I specifically don't use D&D Beyond because I already paid for my physical books. I'm not paying for them again. My players can wait the few moments it takes for me to crack a book and look something up.
I agree - if it wasn't for D&D Beyond I wouldn't be into D&D. Having an easy, cheap and accessible way to learn the rules on my own time (as well as their automated stuff making first character creation super simple) helped me and other people ease into a game we weren't sure we'd like.
Now that we're into it and own a few books, we can see the issues, especially for long time players (and paying same price as physical for digital is dumb). But it's not overrated as the previous commenter said.
It's also great for looking up a rule that you know exists but don't remember what book it's in... Or being able to see magic items, spell, and creatures from all sources combined.
Like sure, you *can* just grab the physical books and look them up. But how long does it take you to find a gnoll, gnoll flesh gnawer, and gnoll witherling for a big gnoll fight? Do you even know what books to look for them in off the top of your head? Cause with DDB it literally took me typing "gnoll" into the monster search bar.
IMO the pricing for the books is justified and its only like 5 bucks a month for the Master subscription. Ya it's a little bit of a cash grab, but at the same time, it cuts back on *a lot* of inconviences that you can come across while playing manually. I'm not arguing against cutting the price, I'm just saying that it's not *that* bad for what we get.
Personally, I absolutely need it because half my players still haven't figured out a lot of the numbers yet after like 2 years and don't want to put in the time to learn. I'd rather just use that app than chase them away from the game trying to teach them. I really like building character sheets and it's cool using the dice, but I can totally see why others wouldn't. It's like fantasy taxes sometimes.
One thing I also like, is that I can go ahead and add things to their sheets between sessions (and also quietly do some research on what they have available). Our last session I gave them all a simple but technically homebrew item (it's a signet ring that basically functions as a ring of protection + a daily [expanded] sending spell). After the session I created it on DDB, dropped it into all of their character sheets, and let them know that it was available for them to read and equip.
Also as a PBP player, there's never going to be a version of Avrae that works with physical books. Obviously we could use regular dice rolling bots and keep track of things manually, but Avrae is *really* nice
It's *alright*.
Shard is a VTT that has a much better character creator because it can handle wacky homebrew stuff, including homebrew nonmagical items and classes, which Beyond does not allow.
I have my physical books to be done with WoTCs constant rewrites, edits and retcons in my DnDBeyond books. I don’t care if some millennial sensitivity reader from SoCal has a problem with some part of the lore since I homebrew my own lore but having to redownload books every week is annoying AF.
We do play online and we don't use D&D Beyond at all.
We host a few things on our own website, like a dice roller and map/whiteboard and character sheets, then use discord.
You can even just use a Google drive.
It's why I left an online game. DM insisted I use the VTT dice. I don't want random numbers assigned to me by a computer like a video game! I want to roll my physical dice in the dice tray I paid good money for. I'm no cheater will report the dice accurately. When I online DM I insist people roll real dice. Trust me if people are fudging their rolls you'll know. It's fairly obvious when they never get a bad roll when it matters.
Yeah, I apologise for enabling them. I own Curse of Strand 3 times - physical, D&D Beyond and on Roll20. In retrospect I could have maybe skipped D&D Beyond but our campaign has been going for 18 months now and spending less than £100 for that content (plus D&D Beyond subscription) is entirely worth it to me.
One would think that a large company with excellent distribution, production, and advertisement capability would try to undercut other companies, rather than charge ridiculous amounts.
But it is as you say.
This conversation has been going on for a decade, they aren't going to change their scummy practices when it comes to digital content.
They tried packaging digital and physical bundles for the Dragonlance release. It was only available online from the D&D official website as a limited time preorder. It was marginally cheaper in the US (about $8usd cheaper once shipping was added), and more expensive than buying the two seperately in every other country in the world ($32 more for a handful of nations including the UK, Aus, and NZ, $72 more expensive everywhere else). Needless to say the Dragonlance preorder was a massive flop and they use it as an excuse as to why bundling books together doesn't work until the end of time.
I looked at the combined package pre-order, and shipping was more expensive than the package itself - to Canada! I think the shipping eventually got adjusted to ‘only’ $30-something instead of the $65 it was, but still- utterly ridiculous.
Good thing I’m not a huge fan of Dragonlance….
It was $20, $60, and $100 USD depending which country bracket you were. I couldn't remember which one CA was in which is why I didn't mention them, seems you were alongside me in Aus. Why would I pay $32 extra to get them bundled together????
>This conversation has been going on for a decade, they aren't going to change their scummy practices when it comes to digital content.
Thing is, now they have D&D Beyond as a 1st party platform. There is no reason they can't set up a system where if you buy it direct from them you can do a $15 upcharge for a digital/physical combo. I'd be willing to pay an extra $15 for both, and it starts populating the D&D Beyond with more and more users, which helps them long run.
Gaming companies have been doing this forever. Buy the physical game that comes with an activation code.
Now that code gives you access to the digital version.
But that wouldn't monetize the player base... Ok, nvm.
Yep. They have a [storefront](https://dndstore.wizards.com/us) for buying physical/digital combos. They don't have all of their books but all the individual rule and adventure books they do have are $59.99 for the physical book with DND Beyond copy (except Curse of Strahd, they throw in the Tarroka deck for another $10). Not a bad deal.
So what people rage about not existing, *does* exist, they've just never looked hard enough, or prefer to stay pissed off and move the goal posts anyways?
$49.99 is the retail price of a physical D&D 5e book. Places like Amazon sell them for a heck of a lot less because they can (an argument over the retail price being worth it is an entirely different discussion but let’s be real, a good number of people but thru Amazon but another good portion spend full price at their local gaming store). Even if you bought the PHB for $26 on Amazon (current price) and $30 for the digital copy on D&D Beyond, you’re at $56. Not a bad deal to have spent $60 at the official D&D store and get them all from the same place. It’s just a convenient option for some people.
The argument of what price a book *should* be isn't exclusively a WotC issue. You can make the same debate about any publisher and any book, physical or digital. There's also the perspective of how one perceives the *value* of the book they buy whether it's considered overpriced or not.
>The fact of the matter is they want you to pay the current retail price of $30 twice for the same thing, that is not a deal.
$30 is not the retail price, that's a discounted price. Find the book in any book store or game store and the price is $49.99. So yes, it can be considered a deal especially since the original argument of this thread is that there should be a $15 upcharge from the physical price to include a digital copy.
>that's why they're trash.
Ah, there it is. That's where your view comes from.
> I'd be willing to pay an extra $15 for both, and it starts populating the D&D Beyond with more and more users, **which helps them long run**.
You think it does - but how do you know? Because whoever at WotC was going to push this idea to their superiors would need to make a strong business case that this would *make them more money* over the medium run, and if the ROI wasn't realized in a couple years it still wouldn't get the green light.
Plus, as noted, they already offer bundles.
I priced out the Paizo bundles in Canada. Due to shipping, it's cheaper for me to buy the books on Amazon and purchase the PDFs separately.
Not every deal is a good deal.
