Is D&D Insider worth it?

[AttilaTheGeek]

I've recently gotten into 4E after a friend gave me his collection of books. D&D Insider sounds nice, but it is a substantial amount of money and I already have quite a few books. Is it worth paying for?

[GPuzzle]

Which books do you have? It's nice to have Dragon, mainly because there are some things here and there that are pretty nice. The Character Builder'd be really nice (I can talk about this, I don't actually have D&D Insider, just a collection of PDFs - and man, it is a gigantic collection of them), but you can leave without it. The thing about it is that it allows you acess to every single thing in the game without requiring you to search the whole damn internet for PDFs.

[obryn]

It's worth it for me, since I'm regularly running the game.

I don't use the tools all that often, but I use the Compendium a whole lot. What's more, there's a (new) plugin for Masterplan that imports monsters from the Compendium, which is ten kinds of awesome.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Which books do you have?

I'm away from my books at the moment, and I only got them recently so I don't remember them all, but if I recall correctly I have all three PHBs, Arcane, Martial, Primal, and Divine Power, and a couple of the "Heroes of the..." books. He also gave me a DMG and a couple bestiaries, but I am not a DM so I won't be using those too much.


It's nice to have Dragon, mainly because there are some things here and there that are pretty nice. The Character Builder'd be really nice (I can talk about this, I don't actually have D&D Insider, just a collection of PDFs - and man, it is a gigantic collection of them), but you can leave without it. The thing about it is that it allows you acess to every single thing in the game without requiring you to search the whole damn internet for PDFs.

How helpful is the character builder? I've never built a 4E character, but I've played 3.X for a while, so I know the basic mechanics.

[obryn]

How helpful is the character builder? I've never built a 4E character, but I've played 3.X for a while, so I know the basic mechanics.
The online one, nowadays, is pretty great. It's current enough, and works well.

It was rocky when it was first introduced, but it's gotten over its growing pains. The Monster Builder also works pretty great now.

[MunkeeGamer]

How helpful is the character builder? I've never built a 4E character, but I've played 3.X for a while, so I know the basic mechanics.

Depends on how you play. If you like to power game and rules-lawyering is important to you then it is very valuable. If you bend the rules sometimes or homebrew a lot of things or care more about roleplaying than roll-playing then it starts to become less valuable.

[obryn]

Depends on how you play. If you like to power game and rules-lawyering is important to you then it is very valuable. If you bend the rules sometimes or homebrew a lot of things or care more about roleplaying than roll-playing then it starts to become less valuable.
I don't even have any idea what this is supposed to mean.

[MunkeeGamer]

I don't even have any idea what this is supposed to mean.

Some people are obsessed with following the rules down to the # with absolutely no deviation. If you are the type of player, the DDI character builder can be useful, because as a machine, it only presents you with options available in the rules.

If, however, you enjoy using the books as a framework for cooperative storytelling and don't mind bending the rules or massaging the number for the sake of a better story, then the DDI character builder starts to become less valuable. Possibly even a bother.

[Leewei]

No need to knock on people who dig the game mechanics as well as roleplaying.

I get by with eight sourcebooks, but I can certainly see the benefit of having more options for character design and development. Ultimately, no game system is needed at all if you want to just wing everything (I did this years ago -- very fun and immersive, but exhausting -- and works with only a few players).

The neat things about game mechanics is that everyone has the chance to immediately grasp what their character can do. DM rulings and the opportunity for player frustration are infrequent when you have a rigorously played and understood set of play mechanics. A great secondary benefit is that character optimization can be a great deal of fun. The optimization mustn't be game-breaking, and is ideally something that is cooperative -- boosting the performance of the entire party, rather than just the individual character.

[MunkeeGamer]

No need to knock on people who dig the game mechanics as well as roleplaying.

I get by with eight sourcebooks, but I can certainly see the benefit of having more options for character design and development. Ultimately, no game system is needed at all if you want to just wing everything (I did this years ago -- very fun and immersive, but exhausting -- and works with only a few players).

The neat things about game mechanics is that everyone has the chance to immediately grasp what their character can do. DM rulings and the opportunity for player frustration are infrequent when you have a rigorously played and understood set of play mechanics. A great secondary benefit is that character optimization can be a great deal of fun. The optimization mustn't be game-breaking, and is ideally something that is cooperative -- boosting the performance of the entire party, rather than just the individual character.

