Forgotten Realms: Astarion's Book of Hungers - First Impressions

Astarion's Book of Hungers probably doesn't contain enough content to justify its $15 price tag unless a player is absolutely set on playing a dhampir or a vampire-adjacent character in their D&D campaign. Released today alongside the wide release of the new Forgotten Realms books, Astarion's Book of Hungers features a new species (the dhampir, receiving some minor adjustments from its last appearance in Von Richten's Guide to Ravenloft), three new backgrounds, and a collection of vampire-themed feats. Also included in the set are a handful of new monster statblocks and three stripped-down adventures in the vein of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, all of which are set in the Rat's Run Tavern and are themed around Astarion's extended vampire spawn family.

The new adventure content is also the first of a new kind of product for Dungeons & Dragons - digital "DLC" tied to the release of a physical product. Astarion's Book of Hungers is one of three DLC for the new Forgotten Realms books and can be purchased either via a bundle with the Forgotten Realms books or individually for $15. The price point is where I'm really struggling with this content. Based on the $60 price point of Heroes of Faerun and the 194-page count, one would expect this DLC to have around 50 pages of content in it. It's hard to get an exact page count on this since it's digital, but it certainly feels a lot skinnier than that.

The content itself isn't disappointing - the dhampir contains some minor updates from its last iteration to make the lineage into a standard species. Some of the feats could also be combined to create either a flavorful vampire aspirant or a holy vampire slayer. The new monsters are interesting, especially the new devils that are tied to Mephistopheles. However, I really expected a bit more from this DLC. At the very least, we could have gotten a history of Astarion himself, especially as he's the central character of the book. I suppose Wizards is banking on anyone who purchased this book to have already played through Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm just stunned that there's not more of a focus on Astarion outside of a couple of quick adventures in which players are expected to save him from his vampire kin.

I've expected more digital-exclusive paid content on D&D Beyond for a long while, at least since Hasbro executives complained that D&D was "undermonetized." The key to these releases is to find the right price point and the right amount of content. To be blunt - Astarion's Book of Hungers isn't it. Maybe if the price were lower or if there was more content, this would feel less like a cash grab and more like true add-on content. While I don't mind what we got, I feel like the price point dictated more. Maybe the other DLCs will be more robust, but Astarion's Book of Hungers fell short.

 

[mamba]

ou are paying a lot more money proportionally for these smaller items than you are for the full-sized books because the prices for both are beginning at like $10 for labor (which is the same regardless of product size), and then the individual mechanical bits on top of them creeping the rest of the price up.

Except that the labor is probably more in the $0.01 range in reality... Selling 10s of thousands of copies tends to make that one time labor cost very negligeable...

EDIT: the $0.01 is for setting up the individual monster, for these books they had to also produce the actual content. The same principle applies however, I doubt the cost is more then $1 to $2 on their end.

 

[Parmandur]

agreed, I just think doing this comparison is missing the mark in the first place. The real comparison is against other digital products with that number of pages, not against a theoretical print product and then taking 60% of its hypothetical price.

In general, in TTRPG circles, those are underpriced.

 

[Parmandur]

As I was reading through the thread, this was exactly my thought and I'm glad to see someone else had the same idea!

Pretty much everything ever sold 'a la carte' on DDB was way more expensive individually than it "should" have been if one divided up the full-price item into its constituent parts. You basically were paying for the labor of getting the item written, designed, printed and/or programmed into DDB rather than the item itself... which is why the more you bought all at once the cheaper they all became as parts of a price.

The same way you might pay $5 for a one-scoop ice cream cone at an ice cream shoppe, but only $5.50 for a two-scoop or $6 for a three-scoop. The second and third prices would imply to us that a scoop of ice cream is only worth .50 cents... which means the first one-scoop price should have started at .50 cents by that argument. But in truth you are actually playing that extra $4.50 for the labor of making the ice cream in the first place and getting the ice cream served to you, and that set price occurs regardless of the size you ordered.

