It's not a question of being on any high ground. The logic is simple. If WotC takes away something that I paid for and hides behind the "well, you didn't really buy it, you only bought access to it" shield, that's fine. They can do that. But it's not going to invite me to spend more money on their services.
WotC is letting us keep our 2014 stuff not because we're in some moral right. They're doing it so we're more likely to stick around and spend money on the 2024 stuff. It's just responding to market pressures.
There were going to be issues no matter which route they took, so I am glad they decided to go this route.
You have an early release product, it is not surprising somethings aren't working yet, they have a couple of weeks to sort it out before the book's official release date.
You also have all of the solutions given to those of us that did not want the original "delete the old stuff and let them figure it all out" quick fix available to you until they get this sorted out, with the added benefit of knowing it will get better instead of it's the way it will always be.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
At the end of the day, this is day 1. I am almost 95% sure that many of the issues I have brought up here will soon be fixed. I have no doubt in my mind that the DDB team will work their asses off to make this transition period as smooth as they can. The issue is, not only did someone have to go through and add the legacy tag to over 400 spells, they now ALSO have to fix the insane amount of bugs this has brought along on top of that.
My complaints are not that the system has bugs. My complaint is that we as a community, bullied WOTC into back pedaling. ALL of the stated issues are things that will require more work on the backend, as well as more work from us from a DM's perspective. And I can almost guarantee you that the decision to over write the original spells came as a direct response to the issues I am touching on here. It wasn't because the system couldn't handle the data, It wasn't to make more money. It is the way the system works within itself, and the problems that come up within the code. The devs could foresee it happening, and made the executive decision that for the health of the platform. The overwrite was the move to make.
Especially when considering the amount of spells that changed significantly outside of a wording change for clarification, is so small. Realistically, we as DM's would have been provided FOR FREE the revision to spells. Then we as DM's would have had to go in and homebrew ~35/400 spells to be in line with 2014 rules.
All magic items would be synced, all clutter would be gone, all legacy content that relates to spells would be synced, artificer would be synced... and I am almost 1000% sure there are more issues I have not found yet that too, would be synced.
If the revision had landed, these issues would not be present.
I have 2 campaigns that did not want to touch the 2024 revision, and we were across BOTH campaigns with 6 players each. Going to have to homebrew the 2014 versions of a TOTAL of 13 spells.
At the end of the day, this is day 1. I am almost 95% sure that many of the issues I have brought up here will soon be fixed. I have no doubt in my mind that the DDB team will work their asses off to make this transition period as smooth as they can. The issue is, not only did someone have to go through and add the legacy tag to over 400 spells, they now ALSO have to fix the insane amount of bugs this has brought along on top of that.
My complaints are not that the system has bugs. My complaint is that we as a community, bullied WOTC into back pedaling. ALL of the stated issues are things that will require more work on the backend, as well as more work from us from a DM's perspective. And I can almost guarantee you that the decision to over write the original spells came as a direct response to the issues I am touching on here. It wasn't because the system couldn't handle the data, It wasn't to make more money. It is the way the system works within itself, and the problems that come up within the code. The devs could foresee it happening, and made the executive decision that for the health of the platform. The overwrite was the move to make.
Especially when considering the amount of spells that changed significantly outside of a wording change for clarification, is so small. Realistically, we as DM's would have been provided FOR FREE the revision to spells. Then we as DM's would have had to go in and homebrew ~35/400 spells to be in line with 2014 rules.
All magic items would be synced, all clutter would be gone, all legacy content that relates to spells would be synced, artificer would be synced... and I am almost 1000% sure there are more issues I have not found yet that too, would be synced.
If the revision had landed, these issues would not be present.
I have 2 campaigns that did not want to touch the 2024 revision, and we were across BOTH campaigns with 6 players each. Going to have to homebrew the 2014 versions of a TOTAL of 13 spells.
