Purchase Question : D&D Complete Core Class Pack

[Booker Grimm]

I bought the D&D Basic Rules; $49.99 seems very steep for the D&D Complete Core Class Pack - I've read the features list, (and already have most of the Monsters from the Parse5e program) and can't work out why it is so expensive. Can anyone who has bought the product tell me if it's worth the money - and what exactly I get that I couldn't enter manually through Parse5e?

Thanks.

[Morgentaler]

Think of it as purchasing a physical PHB. Rather than transcribing from your friends book page per page. And entering all that data by hand..no thank you.the 49.99 was worth the time saved on my end.

[Goltron]

Yeah it's basically a digital copy of the PHB that is already formatted to slickly work with the Fantasy Grounds software, You also get a tonne of portraits and a custom theme for your tabletop.

[Mask_of_winter]

Wotc doesn't license it's products for cheap and the conversion still had to be done. There were probably over a hundred hours of development that went into this. Smitworks still has to make a profit. I doubt wotc was willing to take the usual cut so SW had to make it up at the top.

[MTS]

It's worth it to me. I love the fact that I don't have to spend the 100+ hours entering all this information myself; I paid Smiteworks to do it for me. Now I can just have fun with it, and it's totally worth the cost.

It's cheaper than buying a nice car, and a whole lot more fun to drive....!

[damned]

I bought the D&D Basic Rules; $49.99 seems very steep for the D&D Complete Core Class Pack - I've read the features list, (and already have most of the Monsters from the Parse5e program) and can't work out why it is so expensive. Can anyone who has bought the product tell me if it's worth the money - and what exactly I get that I couldn't enter manually through Parse5e?

You absolutely don't need to buy it. But it will save you a lot of time. If you have more time and less money - don't buy.

[kylania]

Think of it as purchasing a physical PHB.

Sure, but I can purchase three physical PHB (https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Dungeons-Dragons-Wizards/dp/0786965606)s for the price of one virtual have-to-pay-almost-as-much-more-for-a-license-to-even-use-it FG DLC so it's not really a fair comparison. :)

I totally agree with what others said, that converting this wasn't easy and Smiteworks absolutely deserves profit from it, but when the cost of a virtual version of a product we've probably all already paid for is 3-6x the price it gets a little difficult to justify.

All the conversion has already been done, there's no stock to keep, no physical product to manufacture and distribute, updates are a few copy/paste clicks and mostly driven by the customers proof reading to find mistakes. That all makes the $90/$200 for the "PHB + license" price pretty steep for a new user when the tabletop cost is $30.

That said, I've bought all the FG 5E stuff and love every bit of it. :)

[damned]

Sure, but I can purchase three physical PHB (https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Dungeons-Dragons-Wizards/dp/0786965606)s for the price of one virtual have-to-pay-almost-as-much-more-for-a-license-to-even-use-it FG DLC so it's not really a fair comparison. :)

I totally agree with what others said, that converting this wasn't easy and Smiteworks absolutely deserves profit from it, but when the cost of a virtual version of a product we've probably all already paid for is 3-6x the price it gets a little difficult to justify.

All the conversion has already been done, there's no stock to keep, no physical product to manufacture and distribute, updates are a few copy/paste clicks and mostly driven by the customers proof reading to find mistakes. That all makes the $90/$200 for the "PHB + license" price pretty steep for a new user when the tabletop cost is $30.

That said, I've bought all the FG 5E stuff and love every bit of it. :)

Ok... Amazon sells $billions every year and most years LOSES money. Some years it makes 10's of millions. Holding Amazon up as an example doesn't cut it for me. Amazon - as good as it is for the consumer today - is terrible for everyone else. Selling books for $1 markup makes no sense.
Second you have linked to a product that costs 1/2 - not 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 or 1/6 of the price.
Third - Intel can make a CPU for $20 and they can sell it for $300. Oh, woops - I forgot about the cost of the R&D and building the fabrication plant. Smiteworks still have to pay for the time it took to negotiate a deal, to convert the products, to enhance the ruleset etc etc etc
And the base license is a totally separate product to the licensed material. Why are you even including that?
In my opinion - these are terrible arguments.

[ddavison]

Sometimes we have a say on what the final price of a licensed product is, sometimes we don't. It depends on the deal we have with each publisher. All of our licenses are set up as a royalty or a revenue share, as opposed to paying for a license up front.

[epithet]

It is also worth mentioning that the Fantasy Grounds version of the books is constantly maintained, incorporating errata and whatnot.

