D&D Beyond Pricing Released

[McNinja]

D&D Beyond has released it's pricing structure. Be aware that you do (somehow) receive offline access to the book you purchase via DNDB.

The announcement:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/pricing-details

FAQ for the pricing:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d...icing-purchase

Announcement forum post:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d...for-d-d-beyond

Comments on the pricing:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d...ions-costs-and

How their subscriptions work:
http://www.dndbeyond.com/full-subscr...for-d-d-beyond

Associated thread:
http://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-...for-d-d-beyond

It personally don't like it one bit. My issues are:
- books purchases are absurd if you already own the books.
- ads still show on other parts of the site if you buy books. They don't show on the specific content you buy.
- only a subscription removes ads and removes the arbitrary limit on created characters.
- the costs of buying individual races, items, feats, or spells is steep.

[Hooligan]

It's like they tried to make up for being late to the party by defecating in a trash can and calling it a present.

[Blacky the Blackball]

The pricing is utterly ridiculous.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were providing something like an improved Roll20, but from what I can see they've just got searchable e-books and a character builder. And you even have to pay extra for the e-book content!

There's nothing on there that is worth paying anything for, assuming you have the physical books. And if you don't already have the physical books the prices are set high enough that you might as well just buy the physical books.

If they want the service to be a replacement for the books, they need to price it a lot lower. And if they want it to be an addition to the books that's actually worth paying extra for they need to give it a much better feature set.

As it stands, it's not something I'd pay a penny for - never mind the ridiculous prices they're asking for e-book access.

[Anonymouswizard]

But they still won't put pdfs on DriveThruRPG/DMsGuild, where everybody and their mum wants them? Even if they were still those jerks that charge £20 for ebooks it would be less annoying (and let's be honest, they're already charging more for less of a service).

Honestly, the reason I like pdfs is that I can stick them all on a memory stick and carry them without breaking my back, and then use them when not connected to the internet (which isn't completely uncommon), or just print out the sections I need. This is exactly the opposite of what most people I know want from them (which is....... official pdfs on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow/DMsGuild).

[McNinja]

But they still won't put pdfs on DriveThruRPG/DMsGuild, where everybody and their mum wants them? Even if they were still those jerks that charge £20 for ebooks it would be less annoying (and let's be honest, they're already charging more for less of a service).

Honestly, the reason I like pdfs is that I can stick them all on a memory stick and carry them without breaking my back, and then use them when not connected to the internet (which isn't completely uncommon), or just print out the sections I need. This is exactly the opposite of what most people I know want from them (which is....... official pdfs on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow/DMsGuild).

I'll have to add this to the OP since the DNDB mods don't seem to think this is important:

You do get offline access to the books you buy. They are not in an ebook or pdf format, but you do get offline access.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'll have to add this to the OP since the DNDB mods don't seem to think this is important:

You do get offline access to the books you buy. They are not in an ebook or pdf format, but you do get offline access.

The question is, can I stick them on a USB stick? Because if not I have to go online to get them, which defeats the point of being able to use them offline...

[McNinja]

The question is, can I stick them on a USB stick? Because if not I have to go online to get them, which defeats the point of being able to use them offline...

Honestly I have no idea. I'd assume you'd be able to download the tool to your phone, because the compendium is 100% proprietary. The FAQ doesn't make much of an attempt to explain it.

[jaappleton]

If I get a subscription, do I get access to all the content, so long as my subscription is active?

As in, can I forgo purchasing the books and just subscribe?

[McNinja]

If I get a subscription, do I get access to all the content, so long as my subscription is active?

As in, can I forgo purchasing the books and just subscribe?

Nope. All a subscription gets you is:
- removes ads
- removes the limit on the character creator
- allows you to share your stuff with others

Players can get the most out their D&D Beyond experience by signing up for one of two subscription tiers:

The Hero Tier at $2.99/ month is intended primarily for players. It removes ads on the site, allows players to create an unlimited number of characters, and add publicly-shared homebrew content to your collection to use within the toolset.

