D&D 5E Are You Planning on Subscribing to D&D Beyond

[Charles Rampant]

I'll be buying the core books - and perhaps Volo's - in the first week, and subscribing to Heroic. I run for three groups, and my wife has already enjoyed using it to run her LMoP Elf Wizard, a class that was giving her trouble as a total newcomer, because of having to read each card every turn. The app has been a boon for her, and I also can admit to just liking the idea of having everyone working together in the campaign manager, albeit the main functionality of that isn't there yet.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I dont understand how 5e really needs it. We hardly even use the PHB during play. The only people who use the PhB at the table are the spell casters.

So about 75% of players then?

Sent from my VS987 using EN World mobile app

 

[CydKnight]

I plan to consider it but admit to knowing little about the tool other than it is a way to access published resources electronically. It seems like if you were to use such a thing, the best way would be to jump all in and cast the pencil-and-paper method to the curb. Is this the way the majority sees using D&D Beyond effectively?

 

[Waterbizkit]

My group doesn't meet often enough at the moment to make any extra expenditure on my part worth it at the moment.

Now, I recently made a Roll20 account in an effort to see if meeting via a VTT will help us get around the scheduling issues. If we start meeting regularly online, If Roll20 handles the way we need it to and if DDB ends up with any kind of integration with Roll20 and it works... then I might consider it. But that's a lot of "ifs".

So we'll see.

 

[JonnyP71]

I find the exact opposite. Having six books plus notes, plus maps, plus minis, plus a hundred odd dice (and in 5e, you need that many, especially as a DM), all at the table, and all needed to flip through constantly to reference, gets in the way and having it all on a notebook in front of me minus all that junk, is far faster and easier.

6 Books to each game??? I guess it all depends on the type of game you want to run, when I DM I usually only need to have the adventure and associated notes actually on the table. I keep my PHB and MM beside it, and maybe refer to them once or twice in a 6 hour session. We don't use battlemaps, so no need for lots of those, or lots of minis - just a whiteboard, a couple of pens and 1 mini per PC. My players have 1 PHB on the table that they share around.

There's no need to keep looking up rules when playing 5E.. just ensure the DM knows the general mechanics and go with the flow!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't know yet. Probably not on initial release because my two current Curse of Strahd campaigns are still going and I doubt I'd want to transfer all my player's PCs and stuff over to it. I'd rather wait for a fresh campaign so that my new players could start with their characters in the system from the beginning so they can learn how DDB works as they go.

That being said... paying a subscription doesn't bother me. I happily paid for a D&D Insider subscription the entire length I was running 4E games because the character and monster builders were fantastic, and I still use and pull from the stack of 4E adventures I got through the online Dungeon Magazine for my 5E games.

Buying the books "again" also doesn't bother me, because I haven't been buying any other D&D books since barely any have been released. That was why I made my joke way back earlier in the other DDB thread. People are complaining that they don't want to have to buy the books "again" even though they would actually use the material in this new format... and yet never seemed to have problems spending HUNDREDS of more dollars buying 3E or 4E books each and every month, only to maybe use one or two things from them (if any at all). Sure, that material was "new"... but if you don't actually USE it, whether or not its new or old doesn't matter. Old material that I will actually use in a new and easier way is much more useful than new material that does nothing but sit on a shelf collecting dust.

The question for me then becomes whether the format with which I receive this old material is useful to me. And for that, I'll want to see what DDB produces first before I buy. Will it produce and print character sheet styles I'll actually like? How wieldy or unwieldy will spell lists and spell description sheets be for any potential spellcaster PCs? How efficient will encounter builders be, and will I be able to print various monster statblocks together on single sheets of paper? These are all things I currently do myself in Microsoft Word and Excel, and my format works pretty well. DDB will need to be at least on par with what I already have, and hopefully be faster to produce. At the end of the day, my tables are still paper-based players, so anything in DDB has to be able to be printed out from the system and how clean, concise and efficient those pages are will be what really determines whether or not I subscribe to it.

 

[Raith5]

So about 75% of players then?

Sent from my VS987 using EN World mobile app

OK, with 5e should have been more specific. As this is somewhat of running joke in our party because the bard monopolizes the PhB, as the cleric and Paladin mostly use the same cures and smites respectively.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

6 Books to each game???

PHB, MM, DMG, SCAG, Volo's, SKT.

There's no need to keep looking up rules when playing 5E.. just ensure the DM knows the general mechanics and go with the flow!

Why even play using a system when you're just going to ignore it anyway?

 

[Satyrn]

I plan to consider it but admit to knowing little about the tool other than it is a way to access published resources electronically. It seems like if you were to use such a thing, the best way would be to jump all in and cast the pencil-and-paper method to the curb. Is this the way the majority sees using D&D Beyond effectively?

I'm seeing it as a book-replacement, not a character sheet replacement (even though it is also a character sheet, I'm unlikely to use it)

And if the campaign management tools are strong enough, I would use it for typing up my notes instead of Word.

 

[Guest 6801718]

No, as I don't really need digital tools for D&D right now. I'm playing and not running anything. With form fillable pdfs, spell card decks and a phb, I don't really need anything special. Creating or leveling a character is pretty easy. Even when I DM, I may use a digital tool to print out the monster stat blocks or create a map. I still print my campaign materials though. I just track monster damage on the printed out stat blocks and they are handy scratch paper. I find it quicker for me to flip through a paper or two rather than going through tabs or open documents on a laptop or tablet.

The other reason I wouldn't subscribe is that there are already other digital tools out there for character or campaign management and they're free. So I don't really need to subscribe to Beyond or purchase digital version of the books. Beyond is certainly pretty reasonable with the subscription fees, so I have no issue there. I just use digital so infrequently that it doesn't make sense to subscribe to something when I can just use a free version elsewhere, the few times I may want to use it.