Robert Schwalb releases his version of Warlord

Robert Schwalb, who designed one of my favorite games (Shadow of the Demon Lord), with a version of one of my favorite classes? Sold.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I do wonder if the 14th level ability being made way earlier like 2nd or 3rd then make some of the lesser powers at higher level.

 

[MechaPilot]

If you expect something to have every possible feature imaginable, you'll be disappointed. D&D Beyond is not perfect, but it is very good and saves me a lot of time, and it saves my back. I can go to my games with Dice and my Tablet and cover everything I need to cover, whether it is summned monster stats, spells, rules, etc.... As a DM, it saves me a lot of time and effort. I can see the sheets of the PCs without asking them their perception score, I can look at what spells they can access when considering a puzzle, etc... It is very useful. If ou have no tried it, it is worth a shot.

I don't expect every feature imaginable. However, the program, presumably, already deals with races, subraces, classes, subclasses, weapons, armors, feats, spells and magic items. I would expect to be able to create, type in, and save my own versions of any one of these things and have it flow through as the material from the official books does. If I have to input some classification codes so the program knows to make certain bonuses flow from one spot to another, that's fine, but I expect to be able to input homebrew stuff (or stuff in third-party books I own) and have it flow through to all the appropriate places.

Given how prevalent homebrew is in D&D, with homebrew technically being the most popular setting and us constantly being told to change rules to make things more fun for our table, it seems to me that the ability to support homebrew is a vital function of any D&D assisting program.

 

[Mistwell]

I can't create classes with it and I have to re-buy my books again for use with it?

I wonder why THAT'S not more popular.

Sorry, maybe that's being a little too sarcastic, and maybe I'm kind of piling on. If you enjoy D&D Beyond, then I'm genuinely glad for you. However, it seems the more I hear about it the more it seems like it's actively trying to push me away from being a customer.

The "re-buy books" part is silly, and has been explained extensively. It's not owned by WOTC, they cannot give you a discount for a book you bought from WOTC, they cannot be a company and give it away for free if you bought a book from WOTC, it's a separate service entirely from WOTC and in fact is covered by WOTC's minimum purchase price which they have zero control over.

As for making up your own class, they're adding new features all the time. Right now, you can make up and directly add your own sub-class. However, core classes are a fair bit more complicated than sub-classes, and that feature isn't there yet. I mean, you could probably klooge it with the other house rule tools if you really wanted to, but it's not for that quite yet. That said, it's WAY worth it in my opinion and does a huge number of things. Once you use it will the full functionality it currently has you won't want to ever not be able to use it.

 

[Zardnaar]

The "re-buy books" part is silly, and has been explained extensively. It's not owned by WOTC, they cannot give you a discount for a book you bought from WOTC, they cannot be a company and give it away for free if you bought a book from WOTC, it's a separate service entirely from WOTC and in fact is covered by WOTC's minimum purchase price which they have zero control over.

As for making up your own class, they're adding new features all the time. Right now, you can make up and directly add your own sub-class. However, core classes are a fair bit more complicated than sub-classes, and that feature isn't there yet. I mean, you could probably klooge it with the other house rule tools if you really wanted to, but it's not for that quite yet. That said, it's WAY worth it in my opinion and does a huge number of things. Once you use it will the full functionality it currently has you won't want to ever not be able to use it.

The reason I don't use Beyond is the price and I have already bought the books. I don't mind paying for digital versions but expect them to be cheaper than physical copies since they don't really have to produce anything physical or pay to ship/distribute it. If you have lots of money to waste or only play online it looks a lot better IMHO.

Logically/legally you are 100% right. I'm not going to pay more and get less though. Digital needs to be competitive price wise with Amazon at the very least IMHO.

 

[MechaPilot]

The "re-buy books" part is silly, and has been explained extensively. It's not owned by WOTC, they cannot give you a discount for a book you bought from WOTC, they cannot be a company and give it away for free if you bought a book from WOTC, it's a separate service entirely from WOTC and in fact is covered by WOTC's minimum purchase price which they have zero control over.

I have a limited gaming budget. Heck, I have a limited everything budget. Tell me that I don't have to pay to use material from books I already own and I'll agree there's no re-purchasing of books. If you can't honestly tell me that, then I do effectively have to re-buy the books; maybe for a lower cost than buying another hard copy of the original books, but there's still a reinvestment in content that I already have access to.