The Master Tier at $5.99/ month is intended primarily for Dungeon Masters and full groups. It grants all the benefits of the Hero Tier, and also allows a DM to share all her unlocked official content with other players within a campaign - so content does not have to be unlocked by every player.

[McNinja]

Added the FAQ to the OP.

Also, there is a difference between "compendium only" and "full sourcebook" content. It was added a bit ago to the FAQ.

The compendium content includes the full pages of content that you can read through - in essence all of the content of the physical book. Think of it like an online browsable version of the Player's Handbook.

It does NOT include digital assets that can be used with the character creator.

For example, if you purchase, PHB Compendium Content, you have the full Player's Handbook that you can read, reference and search through using D&D Beyond. However, you would not unlock the ability to use the additional subraces, subclasses, spells, feats etc for use in the character creator.

If you should later decide that you would like the digital assets as well, you can upgrade to the full Player's Handbook by paying the difference.

[Anonymouswizard]

Reading the FAQ, and $29.99 is the lowest price they've seen for a digital sourcebook? That's interesting, it's actually relatively hard to find ones so expensive, they generally seem to be about $19.99. Quite a few down at $14.99 and $9.99 as well, have they actually ever browsed DriveThruRPG? (Just going through it now I'll pull out the Star Trek Adventures core rules, Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook, Vampire the Requiem 2e, The Dresden Files: Your Story, and the Rocket age core rulebook as evidence that plenty of core rulebooks are available for less as digital books [although those also often cost $29.99, e.g. the Dr Who RPG, Exalted 3e, and the oWoD 20ths], and supplements are generally cheaper.)

Oh, and the hints seem to be no 'stick on a memory stick and go' option. Seriously, all I want is a pdf I can carry in my pocket. But not, I have to use a mobile app (which I hate).

Oh god, the 'pay three times for the sourcebook' hint turned out to be true. Say, anybody remember how a lot of companies are doing Bits and Mortar and other ways to get free pdfs with your physical book?

[jaappleton]

Beyond is such a damn joke if these are the price points. Seriously, **** this thing.

[Easy_Lee]

From my experiences with D&D Online, I had a feeling something like this might happen. Subscriptions that don't even grant you access, having to pay for the same thing multiple times, arbitrarily limited character slots, it's the same thing all over again.

I don't know what WotC's deal is. I don't know if it's corporate greed or just seriously outdated ideas about pricing. Maybe they're all still living back in the eighties when online-anything was expensive and fantasy gamers took what they could get and were grateful for it. I can't say.

But what I can say is that for those prices, I'd just write everything up myself. Writing relevant rules and features down in a journal is faster access and better for memory, anyway.

[Discord]

I blame Hasbro

[mgshamster]

Pricing is comparable to their leading competitor: Paizo.

Look at HeroLab, the primary competitor for D&D Beyond.

Adventure pricing is $25, for both HeroLab PF and D&D Beyond. PF Core books are $13-35 each, but considering there's 9 rule book add-ons, 7 essential rule books, and the two core books (CRB + B1), it's competitive.

PF CRB: $25 (or $35 plus access to other books, with prices as low as $13/splat book)
D&D PHB: $30 (discounted to $20 for week 1, no increased cost to access other books).

Looking at the HeroLab price guide, all their starting books for all of their games are $25 for the core book, plus some more to access full packages available.

This is the market research they did. They looked at their primary competitor and no further.

[Anonymouswizard]

*good analysis of likely source for pricing*

This is the market research they did. They looked at their primary competitor and no further.

How silly of me to look at a site dedicated to selling pdfs from all companies to determine the lowest price I've seen for a source book (~$5, after excluding free and PWYW, although I suspect if I dug further I could find $2 because I remember it). I should have just looked at one company that happens to be my biggest competitor.

This is just insane. I'd rather pay £15/$20 for the core rulebook for The Dark Eye/DSA in pdf format. Heck, even if they charged $30 dollars for that book I'd still be getting more game for my money.

Oh, and even though I don't own it, I do know that the PF CRB includes the GM's stuff as well. I don't own it because I don't want it.

