Does anyone know how this will affect using already bought 2014 rules content in the DNDB character sheet. WIll all the 2014 bought content continue to work - but - pull spells and items from the 2024 content?
Also, I hope our RPG loving attorney members are checking if Hasbro is violating the digital rights content laws. This is published material we purchased a use license for. I'm no expert on this, but I have to wonder if consumer protection parts of DRM is being violated.
This is absolutely a backwards decision and I question if the people making the decision have ever actually played the game? I've grown up from the 2nd edition, moved through 3.5, and most recently to 5th edition. With each time, I have campaigns and characters that STAY in the edition they were created in. Essentially it's treating each edition as a separate, but similar game system.
I have active campaigns, being run on a mix of home brew stories, physical box sets, and various 5th edition (2014) source books release just months ago. It will take time to wrap these up and no one wants to essentially re-roll characters to fit a new edition and learn all the new mechanics. I mean, have you ever tried to keep a game group moving at a regular pace? It can take weeks or months to move through a moderate sized module.
Additionally, usually people will buy the new core books and slowly start to learn the material and will start with an occasional one-shot with the new characters and resources. Eventually, as you move through your modules, you'll find a good point to move over to the new material, but this should be at the player and DM's discretion, not foisted upon us by the corporate BBEG.
Hasbro/WoTC are making it VERY hard to stay engaged and continue to purchase digital content when that value can go up in smoke at a whim.
Please reverse this decision. I don't see why the content can't be tagged with "5e Legacy (2014 )" and have that be a switch in the character creator just like it is for partnered content. There's already a Legacy switch anyway. You could have a Framework choice which changes the sources/partnered content from being based on 5e Legacy or 5e 2024 framework.
DnDBeyond is a giant database. Just add a new column or build a new table and maintain the content.
If this decision stands, I will find it hard to justify continuing my subscription and using this service when suddenly all the content I've purchased over the years cannot be used in my characters because you are eliminating legacy content items.
One this is how their system has always worked for spells and items. Swordcoast content got updated in guides to everything and if you wanted the old content you had to homebrew it to reference it in the sheet.
greenflame blade for example
they should have fixed the problem …
this isn’t a masterful evil plan to ger players to buy the new books. It’s years of tech debt causing the problem and either the devs don’t know a quick easy way to fix it in time or they don’t want to risk it without breaking something.
easy worknaround/band-aid is for someone on the dev team to just do a batch copy of all the spells & items into the homebrew content and let players add it to their personal homebrew instead of each individual person havin to do it themselves
Sorry, but anyone who has ever done even rudimentary coding, or database work (which I did back in the early 2000's) knows that this is entirely nonsense. They have existing data in their database. To update said data to the new versions they've had two options - first they could simply save themselves work by editing the existing entries and in doing so lose all the information they intend to depricate, second they create all new entries for the updated information and depricate the old entries.
Organisations like Unicode take the second option with the idea that everything should always be compatible in the future. Symbols within unicode may get depricated but never overwritten or removed. This was a foundational principle back when I learnt to code. It's always better to depricate and retain than simply replace. I know that the coding landscape has changed a lot, but it will have been just as much work to edit all the entries in their database and verify the integrity of all the links and shortcodes and other such stuff. Genuinely it would have been just as much work as simply adding the new versions of the data. This happens in publishing for example, every new edition of a book is associated with a new ISBN. The precedent to do the opposite to what the devs at DDB have done exists.
So, then if the workload would be similar, and the precedent is the opposite of what they've chosen to do - why would they be taking this path?!
Simple - money. WotC/Hasbro consistently ramble about wanting to extract more money from the playerbase of D&D. The reception to the 2024 books has been lukewarm to say the least, this path forces us to purchase the new content. It really is that simple. This is a money making exercise and it's so blatant that it is not even funny.
That said, let's assume that you're correct. Let's assume that the devs behind the site are so incompetent as to have created a system as broken as you suggest. Well, in that case why would they still be in employment? You don't keep incompetent staff if they are posing a risk to your bottom line. And if you are correct then the devs are - incompetent I mean. They've been able to tag depricated data (Mordenkienen's Tome of Foes) as legacy previously, so we know that they're able to keep the old data alongside the new data for those who own it. If they're now saying they can't then it is either incompetence, orders from above, or genuine laziness.
I don't enjoy ripping apart other people's statements, but in this case it does need to be done. This isn't an example of an overworked coding team. This is blatant orders from management who are attempting to get more money from a product at the cost of the user experience. Sadly, that happens all the time in such projects.