Are you saying that had they not rolled back removing the 14 stuff from the character builder that there would be no issues on the 24 early release?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
At the end of the day, this is day 1. I am almost 95% sure that many of the issues I have brought up here will soon be fixed. I have no doubt in my mind that the DDB team will work their asses off to make this transition period as smooth as they can. The issue is, not only did someone have to go through and add the legacy tag to over 400 spells, they now ALSO have to fix the insane amount of bugs this has brought along on top of that.
My complaints are not that the system has bugs. My complaint is that we as a community, bullied WOTC into back pedaling. ALL of the stated issues are things that will require more work on the backend, as well as more work from us from a DM's perspective. And I can almost guarantee you that the decision to over write the original spells came as a direct response to the issues I am touching on here. It wasn't because the system couldn't handle the data, It wasn't to make more money. It is the way the system works within itself, and the problems that come up within the code. The devs could foresee it happening, and made the executive decision that for the health of the platform. The overwrite was the move to make.
Especially when considering the amount of spells that changed significantly outside of a wording change for clarification, is so small. Realistically, we as DM's would have been provided FOR FREE the revision to spells. Then we as DM's would have had to go in and homebrew ~35/400 spells to be in line with 2014 rules.
All magic items would be synced, all clutter would be gone, all legacy content that relates to spells would be synced, artificer would be synced... and I am almost 1000% sure there are more issues I have not found yet that too, would be synced.
If the revision had landed, these issues would not be present.
I have 2 campaigns that did not want to touch the 2024 revision, and we were across BOTH campaigns with 6 players each. Going to have to homebrew the 2014 versions of a TOTAL of 13 spells.
Are you saying that had they not rolled back removing the 14 stuff from the character builder that there would be no issues on the 24 early release?
Oh absolutely not, just that the issues I have stated here would not be among the many issues they are dealing with as well. I have been following the bug report and it is massive, which is to be expected with an update like this. I am only stating that had the revision gone through, almost all the issues I stated in my original post would not be among the problems we are now dealing with.
Most of the reported issues have nothing to do with spells anyway, whether they kept legacy spells or not wouldn't have made much of a difference. And honestly it's not that hard to ignore the 2024 versions of spells if playing 2014. And if playing 2024 then just disable legacy content and there's no problem.
Considering DDB will fix the issues soon I see it as a far better solution than what was initially proposed.
A short term inconvenience with a work around is far better than permanently removing things, especially when the minor inconvenience now is a one time suffering that we will reap the benefits of with every new book released instead of the new releases compounding the work for the end users to keep what was already there with each new release.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Most of the reported issues have nothing to do with spells anyway, whether they kept legacy spells or not wouldn't have made much of a difference. And honestly it's not that hard to ignore the 2024 versions of spells if playing 2014. And if playing 2024 then just disable legacy content and there's no problem.
Does that not completely defeat the purpose of this book, and future books being backwards compatible? I get that it is a preference, and something we have to "deal with" I am stating issues that are only here because of it. Case in point magic items, and features that grant spell lists. Which will all need homebrew revisions to make them in line with the revision if you intend on playing the game they intended on releasing which is a backwards compatible revision to the rules that have existed for 10 years now.
What we're seeing is the pains of a system that should have functioned like this in the first place. We only got this because we argued for it but it was obvious that they didn't want to give us this from the onset and now they have to go back and "fix" something that should have been taken into consideration from jump street.
I'm not mad or upset that there are growing pains, I'm upset that this wasn't the idea to do in the first place.
Al I know is that if they would have went with the original plan, I would have went over to Roll20 and played there and cancelled my DDB sub. It would have sucked to buy all the books again, but at least I would have had the options that we now have. And I am sure WOTC saw that too because the day after they anounced their original intent, Roll20 said they weren't follwing WOTC's plan. So I'm prety sure they chose to make this work for fear of losing more customers to the rival.
Bugs are expected for this type of transition. It will be buggy for awhile. But they will fix it in time. I would rather have options with Day 1 bugs that will eventually get fixed, than being forced to adapt to changes I didn't want and still have bugs Day 1. I think they made the right choice.