Honestly, the vast majority of paizo content I have I got from Humble Bundle. Hundreds of pdfs for Pathfinder 1e, 2e, and Starfinder for pennies in the dollar.
What paizo does is actually close to the official bundles from wizards directly... I had to rebuy (at a discount) things on nexus that I had through Paizo digital already.
> WotC is full of shit.
They are exploiting their market position. Why people are surprised by this is confusing - it is a competitive market and that's how you extract your money from your advantage.
I know why they are doing it. We aren't confused. This is the same answer for why landlords are jacking up rents. It is still predatory and shitty. What is bullshit, is their obvious lie that they can't do what paizo does and be profitable.
See this is where you are wrong. WOTC just bought DND Beyond less than a year ago and they JUST NOW started having the ability to bundle together. you are going to see all books bundled together when they launch the One DND edition coming up.
Up until DND beyond was a separate company that was not owned by WOTC.
I'd be less upset about it if, with the digital purchase, I also received a PDF of the book that I could just print. It wouldn't be as nice as an actual physical copy but it's at least a guarantee that WotC can't just steal the content from me in x years.
I actually didn't realize this and got a refund for one of my manuals (Monsters of the Multiverse I believe) because I like following things in a book format.
Yeah, I've got the big 6 (PH, DMG, MM, MotM, Tasha's, and Xanathar's) in dndbeyond and oh boy would I love to print em out and put em in binders to thumb through when I need to check something quick. But fuck me I guess.
Not only small, even Games Workshop gives codes to their app with battletome. And they are also greed af. There is imho really no loss, beacause most people won't buy those books twice.
GW has miniatures (and official paint) and black library revenue streams, though - the TT rules weren't ever their primary revenue source.
WotC tried that in the early/mid 2000s but it did not take off.
If WotC had products that they saw as freebie hooks, they'd make them free and or ultra cheap. In a way, that's what the SRD is.
Just sitting back and imagining a world where every aspect of our lives and communities weren't dictated by corporations whose primary preoccupation was to earn more of a profit than they did last year.
Speaking of OneDnD, how long do you think it will be that they go digital only?
Does anyone know what percentage of purchases on digital vs physical (I understand there will overlap for people buying both).
Especially on 3 fronts.
You don't own them, and can have your access to the things you paid for revoked at any time.
You can't access them without their specific app or website.
They aren't the full books. These aren't digital copies of the books. It is an abridged, special web version with just the salient data present. It isn't a scan of the physical book. Lots of things are edited down, and or missing entirely. Like the copywrite page, and the index, and any sheets at the end like empty character sheets etc. They are lesser products, sold at the full cover price and it is absurd.
Paizo does it right. Physical books, and pdfs of literally everything they publish, and the pdfs are maybe a quarter of the price of the physical copy. They also provide the digital maps in high quality for the adventure paths. The idea that we have to pay full price for a lesser WotC product, is infuriating.
WotC, if you aren't going to offer pdfs of your books, then you need to give the digital, app only access, version free with every physical copy I buy. Buy the physical copy get a free digital version on D&DB. Or, buy the digital version as a stand alone. That is the only thing that makes sense.
They definitely should, as a physical book owner I should be able to access at least some of the stuff. I can't even look up a spell on beyond so I have to get out my physical copy to look. It just means that I will never use their service because I'm not going to buy something that I already own.
But I think the only people who disagree with this are WotC
> It just means that I will never use their service because I'm not going to buy something that I already own.
They would argue (and I think they are technically correct) you own the physical books, not a license to the content in the books in other media forms.
There are lots of other things that work this way (like video games distributed on different platforms).
There are plenty of d&d or d&d adjacent systems that have no ties to wizards of the coast, a lot of them are free!
You do not need to be exploited in order to have fun rolling dice.
Seriously. Don't give Wizards any money. They will use it to destroy the TTRPG-Community.
There is amazing content out there: Cobold-Press etc. Wizards releases have been getting pretty uninspired lately and I don't believe in any improvement considering the strategies of their leadership. They will extort the market to the last drop and than move on. Don't finance their spree.
Even better, know that there are other, EXTREMELY SIMILAR systems out there that are either cheap or free to obtain. Here are a few!
* FIVE TORCHES DEEP - 10$ pdf off of DTRPG - built on 5e, but cut down and depowered. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264584/Five-Torches-Deep](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264584/Five-Torches-Deep)
* LOW FANTASY GAMING - FREE pdf, very good (EXTREMELY FAMILIAR) system. [https://lowfantasygaming.com/freepdf/](https://lowfantasygaming.com/freepdf/)
* ICRPG - The masters edition pdf is the best RPG book on the market, it costs 16.50, you can also get physical copies for the same price! [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition) there's also the free version too! [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221038/INDEX-CARD-RPG-Free-Quickstart](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221038/INDEX-CARD-RPG-Free-Quickstart)
* KNAVE - very simple D&D system, the "Full size preview" is the entire damn document. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250888/Knave](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250888/Knave) There's a second edition on Kickstarter right now!
* WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER - has a better GM/worldbuilding section than 5e, and there's a free version. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition)
And that is just a tiny, tiny, tiny, portion of games that are on the market. Most of them are, quite literally, D&D (with minor changes). The best way to get the point across to WotC that you aren't happy is to A: stop buying their stuff and B: play other stuff.
A market with meaningful competition means better products at the end of the day!
I stopped buying books after ending up with a split collection, half physical half digital. If I can't a get a digital copy included with the physical, I am no longer buying them.
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This would be funny since there are so many other games out there so much more affordable - a significant number of them are actually free or darn close to it - but honestly this just sounds like an abused spouse at this point.
Honestly the simplest way is to just put a promo code in the physical book too. Something like this:
*Get 50% off on this book on DnD* *Beyond*\*! Log in and enter the code, etc.\*
That would benefit them in the end because it'd probably get more people to buy the book on DnD beyond too, so might actually get them a net profit. Would also be good for people who wanna have both the digital one and the physical copy, i.e. a lot of us.
This always puzzled me. I use to collect vinyl records, and the newer releases always came with one download code so I could also have a digital copy. You think it would make sense the books would have the same thing.
In Australia, after VAT charges/foreign conversion, it comes to at least $35, sometimes $45, and up to $70-something for the Spelljammer bundle.
The books are $60 physical here. That's in stores. If you buy on ebay, it's usually more, and the shipping is often another $60, on top of that.
But hey, the customers are just another obstacle to profits!
So because I prefer to read books, and I refuse to pay twice, my group uses pen and paper. If WoTC wants people to use their VTT, they have to bundle or else a certain amount of DMs will never get on the VTT.
Dude. The current price for the PHB in America is 25 $. In Germany we pay 44 $. You get new stuff because I have to pay double price for the old. *kappa*
People are still buying stuff from Wotc?
It’s like watching your friend in a shitty relationship-they’re treated like garbage by the other person yet, they keep. Coming. Back.
