D&D 5E D&D Beyond: No More À La Carte Purchases But US Customers Can Buy Physical Books

WotC has announced some changes to D&D Beyond's marketplace. These include physical products (for US customers), the removal of à la carte purchases, and various navigational changes.

You can no longer buy individual feats, subclasses, etc. -- you'll need to buy the whole book. The full list of changes includes:

• US shoppers can now buy physical books
• More info on product listings, including previews
• UI improvements to makee finding your purchased content and redeeming keys easier
• No more à la carte purchases (though your previous ones still count)

 

[humble minion]

I'm not a D&D Beyond guy myself, but three of the players in my Dragonlance campaign use it for building/tracking their PCs, and they're all annoyed enough about this that they're looking to move to another platform. Having to shell out $ for the entire SotDQ book on DDB just to access a single feat (especially when they're actually playing in the game so won't be able to read most of the book or risk spoilers!) has browned them off something serious.

Just one data point.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah, the character sheet print outs from DDB really do suck. I think it was a poor decision to try to fit everything into paper character-sheet design from the PHB.

I agree. Do you know what makes for a better character sheet? The MONSTER stat-block. Oddly enough, I don't like it very much for monsters!

I honestly don't think that it would take much to make the font bigger, fit everything (other than spells) on one sheet of paper. I think that, because I've done it!

Here's an example of what one of my homemade characters looks like. It all fits on one page, you can read it, and it tells you about everything you can do. (This one might have some playtest stuff in it, and it might have a few minor house-rules):

Spoiler: Branwen

 

[mamba]

I'm not a D&D Beyond guy myself, but three of the players in my Dragonlance campaign use it for building/tracking their PCs, and they're all annoyed enough about this that they're looking to move to another platform. Having to shell out $ for the entire SotDQ book on DDB just to access a single feat (especially when they're actually playing in the game so won't be able to read most of the book or risk spoilers!) has browned them off something serious.

Just one data point.

first of all, it should be sufficient for one of them to own the book and share it, or is no one subscribing to DDB? Second, don't they own the stuff already, if so they should still be able to use it.

I can see being annoyed for the future, but it should not cause immediate issues

 

[Umbran]

yes, the keys and ownership stays in place, there just cannot be any new owners any more

Less "cannot" and more "probably won't".

There is nothing stopping them from continuing to sell or broadening access to legacy content. That's just a business decision, not a legal or technical issue.

 

[Clint_L]

Note that you can't share content unless you have a master tier subscription. Then, you create a campaign and can share your content with anyone in the campaign, deciding exactly how much to share. You can have up to 5 campaigns going at once, with up to 12 separate accounts linked. So effectively, you can share with up to 60 people at a time. I often come close to maxing this out, since our practice at D&D Club is for me to make a campaign for each group precisely so they can all access DnDBeyond. This is working as intended, and is presumably why WotC supports school clubs.

So that's a great deal for large groups, but not much use to anyone who doesn't want or need a master tier subscription (6 bucks a month).

I will note that, as someone who spent years lending books out and then having to track them down, etc. (sometimes even replacing them), sharing via DDB is infinitely more practical, efficient, and inexpensive.

Edit: you can have up to 5 campaigns going at once that support account sharing. I'm not sure how many campaigns you can have going at once overall; I don't know if there is a limit. I've personally had eight active campaigns going at the same time, five of them supported.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Note that you can't share content unless you have a master tier subscription. Then, you create a campaign and can share your content with anyone in the campaign, deciding exactly how much to share. You can have up to 5 campaigns going at once, with up to 12 separate accounts linked. So effectively, you can share with up to 60 people at a time. I often come close to maxing this out, since our practice at D&D Club is for me to make a campaign for each group precisely so they can all access DnDBeyond. This is working as intended, and is presumably why WotC supports school clubs.

So that's a great deal for large groups, but not much use to anyone who doesn't want or need a master tier subscription (6 bucks a month).

I will note that, as someone who spent years lending books out and then having to track them down, etc. (sometimes even replacing them), sharing via DDB is infinitely more practical, efficient, and inexpensive.

Edit: you can have up to 5 campaigns going at once that support account sharing. I'm not sure how many campaigns you can have going at once overall; I don't know if there is a limit. I've personally had eight active campaigns going at the same time, five of them supported.

I've run into these same issues as well. I had to recently get people to shuffle between campaigns to make sure everyone who wanted to play could -- if you have the same people in multiple campaigns, it still counts against the 12 accounts/campaign limit.

Unless everyone has purchased the content on their own (which I'm sure WotC would prefer), there's not much value in those campaigns beyond the five campaign limit, which we immediately discovered when people wanted to make new characters for our Radiant Citadel game.

 

[Clint_L]

Unless everyone has purchased the content on their own (which I'm sure WotC would prefer), there's not much value in those campaigns beyond the five campaign limit, which we immediately discovered when people wanted to make new characters for our Radiant Citadel game.

The value there is for the DM (me). DDB is how I organize my combat encounters and a ton of other stuff. I wind up activating and deactivating campaigns as needed.

 

[Faolyn]

I agree. Do you know what makes for a better character sheet? The MONSTER stat-block. Oddly enough, I don't like it very much for monsters!

I always make my own character sheets--the official ones never have enough for me--and I've found that even just splitting everything into traits, actions, bonus actions, and reactions like the way the monster blocks do makes everything so much easier to use.

 

[GreyLord]

Edit: you can have up to 5 campaigns going at once that support account sharing. I'm not sure how many campaigns you can have going at once overall; I don't know if there is a limit. I've personally had eight active campaigns going at the same time, five of them supported.

I THOUGHT I played a lot.

5 Campaigns all going on at once!!!!

Wow.

I already spend a ton of time and that is with being part of 3 campaigns currently (one just started though).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The value there is for the DM (me). DDB is how I organize my combat encounters and a ton of other stuff. I wind up activating and deactivating campaigns as needed.

Ah, I do nothing DM-facing with the campaign feature. I guess I should noodle around with it, especially for my Radiant Citadel game, since I own that on DDB as well.