These smaller DLCs and game components seem to be following a similar track. You are paying a lot more money proportionally for these smaller items than you are for the full-sized books because the prices for both are beginning at like $10 for labor (which is the same regardless of product size), and then the individual mechanical bits on top of them creeping the rest of the price up.

(All numbers are made up purely for example and explanation, not due to any known information.)

And isn't new: the OG AD&D PHb was like $48 adjusted, as opposed to $28 for White Plume Mountain...$28 for the 12 page version.

 

[Parmandur]

Except that the labor is probably more in the $0.01 range in reality... Selling 10s of thousands of copies tends to make that one time labor cost very negligeable...

EDIT: the $0.01 is for setting up the individual monster, for these books they had to also produce the actual content. The same principle applies however, I doubt the cost is more then $1 to $2 on their end.

Doubtful.

 

[mamba]

In general, in TTRPG circles, those are underpriced.

the books maybe, digital, a lot less sure

 

[mamba]

Doubtful.

not all that much, if Kobold Press can sell 32 digital pages for $5 and 64 for $10, then WotC can easily do so too. Given their volume they would still make a killing

 

[TravDoc42]

The Monsters are my favorite part. Between the Vamps in here and the ones in the MM, we now have vampire enemies for CRs:

15 - Umbral Lord
14 - Infernalist
13 - Vampire
10 - Warden
8 - Nightbringer
5 - Spawn
3 - Familiar

More than enough to run an entire campaign of Vampire villains and have something for every tier of play.

As someone who keeps semi-accidentally running vampire campaigns, I am very satisfied with 2024!5e's amount of vampiric baddies!

I also love the two devils presented here!! Any more planar critters is always a positive for me!

 

[DEFCON 1]

not all that much, if Kobold Press can sell 32 digital pages for $5 and 64 for $10, then WotC can easily do so too. Given their volume they would still make a killing

Kobold Press doesn't sell at that price because they can... they sell at that price because they have to. Few people would buy the products otherwise because that's just the reality for most non-WotC 3rd party sellers.

All of these companies sell their product at the price for which the market would bear for them. If Kobold could price their products higher, they would. No one is selling their products out of the goodness of their heart by discounting everything just to be nice.

WotC charges what they do because the market tells them people will pay for it. And that includes the new Asterion product at $15. There will be plenty of people who won't care it is only $15 and buy it no questions asked. Especially those people who play D&D so often that they've known for years if not decades that the amount of worth they've gotten out of their games has covered the costs of these D&D products they've bought hundreds of times over. So throwing an extra $15 into the pot is a drop in the bucket for what they've already gotten out of the game.

If and when WotC's sales slow down on this Asterion product at some point in the future... then they'll drop the price or put it on sale to help juice the buys. That's how these things always go. So if someone wants this product but not at the $15 price point... they can just wait a while and see if it eventually will drop.

 

[TheSword]

It’s the law of supply and demand folks.
If you accept the price then buy it, but recognize that no one forced you to do that.

If you don’t accept the price then don’t buy it and tell WotC that’s why you didn’t. They’ll then make a decision about whether it’s worth doing at a lower price in the future. Of course if it sells like hotcakes then they probably won’t.

I suspect that they are approaching this as a niche product. As an experiment. With little idea how popular it will be. It’s always easier to reduce the price later on with a discount or bundle. It’s much much harder to put prices up from a precedent - which is kind of what has been discussed in the last few pages.

It will inevitably end up in a bargain bin somewhere so I wouldn’t sweat it.

 

[mamba]

Kobold Press doesn't sell at that price because they can... they sell at that price because they have to. Few people would buy the products otherwise because that's just the reality for most non-WotC 3rd party sellers.

they still make a profit doing so however. Which is my point, the $15 WotC charges for 32 digital pages is way overpriced. They do so because they can afford to, not because it is an accurate reflection of their cost

All of these companies sell their product at the price for which the market would bear for them.

which is what I was saying, I am not the one claiming that this is a good price for what you get in return, I am arguing that it is not

WotC is basically charging 3 times as much as anyone else for this because they can