm herald barbarian class; Vladimir buys the drow race, the arcane trickster, and any non-SRD spells he wants/needs for his character). This option does not require a subscription.

-you could buy the various race, subclass, and spell bundles you want to make available to folks and buy a Master tier subscription in order to share them

-you could homebrew (but not publish) all the options you want to make available; those are shared in your campaign even if you don't have a subscription.  The artificer can't be homebrewed because it is a full class that does not appear in the SRD/Basic rules.  But just about everything else can be homebrewed.

-you could purchase the entire sources you want to be available and buy a Master tier subscription in order to share them

In terms of utility of buying campaigns/adventures here, it all depends on how you play.  Before COVID and an unrelated move, I ran a table at the local library.  Until very late in the process, most of my players did not have DDB accounts; but I found it very useful a a DM to have the adventure on DDB because of all the linking that had been done:  I could click on the word orc and instantly see the stat block, for example.  I could have various monsters up in different tabs, and quickly access the spell descriptions if the monsters/npcs in question could cast spells.  But I also found it handy at times to have the physical book (which the library had purchased),

As for the Essentials kit in particular, it is a bit of a special case here on DDB, that bears thinking about before you purchase.  If you are planning to run it, I strongly recommend that you buy the physical Essentials kit.  The physical boxed set includes a code that gets you the adventure  here for free, plus several follow up adventures that are also free with that code, and are only available here.  Note that the printer made a very poor font choice, and those codes can be hard to read properly (the number 1 and the letter l are indistinguishable, for example).  Patience and working with the customer service folks may be necessary.   The boxed set also includes at 50% off coupon for purchasing the PHB here.  These codes are unique to the Essentials kit, possible because it is a boxed set, and done I believe as a bit of an experiment.  Note, however, that I said above that the code in the box unlocks the adventure here.  It does not unlock the Essentials kit rulebook here.  The rulebook in the Essentials kit offers two subclasses for each class: one of those subclasses is from the SRD/Basic rules, and is therefore free here.  The other is not, and must be purchased here to be used.  This has surprised many folks, and, to be honest, has not been well explained in marketing materials.  I think the PHB coupon is in part to "make up" for the fact that those additional subclasses are not included.

Finally, I'd encourage you to keep in mind that any money you spend on piecemeal purchases from a particular source is credited toward the purchase of the entire source.  This is true for the character option bundles within a source.  So you don't lose anything by first buying a few races, subclasses, and/or spells and then later buying more or buying the entire source.  The only place this might not be true is with the PHB if you have the 50% off coupon.  Then it might make as much sense to just purchase the entire PHB with the coupon.  (Keeping in mind that content sharing always requires a master tier sub)

Thank you so much! I was wondering if I was going to have to learn to homebrew some of the things I'll need to hand out as treasure for LMoP. I have purchased the Essentials Kit boxed set, but did not realize it came with codes. We're maybe a quarter of the way through our current campaign, so I have not really broken out Icespire Peak much yet except to schedule my 3D printer builds.

Are you saying I will not have access to the Icespire Peak rulebook digitally on DDB or my players just won't have access to the content unless it is purchased? If I cannot access the book it is not the biggest deal, but seems kind of...well, crap. Thanks again for all the info!

So if you buy a book from WotC you don't get it on DDB, or vice versa. it's that simple, hope it helps! GL.

Steeltown, welcome to the site! I am far, far from the most knowledgeable about all the ins and outs of the possibilities of using DNDBeyond, but I've been a user for a while and own all sources/books here. As others have already mentioned (and no doubt others can follow up with more specific advice after me), the site usage can be free but it depends how much work you personally are willing to do and how you are seeking to leverage the site for your family's benefit. I highly encourage you to dig around inside the physical box of the essentials code to redeem your adventure here, and play around with it to see how everything links together and determine from that if it suits your needs. For me, the convenience of how the programmers hard work on linking ("tooltips") and digitizing the content and adventures, and how the content interacts with and can be utilized automatically with character creation is well worth the price. Many people will buy the physical copy of a book elsewhere and also choose to purchase the digital version here because the convenience meets their needs; others choose one format, or the other, and no doubt plenty of users get plenty of mileage using only the free resources at hand + a little fiddling within homebrew tools for private usage. For "master tier subscription" there should be an option to purchase just one month (I assume?), and consider it for yourself a trial period and all it really does is unlock character sheet options, view monsters and magic items, etc. from content purchased by users within that shared campaign.

I'm as big a fan of pencil/paper as anyone, more of nostalgic than anything else, but the character sheets here can be done very quickly and accurately considering the amount of bloat added on through classes/species (**opinion provided). And, as a DM, telling someone they found "xxxxx magic ring" which is already set-up as available/addable/viewable for the player b/c it's purchased content by me and shared in the campaign via my purchased master tier (and properly coded by a professional and not busted up and nonworkable b/c I can't figure out how to use the homebrew maker) makes my life and the player's life easier.

Quote from Steeltown_Riot >>

Are you saying I will not have access to the Icespire Peak rulebook digitally on DDB or my players just won't have access to the content unless it is purchased? If I cannot access the book it is not the biggest deal, but seems kind of...well, crap. Thanks again for all the info!

 That is correct:  the rulebook from Icespire Peak is not reproduced here.  (It's one of the things that makes the essentials kit an exception to the rule here).  The vast majority of the rules in the rulebook are from the Basic Rules, which are available for free here, but they won't be formatted precisely like the Essentials kit rulebook; the exceptions I know about are those subclasses I mentioned earlier.  The adventure booklet, however, is reproduced here.

In terms of LMOP treasure, some of the magic items are found in the Basic Rules/SRD*, and so you can access for free here.  Others (it looks like 5 of them) will need to be purchased or homebrewed if you want to give them out.  (if you don't want to buy a subscription, you will need to homebrew them, or have the person receiving them purchase the item)

I homebrewed the LMoP magic items that are not part of the Basic Rules/SRD and found my code for Icespire Peak. I tried to dig around to find the subclasses I will need to buy, but am struggling. If I use the 50% off coupon and buy the PHB, will that add those subclasses from Icespire? Thanks again for all your patient help.

Yeah, I think a combination of pencil and paper with the character sheet management is a good fit for us. I've already struggled using the Homebrew creator, so I can see the benefit of the items as well.

Quote from Steeltown_Riot >>

I homebrewed the LMoP magic items that are not part of the Basic Rules/SRD and found my code for Icespire Peak. I tried to dig around to find the subclasses I will need to buy, but am struggling. If I use the 50% off coupon and buy the PHB, will that add those subclasses from Icespire? Thanks again for all your patient help.

 I don’t have the physical version of the essentials kit, so I cant double check, but I’m pretty confident all the subclasses from the essentials kit are in the PHB. If you can list them for me, I can give you a more definite answer.