D&D Beyond Launches on August 15th for $3-6/m

$3/ month isn't that bad. And you really only need it if you want to use homebrew.

 

[guachi]

If this were about getting PDFs of the D&D books, I'd agree with you. But it's not. It's a character builder, campaign manager, etc. You're paying for the usage of the information in those books in these tools. Basically, look at a character builder like Hero Lab, only with a bunch of other tools on top of it.

It's unfair to compare this tool to simply scanning a book.

No, it's not.

The post of mine you quoted was talking solely about the cost of getting PDFs of the books. You can access the free service to get the PDFs. And you don't have to buy the PDFs to use the free service.

Spending $29.99 for the PHB gets me nothing other than access to the PDF. It doesn't get me access to the character builder or the campaign manager. And there's no indication that there are any features of the character builder that require ownership of the PHB PDF. What features of the character builder will be unlocked if I buy the PHB in PDF format?

 

[guachi]

You forgot to add the $5.99 for shipping. Amazon: $35.99

I didn't "forget" because the shipping to my home is free. It's free shipping with Prime and free shipping without Prime.

 

[SkidAce]

However, the character builder is not particularly useful. Why can't I print out my character on a standard character sheet for my live game?

I will be glad to help.

This feature is coming. The program is still currently in Beta.

 

[SkidAce]

$3/mo isn't bad.
$6/mo isn't bad.

Rebuying the content just to have a digital version of it? Hard pass.

I'd rather pay $10-15 a month and get everything, or pay no monthly fee and have to buy every product I want to use digitally again. But rebuying the content and then paying a subscription to access content I own? That's like charging me to open my books.

Why is Wizards terrible at online systems?

You wont need a subscription to access the content you buy.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I'm flat-out going to make the prediction that at least 50% of the people who are saying they won't buy and it's all too expensive will end up buying it and subscribing at some point. A lot of the complaints I'm seeing are based entirely on misunderstandings that will be clarified after some use of the final product. That, and once they see how popular DDB is, they'll jump on board because it's no longer a big scary wolf barking at their heels.

And please, by all means, bookmark this post so that you can come back and tell me how horrible and unpopular the product is after a year. I'm predicting that DDB will be incredibly popular and successful so I look forward to being proven wrong.

 

[Over the Hill Gamer]

I'm flat-out going to make the prediction that at least 50% of the people who are saying they won't buy and it's all too expensive will end up buying it and subscribing at some point. A lot of the complaints I'm seeing are based entirely on misunderstandings that will be clarified after some use of the final product. That, and once they see how popular DDB is, they'll jump on board because it's no longer a big scary wolf barking at their heels.

And please, by all means, bookmark this post so that you can come back and tell me how horrible and unpopular the product is after a year. I'm predicting that DDB will be incredibly popular and successful so I look forward to being proven wrong.

I hope and expect that you will be correct. But it's not that product yet.

 

[TheSwartz]

I'm super disappointed in what they call "campaign management". Unless they have something in the works that I haven't seen, you may as well forget that entire feature.

Also, we'll have to see how well they will print character sheets, but the on-screen display of character sheets are positively pitiful currently. But if they will let you print on a proper character sheet, then I guess that's cool. But then, only because it's super cheap at Free. HOWEVER, that doesn't include that (I believe) they're saying you have to purchase whatever content you want to use on that player character sheet if it isn't SRD.

I want to love this, but so far, I don't understand how it makes any sense at all to subscribe to DDB or purchase any material on DDB if you already use Fantasy Grounds, which works absolutely perfect at the desktop with a notebook PC at your side to look up all this same information and more.

At best, the $3/mo gives you the only thing unique to DDB, which is to share homebrew material. For which, at this time, is only player created monsters and magic items - not a huge deal IMHO.

I'll ditto others. Disappointing that they are going for a subscription model. Would much rather prefer to pay up front once.

Why am I feeling some Deja Vu from my experience with the release of Sword Coast Legends... super hyped until finally seeing it...

 

[Emirikol_Prime]

Is there some blood curse that causes WotC from doing this correctly? Their handling of digital is borderline offensive.

 

[thewok]

Think I'll just stick with ForgedAnvil.

I don't care about the subscription fee. But I don't want to pay $30 twice for the same book. I don't do digital at the table anyway.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Why am I feeling some Deja Vu from my experience with the release of Sword Coast Legends... super hyped until finally seeing it...

I'm having the opposite reaction. I pre-bought SCL and still haven't played through more than a couple of hours of it. Almost a month into watching the development cycle, after having pre-bought it, I knew it was going to be utter crap. This, I was very skeptical about it and highly critical of it but the devs have proven to me that they're capable and I'm quite happy with how things are developing.