Most of the reported issues have nothing to do with spells anyway, whether they kept legacy spells or not wouldn't have made much of a difference. And honestly it's not that hard to ignore the 2024 versions of spells if playing 2014. And if playing 2024 then just disable legacy content and there's no problem.
Does that not completely defeat the purpose of this book, and future books being backwards compatible? I get that it is a preference, and something we have to "deal with" I am stating issues that are only here because of it. Case in point magic items, and features that grant spell lists. Which will all need homebrew revisions to make them in line with the revision if you intend on playing the game they intended on releasing which is a backwards compatible revision to the rules that have existed for 10 years now.
It is backwards compatible, the only things marked as Legacy are aspects of the game that have been replaced with newer versions. Your Firbolg for example isn't Legacy since it doesn't appear in 2024 PHB. It's under the Expanded Rules toggle, so you can still play 2024 and play a Firbolg and not have to deal with 2014 spells.
The example of magic items is only the case until they release the DMG at which point they will legacy all old magic items and create 2024 versions of the magic items. This is because wotc in their infinite wisdom has decided to release the books months apart.
You should basically be treating this as a Beta test until all 3 books are released, as you can't truly play 2024 dnd until then, hence any bugs with new content are to be expected.
Meanwhile everyone can continue playing their 2014 campaigns without disruption, so I don't really see the problem to be honest.
Most of the reported issues have nothing to do with spells anyway, whether they kept legacy spells or not wouldn't have made much of a difference. And honestly it's not that hard to ignore the 2024 versions of spells if playing 2014. And if playing 2024 then just disable legacy content and there's no problem.
Does that not completely defeat the purpose of this book, and future books being backwards compatible? I get that it is a preference, and something we have to "deal with" I am stating issues that are only here because of it. Case in point magic items, and features that grant spell lists. Which will all need homebrew revisions to make them in line with the revision if you intend on playing the game they intended on releasing which is a backwards compatible revision to the rules that have existed for 10 years now.
Really they need to seperate out the character builder/sheet into two versions.
If you select 2014 it should block out all of the 2024 content (including spells) and just offer you the old options and have the old rule text on the character sheet (for conditions etc). The legacy toggle would then enable content that is legacy to 2014 only (e.g. Volo's Guide to Monsters).
Then if you select it should show all the 2024 compatible options (including 2014 backgrounds\subclasses etc that haven't been replaced), updated as neccessary to use the 2024 spells. Behind the scenes this would probably mean having two copies of each subclass, one with 2014 spells and one with 2024 spells, but these should be tagged to only show up on the relevant sheets. Then, on 2024 sheets, have the legacy toggle enable all the 2014/legacy options for those that want to mix & match.
Ideally they'd use the tagging/toggle system to enable even better filtering, e.g. being able to turn on 2014 content, but not content that is legacy within 2014 (again, e.g. Volo's). As they add more and more content, especially from 3rd parties, it's going to get more and more cluttered unless they put a decent filtering system in place, might as well start on it now.
As for monsters and magical items, I expect the issue is that technically there are no 2024 monsters or magic items (bar a handful of examples) until the DMG and MM are released. Ideally they'd have implemented copies of old monsters\items with the new spells as a temporary measure until then, but as we can see they haven't managed to do all of the PHB, let alone any extras.
At the end of the day, the first OneDnD playtest was in August 2022, and must have been in the works at least 12 months before that, so 3 years minimum. They have had plenty of time to come up with a solution that would support both sets of rules adequately, they have just chosen not to put in the resources to do so.
Any disruption caused by the u-turn a couple of weeks ago is entirely down to their lack of planning. It should not have come as a surprise to them that after months of telling us we could continue with 2014 rules, that we would expect to be able to continue with 2014 rules. Besides, ignoring the bugs and just looking at all the features that are just not implemented at all, they clearly were'nt on track for a proper release anyway, now or in two weeks when early access ends.