Adding to that, the amount of work it would take to do all the 5.5 coding and setup means this is a decision that would've been made a good while ago. Even before the summer sale where they offered good enticing deals on the current PHB/DMG/MM. And yet they were silent. Waiting until very soon before release to quietly drop, "Oh by the way we're deleting your spells and magic items and making the sheets not applicable to your current characters."
Completely unacceptable we own the books and that content needs to be represented on character sheets. We won't be updating our current campaign to 2024 as they aren't releasing enough class content to convert everyone and have no desire to play a hybrid system. There needs to be a clear split with both versions available. I won't need my subscription either if this moves forward.
Completely unacceptable we own the books and that content needs to be represented on character sheets. We won't be updating our current campaign to 2024 as they aren't releasing enough class content to convert everyone and have no desire to play a hybrid system. There needs to be a clear split with both versions available. I won't need my subscription either if this moves forward.
To all the people in this same situation, I strongly advocate that you actually cancel your subscription now. You won't lose access until the next billing renewal date anyway, and the message of lost money is the ONLY message that WoTC understands.
Master Tier and legendary bundle subscriber here. I've spent hundreds of dollars on this site. And I am now talking to members of my several ongoing campaigns to find and agree on alternatives; I would have canceled already, but I don't want any of my players to be left even briefly in the lurch.
If this decision isn't reversed, they will absolutely lose my business.
This is incredibly disappointing, and has my group looking at moving away from using DND Beyond all together. We're in the middle of several campaigns and no one wants to have to change the system they're using mid campaign, but especially not if we're forced to because our previous things have been deleted! I sincerely hope WotC will rethink this decision.
but what would be filed? as when WotC moved to the books needing to be purchased as 1 thing and having to repay for what we payed for how would we prove that we even purchased something?
i cant say that i mind doing homebrew and i have started using some of the new rules like the feat at first level and really like it
The issue is that a big selling point of purchasing content was that you DON'T have to homebrew it. I've homebrewed some spells I don't own and they can be finicky to figure out at times.
Also, it's fine if you like the 5.5 rules but for those of us that don't and don't want to switch, why should DDB take away functionality we currently have?
i cant say that i mind doing homebrew and i have started using some of the new rules like the feat at first level and really like it
The issue is that a big selling point of purchasing content was that you DON'T have to homebrew it. I've homebrewed some spells I don't own and they can be finicky to figure out at times.
Also, it's fine if you like the 5.5 rules but for those of us that don't and don't want to switch, why should DDB take away functionality we currently have?
im just saying that i have WAY to much time on my hands and can sit and homebrew for hours because of it
Even IF WoTC's Homebrew interface wasn't an absolute pile of dog shit, I STLL wouldn't be willing to put in the mind-numbing amount of hours it would take to Homebrew all spells and items.
This is a monolithically idiotic decision that completely alienates a MASSIVE amount of their current core userbase, especially because many of the new rules in DnDNext are half-baked at best, and absolutely game-breaking at worst.
There is literally no valid reason for not accommodating 5e content and introducing a separate 2024 section for new content moving forward. Congratulations, WoTC, my long-term group is going to move to Pathfinder as soon as possible. I'll take a crack at Demiplane, they seem to have their shit together.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
DND beyond, this is absurd and unacceptable! We have paid for this content - let us use the spells and materials that we have on this portal.
No
If the shit I paid for disappears I’m going to pathfinder
Or Draw Steel which is looking rather intriguing.
Cancelled my sub. I need fully functional Legacy Character Sheets. I'm so tired of the mishandling of this property.
It won’t, they’re just forcing us to buy the new one unless we wanna homebrew in ever single spell
Does anyone know how this will affect using already bought 2014 rules content in the DNDB character sheet. WIll all the 2014 bought content continue to work - but - pull spells and items from the 2024 content?
Also, I hope our RPG loving attorney members are checking if Hasbro is violating the digital rights content laws. This is published material we purchased a use license for. I'm no expert on this, but I have to wonder if consumer protection parts of DRM is being violated.
This is absolutely a backwards decision and I question if the people making the decision have ever actually played the game? I've grown up from the 2nd edition, moved through 3.5, and most recently to 5th edition. With each time, I have campaigns and characters that STAY in the edition they were created in. Essentially it's treating each edition as a separate, but similar game system.
I have active campaigns, being run on a mix of home brew stories, physical box sets, and various 5th edition (2014) source books release just months ago. It will take time to wrap these up and no one wants to essentially re-roll characters to fit a new edition and learn all the new mechanics. I mean, have you ever tried to keep a game group moving at a regular pace? It can take weeks or months to move through a moderate sized module.
Additionally, usually people will buy the new core books and slowly start to learn the material and will start with an occasional one-shot with the new characters and resources. Eventually, as you move through your modules, you'll find a good point to move over to the new material, but this should be at the player and DM's discretion, not foisted upon us by the corporate BBEG.
