Upgrading from a yearly plus to monthly pro subscription. Worth it?

Hello, I have been a plus subscriber for about 2 years now and my group is playing more consistently.  I was wondering if it's beneficial for me to upgrade to pro now.  I'm the DM.   The main thing that entices me is the FX tool.  We've had some trouble with area effect calculations and having it be realistic rather than exactly by grid.  Example: A line that can hit creatures even if they are not lined up.(not straight line) or a cone on a certain angle.  Knowing what is hit or not is difficult.  Will the FX tool help? Another thing that looks good is the API but I have absolutely no coding knowledge.  Do I need knowledge of that?  Is the API worth it to speed prep and/or help the players visualize things? I also really want to know if there's a way to sample pro for a month.  Is it possible to change my subscription to pro monthly for 1 month and then back to my yearly plus without paying for the yearly plus again? Thanks, Ari

Ari K. said: I also really want to know if there's a way to sample pro for a month.  Is it possible to change my subscription to pro monthly for 1 month and then back to my yearly plus without paying for the yearly plus again? When you cancel a subscription, the remainder of it is prorated, so if you have only used 6 months of your plus subscription, you will get half of the year's sub money back. You can use this money to pay for your month of pro and have a bit left over if you wish to restart your plus sub. However, your yearly plus subscription will then start in a different month than it used to, and you will have to pay for the full year. Example. You pay for a year of plus in January. You cancel in April after 3 months, you get 75% of your money back. You use that money to pay for one month of Pro until June. In June, you pay full-price for a year of plus, but your subscription will last until next June, not next January. Hope this helps

Ari K. said: Hello, I have been a plus subscriber for about 2 years now and my group is playing more consistently.  I was wondering if it's beneficial for me to upgrade to pro now.  I'm the DM.   The main thing that entices me is the FX tool.  We've had some trouble with area effect calculations and having it be realistic rather than exactly by grid.  Example: A line that can hit creatures even if they are not lined up.(not straight line) or a cone on a certain angle.  Knowing what is hit or not is difficult.  Will the FX tool help? Another thing that looks good is the API but I have absolutely no coding knowledge.  Do I need knowledge of that?  Is the API worth it to speed prep and/or help the players visualize things? I also really want to know if there's a way to sample pro for a month.  Is it possible to change my subscription to pro monthly for 1 month and then back to my yearly plus without paying for the yearly plus again? Thanks, Ari The fx tool isn't that useful for determining hit areas in my opinion; it is great for getting the feeling of that fireball going off though. In my opinion, the API is the big draw of a pro subscription. I will say that it can actually lengthen your prep time (having to setup any scripts you wind up using), but can drastically speed up game play. As for the necessity of knowing programming, you don't need to know any unless you want to code your own scripts. There is a wide selection of scripts that authors like myself have made available for one-click install. You can also copy/paste scripts into your scripts page if they aren't available through one-click. Take a look at the  wiki script index for a sampling of what is available.

Ari K. said: The main thing that entices me is the FX tool.  We've had some trouble with area effect calculations and having it be realistic rather than exactly by grid.  Example: A line that can hit creatures even if they are not lined up.(not straight line) or a cone on a certain angle.  Knowing what is hit or not is difficult.  Will the FX tool help? The FX is really more about looking cool.  It's probably not going to solve those problems.  In my games, I have characters that represent spell effects and drag them in on the board (the players can drag them as well) and use them to line up where a spell happens. Ari K. said: Another thing that looks good is the API but I have absolutely no coding knowledge.  Do I need knowledge of that?  Is the API worth it to speed prep and/or help the players visualize things? I think the API is THE reason to be Pro.  You don't really need to understand programming to get benefit from the API.  There are many many scripts and lots of helpful people that will help you get it going.

Thanks guys for your responses! I'm going to stick with plus and buy a few modules/maps/fx templates instead.  Take Care!

I can't remember if the transmognifier is a pro feature or included in plus, but that tool by far gets the most use by me. I have campaigns that contain all of my maps, sized and Dynamic Lighting ready to go, when I need a map I transmognify it on over to my campaign page. That helps keep the load time down and the page bar neat and organized. 

The  Transmogrifier  is a pro feature.

MeditatingMunky said: I can't remember if the transmognifier is a pro feature or included in plus, but that tool by far gets the most use by me. I have campaigns that contain all of my maps, sized and Dynamic Lighting ready to go, when I need a map I transmognify it on over to my campaign page. That helps keep the load time down and the page bar neat and organized.  As an FYI, pages (handouts and maps) are loaded dynamically (only when you're using them), so storing them in a separate campaign does not affect load time. The primary cause of lag in large campaigns comes from loading journals (or more specifically, ALL the attributes in the journals/sheets in the game and the archive). Moving maps in as needed would indeed help keep things organized though. You can do a similar thing to what he describes using sheets with the Vault if you are a Plus subscriber.