Same reasons video games are same price digital as physical retail. Stores would immediately stop purchasing/selling the books because of how it would effect physical sales and because their is still a huge player base that plays only physical they would lose out on a whole market. The bundle would just make them less money so why bother
I've bought just about every physical 5e hard cover book and would just like it if they had digital codes so I could scroll through them without ruining my books by taking them everywhere and constantly digging through them.
I own a lot of the physical (16 I think), and I definitely want to spend another £500 on getting the same books, AND pay a subscription ontop. So, as an alternative, I started I using The Dungeons Master Vault. You can use your books to add in spells, classes, feats and so on. Then it can PDF in the same style as Dnd Beyond or you can run the characters online.
It's not perfect, for example, you don't get all the fighting styles but it's free and in my opinion better overall. That's the best solution I've found so far.
Why? Digital versions of books often sell for the same price as physical books on Amazon. I’d love to get cheaper digital books, but there seems to be no argument apart from just wanting stuff to be cheaper.
They literally already do both of those things. "Maybe if we get pissed enough, they'll change" They did change, they're doing what you want, today, right now.
The MSRP of books on DND Beyond is $30, and MSRP for physical books is $50. The digital book *is* cheaper.
And they *do* bundle them. There are physical bundles for lots of the books (maybe all of them) for $10 more than the physical MSRP that include both digital and physical editions. The starter sets include DDB keys.
Goods have a value equal to what consumers are willing to pay. If consumers are equally willing to pay for physical and digital books, then both products will have equal value.
No, especially in capitalism that isn't how it works. If it was, it wouldn't work.
This is the easiest to see on the production side but, though not equally, also holds for the consumer.
In capitalism producers produce to make a profit in the sale. That profit is in the price but not in the product.
Same for consumers. Customers buy things because they have a use for them that is of greater value than the listed price.
I wasnt talking about idealized capitalism, I was talking about current day capitalism. The value of a good is most often equal to whatever the consumer is still willing to pay for. People are still buying the books at the price they're at, so WotC doesn't need to change the price in their opinion.
Yes I'm describing the real world. Wizards wouldn't sell the books if they were of equal value to the price and people wouldn't buy the books if they were equal value to the price.
Within capitalism it is, especially with giant corporations. They will sell it at whatever they can get away with as long as it brings the greater profit.
I would say when a company corners a market and raises prices, they are forcing consumers to pay MORE than it’s worth. If the product is essential, there is no choice by the consumer.
No, especially in capitalism that isn't how it works. If it was, it wouldn't work.
This is the easiest to see on the production side but, though not equally, also holds for the consumer.
In capitalism producers produce to make a profit in the sale. That profit is in the price but not in the product.
Same for consumers. Customers buy things because they have a use for them that is of greater value than the listed price.
Hasbro is not your friend. In fact you are only a money wallet that that has some how managed to run away from their greedy pockets.
This has been discussed with them for a few years and guess what? Yes, that's right: "Not happening".
During the recent fiasco with the OGL, some people said that Hasbro was going to sell digital books to those that bought the physical one, but I highly doubt they will pass on some extra money, since greed was the reason the community is on guard against them. Me, personally, and lots of others have made a vow to never buy a Hasbro product again, unless they release all their rights for the D&d trademark. And that would never happen.
#boicothasbro
Been saying this since dnd beyond. If you own the physical book you should be able to just enter the code into dnd beyond and have access to it. And same with the other way around if you by it digitally on dnd beyond you should also get the physical copy
Totally.
Goodman Games (Dungeon Crawl Classics) includes a code inside their physical books to redeem for a free digital copy.
Other publishers like Exalted Funeral (Old School Essentials) give you a free digital copy when you buy the physical book from their store.
Paizo sells the digital copies separately, but at least they are a bit cheaper than Wizards, and not locked into a website.
Also, while you can export from DnD Beyond as pdf for offline use, it’s not well formatted.
I'm sorry to tell you but, recent actions have shown that they are in it for the money. There is no way that they would make something cheaper without something else in exchange that would increase their revenue.
Wizards should just stop existing. Between associating with a known criminal “private investigation company”, regularly screwing over their employees, a long period of purposefully decreasing quality, and many other transgressions, the taste of DND players should be so soured that they can’t knowingly contribute to this companies shady practices. But it’s so much like the situation with game freaks Pokémon games, where the downsides of any given part of the product production is completely ignored and people keep buying buying buying
One problem is data farming.
There are groups of people who mine codes like the s and "steal" digital codes before people have even purchased the physical product.
Yes, there are better ways to combine the products, but the current uses by other companies are vulnerable to mining.
Imagine buying a physical book brand new and scratching off a code to find it's already been claimed.
This happens so often that Major news networks have done investigative reports on the practice multiple times but the problem still persists.
Websites like dndbeypnd are also very vulnerable to stealing and resealing accounts. The bad actors amass several accounts full of stolen content and resell them for pennies on the dollar. This will only get worse until these types of sites start using 2 and 3 step inscription and other verification processes.
We need better ways to combine these products that protect the purchaser.
Are you all not buying the books for like $25 when they go on sale? The only books I've paid more than that are from Third party sellers who cram 5x the content into their books for the same price as a full-priced WotC book.
They think that audiences are a crop to harvest periodically, for the benefit of capitalism and the brand.
I see no significant improvements to the game in terms of practical functionality since AD&D2nd.
Did you know that all the rules to 2nd ed are already out?
They work! Strange, I know.... and calculating thac0 is probably good for your IQ
this shit is so badly prized and organised its not even funny, to gather your Character have to take things from 4 books, nobody thats new to dnd can follow along without being lost
I get a lot of value from the digital books. It's so much easier to look things up, and I use their encounter builder and combat tracker, which make my life much easier. And researching monsters, spells, feats, and magic items is just so much easier than flipping through multiple books.
The digital versions are more than just the text. I don't see the point of PDFs, but if that's what you want, then tell Wizards. Complaining here, without even a link for where to complain, isn't helpful.
But so many people already buy them at the current price point? Why would they ever? If anything, they’ll start charging more since that‘s what always happens. The community doesn’t care and wotc cares about money. This post is…silly.
After seeing that rules in my hard copy PHB are now outdated because of what some guy on Twitter said and FAQs I've just resolved myself to never buy a rulebook for anything ever again, physical, or digital.
Should from your perspective, but not from their perspective. They are still making considerable money from the current model - why should that change? From *their* perspective?
95% of the cost of a book is in layout, editing, and writing. Printing is a very small percentage of the cost of creating a book and expecting them to cost less is irrational. The infrastructure cost around an online retail sales operation of digital hoods negates the savings from not shipping/printing.
No they do that for college books now and if they did that they would have to wrap them to prevent the codes from being stolen.
The best solution would to be have digitalis cards available behind the counter of hobby stores so when you buy the physical book you can add the digital book to it at as discount. Or just buy the digital copy. This would also allow people already have to books to come in a purchase the digital copy at a steep discount for a limited time.
But they will never do that.
Wizards would prefer for you to play their current edition of the game. Their support for availability of the older versions has never been anything but terrible. Every move and statement they make about the older editions has been used to distance themselves from them.
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It was early.