Rules lawyering wasn't really a knock at people who follow the rules religiously, it's the only real colloquial term for it that I know. I only meant to explain that OPs playstyle will determine how valuable the DDI character creator is for him/her.

[Sol]

From a rules lawyer's perspective, the OCB actually gets a lot of stuff wrong, and homebrew is generally as easy as clicking the homebrew button and adding in feats that do what you want, or giving your character placeholder items, to get the numbers correct.

Still, it's by far the easiest and fastest way both to create a character, and to learn the system. I highly recommend it.

It's also somewhat of a bargain, as it would take several years of membership to add up to the cost of all of the books it gives you access to.

[Nightgaun7]

If it weren't for Insider I wouldn't be running a game, and probably not be playing in one either. I use it for everything 4E related - character creation, monster choice or creation, and actually running games. It's particularly invaluable to an IRL group in which I am the only person who's played 4E before - I can quickly and easily help the GM and other players look up rules for anything they need, and I help them with all their characters with minimal hassle.

[Kurald Galain]

Personally I prefer physical books, primarily because they won't disappear when I stop paying for them.

[GPuzzle]

I prefer my collection of PDFs. I don't have the money to buy the books nor the money to pay for a subscription, so PDFs I can read on my phone were the logical option.

[Sol]

@gpuzzle: I guess I can imagine situations in which theft is your most viable option, but why on earth would you publicly admit to it and recommend it to others?

[neonchameleon]

For you or for the group. It is worth one player at the table having access to the compendium, and being able to use a character builder so you can print out power cards with the math already done for you.

[Laserlight]

For you or for the group. It is worth one player at the table having access to the compendium, and being able to use a character builder so you can print out power cards with the math already done for you.

That's what I do for our group. Combat goes a good deal faster when people don't have to look through three different books to see exactly what their character can do, plus two more to see what their gear can do.

It also helps keep things legal, in the sense of "it won't let you retrain to that...probably because you're trying to retrain a level 2 to become a level 6", or "CharBuilder's not offering the feat you want as an option; looking it up in the Compendium, I see it requires WIS 15 and you only have 13." If you're not concerned about that sort of thing, obviously it's less valuable.

[captpike]

speaking of someone who hates the character builder sheet so much he spent the time to make a spreadsheet to do the math for him. I still say its worth it.

its worth it because having all the powers and feats at your finger tips is awesome, being able to quickly look at all the level 1 wizard powers for example is just amazing useful.

[shadow_archmagi]

How helpful is the character builder? I've never built a 4E character, but I've played 3.X for a while, so I know the basic mechanics.

I'm a huge fan of the character builder. When I'm making a 3.5 character, I generally end up going online to see what feats people like, then googling those feats to find out what book they're in, then opening the book to find the feat itself, then if I like the feat, I write down its name so I can remember once I've repeated the process a few dozen times so I have a good pool of options.

With the 4E builder, it goes "You need a 1st level Encounter power. Here are the seventeen powers that've been printed for 1st level rogues across eighteen books. Click on them to see the full text of what they do. Double click to add them to your sheet (and don't worry, you can change anything at any time.) It's beautiful. Turns hours of research and book shuffling into fifteen minutes of reading.


From a rules lawyer's perspective, the OCB actually gets a lot of stuff wrong


Oh, that's unfortunate. What kinds of things does it get wrong?


and homebrew is generally as easy as clicking the homebrew button and adding in feats that do what you want, or giving your character placeholder items, to get the numbers correct.


Oh, fascinating! I hadn't noticed a homebrew button. I shall go back and look for it- that should make adding the custom themes from Zeitgiest a lot easier.

[Sol]

Oh, that's unfortunate. What kinds of things does it get wrong?

Oh, fascinating! I hadn't noticed a homebrew button. I shall go back and look for it- that should make adding the custom themes from Zeitgiest a lot easier.
It misses a lot of conditional bonuses that, due to your built configuration, aren't really conditional anymore. To use a very common example, of you have a frost weapon, gauntlets of ice, a siberys shard of merciless cold, and the icy heart feat, but the powers you choose don't natively do cold damage, there's no way to get the CB to honor the frost weapon's toggle and calculate the actual damage values of everything for you. There's a few small, far more obscure rules interactions it gets wrong - it doesn't give you a second hybrid talent if you paragon multiclass, it doesn't let you take a non-leveled at-will with PMC or corellon's boon, or take Battle Cleric's Lore with the Divine Healer feat. Nothing major, and to be honest it's probably more in line with RAI than RAW here.