Every time WotC seems to prove they have competent people on their team I see the evidence of people not doing their research and despair anew.

[Tetrasodium]

I'll have to add this to the OP since the DNDB mods don't seem to think this is important:

You do get offline access to the books you buy. They are not in an ebook or pdf format, but you do get offline access.

WotC can't disintegrate your dead tree format book when they get bored of yet another too late digital thing & dump it too.

[mgshamster]

How silly of me to look at a site dedicated to selling pdfs from all companies to determine the lowest price I've seen for a source book (~$5, after excluding free and PWYW, although I suspect if I dug further I could find $2 because I remember it). I should have just looked at one company that happens to be my biggest competitor.

Ha! Yeah. :)

Our mistake was looking at PDFs for market comparison. WotC is not selling PDFs. They're selling a product competing with HeroLab - a character generators program. So that's the pricing they're trying to be competitive with.

I bet that their internal logic is: "Sure, we're back little pricier than PF on HL, but we have fewer books so the over all cost is cheaper."

I also predict that they're going to turn D&D Beyond into a competitor for Roll20 in the future. Otherwise, what's the point of including the adventures in the program? If they did that, the price would be more in line with the true value.

[Matrix_Walker]

Asking people to pay that much for books they probably already own in print is a recipe for disaster. This is going to be a major fail for them.

[mgshamster]

Asking people to pay that much for books they probably already own in print is a recipe for disaster. This is going to be a major fail for them.

People said the same thing about HeroLab when it came out. They're still going strong.

I predict this will work out just fine. May have to adjust the price in the future, but I find it unlikely that they'll do so. 5e has a large enough base that it will still be profitable for them.

[Anonymouswizard]

Ha! Yeah. :)

Our mistake was looking at PDFs for market comparison. WotC is not selling PDFs. They're selling a product competing with HeroLab - a character generators program. So that's the pricing they're trying to be competitive with.

The thing is, that's not what they're telling us they're selling. Looking at it I can see that this is what they're selling, but from what they've written we're getting a super-SRD with attached character builder, while HeroLab is primarily a character builder.

I bet that their internal logic is: "Sure, we're back little pricier than PF on HL, but we have fewer books so the over all cost is cheaper."

Sure, but looking at HeroLab it's something I'm much more likely to buy. I can get a lot more out of it for only $5 extra at time of purchase (... of course I'm getting the authoring kit first, it allows me to use it for games like Victoriana who don't have this service).

Actually, I'm getting the free version of HeroLab to try it out, it includes Fate Core. Plus the Pathfinder beginner box, but I'm more interested in Fate. I've been looking for a good way to generate electronic Fate characters, especially NPCs.

I also predict that they're going to turn D&D Beyond into a competitor for Roll20 in the future. Otherwise, what's the point of including the adventures in the program? If they did that, the price would be more in line with the true value.

I mean, I suspect the current reason for the adventures is 'superSRD', but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Asking people to pay that much for books they probably already own in print is a recipe for disaster. This is going to be a major fail for them.

Honestly, I suspect even a short term 'send us a picture of your face, book, and receipt and we'll give you a free copy, only valid for one month' promotion would go a long way towards easing the resentment I can feel coming. If this even matters long term (because honestly, there's going to be 5 different copies of each PhB subclass as 'homebrew' within a week). It'll depend on how easy adding homebrew is.

[Hypersmith]

Nope. All a subscription gets you is:
- removes ads
- removes the limit on the character creator
- allows you to share your stuff with others

You can't even share without a sub? lol, well I'm not even attracted to this then. Shame, I thought it would turn out well.

[Hooligan]

The question I'll always ask myself is:
What does this give me that Roll20 doesn't provide for free?

[Pex]

Bah!

In my day I had to lug my Player's Handbook up hill both ways. Tablets? Ptooey. We used actual paper character sheets that would get stained by soda and greasy fingers and pencils that would run out of eraser before you know it. You kids have it too easy.