Any disruption caused by the u-turn a couple of weeks ago is entirely down to their lack of planning. It should not have come as a surprise to them that after months of telling us we could continue with 2014 rules, that we would expect to be able to continue with 2014 rules. Besides, ignoring the bugs and just looking at all the features that are just not implemented at all, they clearly were'nt on track for a proper release anyway, now or in two weeks when early access ends.
I have to agree. Given the rather vocal pushback WOTC got when they wanted to change the licensing (many months ago), and their rapid reversal about that, it should have been clear to anyone with half a brain that a forced rollout of 2024 rules on this platform would be greeted by a similar response. If I were to take a wild guess, lots of the 2024 class features are missing important meta-data that informs the character builder framework how they interact together. Extra Attack seems to be entirely missing from most of the new classes (in the display on the Attack panel, it says "attacks per action: 1" for everyone). 2024 Warlocks cannot select many of the 2024 invocations (devouring blade, lifedrinker, etc) during the build process. Classes which get a Fighting Style Feat as a class feature can't select one. (Paladins)
And I'm not talking about corner-cases (like something unexpected when trying to use 2014 content with 2024 characters) -- this is a vanilla "start from scratch" 2024 character being unable to select 2024 features. I'm not even talking about a feature that "doesn't work" such as Eldritch Spear not changing the range of a spell, or Eldritch Smite not being usable "in play". I'm talking "you can't use the builder to build (many) 2024 characters at all" types of bugs.
I have no idea how they've architected their data, but they've had people working on a "Maps" feature (which is ok.. it's early days) -- I think they probably would have been better deployed on this rollout months ago, so it was solid, to be frank.
You're likely on something of an island in holding that opinion. There are many that don't want to upgrade, whether mid-campaign or to upgrade at all, and so continuing to use the current 5e rules with the DNDBeyond toolset is essentially the minimum viable product in that respect.
I wouldn't go so far as to say he is on an island, I think it only seems that way because of change. Most people resist change. That's a scientific fact.
You think everyone was happy going from edition to edition? I gave up when I first saw 3e and never played it or 4th. As far as I was concerned it only looked like D&D in name only. See I was on that small island of not wanting to change. I've only just become mildly interested in 5e off and one for about a couple of years. But only recently have I become more interested, because I was actually thinking about trying the game out and starting as a Ranger. I kept seeng videos about Ranger was broken or something and then saw the same thing about the Monk. I decided to stick with Monk, and enjoyed reading the Playtests. Sad to see Stun and Quivering Palm get nerfed, but overall Monk came out better.
So you could say that I was on a small island, because I refused to accept the new changes in editions. But here I am.
There are several issues. (1) It only works for people with parties who exclusively use D&D Beyond. Which isn't a lot. (2) Many people don't want to change period. (3) Most of the problems you are experiencing would probably still be happening.
I was in the camp that the overwrite of the 2014 spells on this platform was a good thing. I made my opinion known, and I made predictions.
Honestly, there are so many reasons for this. The first being ease of use, now we have to deal with an insane amount of clutter when choosing spells. I thought from the beginning that having both available at the same time would be incredibly confusing for new players to navigate, and over all messy. Taking the amount of options available and nearly doubling them, all because you wanted to play a Firbolg or some other "Species" not in the new book. Which would force you to turn on the "Legacy" slider. I was right. You cannot have access to one aspect of legacy content, without being bombarded by all other legacy content.
The second and even more egregious. Magic items. Because we did not allow those spells to be over written. ALL magic items from the 2014 rules that reference a spell with a tooltip. Now only reference 2014 rules. If the spells had been overwritten, the tooltips would have updated. Now if you want for example; a Staff of healing, to use the 2024 healing spells. We either have to wait for it to be revised in the 2024 DMG or homebrew it.
The third, and likely just an oversight: Artificer. I am making an assumption here, but as of right now (still launch day, so I understand this will change very soon) Artificer cannot access the 2024 spells at all. I assume this is just an oversight, because in order for their spell list to show the 2024 rules as a choice. Their entire spell list needs to have the 2024 versions added to it on the back end. The reason I am noting this.... because if the overwrite would have happened. This would not be the case.