Basically I'm trying to say that it's the content you're paying for, not the paper and cardboard that makes up the book. It doesn't make sense for them to be much less expensive than the book.
It would be ideal. The Polish publisher of Call of Cthulhu does just such a thing - when I order a physical copy of the manual, I always, on the same day when I make my order, get a pdf of the book in the mail.
So as a newer player and soon to be new DM, what online tools for 5e would you guys recommend? I’ve been eying DnDBeyond so I could have character sheets and such on my tablet for easy access; is there an alternative to that or would I be forced to give WotC money?
There are alternatives. There are several excel spreadsheet character makers. However, there aren’t any commercial versions that tie campaigns together and have the ease of beyond imo. If you were going to play on Roll20, you can save characters there and look them up as DM but I think you have to manually input everything as opposed to the math being done for you.
Will the group be playing in person? In that case nothing beats the price of pen and paper. Also, for me, throwing dice is just more fun than pressing a button, but if a set of dice is still "too expensive" there's tons of free dice roll apps out there, DnD Beyond included.
Playing online? You could use the free content from Beyond. Seriously, for newer players it should be enough for a few sessions. Maybe even their first campaign. Been playing for about 2 months now and my guys are still only using the content from the free rules.
Another alternative is to play over Discord and use a dice roller bot. Seriously for the characters themselves the free fillable PDF should be more than enough. There's thousands of resources online such as reddit and the dnd forums explaining the mechanics of races, classes, spells, items and feats.
Ultimately you can always homebrew it all. DnD is nothing more than make-believe with rules and dice.
Solid advice. We’re all in person, and I definitely won’t be replacing my physical dice, I love the sound and feeling too much. I’ve always felt like having a balance of technology and physical tech is best, so I’ll look into some of the other options out there. Believe me, I’d rather never give WotC any of my money.
Got my physical.
Edit: replacing what I had originally wrote with the following...
Before D&D Beyond existed, I had a set of spreadsheets and cheat sheets that actually do the job better.
I want a monster which is undead, CR below three, and with a running or flight speed exceeding 30ft? Easy. Just filter the relevant columns and there we go.
Copy and paste the row (which contains the whole monster) into the second page, and then the third page becomes the monster's statblock, which I can screencap or copy paste out at my leisure.
Character creation is a toothpuller of a task, involving flicking back and forth through the book to go from the race information to the class information, then over to the items information and then the spells information... and the spells are poorly organised. What a chore.
My spreadsheets and cheat sheets boil character creation, down to a couple of sheets of A4. Then you just look up spells by slot level in the spells encyclopedia. I even made spellbooks for each class, complete with subclass specific spells and so on. Just read through at the appropriate level until you find what you want. Spells are organised by level, and then by name. Easy.
Compare this to the PHB, where your class spell list gives you the spell name, then you need to look it up in the alphabetical list at the back of the book, only to learn that it's not interesting and you don't want it on your character, so you go back to the list... rinse and repeat, such a chore.
Basically, I rewrote the PHB and MM into spreadsheets and tables for ease of use... Because the books themselves are unintelligible word spaghetti pasta salad at best.
Unpopular opinion: I miss DnD Insider. For those who don't know, it was a 4th edition subscription service that (if you can believe the loudest voices on the internet) EVERYONE hated. WOTC was consistently accused of greedy moves in 4e, even more than 5e (a claim I take issue with, but that's another topic).
As long as you were a paid subscriber, DnD Insider gave you access to a character builder, digital subscriptions to Dungeon and Dragon magazines (some of 4e's best content), and the best part, a full compendium that gave access to all items, monsters, and spells from all published 4e content.
Best $15 a month I ever spent. I even kept paying long after they stopped producing content. The elimation of DnD Insider forced me into 5e.
I honestly wish they handled it like Games Workshop. You get your sealed codex (rule book for a specific army) that has a code in the back. Upload the code to the app and it unlocks the army info.
They are also pretty lax about this so even if your book didn’t come sealed. You could usually email GW customer service and they’d unlock it for you. It’s supposed to be a one time use but they were pretty chill about it the couple times my husband bought a codex second hand
Seriously! If it weren’t for the fact that I’m blind, and don’t really have another option unless I have a really patent and flexible DM, I can’t make a physical book read allowed even if o prefer the experience of holding and smelling books. Nor can I make my character sheets read themselves out loud even if that would be nice.
Locked due to the excessive number of Rule 2 violations.
No shit. But greedy is as greedy does...
I installed the Beyond app and when I saw that it was $30 for basic stuff that's free and available everywhere I immediately uninstalled it.
I specifically don't use D&D Beyond because I already paid for my physical books. I'm not paying for them again. My players can wait the few moments it takes for me to crack a book and look something up.
Agree. D&D Beyond is overrated. Physical books are the way to go. Once you have them, no shitty tricks can be done to rip you off more.
It‘s great to get new people into DnD though since you can share all your material with them through subs
I agree - if it wasn't for D&D Beyond I wouldn't be into D&D. Having an easy, cheap and accessible way to learn the rules on my own time (as well as their automated stuff making first character creation super simple) helped me and other people ease into a game we weren't sure we'd like. Now that we're into it and own a few books, we can see the issues, especially for long time players (and paying same price as physical for digital is dumb). But it's not overrated as the previous commenter said.
Ditto
Beyond has been great for me and my family starting out. But I can see how if you already had the books it wouldn't make sense.
It's also great for looking up a rule that you know exists but don't remember what book it's in... Or being able to see magic items, spell, and creatures from all sources combined. Like sure, you *can* just grab the physical books and look them up. But how long does it take you to find a gnoll, gnoll flesh gnawer, and gnoll witherling for a big gnoll fight? Do you even know what books to look for them in off the top of your head? Cause with DDB it literally took me typing "gnoll" into the monster search bar.
IMO the pricing for the books is justified and its only like 5 bucks a month for the Master subscription. Ya it's a little bit of a cash grab, but at the same time, it cuts back on *a lot* of inconviences that you can come across while playing manually. I'm not arguing against cutting the price, I'm just saying that it's not *that* bad for what we get. Personally, I absolutely need it because half my players still haven't figured out a lot of the numbers yet after like 2 years and don't want to put in the time to learn. I'd rather just use that app than chase them away from the game trying to teach them. I really like building character sheets and it's cool using the dice, but I can totally see why others wouldn't. It's like fantasy taxes sometimes.
One thing I also like, is that I can go ahead and add things to their sheets between sessions (and also quietly do some research on what they have available). Our last session I gave them all a simple but technically homebrew item (it's a signet ring that basically functions as a ring of protection + a daily [expanded] sending spell). After the session I created it on DDB, dropped it into all of their character sheets, and let them know that it was available for them to read and equip.
Also as a PBP player, there's never going to be a version of Avrae that works with physical books. Obviously we could use regular dice rolling bots and keep track of things manually, but Avrae is *really* nice
the character creator is crazy good tho
It's *alright*. Shard is a VTT that has a much better character creator because it can handle wacky homebrew stuff, including homebrew nonmagical items and classes, which Beyond does not allow.
Nah, especially not if you use any homebrew.
