For 12 months of D&Di, it currently costs US$71.40. That is somewhere between 2-3 hardcover books. For many people that sounds like quite a steal. Access to most of the material in every single published source for the cost of purchasing 2 or 3 individual books? Who would be stupid for buying the actual books?
Now, there are advantages to the hardcovers that D&Di simply can't beat. You can sit down and read a book. The books often contain some rules, fluff and useful sidebars that you just can't get on D&Di. However, there are also books where there is little information in the book not available to D&Di.
The Monster Manuals, once you know how to read a monster's entry, provide little reason to own the book. All the monsters are available in the Compendium. All the Racial Traits are available in the Character Builder. Soon, all the monsters will also be available in the Monster Builder.
The Power expansions are completely contained within the Character Builder. There is nothing in these books that I have not seen contained in the Character Builder. If someone in the group has a subscription to D&Di, what is the incentive to purchase these books?
So, bring on your conjectures, anecdotes, or even *hint to Wizards insiders* facts! Is Wizards actually competing with itself?
I use the Compendium when I am here on the forums to look up things different people recommend or mention because I don't always have books with me.
I use the Character Builder to actually build out the character and print out the character sheet.
D&Di is worthy of my money.
I lost that feeling with 3e, having kids and working long hours cut deeply into our D&D time and we had to stop playing in about 2002.
Now with 4e I seem to have that feeling back. (even though I am now old enough to know better :D )
I look forward to getting the books and sitting down and reading them, so I can lock any juicy bits of fluff from them away in the recess of my brain marked D&D. I also get the updates on the comp. Yes I no longer need my books to play. 90% of what I need during the game I can do with my Insider subscription. There is something about having my hands on the book it's self that is compelling.
Personally, I buy all the books and have D&Di as well. But I am the DM for my group and an active player in LFR so I have good reason to have a lot of books on hand.
For example, both Open Grave and Draconomicon have crunch in the compendium but the amount of advice/fluff/encounter & adventure design mean for a DM the books are a must buy.
Similarly, for players, I'd consider both of the Player's guide for FR/Eberron as ones that you don't get enough information just by what's in the compendium.
Whereas both Adventurer Vault and the Monster Manuals are more DDI-only purchases IMO.
Moreover, I'm not entirely sure that WotC loses out if someone buys a DDi subscription over several books. Books have several costs (printing, typeseting, etc) that isn't as large a deal with DDi. DDi is purchased straight from WotC, whereas an book comes from a middle man, so WotC captures more of the profit. You pay for DDi upfront, so WotC gets your cash then works on the product, which helps the balance sheet.
Personally My favorite books are the Fluff books, Dragonomicon 1 sits right at the top for me right now. So hardcovers are usually reserved for those for me at the moment.
But like i said, i dont have to buy al the books now and dont have to houserule "Use only books I own" anymore.
Based on two things: (a) just because the character builder lets you put it on your sheet doesn't mean it's legal - there are tons of examples of things the character builder allows that it shouldn't, and (b) I don't know if you've ever tried figuring out the way class features and feats work from the text printed on a character sheet, but we have a heap of trouble, and we're not inclined to bring laptops to the game table.
I've never relied on a laptop at the table, so books it is. If I ever get more comforable with that, I might slow up on the book buying.
I have used the Compendium to convert/save PDF copies of the exclusive powers that were available in "PH Heroes Series 1". I've thought about buying the minis (they're not that ugly ;)) but keep passing 'em up.
Primarily the supplement power source books, because those books are just all over the place in terms of content and likely not helpful for more than one or two players at a time, for one or two characters total. If I play one Martial class, I feel like it's a waste to buy a book with 3/4ths content for classes I don't play. And beyond that even more of the book is taken up by "bad" options as well (see below), so for a single character of that power source, there's really less than 1/4th applicability for any one player.
However books like the PHB2 I do buy, because those are actual new classes and not just expansions. They also have a variety of content for different aspects of the game.
Lately a strong reason for me to not purchase books has to do with the quality control. For instance, why would I buy Martial Power 4 months ago when the Battlerager and Tempest were at their heights of brokeness? I still think both those options are broken even after some updates. Similarly, many of the other options for any class in that book are quite unbalanced, either ridiculously good or kind of lame. Without uniform quality such that I feel "I may not be using this entirely at the moment, but this whole book is good material and I could definitely use it in the future" I am quite reluctant to drop that much money on it.
If Martial Power was up to snuff, with all options relatively balanced and meaningful (purely my opinion of course) I would certainly have bought it.
We also need certain books just for the play session. PHB1 is always going to be on hand for groups. The DMG is really something a DM should read. The Monster Manual is somewhat less important, but still contains valuable information that can help spark adventure ideas.
I'm sure WoTC knows that the Power books are likely to sell less reliably though, and prints fewer copies.
On game days players may come over early the research their characters next power, feat, etc.
Bel
Besides, its a much better feeling to read through the books instead of just looking up the crunchy bits.
The biggest reason I buy books is a lot of the rules aren't covered anywhere. Like, the rules on Familiars/Companions/Alchemy aren't in the compendium (that I can find at least), so I bought the appropriate books for these.
Agreed. When DDi first came out I was considering using it as an alternative to the books. But I've since enacted a personal rule for myself that I don't use anything unless I have access to the book or PDF its from. So my level 10 Wizard has still yet to get himself a familiar.
I now use the DDi tools to make it easier for me to run a game or character. Nothing beats being able to search every single 4th ed book out there in 5 seconds for monsters within a certain level range.
I don't intend to maintain a DDI subscription for 20 years in order to get the same benefit out of 4th Edition.