I love Spiritual Weapon. It's a nice feeling to be like, "Okay, this is a tough fight. Time to bring out the second level spell."
I love healing spells. There was a healing word chain that was awesome. The bard got my cleric up from zero and then my cleric got the fighter up from zero. That was a fun game moment! And it was using the "crappy" version of healing word too!
Both of these examples are strong arguments as to why the old spells needed to be fixed.
Spiritual Weapon is great - and still will be great. The problem with it? A you could stack Spiritual Weapon with Spirit Guardians, allowing a Cleric to use two fairly low-level spell slots to churn out consistently high turn-after-turn damage with little additional investment - while still allowing Clerics to spend the turn being support units or use additional damage spells. Making Spiritual Weapon a concentration spell fixes a clear flaw in game design problem. Frankly, they should have given SW errata ages ago.
The example you gave for 2014 healing can, of course, still be done with the 2024 version of the spells. Except there will be one big difference. Because 2014’s spells have such low healing output as compared to monster damage, you are encouraged to wait until someone drops to zero before firing off a heal - healing someone at any other time is bad action economy, since you waste your turn healing for X, only to have the creature hit for a much larger Y, undoing your healing. This makes healing only worthwhile if you are using it to regain the action economy of a player who dropped. This is also bad game design.
Summon Spells, which you didn’t mention, were explicitly changed because they led to really bad gameplay - they led to extremely long turns and often had an element of dithering to them. Wizards admitted that, while the spell concept was cool and could be fine in the hands of an experienced player, far too often the folks using these spells used them in a manner which slowed down gameplay and made it worse - often while lacking basic empathy to realize they were ruining combat for everyone with their selfishly long turns. These are spells that are fine on paper - but, on the wrong hands, make the game worse. With inexperienced players constantly being added to the game, having spells which, in the hands of the inexperienced, make combat less enjoyable is bad game design.
(For myself, I am making homebrew copies of the conjure spells and trusting some of my players to use them without recreating the problem Wizards correctly identified. Does that mean I have to put in two minutes of work to preserve them? Sure. But that’s really fine - hardly a cost to me. Frankly, all the people throwing a fit about their being updated, and refusing to put in two minutes of effort, proves exactly why they should be removed - the folks yelling about these spells have done so in a rude way that ignores how easy it would be for them to solve their own problem. Hard not to think that rude and entitled forum posters are the same kind of rude and entitled spell casters who created the problems which ruined the spell for everyone else.)
You are, of course, free to like bad design - but that does not change the fact that, from a gameplay standard things like “Cleric gets disproportionate amounts of repeatable damage,” “healing spells discourage healing,” and “spells which make the game less fun for folks other than the caster” are all fairly clearly bad gameplay elements.
Wait, I thought the only Spells affected, would be the ones from the 2014 Player's Handbook and a few spells that originated from other sources that were going to be in the 2024 Player's Handbook (I think Mind Sliver might be an example of a spell from Tasha's that will be- but that is more of an exception). This is making it sounds like ALL the spells in the 2014 game, from all sources, are going to be affected, when the digital version of the 2024 Player's Handbook goes live. which is it?
Per the plain text of Wizards’ post, this will only be applied to spells where a “new” (using quotes, since many of the “new” versions are mechanically identical to the old) version of the spell is released.
Both of these examples are strong arguments as to why the old spells needed to be fixed.
Spiritual Weapon is great - and still will be great. The problem with it? A you could stack Spiritual Weapon with Spirit Guardians, allowing a Cleric to use two fairly low-level spell slots to churn out consistently high turn-after-turn damage with little additional investment - while still allowing Clerics to spend the turn being support units or use additional damage spells. Making Spiritual Weapon a concentration spell fixes a clear flaw in game design problem. Frankly, they should have given SW errata ages ago.
The example you gave for 2014 healing can, of course, still be done with the 2024 version of the spells. Except there will be one big difference. Because 2014’s spells have such low healing output as compared to monster damage, you are encouraged to wait until someone drops to zero before firing off a heal - healing someone at any other time is bad action economy, since you waste your turn healing for X, only to have the creature hit for a much larger Y, undoing your healing. This makes healing only worthwhile if you are using it to regain the action economy of a player who dropped. This is also bad game design.