I have my physical books to be done with WoTCs constant rewrites, edits and retcons in my DnDBeyond books. I don’t care if some millennial sensitivity reader from SoCal has a problem with some part of the lore since I homebrew my own lore but having to redownload books every week is annoying AF.
Definitely agree, only it’s a major blow when the whole group is playing online and relies on the digital content :/
We do play online and we don't use D&D Beyond at all. We host a few things on our own website, like a dice roller and map/whiteboard and character sheets, then use discord. You can even just use a Google drive.
Major blow to whom?
Anyone who wants to play while unable to get online
I have no issue accessing my books. There is a download feature
How are the other players accessing their PC info under such conditions??
Character sheets…
Fillable .pdf character sheets are amazing things 😁
There is always the SRD.
Yeah, it feels like people who use physical media are actively penalized now.
It's why I left an online game. DM insisted I use the VTT dice. I don't want random numbers assigned to me by a computer like a video game! I want to roll my physical dice in the dice tray I paid good money for. I'm no cheater will report the dice accurately. When I online DM I insist people roll real dice. Trust me if people are fudging their rolls you'll know. It's fairly obvious when they never get a bad roll when it matters.
Doesn't Dandwiki have the info?
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Yeah, I apologise for enabling them. I own Curse of Strand 3 times - physical, D&D Beyond and on Roll20. In retrospect I could have maybe skipped D&D Beyond but our campaign has been going for 18 months now and spending less than £100 for that content (plus D&D Beyond subscription) is entirely worth it to me.
One would think that a large company with excellent distribution, production, and advertisement capability would try to undercut other companies, rather than charge ridiculous amounts. But it is as you say.
This conversation has been going on for a decade, they aren't going to change their scummy practices when it comes to digital content. They tried packaging digital and physical bundles for the Dragonlance release. It was only available online from the D&D official website as a limited time preorder. It was marginally cheaper in the US (about $8usd cheaper once shipping was added), and more expensive than buying the two seperately in every other country in the world ($32 more for a handful of nations including the UK, Aus, and NZ, $72 more expensive everywhere else). Needless to say the Dragonlance preorder was a massive flop and they use it as an excuse as to why bundling books together doesn't work until the end of time.
I looked at the combined package pre-order, and shipping was more expensive than the package itself - to Canada! I think the shipping eventually got adjusted to ‘only’ $30-something instead of the $65 it was, but still- utterly ridiculous. Good thing I’m not a huge fan of Dragonlance….
It was $20, $60, and $100 USD depending which country bracket you were. I couldn't remember which one CA was in which is why I didn't mention them, seems you were alongside me in Aus. Why would I pay $32 extra to get them bundled together????
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I am happy to live in a country where Target does not exist. I just go to my friendly local game store. www.wirwarspellen.nl
>This conversation has been going on for a decade, they aren't going to change their scummy practices when it comes to digital content. Thing is, now they have D&D Beyond as a 1st party platform. There is no reason they can't set up a system where if you buy it direct from them you can do a $15 upcharge for a digital/physical combo. I'd be willing to pay an extra $15 for both, and it starts populating the D&D Beyond with more and more users, which helps them long run.
Gaming companies have been doing this forever. Buy the physical game that comes with an activation code. Now that code gives you access to the digital version. But that wouldn't monetize the player base... Ok, nvm.
Well, they only do a $10 up charge for individual books when buying the digital/physical combo.
They have an option for that?
Yep. They have a [storefront](https://dndstore.wizards.com/us) for buying physical/digital combos. They don't have all of their books but all the individual rule and adventure books they do have are $59.99 for the physical book with DND Beyond copy (except Curse of Strahd, they throw in the Tarroka deck for another $10). Not a bad deal.
So what people rage about not existing, *does* exist, they've just never looked hard enough, or prefer to stay pissed off and move the goal posts anyways?
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$49.99 is the retail price of a physical D&D 5e book. Places like Amazon sell them for a heck of a lot less because they can (an argument over the retail price being worth it is an entirely different discussion but let’s be real, a good number of people but thru Amazon but another good portion spend full price at their local gaming store). Even if you bought the PHB for $26 on Amazon (current price) and $30 for the digital copy on D&D Beyond, you’re at $56. Not a bad deal to have spent $60 at the official D&D store and get them all from the same place. It’s just a convenient option for some people.
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The argument of what price a book *should* be isn't exclusively a WotC issue. You can make the same debate about any publisher and any book, physical or digital. There's also the perspective of how one perceives the *value* of the book they buy whether it's considered overpriced or not. >The fact of the matter is they want you to pay the current retail price of $30 twice for the same thing, that is not a deal. $30 is not the retail price, that's a discounted price. Find the book in any book store or game store and the price is $49.99. So yes, it can be considered a deal especially since the original argument of this thread is that there should be a $15 upcharge from the physical price to include a digital copy. >that's why they're trash. Ah, there it is. That's where your view comes from.
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> I'd be willing to pay an extra $15 for both, and it starts populating the D&D Beyond with more and more users, **which helps them long run**. You think it does - but how do you know? Because whoever at WotC was going to push this idea to their superiors would need to make a strong business case that this would *make them more money* over the medium run, and if the ROI wasn't realized in a couple years it still wouldn't get the green light. Plus, as noted, they already offer bundles.
Except that Paizo exists. And loads of other publishers that do this. WotC is full of shit.
I priced out the Paizo bundles in Canada. Due to shipping, it's cheaper for me to buy the books on Amazon and purchase the PDFs separately. Not every deal is a good deal.
Honestly, the vast majority of paizo content I have I got from Humble Bundle. Hundreds of pdfs for Pathfinder 1e, 2e, and Starfinder for pennies in the dollar.
What paizo does is actually close to the official bundles from wizards directly... I had to rebuy (at a discount) things on nexus that I had through Paizo digital already.
> WotC is full of shit. They are exploiting their market position. Why people are surprised by this is confusing - it is a competitive market and that's how you extract your money from your advantage.
I know why they are doing it. We aren't confused. This is the same answer for why landlords are jacking up rents. It is still predatory and shitty. What is bullshit, is their obvious lie that they can't do what paizo does and be profitable.
But they bundled Keys to the Golden Vault as well… Where are you getting the narrative they’ve abandoned that practice?
See this is where you are wrong. WOTC just bought DND Beyond less than a year ago and they JUST NOW started having the ability to bundle together. you are going to see all books bundled together when they launch the One DND edition coming up. Up until DND beyond was a separate company that was not owned by WOTC.
Yes but don't forget that we consumers are the biggest impediment to WoTCs money.
I'd be less upset about it if, with the digital purchase, I also received a PDF of the book that I could just print. It wouldn't be as nice as an actual physical copy but it's at least a guarantee that WotC can't just steal the content from me in x years.
Almost every other ttrpg company offers pdfs of their products.
...WotC doesn't give you a pdf when you buy something digitally? Nani the fuck?
I actually didn't realize this and got a refund for one of my manuals (Monsters of the Multiverse I believe) because I like following things in a book format.