A similar issue: Any legacy feature that provides spells. Example: Mark of Healing Halfling. The spells referenced with tooltips are the 2014 versions, not the 2024 versions. With magic items, I could see an update in the near future with the DMG, but I can't even imagine how far out a replacement for this lineage would be?
I just really wish we, as a community did not attack WOTC for "Taking things away" which in all honesty it wouldn't have. because what we have here is a mess, and I feel like we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I like most others were asking for a 2014 toggle. Sadly they used the awkward legacy system from their previous rewrites of existing stuff. A simple toggle would have left a clearn list of options available based upon the toggle being on or off.
That you didn't bother to read one single person in the prior thread say they wanted to finish their 2014 campaigns rather than starting over is indicative of the problem with replying to your post. You want everyone to conform to the style of play that you prefer, rather than allowing other people to have a few years of use of the content they bought.
The Artificer issue has nothing to do with legacy spells. In fact they would have zero spells from either edition if we had not demanded that the 2014 content be maintained for a few months if not a few years.
Magic items haven't been changed yet because the DMG isn't out. The exception is the potion of healing.
All legacy features would have been deleted under your system, so having them link to legacy content is the only way you and your players have access. You are welcome for our efforts to save these features.
If the 2024 stuff is so perfect that everyone should be forced to convert, why are you allowing players to use legacy content at your table?
I think the problems stem from expectations of a library vs a bookshop. We accept that digital libraries like Netflix change their catalogues, so our access to a particular piece of media isn't guaranteed. But DDB charged people for individual books, so the backlash against those books changing is understandable. And it really is a matter of preference - some people are okay with what they see as a free upgrade to the book they bought. Others purposefully bought a particular edition of a book, so see the changes as unwanted and ruining their purchase.
If DDB wants people to invest in personal digital libraries where customers have to pay for books individually, they really needs to provide stable access to each and every one of those books - including the digital character sheet and toolset compatibility that was an implicit part of the purchase, because that's how they marketed it. I really don't trust DDB as a safe place to buy the books, since they don't provide an actual digital copy for you to keep, and the hosted content is subject to change at DDB's whim.
4e had a subscription model. $60/month gives you every WotC published book from 4th edition. DBB could have followed the same model, but they choose to sell books individually. Also trying to pretend that 2024 is backwards compatible, when this controversy proves it isn't is another big problem. Providing a small print announcement that content is being deleted was a huge problem. Then a WotC employee shut down my effort to publish all the 2014 spells as home brew content so that the legacy players didn't need WotC to change course and not delete content was yet another problem.
Netflix doesn't promise customers access to content that isn't available to their customers. The number of easy to implement solutions to the problems are vast. But they didn't realize that players actually need a couple years to complete a campaign, nor that players would actually want to finish a level 1-20 campaign rather than drop the game at level 17 without getting to see the big final boss fight.
It's not a question of being on any high ground. The logic is simple. If WotC takes away something that I paid for and hides behind the "well, you didn't really buy it, you only bought access to it" shield, that's fine. They can do that. But it's not going to invite me to spend more money on their services.
WotC is letting us keep our 2014 stuff not because we're in some moral right. They're doing it so we're more likely to stick around and spend money on the 2024 stuff. It's just responding to market pressures.
Agreed!!! I didn't buy 2024 because I was in the middle of a 2014 campaign and didn't want to deal with whatever mess might come my way. As soon as they announced a toggle (which so far only seems to allow for 2024 only or both content side by side, rather than a total toggle off for 2024, I ordered the new edition. Being unable to turn off the 2024 content is annoying in my ongoing 2014 games, but its not that big of an issue. Hopefully they will eventually do what they should have done in the first place and have a fullly functional toggle so we can chose either/or, rather than all being trapped in the middle of both/and.
