Like many people I am running a game using DDB. My players have no interest in changing to the new rules part way through an ongoing campaign.
Like others who’ve posted here, I’m disappointed by the way the legacy spells are being removed from the rules database, and will only be available in the Compendium. I can see why there was a difficult choice to be made here - DDB was never designed to support more than one set of rules, and so has limited options to support multiple spells or other individual elements with identical names. I can imagine other options that could potentially work - using the Legacy toggle or source of the character’s class to filter appropriate spells - but those have their own problems with allowing people to mix and match if they want to. So, likely from a combination of work hours available/budgeted for and a desire to prevent player confusion, instead we have what’s been announced.
So: all my players have spellcasting to a greater or lesser degree, but none of them know how to do homebrew on the site and they sure aren’t going to learn for this purpose, which means a great deal of manual work needs to be done by me to keep all of their spells the same as they are now. Work, by the way, that will need to be duplicated by hundreds if not thousands of DMs. Though to be fair, it’s not clear how many spells are significantly impacted - that is, how many just have clearer wording but the same game effects, and how many have big or at least impactful changes like the basic healing spells, suggestion, smites and so on. It might be twenty, or it might be one hundred. But I don’t know.
So given this information isn’t going to be preserved where it’s most used, I have questions.
Do we need to copy the spells as homebrew before the new PHB release? Will they still exist in copyable form afterwards? i.e. once the new spells are in, can I copy the old one from the database using the current method of choosing it as the basis for a new spell, or do I have to manually write it out from the text in the Compendium?
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
I’m not one to complain about the small stuff, but Id like to know if this represents a lot of work for me to be able to keep playing my current campaign. So a bit more clarity and anything you can do to minimise that work would be appreciated.
I started looking (I have access to a Gen Con copy through a friend of mine) and only got through A in the spells before I realized it would be easier to just make a copy of every spell from the PHB. Gonna look for spells that appear in other books, Dragon Breath at the very least does (originally in XGtE) but most are just PHB spells.
I started looking (I have access to a Gen Con copy through a friend of mine) and only got through A in the spells before I realized it would be easier to just make a copy of every spell from the PHB. Gonna look for spells that appear in other books, Dragon Breath at the very least does (originally in XGtE) but most are just PHB spells.
Yeah, I figure there will be fan resources for this stuff too, but that will take time and I’m not sure where that info will appear. But if you do make the effort and can share it, I’d be very grateful.
Note I’ve edited my original post to acknowledge that I’m really only worried about major impactful changes - if a spell has the same rules effect but the wording’s been tightened up, I’m okay with that. But if the type of action has changed, or if it has new restrictions it didn’t before, or does a different amount of damage or healing etc, that’s something I’d like to know about. And I think a few spells have been straight up rewritten, too.
Like many people I am running a game using DDB. My players have no interest in changing to the new rules part way through an ongoing campaign.
Like others who’ve posted here, I’m disappointed by the way the legacy spells are being removed from the rules database, and will only be available in the Compendium. I can see why there was a difficult choice to be made here - DDB was never designed to support more than one set of rules, and so has limited options to support multiple spells or other individual elements with identical names. I can imagine other options that could potentially work - using the Legacy toggle or source of the character’s class to filter appropriate spells - but those have their own problems with allowing people to mix and match if they want to. So, likely from a combination of work hours available/budgeted for and a desire to prevent player confusion, instead we have what’s been announced.
So: all my players have spellcasting to a greater or lesser degree, but none of them know how to do homebrew on the site and they sure aren’t going to learn for this purpose, which means a great deal of manual work needs to be done by me to keep all of their spells the same as they are now. Work, by the way, that will need to be duplicated by hundreds if not thousands of DMs. Though to be fair, it’s not clear how many spells are significantly impacted - that is, how many just have clearer wording but the same game effects, and how many have big or at least impactful changes like the basic healing spells, suggestion, smites and so on. It might be twenty, or it might be one hundred. But I don’t know.
So given this information isn’t going to be preserved where it’s most used, I have questions.
Do we need to copy the spells as homebrew before the new PHB release? Will they still exist in copyable form afterwards? i.e. once the new spells are in, can I copy the old one from the database using the current method of choosing it as the basis for a new spell, or do I have to manually write it out from the text in the Compendium?
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
I’m not one to complain about the small stuff, but Id like to know if this represents a lot of work for me to be able to keep playing my current campaign. So a bit more clarity and anything you can do to minimise that work would be appreciated.
Id just start a campaign and do it yourself. You want to do it before the update to make life easier. If you do it and the players are in your campaign they should have access to your homebrew.
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
All the shills saying "It's just a few dozen spells."
It's 121 106 by my count, subclasses that grant spells, and warlock Invocations (which cannot be homebrewed), and class traits that grant additional spells via Tasha's rules (Also cannot be homebrewed currently).