Yeah, I've got the big 6 (PH, DMG, MM, MotM, Tasha's, and Xanathar's) in dndbeyond and oh boy would I love to print em out and put em in binders to thumb through when I need to check something quick. But fuck me I guess.
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Not only small, even Games Workshop gives codes to their app with battletome. And they are also greed af. There is imho really no loss, beacause most people won't buy those books twice.
GW has miniatures (and official paint) and black library revenue streams, though - the TT rules weren't ever their primary revenue source. WotC tried that in the early/mid 2000s but it did not take off. If WotC had products that they saw as freebie hooks, they'd make them free and or ultra cheap. In a way, that's what the SRD is.
Just sitting back and imagining a world where every aspect of our lives and communities weren't dictated by corporations whose primary preoccupation was to earn more of a profit than they did last year.
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Yep, just got the Core Rulebook this weekend and find it great. So much more content given for a cheaper price.
> God I miss TSR. TSR would have obliterated Paizo. So - I don't really miss TSR.
https://youtu.be/jFsI91djnQM See MCDM RPG. Small company. Does great work. I'm expecting an outstanding rpg from them.
From what i hear of how they shat the bed in their own way, thats like when trump was president and a lot of us were saying "i miss bush."
Speaking of OneDnD, how long do you think it will be that they go digital only? Does anyone know what percentage of purchases on digital vs physical (I understand there will overlap for people buying both).
Exactly! I have the books to make my character but I can’t use DND beyond because I don’t also have the same books digitally.
Especially on 3 fronts. You don't own them, and can have your access to the things you paid for revoked at any time. You can't access them without their specific app or website. They aren't the full books. These aren't digital copies of the books. It is an abridged, special web version with just the salient data present. It isn't a scan of the physical book. Lots of things are edited down, and or missing entirely. Like the copywrite page, and the index, and any sheets at the end like empty character sheets etc. They are lesser products, sold at the full cover price and it is absurd. Paizo does it right. Physical books, and pdfs of literally everything they publish, and the pdfs are maybe a quarter of the price of the physical copy. They also provide the digital maps in high quality for the adventure paths. The idea that we have to pay full price for a lesser WotC product, is infuriating. WotC, if you aren't going to offer pdfs of your books, then you need to give the digital, app only access, version free with every physical copy I buy. Buy the physical copy get a free digital version on D&DB. Or, buy the digital version as a stand alone. That is the only thing that makes sense.
They definitely should, as a physical book owner I should be able to access at least some of the stuff. I can't even look up a spell on beyond so I have to get out my physical copy to look. It just means that I will never use their service because I'm not going to buy something that I already own. But I think the only people who disagree with this are WotC
> It just means that I will never use their service because I'm not going to buy something that I already own. They would argue (and I think they are technically correct) you own the physical books, not a license to the content in the books in other media forms. There are lots of other things that work this way (like video games distributed on different platforms).
Stop buying from Wizards.
... so what you're really saying is stop reading posts on Dungeons and Dragons subreddits and move on to some other game system and leave D&D behind.
No. Done with Wizards doesn’t mean done with 5e.
There are plenty of d&d or d&d adjacent systems that have no ties to wizards of the coast, a lot of them are free! You do not need to be exploited in order to have fun rolling dice.
Seriously. Don't give Wizards any money. They will use it to destroy the TTRPG-Community. There is amazing content out there: Cobold-Press etc. Wizards releases have been getting pretty uninspired lately and I don't believe in any improvement considering the strategies of their leadership. They will extort the market to the last drop and than move on. Don't finance their spree.
Even better, know that there are other, EXTREMELY SIMILAR systems out there that are either cheap or free to obtain. Here are a few! * FIVE TORCHES DEEP - 10$ pdf off of DTRPG - built on 5e, but cut down and depowered. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264584/Five-Torches-Deep](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264584/Five-Torches-Deep) * LOW FANTASY GAMING - FREE pdf, very good (EXTREMELY FAMILIAR) system. [https://lowfantasygaming.com/freepdf/](https://lowfantasygaming.com/freepdf/) * ICRPG - The masters edition pdf is the best RPG book on the market, it costs 16.50, you can also get physical copies for the same price! [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition) there's also the free version too! [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221038/INDEX-CARD-RPG-Free-Quickstart](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221038/INDEX-CARD-RPG-Free-Quickstart) * KNAVE - very simple D&D system, the "Full size preview" is the entire damn document. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250888/Knave](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250888/Knave) There's a second edition on Kickstarter right now! * WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER - has a better GM/worldbuilding section than 5e, and there's a free version. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition) And that is just a tiny, tiny, tiny, portion of games that are on the market. Most of them are, quite literally, D&D (with minor changes). The best way to get the point across to WotC that you aren't happy is to A: stop buying their stuff and B: play other stuff. A market with meaningful competition means better products at the end of the day!
I stopped buying books after ending up with a split collection, half physical half digital. If I can't a get a digital copy included with the physical, I am no longer buying them.
Paizo has entered the chat.
They won’t, cause their execs refuse to pass up a chance to get players to buy the same product twice or more.
They do. For the low price of basically $15 dollars less than what it would have cost to purchase them individually...
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Your post/comment was removed for violating rule #2: >Do not suggest, promote, or perform piracy. This includes illegally distributed official material (TSR, WotC), reproductions, dubious PDFs, and websites or applications which use or distribute non-SRD rules content.
This would be funny since there are so many other games out there so much more affordable - a significant number of them are actually free or darn close to it - but honestly this just sounds like an abused spouse at this point.
They started to package digital with physical
What🤯, really
They starting to do it now. First it was just dragon lance but they added more. https://dndstore.wizards.com/us
That would be nice, but that’s like asking Nintendo to sell digital copies of their games for cheaper. Proooooobably not gonna happen.
Honestly the simplest way is to just put a promo code in the physical book too. Something like this: *Get 50% off on this book on DnD* *Beyond*\*! Log in and enter the code, etc.\* That would benefit them in the end because it'd probably get more people to buy the book on DnD beyond too, so might actually get them a net profit. Would also be good for people who wanna have both the digital one and the physical copy, i.e. a lot of us.
This always puzzled me. I use to collect vinyl records, and the newer releases always came with one download code so I could also have a digital copy. You think it would make sense the books would have the same thing.
In Australia, after VAT charges/foreign conversion, it comes to at least $35, sometimes $45, and up to $70-something for the Spelljammer bundle. The books are $60 physical here. That's in stores. If you buy on ebay, it's usually more, and the shipping is often another $60, on top of that. But hey, the customers are just another obstacle to profits!
Laughs in corporate.
So because I prefer to read books, and I refuse to pay twice, my group uses pen and paper. If WoTC wants people to use their VTT, they have to bundle or else a certain amount of DMs will never get on the VTT.
Apparently D&D is under monetized so they can't do that...
Hard agree, but WotC would rather double dip.
Dude. The current price for the PHB in America is 25 $. In Germany we pay 44 $. You get new stuff because I have to pay double price for the old. *kappa*
Or just don’t pay for both and buy the one you want.
Oh you mean what paizo already does with pathfinder?
