What should I purchase for my needs?

Hello all, I'm planning on running the Tomb of Annihilation campaign and want to know what else I need or should purchase. I've played on Roll20 before and have loved the platform's capabilities but get frustrated often. As a caster I've found it very tedious to type in all my spells and get the functionality correct for each. If I purchase the Player's Handbook (PHB) will I be able to drag and drop spells onto a character sheet so that they automatically work? Same goes for class features. Do I need to purchase the PHB before the campaign? If I get the PRO subscription what type of tools would be great from the API Access feature? I appreciate any help in advance. Cheers!

Unless all of your ToA players own their own PHB, I'd highly recommend purchasing it so you can share it with players - this will obviously expedite the process of creating characters and leveling up substantially. I'd also recommend Xanathar's if you can stretch that far, there's a load of subclasses and some excellent spells in it. But yes, you can drag & drop everything - this is the best feature about the Compendium in its current form. As a reference document the Roll20 version of the PHB is crippled by some nonsensical indexing. I've made do without the API since I'm rarely GMing, but Token Mod would be the big one I'd be playing with, personally. Automating and buttonising a bunch of tedious GM processes sounds awesome. Transmogrify is also pretty amazing if you want to reuse custom content.

If money is a big issue, I would go to each player and say cough up $20-30 one time and that gets you a pro sub for the year plus maybe the PHB or the Xanathar's Guide.  I wouldn't GM on roll20 without the API.  I use way too many of them in my game.  It lets you forget about the crunch and play the game.  If you want to see what API are good, just PM me or some other GMs and go into our games and look around.  You can come in and see how mine works because I think it will excite you. Plus, the Transmorgrifier feature for the Pro sub is what I use to move all my things from game to game.  Once you create all this cool stuff, you want to take it to the next game.  That's what it allows you to do. I have a guy who just made a 4th level Firbolg Monk Way of Peace or something.  He did it all in about 10-12 minutes because most of it was charactermancer and drag and drop.  Since we have the Xanathar's guide it was quick and easy.   One game on roll20.  Wouldn't mess with it.  If you plan on having regular games, then this is an excellent investment.

Hey Omega Man I might like a look at what you have too. Ive been Plus for 2 months and I've been thinking of going Pro for the last two weeks now. I know nothing about API's so I don't know what I'm missing. I own everything on D&D Beyond as far as source books go and my players have all built their characters there. I'm running Curse of Strahd in two weeks (I bought the module here) For the PC's we are using the chrome extension for D&D Beyond called Beyond 20. Which lets you have a tab open to your character on D&D Beyond and any rolls you do on your sheet are automatically translated here. We've yet to put it into to action but in tests so far its great. Omegaman said: If money is a big issue, I would go to each player and say cough up $20-30 one time and that gets you a pro sub for the year plus maybe the PHB or the Xanathar's Guide.  I wouldn't GM on roll20 without the API.  I use way too many of them in my game.  It lets you forget about the crunch and play the game.  If you want to see what API are good, just PM me or some other GMs and go into our games and look around.  You can come in and see how mine works because I think it will excite you. Plus, the Transmorgrifier feature for the Pro sub is what I use to move all my things from game to game.  Once you create all this cool stuff, you want to take it to the next game.  That's what it allows you to do. I have a guy who just made a 4th level Firbolg Monk Way of Peace or something.  He did it all in about 10-12 minutes because most of it was charactermancer and drag and drop.  Since we have the Xanathar's guide it was quick and easy.   One game on roll20.  Wouldn't mess with it.  If you plan on having regular games, then this is an excellent investment.