That said, and despite the fact that I think the FG module is worth the investment (even though I had my own PAR5ed PHB,) I can't deny the fact that price of the digital "book" seems very high relative to the price of the physical product. SmiteWorks definitely needs to make a profit, but it is worth noting that the official D&D products probably also lead to a lot more Fantasy Grounds licenses sold. My guess, though, is that Wiz has mandated that the digital product cannot be sold for less than the MSRP of the physical product as part of their continuing effort to support the local gaming stores which they believe (wrongly, in my opinion) to be the key to their success.

[Zacchaeus]

Currently the price of buying the PHB from Amazon is exactly the same as it is from Fantasy Grounds (at least it is in the UK). And actually it would cost me more because I wouldn't have to pay postage if I was buying it electronically.

However the way I see it is that they are two completely different products, used for two completely different purposes. I didn't see buying the PHB for Fantasy Grounds as buying the same product again but rather buying something else that would enable me to run games more easily via the software. However I accept that it really depends on many factors not least being your budget.

To the OP, aside from budget, as stated above it depends on how much time you have available. Having the PHB in electronic format all set up to run with FG is as sweet a timesaver as you'll get. The same goes for the Monster Manual and it will also be the same for the DMG when it, too, comes out.

[Raz651]

Also think of it this way. Some people can just buy the PHB for fantasy grounds and have never paid for a hard copy book. So the price of the digital FG copy reflects the price of PHB and the saved time for you to enter it into the program. (also a nicely formatted version). It will also reflect updated errata down the line. (Your hard copy can't do that. Unless you have the WOTC magic PHB Tomb. :p)

The price is well worth it. (And who is to say they will not have specials from time to time).

All you need is the Fantasy Grounds Program to play as it includes the 5E ruleset. You can manually enter all data if you want.

[Morik]

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but here's my 2 coppers anyway; It was more than worth it to me! I would absolutely buy the 'digital PHB' again. In fact, I can't wait for the DMG, even though I've had my physical copy since release. The time it saves is amazing! Another advantage, as an Ultimate user, I can force it to load for my players. That means that they can reference stuff from my copy, without having to go out and buy one (but only when I'm logged in). It's just like borrowing someone's PHB to look something up at the table. That may not sound like much, but it's incredibly valuable.

[MTS]

Oh, definitely. I can't wait for the DMG either, especially after putting half of those wondrous items into the system by hand.... I'll pay a LOT more for that module now that I know firsthand what kind of time I'm saving. If I were paid $1/hour for putting it all in by hand, purchasing the module would still save me probably at least 2x the cost of the module.

[Raz651]

Yeah there is a lot of time involved. I have resolved myself just to enter them as needed. Hopefully the DMG will be out before I have entered them all.

[cychow]

I bought it to save time. No way was I going to enter all that information for the PHB and the MM. :)

[amrbean]

One question I have regarding the Class Pack: Does everyone in the group need to have it or just one member of the party?

[ddavison]

If the DM owns it and is hosting the game, they can mark it as shared for all connected players. They will be able to access it while connected.

[ddavison]

We don't really set the prices for licensed content from our publishers. For the core app, we make most of our revenue off of these and not from products that we license. It's definitely a niche (tabletop rpg gaming) and a niche of that for those players that play online. There may be other character builders that become licensed at some point in the future, but I wouldn't expect the prices for licensed content to be any lower than what we have it for in the store.

[dulux-oz]

In a world were I can pay 60 dollars for a game the cost 140 million dollars to develop, charging 40 + 50 to get a core pack seems steep.

FG needs to do their own financials and set a price that has the best revenue stream they can, and I understand that; however I wonder if they calculate in the cost of purchasers they don't get. There have been studies in other industries where lowering the cost end up increasing purchasers to the point where they make more money.

I wish I could just get a character builder and core pack for 25 bucks. I, personally, don't need a virtual table top. It's not how I roll :)

Peace.

EDIT: Video game cost source - https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

False comparison - FG is not a video game, and SW can't expect to see the 1,000s to 1,000,000s of copies sold required to make that type of cost-point viable.

FG is also not a character builder, and never claims to be - if you want a character builder, then FG is not the product for you.

And SW has done their financials - so all-in-all, while I'm sure Doug and the rest of the SW boys appreciate the feedback, I wouldn't expect anything to change much

Cheers

[gqwebb]

It is a gold mine of tables, skills, spells, and on and on. So I am so glad I got it, and yes it worth every nugget that come out of the mine. Want to level up drag and drop the class again and bam! Leveled up! The tokens are a great value add. No remorse here, just get into making a few characters and you ill see why.

[Nylanfs]

PCGen maybe?