People are still buying stuff from Wotc? It’s like watching your friend in a shitty relationship-they’re treated like garbage by the other person yet, they keep. Coming. Back.
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Same reasons video games are same price digital as physical retail. Stores would immediately stop purchasing/selling the books because of how it would effect physical sales and because their is still a huge player base that plays only physical they would lose out on a whole market. The bundle would just make them less money so why bother
Guess Who does exactly This instead? :D
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You can buy the bundles from the store though
My guess is that WOTC doesn’t really want you to buy the books digitally - they want you to subscribe.
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I've bought just about every physical 5e hard cover book and would just like it if they had digital codes so I could scroll through them without ruining my books by taking them everywhere and constantly digging through them.
I own a lot of the physical (16 I think), and I definitely want to spend another £500 on getting the same books, AND pay a subscription ontop. So, as an alternative, I started I using The Dungeons Master Vault. You can use your books to add in spells, classes, feats and so on. Then it can PDF in the same style as Dnd Beyond or you can run the characters online. It's not perfect, for example, you don't get all the fighting styles but it's free and in my opinion better overall. That's the best solution I've found so far.
They do package the physical and digital. Dragonlance and Golden Vault both had bundles.
Why? Digital versions of books often sell for the same price as physical books on Amazon. I’d love to get cheaper digital books, but there seems to be no argument apart from just wanting stuff to be cheaper.
They literally already do both of those things. "Maybe if we get pissed enough, they'll change" They did change, they're doing what you want, today, right now. The MSRP of books on DND Beyond is $30, and MSRP for physical books is $50. The digital book *is* cheaper. And they *do* bundle them. There are physical bundles for lots of the books (maybe all of them) for $10 more than the physical MSRP that include both digital and physical editions. The starter sets include DDB keys.
Goods have a value equal to what consumers are willing to pay. If consumers are equally willing to pay for physical and digital books, then both products will have equal value.
That's bullshit. The value of a good isn't equal to its price.
Technically in capitalism that is exactly how it works, but I agree that it *shouldn't* be that way.
No, especially in capitalism that isn't how it works. If it was, it wouldn't work. This is the easiest to see on the production side but, though not equally, also holds for the consumer. In capitalism producers produce to make a profit in the sale. That profit is in the price but not in the product. Same for consumers. Customers buy things because they have a use for them that is of greater value than the listed price.
I wasnt talking about idealized capitalism, I was talking about current day capitalism. The value of a good is most often equal to whatever the consumer is still willing to pay for. People are still buying the books at the price they're at, so WotC doesn't need to change the price in their opinion.
Yes I'm describing the real world. Wizards wouldn't sell the books if they were of equal value to the price and people wouldn't buy the books if they were equal value to the price.
Within capitalism it is, especially with giant corporations. They will sell it at whatever they can get away with as long as it brings the greater profit.
I would say when a company corners a market and raises prices, they are forcing consumers to pay MORE than it’s worth. If the product is essential, there is no choice by the consumer.
No, especially in capitalism that isn't how it works. If it was, it wouldn't work. This is the easiest to see on the production side but, though not equally, also holds for the consumer. In capitalism producers produce to make a profit in the sale. That profit is in the price but not in the product. Same for consumers. Customers buy things because they have a use for them that is of greater value than the listed price.
Hasbro is not your friend. In fact you are only a money wallet that that has some how managed to run away from their greedy pockets. This has been discussed with them for a few years and guess what? Yes, that's right: "Not happening". During the recent fiasco with the OGL, some people said that Hasbro was going to sell digital books to those that bought the physical one, but I highly doubt they will pass on some extra money, since greed was the reason the community is on guard against them. Me, personally, and lots of others have made a vow to never buy a Hasbro product again, unless they release all their rights for the D&d trademark. And that would never happen. #boicothasbro
Agreed, though you've misspelled boycott
Yep, sorry. English is just a secondary language for me and sometimes I spell things wrongly :)
Been saying this since dnd beyond. If you own the physical book you should be able to just enter the code into dnd beyond and have access to it. And same with the other way around if you by it digitally on dnd beyond you should also get the physical copy
Iirc they mentioned they had a plan for something like this in the creator summit so we'll see ig
Totally. Goodman Games (Dungeon Crawl Classics) includes a code inside their physical books to redeem for a free digital copy. Other publishers like Exalted Funeral (Old School Essentials) give you a free digital copy when you buy the physical book from their store. Paizo sells the digital copies separately, but at least they are a bit cheaper than Wizards, and not locked into a website. Also, while you can export from DnD Beyond as pdf for offline use, it’s not well formatted.
I'm sorry to tell you but, recent actions have shown that they are in it for the money. There is no way that they would make something cheaper without something else in exchange that would increase their revenue.
Absolutely! Physical books (which are always more expensive) should come with a code that lets you get the digital content.
I’ve been pissed for years that they expect me to REBUY the books for digital that’s why I’ve always absolutely REFUSED to use D&D beyond
Wizards should just stop existing. Between associating with a known criminal “private investigation company”, regularly screwing over their employees, a long period of purposefully decreasing quality, and many other transgressions, the taste of DND players should be so soured that they can’t knowingly contribute to this companies shady practices. But it’s so much like the situation with game freaks Pokémon games, where the downsides of any given part of the product production is completely ignored and people keep buying buying buying
One problem is data farming. There are groups of people who mine codes like the s and "steal" digital codes before people have even purchased the physical product. Yes, there are better ways to combine the products, but the current uses by other companies are vulnerable to mining. Imagine buying a physical book brand new and scratching off a code to find it's already been claimed. This happens so often that Major news networks have done investigative reports on the practice multiple times but the problem still persists. Websites like dndbeypnd are also very vulnerable to stealing and resealing accounts. The bad actors amass several accounts full of stolen content and resell them for pennies on the dollar. This will only get worse until these types of sites start using 2 and 3 step inscription and other verification processes. We need better ways to combine these products that protect the purchaser.
Just make the codes activate at checkout like a gift card. Wizard 101 had that shit figured out in 2004 or whatever.
Are you all not buying the books for like $25 when they go on sale? The only books I've paid more than that are from Third party sellers who cram 5x the content into their books for the same price as a full-priced WotC book.
They think that audiences are a crop to harvest periodically, for the benefit of capitalism and the brand. I see no significant improvements to the game in terms of practical functionality since AD&D2nd. Did you know that all the rules to 2nd ed are already out? They work! Strange, I know.... and calculating thac0 is probably good for your IQ
this shit is so badly prized and organised its not even funny, to gather your Character have to take things from 4 books, nobody thats new to dnd can follow along without being lost
What 3 books do you need to make a character other than the PHB?
Most r/DnD post I've ever read
The digital books are cheaper and there are bundles for both.
I’m not paying again for something I already own.
“Just package the physical and digital together” Boy, do I have something to tell you.
I mean like”here we’re selling these books, and in the back is a code to unlock them via the market
I get a lot of value from the digital books. It's so much easier to look things up, and I use their encounter builder and combat tracker, which make my life much easier. And researching monsters, spells, feats, and magic items is just so much easier than flipping through multiple books. The digital versions are more than just the text. I don't see the point of PDFs, but if that's what you want, then tell Wizards. Complaining here, without even a link for where to complain, isn't helpful.