You're free to think they're bad design. I'm only speaking to my own personal preferences. I like Spiritual Weapon and I like the low healing of healing spells. (Makes combats more intense IMO.) I'm not going to tell you that you have to like them as is. I'm only stating that I, along with many others, like the current design.
And those of us that like the spells in their current forms wish to keep using them.
Also, I could argue the 5.5 Conjure Minor Elementals is bad design due to its very high damage compared to most things. But if you're planning to use it and like it, more power to you. It's okay if you like it. I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't.
We have different preferences for our D&D experiences and that's okay.
Hard not to think that rude and entitled forum posters are the same kind of rude and entitled spell casters who created the problems which ruined the spell for everyone else.)
This is an ad-hominem attack that doesn't address any arguments. Please refrain from insinuating that I am "rude" just for liking a different ruleset than you. I have not insulted you for liking a different ruleset. Please return the favor.
The merits of summon spells can certainly be debated, but that's a topic for a different discussion. And for the record, I've also seen a spell as simple as Command result in issues at a table (a player trying to turn it into Dominate Person / Geas essentially) so the issues of a spell in the hands of a problem player are a separate issue.
Overall, all I and others want from DDB is for them to keep legacy versions of the current spells. We are fine with needing to toggle legacy options. I and many others wish to continue playing with the current ruleset.
I'm not going to tell you what you should like. If you like the 5.5 spells, more power to you! I've heard things people are excited about and I'm sure you'll have fun with them. But I like what I have right now. And I like the group where we use what we have right now. So please don't say that I should be happy when DDB is taking away the spells that I've been happy with. Because I'm not happy with losing the spells I like.
Except you're not "losing the spells." Your 2014 books will still be there. The tooltips and descriptions in the builder and sheet will point to the 2024 versions, but you can just disregard those, open your 2014 book in another tab and read the old text. For most spells, reading the text is the extent of the sheet's involvement with the spell anyway.
For the ones that do involve something like a damage/healing roll of some kind, whose calculation has changed in a way you dislike, you can either (a) roll the necessary dice for the deprecated version on the sheet manually, or (b) go with the homebrew route suggested in the article for that particular spell.
Except you're not "losing the spells." Your 2014 books will still be there. The tooltips and descriptions in the builder and sheet will point to the 2024 versions, but you can just disregard those, open your 2014 book in another tab and read the old text. For most spells, reading the text is the extent of the sheet's involvement with the spell anyway.
For the ones that do involve something like a damage/healing roll of some kind, whose calculation has changed in a way you dislike, you can either (a) roll the necessary dice for the deprecated version on the sheet manually, or (b) go with the homebrew route suggested in the article for that particular spell.
As I asked someone else: While precedence is always going to be given to the new ruleset would you hypothetically be okay with having to do what you expect others to do? Because unless the answer to that question is a strong Yes you are a hypocrite.
As I asked someone else: While precedence is always going to be given to the new ruleset would you hypothetically be okay with having to do what you expect others to do? Because unless the answer to that question is a strong Yes you are a hypocrite.
Would I be okay with homebrewing the bare handful of spells that changed in a way I don't like, whose tooltip/calculation I want to be managed by the site, and that I plan to use in a campaign? There's so few spells that meet those criteria for me that strong yes, I would be.
Tell me - how many spells do you actually think you'll need to homebrew 2014 copies of? Which ones, and why?
Would I be okay with homebrewing the bare handful of spells that changed in a way I don't like, whose tooltip/calculation I want to be managed by the site, and that I plan to use in a campaign? There's so few spells that meet those criteria for me that strong yes, I would be.
Tell me - how many spells do you actually think you'll need to homebrew 2014 copies of? Which ones, and why?
No. Would you be okay with having to homebrew all changed spells, etc. if you wanted to keep using the 2014 ruleset until a current campaign was complete?
