D&D Beyond: does this look like a good deal? >The r

>>54391704
no

>>54391704
Not seeing the point. 4e had hundreds of constantly errataed powers, so e-tools made sense. 5e is both more light and more stable.

>>54391704
Wizards of the Coast has the world's shittiest IT department. There is no way this is going to be good, and it's very unlikely to be stable and functional. Even if it works, what's it for? Is this for gaming online or is it just an electronic tool for gaming at the table? Those are both niches that have already been filled.

>>54392827

4e didn't also make you pay per-book. You paid the subscription (Which this also has) and you got every book and dragon magazine.

>>54391704

Or I can just use roll20.

>>54391704
>Digital sourcebooks (such as the Player's Handbook) will be available for $29.99
What in the FUCK

How do they justify charging $30 bucks for a digital book? I understand that printing and binding and distributing books is expensive and that DnD books are generally pretty good quality books, but none of that fucking applies to a pdf.

>>54391704
Only good deal about it is getting future products or products you don't already own digital-only. Getting a $40-50 adventure book for $25 digitally on the first day of release is a good deal, especially with hi-res maps and art and with the VTT licensed releases being $50 as well.

Its use as a live-table tool is iffy, and as it's not a VTT there are much better options like Fantasy Grounds for online play. Its upcoming CR adjustment tool might be worth using too, but that's something that other tools can easily copy now; the math in the DMG is already plain to see.

It really needs a higher subscription service like 4e had. $15 or $20 a month to get access to all of the content, with non-permanent licenses lapsing with it. This is abusable but consumer-friendly, so of course they will never do it.

>>54394305
Its releases are HTML-based and can integrate into the rest of the site. Granted, cheaper PDF-only releases would be better, but you can never bet on WotC doing the smart thing.

>>54391704
All I want to know is how many characters are free accounts normally limited to.

>>54394187
It's not developed/maintained by WotC, but by Curse. Their bread and butter is this type of back-end stuff, so however well it actually does I expect it to at least keep its shit together.

>>54394387
>All I want to know is how many characters are free accounts normally limited to.
Six.

>>54394345
>This is abusable but consumer-friendly, so of course they will never do it.
Wait until they've got more sourcebooks out and some setting support outside of FR. At that point an all-in subscription service would be more tantalizing, have more value, and revitalize a userbase that would probably be flagging a little by then.

>>54391704
Boy, that's exactly what I was expecting. Fuckin' Wizards. I already have all of the core books and Volo's and they want me to buy them again and then subscribe for $6/month to be able to share it. Suuuure.
Fuck it, I'll go make my own fork of 5etools and try adding a charsheet database to it.

>>54391704
>>Paying for what you can legally do any way under current copyright law.

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>>54391704
>$3/month
>$6/month
Unless the free accounts are useful, I won't pay monthly for something I can already do on my computer & phone, even if it's $3 a month.

Lots pf hype for the first few weeks. Multiple major character-builder/reference sites will get C&D letters.
After 6 months, all development will be abandoned and it will basically be 1 admin trying to manage the entire thing. Promises of new content will slowly fade into the distance.
After 2 years, they will announce a full shutdown of the service. The words "wasted potential" and "we all saw this coming", will echo through the blogs and forum posts.
For the next 10 years, people will make "where did Wizards go wrong?" threads on /tg/, and every 5e mention will be have at least 1 angry reply from someone who wasted $$ buying all the content and never even found a group to play with.

>>54399720
>Multiple major character-builder/reference sites will get C&D letters.
Oh god, I didn't even consider this

We're all fucked

>>54399720
>major character-builder/reference sites will get C&D letters
Fucking hell, you're right. May I have some decent examples, while we still have those? I know about Orcpub, 5etools and other popular stuff. And I'll try to make local copies of the astranauta every fucking day.
Also, I myself would try and save http://www.fastcharacter.com/. It's great.

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No. Hell no.
A stumbled across something rather vexing with this...this being the rules for Homebrew. Apparently, you're not allowed to create homebrew content that use any established elements. Why, is this even a thing? You're using a Wizard product for a game that is owned by Wizard.