And yeah, I've heard all the arguments for why DDB can't give me free or discounted access to material I've already bought. As an accountant and a businesswoman, I get that a company (generally) can't give something for nothing (or below cost). That doesn't change the fact that my having to reinvest in content I already purchased is a disincentive. If I already have the hard copies and I'm used to doing things by hand, this disincentive isn't going to make me more likely to want to try DDB. It's going to make me less likely to want to try it; which is basically the definition of a disincentive. I'm not saying they're at fault for not being able to give free or discounted access to content I've already purchased, but by the same token I'm not giving them a pass on the disincentive that puts before me.

As for making up your own class, they're adding new features all the time. Right now, you can make up and directly add your own sub-class. However, core classes are a fair bit more complicated than sub-classes, and that feature isn't there yet. I mean, you could probably klooge it with the other house rule tools if you really wanted to, but it's not for that quite yet. That said, it's WAY worth it in my opinion and does a huge number of things. Once you use it will the full functionality it currently has you won't want to ever not be able to use it.

If I have to klooge it, I'm probably best continuing to do it by hand. At least then I'll know it's flowing to all the right places. and I won't have to worry about having to use one tool to work around the absence of another. I deal with enough arcane software that I have to double- and triple-check thanks to tax law changes; I'd rather not add complications that don't directly increase the fun of my gaming hobby.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't expect every feature imaginable. However, the program, presumably, already deals with races, subraces, classes, subclasses, weapons, armors, feats, spells and magic items. I would expect to be able to create, type in, and save my own versions of any one of these things and have it flow through as the material from the official books does. If I have to input some classification codes so the program knows to make certain bonuses flow from one spot to another, that's fine, but I expect to be able to input homebrew stuff (or stuff in third-party books I own) and have it flow through to all the appropriate places.

Given how prevalent homebrew is in D&D, with homebrew technically being the most popular setting and us constantly being told to change rules to make things more fun for our table, it seems to me that the ability to support homebrew is a vital function of any D&D assisting program.

So far the only thing in your list that you can't create is a class. You can input all the other things in your list. If you really wanted to, if you were running a storm sorcerer but didn't want to pay for the class then you could input the subclass yourself. Once you know how to use snippets, you can make the final DC of an ability show up on the character sheet already calculated or show the bonus of the relevant ability. I haven't figured out how to do everything with homebrew, but it seems to be quite functional for a variety of homebrew other than a base class.

 

[cbwjm]

The reason I don't use Beyond is the price and I have already bought the books. I don't mind paying for digital versions but expect them to be cheaper than physical copies since they don't really have to produce anything physical or pay to ship/distribute it. If you have lots of money to waste or only play online it looks a lot better IMHO.

Logically/legally you are 100% right. I'm not going to pay more and get less though. Digital needs to be competitive price wise with Amazon at the very least IMHO.

If you've tried the free content and think that DnDbeyond is worthwhile to use then wait for a sale. I can't recall how big the discount was but I unlocked a load of content when everything was on sale. For some books I just purchased subclasses and races since I only really wanted the options for character building. If you aren't too impressed by the character sheet then I'd say keep doing what you're doing. I like DnDbeyond but I'd be just as comfortable using a sheet of paper for my character sheet.

 

[Guest 6801328]

D&D Beyond is not "crappy".

I wouldn't know, I've never used it.

(Apparently it isn't obvious that I've just been joking around in this thread. Oh, come to think of it, that really wasn't obvious to @jgsugden...he seems to have blocked me! My bad: the first rule of warlord threads is you NEVER joke around in warlord threads.)

 

[Zardnaar]

If you've tried the free content and think that DnDbeyond is worthwhile to use then wait for a sale. I can't recall how big the discount was but I unlocked a load of content when everything was on sale. For some books I just purchased subclasses and races since I only really wanted the options for character building. If you aren't too impressed by the character sheet then I'd say keep doing what you're doing. I like DnDbeyond but I'd be just as comfortable using a sheet of paper for my character sheet.

IDK I don't play online it kind of defeats the old hang around with friends, eat crap food and have a few beers aspect of D&D. If I do online gaming its things like Stellaris or Europa Universalis IV.

 

[SkidAce]

I wouldn't know, I've never used it.

(Apparently it isn't obvious that I've just been joking around in this thread. Oh, come to think of it, that really wasn't obvious to @jgsugden...he seems to have blocked me! My bad: the first rule of warlord threads is you NEVER joke around in warlord threads.)

Fair enough...