That has been the main complaint among those who do not like how Beyond is handling this. Not just your convenient personal reinterpretation of this where it's just a couple of things you might not like. You don't get to move the goalposts so you can justify what you expect of others.
Visit the [News] Updating the D&D Beyond Toolset for the 2024 Core Rulebooks thread. Notice how posts critical of how Beyond is handling this have around 100 likes? So much for these people being a "vocal minority."
This site has hundreds of thousands of users. Even 500 likes are nothing, and the most is still under 200. Most of the spells don't change AT ALL, most of those that do change for the better, and the very few spells that are now weaker are weaker for a reason, but if you don't like it you can spend a minute per spell to get it to work. That is at most 10 minutes of time, for all the summon spells and Spiritual Weapon. The game will not break because Cure Wounds now heals 2 instead of one d8. The balance doesn't work anyway, CR is completely busted and has been from the start. This is just people being angry because they think WotC wants to force them to buy the new books. If that were the case, and it clearly isn't, you wouldn't get all the new spells for free. It's just a symptom of the very, very low trust people have in WotC, some of it justified, most of it not.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
ETA: I will be renewing my master tier sub, I don't doubt there will be some issues with the roll out, but knowing the new goal I will roll with any glitches that may arise! Thanks wizbro for listening, I am back to being a happy customer!
ETA: I will be renewing my master tier sub, I don't doubt there will be some issues with the roll out, but knowing the new goal I will roll with any glitches that may arise! Thanks wizbro for listening, I am back to being a happy customer!
Yep great news. Will definitely keep an eye out in case there ends up being things silently left out that are still getting changed. But if fully delivered on there, excellent!
Glad to see we cobweb-clutching luddites got a win here. ;-)
Both of these examples are strong arguments as to why the old spells needed to be fixed.
Spiritual Weapon is great - and still will be great. The problem with it? A you could stack Spiritual Weapon with Spirit Guardians, allowing a Cleric to use two fairly low-level spell slots to churn out consistently high turn-after-turn damage with little additional investment - while still allowing Clerics to spend the turn being support units or use additional damage spells. Making Spiritual Weapon a concentration spell fixes a clear flaw in game design problem. Frankly, they should have given SW errata ages ago.
The example you gave for 2014 healing can, of course, still be done with the 2024 version of the spells. Except there will be one big difference. Because 2014’s spells have such low healing output as compared to monster damage, you are encouraged to wait until someone drops to zero before firing off a heal - healing someone at any other time is bad action economy, since you waste your turn healing for X, only to have the creature hit for a much larger Y, undoing your healing. This makes healing only worthwhile if you are using it to regain the action economy of a player who dropped. This is also bad game design.
Summon Spells, which you didn’t mention, were explicitly changed because they led to really bad gameplay - they led to extremely long turns and often had an element of dithering to them. Wizards admitted that, while the spell concept was cool and could be fine in the hands of an experienced player, far too often the folks using these spells used them in a manner which slowed down gameplay and made it worse - often while lacking basic empathy to realize they were ruining combat for everyone with their selfishly long turns. These are spells that are fine on paper - but, on the wrong hands, make the game worse. With inexperienced players constantly being added to the game, having spells which, in the hands of the inexperienced, make combat less enjoyable is bad game design.
(For myself, I am making homebrew copies of the conjure spells and trusting some of my players to use them without recreating the problem Wizards correctly identified. Does that mean I have to put in two minutes of work to preserve them? Sure. But that’s really fine - hardly a cost to me. Frankly, all the people throwing a fit about their being updated, and refusing to put in two minutes of effort, proves exactly why they should be removed - the folks yelling about these spells have done so in a rude way that ignores how easy it would be for them to solve their own problem. Hard not to think that rude and entitled forum posters are the same kind of rude and entitled spell casters who created the problems which ruined the spell for everyone else.)
You are, of course, free to like bad design - but that does not change the fact that, from a gameplay standard things like “Cleric gets disproportionate amounts of repeatable damage,” “healing spells discourage healing,” and “spells which make the game less fun for folks other than the caster” are all fairly clearly bad gameplay elements.
