I've never made a post on here before, so I'm not really sure if this is even in the right place, but I thought it would be a cool idea if Dndbeyond included v3.5 in edition to 5E, since those were the most popular versions of the game. I grew up with D&D 3.5 so that is the edition that is most nostalgic for me personally, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this might be a good way to bring two big parts of the D&D community together via one site. Also, a lot of what was deemed complicated and difficult about v3.5 (negative levels, variable stacking bonuses, preparing spells in exact spells lots instead of spontaneous casting, etc.) could become very easy to navigate with Dndbeyond's character sheet integration and highly interactive website features. I know that the team is likely busy with the testing of One D&D, but seeing as every sourcebook for 3.5 is already written, I felt like I should make a post or ask about this somewhere!
If this is in the wrong thread for people to see this, or if there's somewhere I could have directly sent this to a Dndbeyond representative, please let me know!
While I can understand why people would like having 3.5 Edition on DDB, Wizards is not going to spend the money needed to implement support for an edition of the game they stopped selling in 2008. It's just not something they'd stand to make enough money on to make it worth their while, especially with One D&D releasing in less than a year.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
DDB supporting older editions comes up on this board from time to time. DDB is designed to support the present product line and while anything is possible, it doesn't seem likely DDB would put in the technical overhead to support a similar but still entirely different d20 game.
I believe Foundry has robust support for a number of prior editions of D&D, and while Foundry has a learning curve, especially for the DM, it's community is very willing to help new users.
DemiPlane may also be worth floating around. They're somewhere in the process of rolling out 5e at least SRD support, also pursuant to supporting I think Black Flag and one of the other major 5e 3rd parties. I'd like to see more homebrew mechanics support on DemiPlane, if they had that, that's probably where a 3.5 community could grown. Demiplane also supports Pathfinder, or is also rolling that one out.
As much as I like 3.5, I can understand why Wizards is not committing resources to support it on D&D Beyond. Think about it this way. Let's say they do create a character sheet integration for 3.5. Do you think the players who enjoy 1E, 2E, 3.0, and 4E are going to remain quiet? My guess is, they're going to want their own integrations. So now Wizards puts up the character sheet integrations. Well what about the supplemental materials? It would be nice to have spells, feats, and magic items from the Complete series of books, right? Oh and speaking of, what about psionics? Since Complete Psionic is now available, can you make the Expanded Psionics Handbook available? Oh and the original Psionics Handbook for those who play 3E? Oh and the Complete Series for AD&D? And? And? And? That's a lot of support to provide for products they're no longer producing.
The only time I've seen them produce past products was at the tail end of 4E. At that time, they were struggling to maintain their audience, 5E hadn't quite gained traction, and they were just trying to make money any way they could.
Now, 5E is the most popular edition, the older products are all available on DMs' Guild, and anyone who wants to play the older editions can do so on any number of other VTT products, including Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, which are both supported on the DMs' Guild. If 3.5 is the game you want to play, there are ways to play it.
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
That's not actually correct. They shut down D&D Insider (the 4th edition toolset) when Microsoft shut down Silverlight, which the tools were built on. They would have had to rebuild the entire toolset, presumably in HTML5, for it to keep working.
I remember constantly having to update silverlight (along with flash!!!) to keep the tools working
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
That's not actually correct. They shut down D&D Insider (the 4th edition toolset) when Microsoft shut down Silverlight, which the tools were built on. They would have had to rebuild the entire toolset, presumably in HTML5, for it to keep working.
I remember constantly having to update silverlight (along with flash!!!) to keep the tools working
Yeah, I was in that boat as well, doing whatever dark sorcery was required to keep those tools running on my PC for as long as inhumanly possible.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
That's not actually correct. They shut down D&D Insider (the 4th edition toolset) when Microsoft shut down Silverlight, which the tools were built on. They would have had to rebuild the entire toolset, presumably in HTML5, for it to keep working.
I remember constantly having to update silverlight (along with flash!!!) to keep the tools working
Yeah, I was in that boat as well, doing whatever dark sorcery was required to keep those tools running on my PC for as long as inhumanly possible.
But it was worth it because damn if those tools weren't amazing
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
That's not actually correct. They shut down D&D Insider (the 4th edition toolset) when Microsoft shut down Silverlight, which the tools were built on. They would have had to rebuild the entire toolset, presumably in HTML5, for it to keep working.
I remember constantly having to update silverlight (along with flash!!!) to keep the tools working
Yeah, I was in that boat as well, doing whatever dark sorcery was required to keep those tools running on my PC for as long as inhumanly possible.
But it was worth it because damn if those tools weren't amazing
Agreed, honestly the best digital tools WotC has ever produced. I wish Beyond was as solid and complete.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
Considering they consider d&d under monetised having their vtt be plug and play with previous editions would make sense, and especially as they want the vtt to be the defacto roleplay experience why not have some of the team work on it as a passion project, I'm sure there are plenty of external creatives that would be up for the challenge, imagine the back sales of the old material they could do, an additional micro transaction to resurrect od&d,1st/2nd/3rd/4th material, when reintroducing a 2024 edition of a module or quest. They already own the rights to this stuff and given anything pre 3rd ed is gonna be outside of ogl/creative commons, it can be easily be put behind a pay wall should they so wish to.
