D&D 5E Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts Joins D&D Beyond

Tome of Beasts is the latest third party book to appear on D&D Beyond. The book, first published by Kobold Press in 2016, contains over 400 monsters for D&D 5E.

You can pick it up on DDB for $39.99.

Whether you need dungeon vermin or world-shaking villains, Tome of Beasts 1 has it. This book presents foes suitable for any campaign setting—from tiny drakes and peculiar spiders to demon lords and ancient dragons.

These monsters have been designed so that GMs can use them in their favorite settings for fantasy adventure. This monstrous tome contains:

• More than 400 new monsters for use with the D&D Beyond Encounters tool.
• Updated with errata, streamlined mechanics, and new monster art from the original Tome of Beasts.
• Expansive tables that organize creatures by challenge rating, creature type, and terrain.[/callout[

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, I have a master subscription and don't get an automatic discount.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

Isn't the discount for owning the Legendary bundle? At least that's what Beyond keeps telling me...

Maybe you’re right, but I own that too and still no discount for any of the 3PP.

 

[bedir than]

Maybe you’re right, but I own that too and still no discount for any of the 3PP.

It's probably a bit complex for their point of sale to give you a discount only on WotC's take of the price. That would also reveal the contract for the 3pp and those 3pp don't want the contract exposed, nor to have their profits minimized by a decision they don't control.

 

[Reynard]

It's probably a bit complex for their point of sale to give you a discount only on WotC's take of the price. That would also reveal the contract for the 3pp and those 3pp don't want the contract exposed, nor to have their profits minimized by a decision they don't control.

It is going to be up to Kobold to offer discounts, which will come out of their end. Discounts are marketing. Why would WotC pay for Kobold's marketing?

 

[bedir than]

It is going to be up to Kobold to offer discounts, which will come out of their end. Discounts are marketing. Why would WotC pay for Kobold's marketing?

Why would Kobold be able to tell WotC what discount WotC should have on WotC products? The discount right now is a Spring Sale, not a KP only sale.

 

[MNblockhead]

Well, I already own ToB and have gotten a lot of use out of it. It is a very good beastiary. I bought it again for DDB. Very nice to have ToB monsters show up when searching and filtering the monster list and to be able to drop tokens for ToB monsters onto DDB Maps.

 

[Reynard]

Why would Kobold be able to tell WotC what discount WotC should have on WotC products? The discount right now is a Spring Sale, not a KP only sale.

Tome of Beasts is not a WotC product.

 

[bedir than]

Tome of Beasts is not a WotC product.

Correct. This isn't contested.

The reason the WotC sale doesn't include non-WotC products is because it would either reveal the share of revenue each side gets from the arrangement or force 3pp to take a discount that they have no control over. It's a WotC sale.

 

[Reynard]

Correct. This isn't contested.

The reason the WotC sale doesn't include non-WotC products is because it would either reveal the share of revenue each side gets from the arrangement or force 3pp to take a discount that they have no control over. It's a WotC sale.

I thought the original question was why the "Legendary bundle" discount did not apply to ToB?

Anyway, I think our wires were crossed and we agree: there is not discount on ToB because it isn't a WotC book.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

It is going to be up to Kobold to offer discounts, which will come out of their end. Discounts are marketing. Why would WotC pay for Kobold's marketing?

How do you know that? WotC discounting process is not necessarily written in stone. If they wanted to, they could write into their agreement with a partner that all Legendary or Master subscribers will get a discount and perhaps they would split the value of that discount with the seller. Or they could write into their contract that offering that discount is a price of being on there. They could write any contract they want and if the partner doesn't like it, they just don't participate. Not sure how you could know absolutely who pays for what. I don't think we can know what a sale contract looks like. I mean, Amazon discounts products all the time that are not Amazon-brand products. I'm a self-published author who has been listed on Amazon for 24 years and sometimes they discount the selling price of my book, and they don't even bother telling me. They just do it, and it's out of my hands. They discount it because they want to increase sales even if it reduces the profit that they make per sale. Gross sales profit might mean more to them than volume. And i think that's especially true for digital products. They can add a discount at any time and bump sales without having to increase warehousing.