Per the plain text of Wizards’ post, this will only be applied to spells where a “new” (using quotes, since many of the “new” versions are mechanically identical to the old) version of the spell is released.
You're free to think they're bad design. I'm only speaking to my own personal preferences. I like Spiritual Weapon and I like the low healing of healing spells. (Makes combats more intense IMO.) I'm not going to tell you that you have to like them as is. I'm only stating that I, along with many others, like the current design.
And those of us that like the spells in their current forms wish to keep using them.
Also, I could argue the 5.5 Conjure Minor Elementals is bad design due to its very high damage compared to most things. But if you're planning to use it and like it, more power to you. It's okay if you like it. I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't.
We have different preferences for our D&D experiences and that's okay.
This is an ad-hominem attack that doesn't address any arguments. Please refrain from insinuating that I am "rude" just for liking a different ruleset than you. I have not insulted you for liking a different ruleset. Please return the favor.
The merits of summon spells can certainly be debated, but that's a topic for a different discussion. And for the record, I've also seen a spell as simple as Command result in issues at a table (a player trying to turn it into Dominate Person / Geas essentially) so the issues of a spell in the hands of a problem player are a separate issue.
Overall, all I and others want from DDB is for them to keep legacy versions of the current spells. We are fine with needing to toggle legacy options. I and many others wish to continue playing with the current ruleset.
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Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 48, 5/23/25, Immaculate Mary
Except you're not "losing the spells." Your 2014 books will still be there. The tooltips and descriptions in the builder and sheet will point to the 2024 versions, but you can just disregard those, open your 2014 book in another tab and read the old text. For most spells, reading the text is the extent of the sheet's involvement with the spell anyway.
For the ones that do involve something like a damage/healing roll of some kind, whose calculation has changed in a way you dislike, you can either (a) roll the necessary dice for the deprecated version on the sheet manually, or (b) go with the homebrew route suggested in the article for that particular spell.
As I asked someone else: While precedence is always going to be given to the new ruleset would you hypothetically be okay with having to do what you expect others to do? Because unless the answer to that question is a strong Yes you are a hypocrite.
Would I be okay with homebrewing the bare handful of spells that changed in a way I don't like, whose tooltip/calculation I want to be managed by the site, and that I plan to use in a campaign? There's so few spells that meet those criteria for me that strong yes, I would be.
Tell me - how many spells do you actually think you'll need to homebrew 2014 copies of? Which ones, and why?
No. Would you be okay with having to homebrew all changed spells, etc. if you wanted to keep using the 2014 ruleset until a current campaign was complete?
That has been the main complaint among those who do not like how Beyond is handling this. Not just your convenient personal reinterpretation of this where it's just a couple of things you might not like. You don't get to move the goalposts so you can justify what you expect of others.
Visit the [News] Updating the D&D Beyond Toolset for the 2024 Core Rulebooks thread. Notice how posts critical of how Beyond is handling this have around 100 likes? So much for these people being a "vocal minority."
This site has hundreds of thousands of users. Even 500 likes are nothing, and the most is still under 200. Most of the spells don't change AT ALL, most of those that do change for the better, and the very few spells that are now weaker are weaker for a reason, but if you don't like it you can spend a minute per spell to get it to work. That is at most 10 minutes of time, for all the summon spells and Spiritual Weapon. The game will not break because Cure Wounds now heals 2 instead of one d8. The balance doesn't work anyway, CR is completely busted and has been from the start. This is just people being angry because they think WotC wants to force them to buy the new books. If that were the case, and it clearly isn't, you wouldn't get all the new spells for free. It's just a symptom of the very, very low trust people have in WotC, some of it justified, most of it not.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
No longer an issue!
ETA: I will be renewing my master tier sub, I don't doubt there will be some issues with the roll out, but knowing the new goal I will roll with any glitches that may arise! Thanks wizbro for listening, I am back to being a happy customer!
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Yep great news. Will definitely keep an eye out in case there ends up being things silently left out that are still getting changed. But if fully delivered on there, excellent!
Glad to see we cobweb-clutching luddites got a win here. ;-)
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