"A small bit of the rule on homebrewing content with D&D Beyond.

homebrew could be rejected on copyright grounds: the name or description matches an existing Wizards of the Coast intellectual property (mind flayers, beholders, mordenkainen etc)"

all i care about is the digital rulebooks, so i can stop straining my eyes on those shitty (but useful) scans. i wonder how they managed to keep the print-pdfs (used to produce the books) from leaking in the first place. seems like wotc has better opsec than your government.

>>54394305
can't undercut their own hard copy sales

>>54394305
>How do they justify charging $30 bucks for a digital book? I understand that printing and binding and distributing books is expensive and that DnD books are generally pretty good quality books, but none of that fucking applies to a pdf.


Remember when Steam hit the scene and everybody was like "wow, games will be so much cheaper now that publishers don't have to shell out for CDs, boxes, and shipping to retailers!"

Same thing.

>>54391704
If you have the book or the pdf it is not worth it. If they made it a sigle purchase instead of a subscription it would have been fine, you get it because you find it esier to read then the book. But for checking the rules? Hell no, all of the 5E rules can be found in 23 pages, it is easy to remember where they are and quick to find them.

Now lets talk about how this subscription is worse than free shit Pathfinder fans made. Sure it does not store your charachters, but let's get real for a secound, we all use notepads or some sort of writter on our devices to track and write campaigns. All that this shit offers is worse than the alternatives we allready have.

>>54391704
I'd happily subscribe for $3-6 if I got the content for free. But a subscription fee and I have to buy the content seems like a rip off and waste of time when I have the books and pdf's already and there's numerous online tools that exist for free.

>>54394305
Some places like Germany have laws against different versions of the same content having different laws, historically used to prevent large printers from undercutting competition.

It stuck around into the digital age and became common practice because, why not charge more for our product?

>>54399720
Which is why I keep an up-to-date archive of 5etools for personal, local use in case it gets taken down *again* (and possibly for good).

>>54399720
Multiple major character-builder/reference sites will get C&D letters.

This. It's time to start pirating HTML sites

>>54391704
>Literally 4e online tools but worse in every possible way.

I'm so glad they killed """"""mmo edition"""""" to give us """""new""""" stuff with """""roleplaying""""" in it.

Yes I mad, there is literally nothing Wizard is doing with 5e that isn't an utter and complete downgrade from its recent past.

>>54391704
>>54394218
I'm really confused as to what the purpose of this is, and why I'd use it over literally any other free service, like Orcpub and Roll20.

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>>54391704
>mfw I have beta-tested this since the beginning
>mfw I believed for a while that it will be free app

>>54391704
>falling for this again
You have to be fucking retarded. Shitwizards of the Toilet have ZERO ability to produce a worthwhile online platform for anything.

>>54404203
Why don't you go Strike! yourself in the fucking skull with an icepick you fucking loser.

>>54402352
>omebrewing content with D&D Beyond

That just means you can't create your own donut steel monster and call it a "Mind Flayer".

It does not mean you cannot use the words "Mind Flayer" in a magic item description or whatever other homebrew content.

>>54402555
Certain parks of WotC leaks like a rusted cheese grater, but not all of it. MTG leaks are a good place to look. We've had lists of cards spoiled, and entire uncut sheets stolen and posted online. We've also had new cards spoiled digitally prematurely, at least one time on WotC's own fucking website no less.

But

We have never once had a leak of the ready-to-be-printed sheets in digital form. We have never had a raw card frame leaked despite them being in use, all over the world, for over a decade. Production is actually a tight fucking ship.

Sèéms like a scam, best to avoid.

>Get 5e Character Creator on android play store. Pay $1 and you get an app that levels up your character and uses all splat books, and is flexible enough that you can punch in custom stats/abilities at will.
>Get 5e Spellbook also from play store for free
>DM only needs screenshots of monster statblocks to run a game
>If he wants to be fancy, he can make an account at obsidian portal and make a wiki with all of his notes about the setting that the players can update.

I literally just eradicated the need for paper at my table for the cost of $0-$X where X = number of players. How in the fuck is this at all justified?