[Gwalchavad]

This is interesting - I've kind of been waiting for the DndBeyond topic to be brought up here to get a good view of what the reaction would be outside of the beta echo chamber. It is - well, pretty much exactly what I thought it would be.

A few things - even though Wizards has slapped their name all over the product in their press releases, DndBeyond isn't actually Wizards - it's actually a web company called Curse who are licensing D&D 5e from Wizards.

If all you want are pdf or kindle style digital books, yeah, this sucks and Wizards really hasn't "moved into the 21st century" like their marketing would have you believe. That said, if all you want is the info in the books available in a digital format, the prices aren't *too* bad - the compendium content is $20 for the corebooks, which is about the price point I'd see Wizards trying sell pdfs for if they could get away with it.

If you want to use the character or homebrew generators (and the hopefully forthcoming DM tools such as encounter builders and so on), that's where the $30/book hits you. And yeah, assuming you just use the 3 core books, $90 for the services they offer right now is a bit steep.

I'll be getting the books to use in the generators, but I'll be buying during the first week sale when the core books are a $60 investment. That's about the sweet spot for me for a software suite. But, I also never run pre-published adventures, so the only further cost for me would be things like Volo's and the backgrounds and subclasses from SCAG, and whatever looks good when Xanathar's comes out. I can understand how the adventure costs might be a bit much for those of you who run them (as someone who until this year last played 2nd edition, anything over $5 seems crazy to me, dead tree or not!).

And a small plus for everyone that games online - after DndBeyond launches, the adventures and core books content for FantasyGrounds (not sure about Roll20 - though I know they will have that option if they choose to go for it) will be coming down to match the DndBeyond prices. Apparently the Curse team was able to present the case to Wizards that their overall digital prices were too high and the DndBeyond prices will be the new standard for VTTs that license the D&D brand.

I will say that I see a lot of potential in the beta. I wish they'd flesh out more things before release - the DM tools are embarrassingly skimpy (a campaign name, a single field for hidden and player notes each), using the 4d6 drop lowest method of character creation requires rolling physical dice, and beta testers haven't had a chance to play with the soon-to-be released mobile app that is supposed to allow offline access which tells me the first few updates of the app will probably be horrendously buggy. But at the same time, the beta has helped me flesh out a few high level NPCs complete with custom magic items in just a few minutes and I would really like to see DndBeyond become a "one stop shopping" site for DMs to manage their campaigns.

[Easy_Lee]

Asking people to pay that much for books they probably already own in print is a recipe for disaster. This is going to be a major fail for them.

I hope this is the case. I really hope D&D fans don't accept this system. Expecting people to purchase the same content multiple times is unacceptable, regardless of the price.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I wanted it to be better, but I had a feeling it was going to turn out this way. This is the horse armor of D&D.

[jaappleton]

I wanted it to be better, but I had a feeling it was going to turn out this way. This is the horse armor of D&D.

It'd be a lot easier to accept if people who already owned copies of the books could get digital versions through Beyond for a discounted rate.

[Waterdeep Merch]

It'd be a lot easier to accept if people who already owned copies of the books could get digital versions through Beyond for a discounted rate.

Yeah, it's just not reasonable to ask people to pay for something they already own a second time for mild convenience. My group has five different PHB's, two DMG's, and three MM's already on top of two SCAG's and one Volo's. I allow all of it in my games. So to make this worthwhile for me, I'd need to sink a bare minimum of $150 alongside a $6/monthly Master subscription to realistically utilize it, as the group's primary DM, all for rules that I already bought and have legal access to.

[jaappleton]

Yeah, it's just not reasonable to ask people to pay for something they already own a second time for mild convenience. My group has five different PHB's, two DMG's, and three MM's already on top of two SCAG's and one Volo's. I allow all of it in my games. So to make this worthwhile for me, I'd need to sink a bare minimum of $150 alongside a $6/monthly Master subscription to realistically utilize it, as the group's primary DM, all for rules that I already bought and have legal access to.

Exactly.

It's somewhat mitigated if your table of 5 people total says, "Ok, each of us will pitch in __ and we'll all use the account", but... Yuck.