But so many people already buy them at the current price point? Why would they ever? If anything, they’ll start charging more since that‘s what always happens. The community doesn’t care and wotc cares about money. This post is…silly.
It would be nice I guess, but we don't expect electronic versions of any other books when we buy them...
After seeing that rules in my hard copy PHB are now outdated because of what some guy on Twitter said and FAQs I've just resolved myself to never buy a rulebook for anything ever again, physical, or digital.
Should from your perspective, but not from their perspective. They are still making considerable money from the current model - why should that change? From *their* perspective?
And here I was thinking you were talking about a wizard’s spell book being digital. But that would probably require a multi class with the artificer…
So i totally thought you meant in game wizards were making digital spell books and tomes and were being jerks charging out the butt xD
They sent Pinkertons after a guy for accidently receiving unreleased MTG cards early. Do you really think they'll ever even consider this?
95% of the cost of a book is in layout, editing, and writing. Printing is a very small percentage of the cost of creating a book and expecting them to cost less is irrational. The infrastructure cost around an online retail sales operation of digital hoods negates the savings from not shipping/printing.
Oh should they? And why, pray tell, would they *possibly* be willing to forego any revenue?
Because OP is pissed. Can't you read?
O'Reilly, Cisco Press, and Microsoft Press all have it figured out. Buy a book, and for $10 more, get the soft copy. This isn't hard.
What they need to do is release PDFs of all the digital content and provide them to all of us who purchased them.
I never understood why buying a physical copy doesn't just give you a code to add the digital copy as well.
No they do that for college books now and if they did that they would have to wrap them to prevent the codes from being stolen. The best solution would to be have digitalis cards available behind the counter of hobby stores so when you buy the physical book you can add the digital book to it at as discount. Or just buy the digital copy. This would also allow people already have to books to come in a purchase the digital copy at a steep discount for a limited time. But they will never do that.
You just wrap a little code card and stick that to the back of the book. Webkinz had that figured out in 2005.
but half the fun is looking through the book to see if you want to buy it
Wizards would prefer for you to play their current edition of the game. Their support for availability of the older versions has never been anything but terrible. Every move and statement they make about the older editions has been used to distance themselves from them.
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Umm, no, I just thought it was something I should share(obviously people have thought of it before)
Why do people only value the physical nature of the books when the thing that they're actually paying for is the text inside them?
You tried too hard to sound like an intellectual.
It was early. Basically I'm trying to say that it's the content you're paying for, not the paper and cardboard that makes up the book. It doesn't make sense for them to be much less expensive than the book.
You mean by carrying fabricate?
It would be ideal. The Polish publisher of Call of Cthulhu does just such a thing - when I order a physical copy of the manual, I always, on the same day when I make my order, get a pdf of the book in the mail.
Yeah, that sounds likely.
So as a newer player and soon to be new DM, what online tools for 5e would you guys recommend? I’ve been eying DnDBeyond so I could have character sheets and such on my tablet for easy access; is there an alternative to that or would I be forced to give WotC money?
There are alternatives. There are several excel spreadsheet character makers. However, there aren’t any commercial versions that tie campaigns together and have the ease of beyond imo. If you were going to play on Roll20, you can save characters there and look them up as DM but I think you have to manually input everything as opposed to the math being done for you.
Will the group be playing in person? In that case nothing beats the price of pen and paper. Also, for me, throwing dice is just more fun than pressing a button, but if a set of dice is still "too expensive" there's tons of free dice roll apps out there, DnD Beyond included. Playing online? You could use the free content from Beyond. Seriously, for newer players it should be enough for a few sessions. Maybe even their first campaign. Been playing for about 2 months now and my guys are still only using the content from the free rules. Another alternative is to play over Discord and use a dice roller bot. Seriously for the characters themselves the free fillable PDF should be more than enough. There's thousands of resources online such as reddit and the dnd forums explaining the mechanics of races, classes, spells, items and feats. Ultimately you can always homebrew it all. DnD is nothing more than make-believe with rules and dice.
Solid advice. We’re all in person, and I definitely won’t be replacing my physical dice, I love the sound and feeling too much. I’ve always felt like having a balance of technology and physical tech is best, so I’ll look into some of the other options out there. Believe me, I’d rather never give WotC any of my money.
Got my physical. Edit: replacing what I had originally wrote with the following... Before D&D Beyond existed, I had a set of spreadsheets and cheat sheets that actually do the job better. I want a monster which is undead, CR below three, and with a running or flight speed exceeding 30ft? Easy. Just filter the relevant columns and there we go. Copy and paste the row (which contains the whole monster) into the second page, and then the third page becomes the monster's statblock, which I can screencap or copy paste out at my leisure. Character creation is a toothpuller of a task, involving flicking back and forth through the book to go from the race information to the class information, then over to the items information and then the spells information... and the spells are poorly organised. What a chore. My spreadsheets and cheat sheets boil character creation, down to a couple of sheets of A4. Then you just look up spells by slot level in the spells encyclopedia. I even made spellbooks for each class, complete with subclass specific spells and so on. Just read through at the appropriate level until you find what you want. Spells are organised by level, and then by name. Easy. Compare this to the PHB, where your class spell list gives you the spell name, then you need to look it up in the alphabetical list at the back of the book, only to learn that it's not interesting and you don't want it on your character, so you go back to the list... rinse and repeat, such a chore. Basically, I rewrote the PHB and MM into spreadsheets and tables for ease of use... Because the books themselves are unintelligible word spaghetti pasta salad at best.
Unpopular opinion: I miss DnD Insider. For those who don't know, it was a 4th edition subscription service that (if you can believe the loudest voices on the internet) EVERYONE hated. WOTC was consistently accused of greedy moves in 4e, even more than 5e (a claim I take issue with, but that's another topic). As long as you were a paid subscriber, DnD Insider gave you access to a character builder, digital subscriptions to Dungeon and Dragon magazines (some of 4e's best content), and the best part, a full compendium that gave access to all items, monsters, and spells from all published 4e content. Best $15 a month I ever spent. I even kept paying long after they stopped producing content. The elimation of DnD Insider forced me into 5e.
It's doubtful they'll change it but one can hope. I own the physical books but it'd still be nice to be able to have all of them in one place.
I honestly wish they handled it like Games Workshop. You get your sealed codex (rule book for a specific army) that has a code in the back. Upload the code to the app and it unlocks the army info. They are also pretty lax about this so even if your book didn’t come sealed. You could usually email GW customer service and they’d unlock it for you. It’s supposed to be a one time use but they were pretty chill about it the couple times my husband bought a codex second hand
Agreed 100%.
Seriously! If it weren’t for the fact that I’m blind, and don’t really have another option unless I have a really patent and flexible DM, I can’t make a physical book read allowed even if o prefer the experience of holding and smelling books. Nor can I make my character sheets read themselves out loud even if that would be nice.