The houserule button only exists on the power and feat selection pages, and looks like an orange house to the upper left of the options. It doesn't let you create your own feats/powers, but it does allow you to grant additional bonus powers or feats, ignoring all prerequisites. So it's useful if your DM gives you free expertise, but less so if your DM let you spend a feat to gain the ability to walk on water. Still, between all of the existing utility powers, items, and feats, there's a pretty good chance something similar exists in another form that you can toss on your character in the CB to make the numbers and power cards look roughly correct.

[obryn]

Personally I prefer physical books, primarily because they won't disappear when I stop paying for them.
Neither does a cbloaded Offline Builder. :smallbiggrin:

[masteraleph]

A couple of additional CB issues off the top of my head:

1) Only two of the Monk Hybrids exist in the CB.
2) Battle Song Expertise doesn't function properly
3) Kapak Draconians have the wrong stats
4) Interactions between full classes and subclasses aren't necessarily correct. For example, multiclassing into Ranger should now make you both martial and primal (because Scout is martial primal and is a Ranger subclass). But the CB doesn't realize that. I'm not sure if the inability to pick the Scout's Dual Weapon Attack when Paragon Multiclassing comes from that or comes from them coding it like the Half-Elf's Dilettante (which is limited to level 1 At-Wills, while PMC is not).

[Kurald Galain]

4) Interactions between full classes and subclasses aren't necessarily correct. For example, multiclassing into Ranger should now make you both martial and primal (because Scout is martial primal and is a Ranger subclass).

That doesn't sound right. The "main" ranger is not a primal class, so taking a multiclass feat from that shouldn't make you primal either.

[obryn]

That doesn't sound right. The "main" ranger is not a primal class, so taking a multiclass feat from that shouldn't make you primal either.
I'm likewise not sure that picking up Dual Strike makes sense for Paragon Multiclassing. PMC is archaic and was one of those things that was never seriously updated once 4e's technical language got more precise, and I can't fathom that RAI would be that a PMC character should be able to pick up Dual Strike.

[Sol]

I'm likewise not sure that picking up Dual Strike makes sense for Paragon Multiclassing. PMC is archaic and was one of those things that was never seriously updated once 4e's technical language got more precise, and I can't fathom that RAI would be that a PMC character should be able to pick up Dual Strike.

But the above issue isn't hypothesizing about RAI, it's just a statement of factually how the rules work.

It's a square vs rectangle argument. Just because Scouts and Hunters are Primal doesn't mean Rangers are, even if they're the parent class. There's precisely no reason MC ranger should give the primal keyword, and any argument claiming otherwise is just making itself up.

PMC DWS is entirely a RAI issue, because it involves a probable oversight in the context of an already poorly worded (and largely terrible) feature. Still, RAI debates are best left off of the internet, because none of us are correct, we're just opinionated. Unless it gets fixed one way or the other, no one has an objective highground.

[obryn]

PMC DWS is entirely a RAI issue, because it involves a probable oversight in the context of an already poorly worded (and largely terrible) feature. Still, RAI debates are best left off of the internet, because none of us are correct, we're just opinionated. Unless it gets fixed one way or the other, no one has an objective highground.
It's relevant insofar as masteraleph is considering it a CB bug. :smallsmile:

[Sol]

It's relevant insofar as masteraleph is considering it a CB bug. :smallsmile:

Given that the rules clearly allow it, and the only debate is whether the rules intended to allow it, it's absolutely a CB bug. And no, the CB is not evidence to support it not being RAI. The CB wasn't coded by WotC at all.

[Anlashok]

I don't even have any idea what this is supposed to mean.
He's passive aggressively mocking people who play the game differently than he does. Because that's cool to do I guess.

[DrBurr]

I've found insider being a great use for my players, most if not all the Dragon stuff is in the character builder so they don't need to dig through 1000s of articles looking for that right feat. I mostly use it to build and pull monsters into masterplan but during the month where my computer was broken I mostly used my books so I could see myself living without DDi

So if your players are going to use it I'd say itd be a good idea for the group to pool in for a subscription

[MunkeeGamer]

He's passive aggressively mocking people who play the game differently than he does. Because that's cool to do I guess.