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It's not a question of being on any high ground. The logic is simple. If WotC takes away something that I paid for and hides behind the "well, you didn't really buy it, you only bought access to it" shield, that's fine. They can do that. But it's not going to invite me to spend more money on their services.
WotC is letting us keep our 2014 stuff not because we're in some moral right. They're doing it so we're more likely to stick around and spend money on the 2024 stuff. It's just responding to market pressures.
There were going to be issues no matter which route they took, so I am glad they decided to go this route.
You have an early release product, it is not surprising somethings aren't working yet, they have a couple of weeks to sort it out before the book's official release date.
You also have all of the solutions given to those of us that did not want the original "delete the old stuff and let them figure it all out" quick fix available to you until they get this sorted out, with the added benefit of knowing it will get better instead of it's the way it will always be.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Mistake nr 1. Not make 6th edition, so now you got this screw up of halfassed 6th edition to the detriment of all
Mistake nr 2. Screw over your customer base and try to force them over to a new edition that is not a new edition.
Mistake nr 3. Having idiots at the helm that seem to be incredibly stupid not to see this coming.
At the end of the day, this is day 1. I am almost 95% sure that many of the issues I have brought up here will soon be fixed.
I have no doubt in my mind that the DDB team will work their asses off to make this transition period as smooth as they can.
The issue is, not only did someone have to go through and add the legacy tag to over 400 spells, they now ALSO have to fix the insane amount of bugs this has brought along on top of that.
My complaints are not that the system has bugs. My complaint is that we as a community, bullied WOTC into back pedaling.
ALL of the stated issues are things that will require more work on the backend, as well as more work from us from a DM's perspective.
And I can almost guarantee you that the decision to over write the original spells came as a direct response to the issues I am touching on here.
It wasn't because the system couldn't handle the data, It wasn't to make more money. It is the way the system works within itself, and the problems that come up within the code.
The devs could foresee it happening, and made the executive decision that for the health of the platform. The overwrite was the move to make.
Especially when considering the amount of spells that changed significantly outside of a wording change for clarification, is so small.
Realistically, we as DM's would have been provided FOR FREE the revision to spells. Then we as DM's would have had to go in and homebrew ~35/400 spells to be in line with 2014 rules.
All magic items would be synced, all clutter would be gone, all legacy content that relates to spells would be synced, artificer would be synced... and I am almost 1000% sure there are more issues I have not found yet that too, would be synced.
If the revision had landed, these issues would not be present.
I have 2 campaigns that did not want to touch the 2024 revision, and we were across BOTH campaigns with 6 players each. Going to have to homebrew the 2014 versions of a TOTAL of 13 spells.
Are you saying that had they not rolled back removing the 14 stuff from the character builder that there would be no issues on the 24 early release?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Oh absolutely not, just that the issues I have stated here would not be among the many issues they are dealing with as well.
I have been following the bug report and it is massive, which is to be expected with an update like this.
I am only stating that had the revision gone through, almost all the issues I stated in my original post would not be among the problems we are now dealing with.
Most of the reported issues have nothing to do with spells anyway, whether they kept legacy spells or not wouldn't have made much of a difference. And honestly it's not that hard to ignore the 2024 versions of spells if playing 2014. And if playing 2024 then just disable legacy content and there's no problem.
Considering DDB will fix the issues soon I see it as a far better solution than what was initially proposed.
A short term inconvenience with a work around is far better than permanently removing things, especially when the minor inconvenience now is a one time suffering that we will reap the benefits of with every new book released instead of the new releases compounding the work for the end users to keep what was already there with each new release.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Does that not completely defeat the purpose of this book, and future books being backwards compatible?
I get that it is a preference, and something we have to "deal with" I am stating issues that are only here because of it.
Case in point magic items, and features that grant spell lists. Which will all need homebrew revisions to make them in line with the revision if you intend on playing the game they intended on releasing which is a backwards compatible revision to the rules that have existed for 10 years now.
I don't agree with the OP.