Hasbro/WoTC are making it VERY hard to stay engaged and continue to purchase digital content when that value can go up in smoke at a whim.
Please reverse this decision. I don't see why the content can't be tagged with "5e Legacy (2014 )" and have that be a switch in the character creator just like it is for partnered content. There's already a Legacy switch anyway. You could have a Framework choice which changes the sources/partnered content from being based on 5e Legacy or 5e 2024 framework.
DnDBeyond is a giant database. Just add a new column or build a new table and maintain the content.
If this decision stands, I will find it hard to justify continuing my subscription and using this service when suddenly all the content I've purchased over the years cannot be used in my characters because you are eliminating legacy content items.
This is a bad decision and you should feel bad.
Adding to that, the amount of work it would take to do all the 5.5 coding and setup means this is a decision that would've been made a good while ago. Even before the summer sale where they offered good enticing deals on the current PHB/DMG/MM. And yet they were silent. Waiting until very soon before release to quietly drop, "Oh by the way we're deleting your spells and magic items and making the sheets not applicable to your current characters."
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny | Draíocht, Kholias | Eggo Lass, 100 Dungeons
Talorin Tebedi, Vecna: Eve | Cherry, Stormwreck | Chipper, Strahd
We Are Modron
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 48, 5/23/25, Immaculate Mary
i cant say that i mind doing homebrew and i have started using some of the new rules like the feat at first level and really like it
Pronouns: She/Her
Gender: Nonbinary Female, 1/3 human, 1/3 feline, 1/3 dragon
Mentally and emotionally unstable, anorexic (currently in remission!), autism, ADHD, anger issues
Completely unacceptable we own the books and that content needs to be represented on character sheets. We won't be updating our current campaign to 2024 as they aren't releasing enough class content to convert everyone and have no desire to play a hybrid system. There needs to be a clear split with both versions available. I won't need my subscription either if this moves forward.
Just another example of enshittification.
To all the people in this same situation, I strongly advocate that you actually cancel your subscription now. You won't lose access until the next billing renewal date anyway, and the message of lost money is the ONLY message that WoTC understands.
We should start talking about a class action lawsuit here, this is getting rid of content we paid for with no reimbursment for cost associated.
Master Tier and legendary bundle subscriber here. I've spent hundreds of dollars on this site. And I am now talking to members of my several ongoing campaigns to find and agree on alternatives; I would have canceled already, but I don't want any of my players to be left even briefly in the lurch.
If this decision isn't reversed, they will absolutely lose my business.
This is incredibly disappointing, and has my group looking at moving away from using DND Beyond all together. We're in the middle of several campaigns and no one wants to have to change the system they're using mid campaign, but especially not if we're forced to because our previous things have been deleted! I sincerely hope WotC will rethink this decision.
but what would be filed? as when WotC moved to the books needing to be purchased as 1 thing and having to repay for what we payed for how would we prove that we even purchased something?
Pronouns: She/Her
Gender: Nonbinary Female, 1/3 human, 1/3 feline, 1/3 dragon
Mentally and emotionally unstable, anorexic (currently in remission!), autism, ADHD, anger issues
The issue is that a big selling point of purchasing content was that you DON'T have to homebrew it. I've homebrewed some spells I don't own and they can be finicky to figure out at times.
Also, it's fine if you like the 5.5 rules but for those of us that don't and don't want to switch, why should DDB take away functionality we currently have?
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny | Draíocht, Kholias | Eggo Lass, 100 Dungeons
Talorin Tebedi, Vecna: Eve | Cherry, Stormwreck | Chipper, Strahd
We Are Modron
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 48, 5/23/25, Immaculate Mary
im just saying that i have WAY to much time on my hands and can sit and homebrew for hours because of it
Pronouns: She/Her
Gender: Nonbinary Female, 1/3 human, 1/3 feline, 1/3 dragon
Mentally and emotionally unstable, anorexic (currently in remission!), autism, ADHD, anger issues
Even IF WoTC's Homebrew interface wasn't an absolute pile of dog shit, I STLL wouldn't be willing to put in the mind-numbing amount of hours it would take to Homebrew all spells and items.
This is a monolithically idiotic decision that completely alienates a MASSIVE amount of their current core userbase, especially because many of the new rules in DnDNext are half-baked at best, and absolutely game-breaking at worst.
There is literally no valid reason for not accommodating 5e content and introducing a separate 2024 section for new content moving forward. Congratulations, WoTC, my long-term group is going to move to Pathfinder as soon as possible. I'll take a crack at Demiplane, they seem to have their shit together.