See


Rules lawyering wasn't really a knock at people who follow the rules religiously, it's the only real colloquial term for it that I know. I only meant to explain that OPs playstyle will determine how valuable the DDI character creator is for him/her.

Additionally, I use the DDI CB even with a loose DM playstyle. Maybe don't make assumptions about people you don't know. Or just read all the posts.

[BobTheOrc]

I've recently gotten into 4E after a friend gave me his collection of books. D&D Insider sounds nice, but it is a substantial amount of money and I already have quite a few books. Is it worth paying for?
I struggle with this. My assessment:
1) The character builder is relatively inflexible -- it won't easily accommodate homebrew feats or items, for example. Nor does it easily allow you to restrict which books can be used.
2) The adventure tools (monster builder) is handy but also fairly easy to do without the monster builder
3) The compendium _is_ handy.
3) The rest of the subscription has very low value, IMO. (Dragon magazine would have more value to me _as a magazine_, but I don't care for reading it online.)

On the whole, I would avoid it if you aren't already in it, because your players will get used to picking unbalanced, broken options (e.g., those from Dragon magazine) and it's harder to take things away than not allow them from the start.

Also, the Character builder and Adventure Tools are in silverlight which makes them both fragile and incompatible with any platform but Windows/MacOS (no phones, no tablets, no linux without crazy work-arounds).

I really like the IDEA of the character builder but I'm not a big fan of the current implementation.

[GPuzzle]

unbalanced, broken options (e.g., those from Dragon magazine)

Seriously?

War Chanter.
Flame of Hope.
Divine Oracle.
Morninglord.
Battle Engineer.
Ninefold Master.
Adroit Explorer.
Champion of the Order.
Hospitaler.
Dreamwalker.
Battlefield Archer
Malec-Keth Janissary.
Soaring Blade.
Honorable Blade.
Topaz Crusader.
Infernal Strategist.
Radiant Fist.
Dispater's Iron Discipline.
Honored Foe.
Virtuous Recovery.
Magic Weapon.
Reorient the Axis.
Combat Leader.
Battlefront Leader.
Polearm Momentum.
Paladin's Truth.
Winter Fury.
Primal Summoner.
Disciple of the Winds.
Spirit's Wrath.
Icewrought Sentinel.
Sigil Carver.
The MBA-enhancing feats.

Guess what?

All books. And those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head!

Dragon's not broken, in any way. In fact, the number of good feats from Dragon is underwhelmingly low compared to the number of bad feats from Dragon.

[obryn]

Yeah, one virtue of Dragon being in-house is that it's no more broken than anything else.

Also, it made options like the Strength Cleric into awesome, viable builds instead of also-rans.

[captpike]

the most broken classes, powers and feats are in the PHB1, when they did not understand how things like twin strike and enlarge spells would effect the game

[Endarire]

If possible, it may be worthwhile to subscribe for a month, download the latest versions of stuff then, then cancel your subscription. 5E is nearly out, and you need only to pay once for accesss to most of 4E's content (unless they changed it).

[warhead0180]

They've changed it since then. It's web based instead of downloadable. If you look. around you can still find the old downloadable version as abandonware, download it and try it out and see if you like it before paying for a subscription. I happen to like it a lot, and when or if I am able to dm a game for my friends again (I'm an over the road truck driver and
am gone a majority of the time) I plan on subscribing for the group to be able to use.

[Tegu8788]

As a player I love it because I can see all the options, and plan out a bit. No digging through books, it's right there. I can play around with lots of different builds, and it's something I can pull up almost anywhere.

As a DM, I love it because it means all my players have everything at once, no need to trade books around inbetween games, or searching for a quick ruling. It also means that since we share my account, they can all see each other's sheets and make teamwork plans. I can also see everything they do to their sheet, and make remote edits to add in my homebrew edits (gotta find a similar thing to what you want, homebrew is a weak spot of the builder). It also means I know exactly what everyone can do, so I never have a situation where nobody is able to make the thievery check.

Is it useful, oh boy. Is it cheap, yeah if people are willing to throw in a buck or two each. It's all at once so that can be a bit much, but I'd certainly say it's worth it.

[Sol]

While it can be hard to justify the cost if you are just looking at numbers, it's less expensive than going to one movie a month.

Hell, it's less expensive than going out to lunch once a month.

Regardless of how little faith I have in Mearls, or how little interest I have in 5E, I have absolutely no problem giving wizards $6-10/month - and last year I was well below the poverty line.