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
All the shills saying "It's just a few dozen spells."
It's 121 by my count, subclasses that grant spells, and warlock Invocations (which cannot be homebrewed), and class traits that grant additional spells via Tasha's rules (Also cannot be homebrewed currently).
I'm looking at Feats as my answer to all of that. I think I can make homebrew feats that replicate these things...
(Not defending, just pointing out what I see as the most likely solution on the player side.)
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
All the shills saying "It's just a few dozen spells."
It's 121 by my count, subclasses that grant spells, and warlock Invocations (which cannot be homebrewed), and class traits that grant additional spells via Tasha's rules (Also cannot be homebrewed currently).
Interestingly I don't think they mentioned warlock invocations in the article. I'm going to have to go re-read it now.
All items that add spells will not be able to be homebrewed to reference the 2014 spells. They will ALWAYS reference 2024 versions of spells.
You can work around that by homebrewing the item and adding the spell into the item. Horrible solution if the item grants a ton of spells. But most of the spells should be unchanged, so it shouldn't be a huge issue.
Like many people I am running a game using DDB. My players have no interest in changing to the new rules part way through an ongoing campaign.
Like others who’ve posted here, I’m disappointed by the way the legacy spells are being removed from the rules database, and will only be available in the Compendium. I can see why there was a difficult choice to be made here - DDB was never designed to support more than one set of rules, and so has limited options to support multiple spells or other individual elements with identical names. I can imagine other options that could potentially work - using the Legacy toggle or source of the character’s class to filter appropriate spells - but those have their own problems with allowing people to mix and match if they want to. So, likely from a combination of work hours available/budgeted for and a desire to prevent player confusion, instead we have what’s been announced.
So: all my players have spellcasting to a greater or lesser degree, but none of them know how to do homebrew on the site and they sure aren’t going to learn for this purpose, which means a great deal of manual work needs to be done by me to keep all of their spells the same as they are now. Work, by the way, that will need to be duplicated by hundreds if not thousands of DMs. Though to be fair, it’s not clear how many spells are significantly impacted - that is, how many just have clearer wording but the same game effects, and how many have big or at least impactful changes like the basic healing spells, suggestion, smites and so on. It might be twenty, or it might be one hundred. But I don’t know.
So given this information isn’t going to be preserved where it’s most used, I have questions.
Do we need to copy the spells as homebrew before the new PHB release? Will they still exist in copyable form afterwards? i.e. once the new spells are in, can I copy the old one from the database using the current method of choosing it as the basis for a new spell, or do I have to manually write it out from the text in the Compendium?
Can we get a list of all the spells that have been updated in the new PHB, with an indication of how much? Some way of knowing which ones we need to spend effort updating? Otherwise we will have to read and compare all the spells on our players’ lists on our own.
I’m not one to complain about the small stuff, but Id like to know if this represents a lot of work for me to be able to keep playing my current campaign. So a bit more clarity and anything you can do to minimise that work would be appreciated.
I started looking (I have access to a Gen Con copy through a friend of mine) and only got through A in the spells before I realized it would be easier to just make a copy of every spell from the PHB. Gonna look for spells that appear in other books, Dragon Breath at the very least does (originally in XGtE) but most are just PHB spells.
Yeah, I figure there will be fan resources for this stuff too, but that will take time and I’m not sure where that info will appear. But if you do make the effort and can share it, I’d be very grateful.
Note I’ve edited my original post to acknowledge that I’m really only worried about major impactful changes - if a spell has the same rules effect but the wording’s been tightened up, I’m okay with that. But if the type of action has changed, or if it has new restrictions it didn’t before, or does a different amount of damage or healing etc, that’s something I’d like to know about. And I think a few spells have been straight up rewritten, too.
Id just start a campaign and do it yourself. You want to do it before the update to make life easier. If you do it and the players are in your campaign they should have access to your homebrew.
These people have attempted it
https://rpgbot.net/2024-dnd-5e-transition-guide-and-change-log-everything-thats-different-in-the-new-players-handbook/#spell-changes
All the shills saying "It's just a few dozen spells."
It's
121106 by my count, subclasses that grant spells, and warlock Invocations (which cannot be homebrewed), and class traits that grant additional spells via Tasha's rules (Also cannot be homebrewed currently).I'm looking at Feats as my answer to all of that. I think I can make homebrew feats that replicate these things...
(Not defending, just pointing out what I see as the most likely solution on the player side.)
Interestingly I don't think they mentioned warlock invocations in the article. I'm going to have to go re-read it now.
It actually gets even worse.
All items that add spells will not be able to be homebrewed to reference the 2014 spells. They will ALWAYS reference 2024 versions of spells.
You can work around that by homebrewing the item and adding the spell into the item. Horrible solution if the item grants a ton of spells. But most of the spells should be unchanged, so it shouldn't be a huge issue.