What we're seeing is the pains of a system that should have functioned like this in the first place. We only got this because we argued for it but it was obvious that they didn't want to give us this from the onset and now they have to go back and "fix" something that should have been taken into consideration from jump street.
I'm not mad or upset that there are growing pains, I'm upset that this wasn't the idea to do in the first place.
Al I know is that if they would have went with the original plan, I would have went over to Roll20 and played there and cancelled my DDB sub. It would have sucked to buy all the books again, but at least I would have had the options that we now have. And I am sure WOTC saw that too because the day after they anounced their original intent, Roll20 said they weren't follwing WOTC's plan. So I'm prety sure they chose to make this work for fear of losing more customers to the rival.
Bugs are expected for this type of transition. It will be buggy for awhile. But they will fix it in time. I would rather have options with Day 1 bugs that will eventually get fixed, than being forced to adapt to changes I didn't want and still have bugs Day 1. I think they made the right choice.
It is backwards compatible, the only things marked as Legacy are aspects of the game that have been replaced with newer versions. Your Firbolg for example isn't Legacy since it doesn't appear in 2024 PHB. It's under the Expanded Rules toggle, so you can still play 2024 and play a Firbolg and not have to deal with 2014 spells.
The example of magic items is only the case until they release the DMG at which point they will legacy all old magic items and create 2024 versions of the magic items. This is because wotc in their infinite wisdom has decided to release the books months apart.
You should basically be treating this as a Beta test until all 3 books are released, as you can't truly play 2024 dnd until then, hence any bugs with new content are to be expected.
Meanwhile everyone can continue playing their 2014 campaigns without disruption, so I don't really see the problem to be honest.
Really they need to seperate out the character builder/sheet into two versions.
If you select 2014 it should block out all of the 2024 content (including spells) and just offer you the old options and have the old rule text on the character sheet (for conditions etc). The legacy toggle would then enable content that is legacy to 2014 only (e.g. Volo's Guide to Monsters).
Then if you select it should show all the 2024 compatible options (including 2014 backgrounds\subclasses etc that haven't been replaced), updated as neccessary to use the 2024 spells. Behind the scenes this would probably mean having two copies of each subclass, one with 2014 spells and one with 2024 spells, but these should be tagged to only show up on the relevant sheets. Then, on 2024 sheets, have the legacy toggle enable all the 2014/legacy options for those that want to mix & match.
Ideally they'd use the tagging/toggle system to enable even better filtering, e.g. being able to turn on 2014 content, but not content that is legacy within 2014 (again, e.g. Volo's). As they add more and more content, especially from 3rd parties, it's going to get more and more cluttered unless they put a decent filtering system in place, might as well start on it now.
As for monsters and magical items, I expect the issue is that technically there are no 2024 monsters or magic items (bar a handful of examples) until the DMG and MM are released. Ideally they'd have implemented copies of old monsters\items with the new spells as a temporary measure until then, but as we can see they haven't managed to do all of the PHB, let alone any extras.
At the end of the day, the first OneDnD playtest was in August 2022, and must have been in the works at least 12 months before that, so 3 years minimum. They have had plenty of time to come up with a solution that would support both sets of rules adequately, they have just chosen not to put in the resources to do so.
Any disruption caused by the u-turn a couple of weeks ago is entirely down to their lack of planning. It should not have come as a surprise to them that after months of telling us we could continue with 2014 rules, that we would expect to be able to continue with 2014 rules. Besides, ignoring the bugs and just looking at all the features that are just not implemented at all, they clearly were'nt on track for a proper release anyway, now or in two weeks when early access ends.
I have to agree. Given the rather vocal pushback WOTC got when they wanted to change the licensing (many months ago), and their rapid reversal about that, it should have been clear to anyone with half a brain that a forced rollout of 2024 rules on this platform would be greeted by a similar response.