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I've never made a post on here before, so I'm not really sure if this is even in the right place, but I thought it would be a cool idea if Dndbeyond included v3.5 in edition to 5E, since those were the most popular versions of the game. I grew up with D&D 3.5 so that is the edition that is most nostalgic for me personally, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this might be a good way to bring two big parts of the D&D community together via one site. Also, a lot of what was deemed complicated and difficult about v3.5 (negative levels, variable stacking bonuses, preparing spells in exact spells lots instead of spontaneous casting, etc.) could become very easy to navigate with Dndbeyond's character sheet integration and highly interactive website features. I know that the team is likely busy with the testing of One D&D, but seeing as every sourcebook for 3.5 is already written, I felt like I should make a post or ask about this somewhere!
If this is in the wrong thread for people to see this, or if there's somewhere I could have directly sent this to a Dndbeyond representative, please let me know!
Cheers
While I can understand why people would like having 3.5 Edition on DDB, Wizards is not going to spend the money needed to implement support for an edition of the game they stopped selling in 2008. It's just not something they'd stand to make enough money on to make it worth their while, especially with One D&D releasing in less than a year.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
DDB supporting older editions comes up on this board from time to time. DDB is designed to support the present product line and while anything is possible, it doesn't seem likely DDB would put in the technical overhead to support a similar but still entirely different d20 game.
I believe Foundry has robust support for a number of prior editions of D&D, and while Foundry has a learning curve, especially for the DM, it's community is very willing to help new users.
DemiPlane may also be worth floating around. They're somewhere in the process of rolling out 5e at least SRD support, also pursuant to supporting I think Black Flag and one of the other major 5e 3rd parties. I'd like to see more homebrew mechanics support on DemiPlane, if they had that, that's probably where a 3.5 community could grown. Demiplane also supports Pathfinder, or is also rolling that one out.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
"Beyond" your tabletop.
"Beyond" the books.
"Beyond" your FLGS.
It's pretty easy to Mad Libs and find things that make sense.
As much as I like 3.5, I can understand why Wizards is not committing resources to support it on D&D Beyond. Think about it this way. Let's say they do create a character sheet integration for 3.5. Do you think the players who enjoy 1E, 2E, 3.0, and 4E are going to remain quiet? My guess is, they're going to want their own integrations. So now Wizards puts up the character sheet integrations. Well what about the supplemental materials? It would be nice to have spells, feats, and magic items from the Complete series of books, right? Oh and speaking of, what about psionics? Since Complete Psionic is now available, can you make the Expanded Psionics Handbook available? Oh and the original Psionics Handbook for those who play 3E? Oh and the Complete Series for AD&D? And? And? And? That's a lot of support to provide for products they're no longer producing.
The only time I've seen them produce past products was at the tail end of 4E. At that time, they were struggling to maintain their audience, 5E hadn't quite gained traction, and they were just trying to make money any way they could.
Now, 5E is the most popular edition, the older products are all available on DMs' Guild, and anyone who wants to play the older editions can do so on any number of other VTT products, including Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, which are both supported on the DMs' Guild. If 3.5 is the game you want to play, there are ways to play it.
It definitely doesn't mean "Back" ;)
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It would be nice but WoTC never even published or allowed the biggest ever official fan run event* to be published, so don't get your hopes up.
*Living Greyhawk
They shut down the online 4e tools when all they needed to do was pay the server costs to keep them running. I don't think they're interested in supporting older editions. I fully expect as we move forward into OD&D, even the backwards compatibility with 5e will begin to erode away as the character builder continues to evolve.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
That's not actually correct. They shut down D&D Insider (the 4th edition toolset) when Microsoft shut down Silverlight, which the tools were built on. They would have had to rebuild the entire toolset, presumably in HTML5, for it to keep working.
I remember constantly having to update silverlight (along with flash!!!) to keep the tools working
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Yeah, I was in that boat as well, doing whatever dark sorcery was required to keep those tools running on my PC for as long as inhumanly possible.
But it was worth it because damn if those tools weren't amazing
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Agreed, honestly the best digital tools WotC has ever produced. I wish Beyond was as solid and complete.
I myself am very happy with DDB even with short comings I love having all my books on the app so even with no net I can read and look up stuff.
Can I cast wish and have the same on my PC? LOL.
I know it is possible with emulators.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Considering they consider d&d under monetised having their vtt be plug and play with previous editions would make sense, and especially as they want the vtt to be the defacto roleplay experience why not have some of the team work on it as a passion project, I'm sure there are plenty of external creatives that would be up for the challenge, imagine the back sales of the old material they could do, an additional micro transaction to resurrect od&d,1st/2nd/3rd/4th material, when reintroducing a 2024 edition of a module or quest. They already own the rights to this stuff and given anything pre 3rd ed is gonna be outside of ogl/creative commons, it can be easily be put behind a pay wall should they so wish to.