If I were to take a wild guess, lots of the 2024 class features are missing important meta-data that informs the character builder framework how they interact together. Extra Attack seems to be entirely missing from most of the new classes (in the display on the Attack panel, it says "attacks per action: 1" for everyone). 2024 Warlocks cannot select many of the 2024 invocations (devouring blade, lifedrinker, etc) during the build process. Classes which get a Fighting Style Feat as a class feature can't select one. (Paladins)
And I'm not talking about corner-cases (like something unexpected when trying to use 2014 content with 2024 characters) -- this is a vanilla "start from scratch" 2024 character being unable to select 2024 features. I'm not even talking about a feature that "doesn't work" such as Eldritch Spear not changing the range of a spell, or Eldritch Smite not being usable "in play". I'm talking "you can't use the builder to build (many) 2024 characters at all" types of bugs.
I have no idea how they've architected their data, but they've had people working on a "Maps" feature (which is ok.. it's early days) -- I think they probably would have been better deployed on this rollout months ago, so it was solid, to be frank.
I wouldn't go so far as to say he is on an island, I think it only seems that way because of change. Most people resist change. That's a scientific fact.
You think everyone was happy going from edition to edition? I gave up when I first saw 3e and never played it or 4th. As far as I was concerned it only looked like D&D in name only. See I was on that small island of not wanting to change. I've only just become mildly interested in 5e off and one for about a couple of years. But only recently have I become more interested, because I was actually thinking about trying the game out and starting as a Ranger. I kept seeng videos about Ranger was broken or something and then saw the same thing about the Monk. I decided to stick with Monk, and enjoyed reading the Playtests. Sad to see Stun and Quivering Palm get nerfed, but overall Monk came out better.
So you could say that I was on a small island, because I refused to accept the new changes in editions. But here I am.
There are several issues. (1) It only works for people with parties who exclusively use D&D Beyond. Which isn't a lot. (2) Many people don't want to change period. (3) Most of the problems you are experiencing would probably still be happening.
I like most others were asking for a 2014 toggle. Sadly they used the awkward legacy system from their previous rewrites of existing stuff. A simple toggle would have left a clearn list of options available based upon the toggle being on or off.
That you didn't bother to read one single person in the prior thread say they wanted to finish their 2014 campaigns rather than starting over is indicative of the problem with replying to your post. You want everyone to conform to the style of play that you prefer, rather than allowing other people to have a few years of use of the content they bought.
The Artificer issue has nothing to do with legacy spells. In fact they would have zero spells from either edition if we had not demanded that the 2014 content be maintained for a few months if not a few years.
Magic items haven't been changed yet because the DMG isn't out. The exception is the potion of healing.
All legacy features would have been deleted under your system, so having them link to legacy content is the only way you and your players have access. You are welcome for our efforts to save these features.
If the 2024 stuff is so perfect that everyone should be forced to convert, why are you allowing players to use legacy content at your table?
4e had a subscription model. $60/month gives you every WotC published book from 4th edition. DBB could have followed the same model, but they choose to sell books individually. Also trying to pretend that 2024 is backwards compatible, when this controversy proves it isn't is another big problem. Providing a small print announcement that content is being deleted was a huge problem. Then a WotC employee shut down my effort to publish all the 2014 spells as home brew content so that the legacy players didn't need WotC to change course and not delete content was yet another problem.
Netflix doesn't promise customers access to content that isn't available to their customers. The number of easy to implement solutions to the problems are vast. But they didn't realize that players actually need a couple years to complete a campaign, nor that players would actually want to finish a level 1-20 campaign rather than drop the game at level 17 without getting to see the big final boss fight.
Agreed!!! I didn't buy 2024 because I was in the middle of a 2014 campaign and didn't want to deal with whatever mess might come my way. As soon as they announced a toggle (which so far only seems to allow for 2024 only or both content side by side, rather than a total toggle off for 2024, I ordered the new edition. Being unable to turn off the 2024 content is annoying in my ongoing 2014 games, but its not that big of an issue. Hopefully they will eventually do what they should have done in the first place and have a fullly functional toggle so we can chose either/or, rather than all being trapped in the middle of both/and.