Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
It is also important to note that a toggle would have been a better choice and easier for users, like they did for those not wanting the legacy stuff in the '24 rules. That choice added to the absolute zero response to the many confused users of this site on how they can use this mess they have made for us when there was a far superior choice that they did make for the way they want us to play the game is rather insulting.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I just bought used copies of PHB and TCoE online for pretty cheap so I could have those at the table when we play. That way, if the players have a hard time finding it in DDB, we have the hard copies. I think I'll probably use this to wean them (and me) off of DDB altogether. It kind of sucks because I love the campaign feature where I can see all of their character sheets, but hey... we did it that way for decades, so no biggie.
I subscribed to DnDB to have an easy way to make characters for my teenage players. With all the recent changes it is not easy anymore. So why should i keep my subscription?
Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
We had a functioning* site. We were then told that half** of that was going to be deleted. The fact that they decided not to delete things and instead merely made it unnecessarily difficult and confusing to use (and accidently deleted a few things anyway***) is not something to celebrate. They have not "listened to the customer base", if they had we'd be able to choose which ruleset to use and only see the chosen ruleset in the character builder/sheet. Instead they've done the bare minimum to pretend they're listening. No-one**** playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through all the 2024 options to build a character, and I can't imagine 2024 players are thrilled to have legacy rules showing up all over the sheet, or having to enable all the legacy spells etc just to access the legacy subclasses.
As for the "massive course change", that was entirely self inflicted. They'd had over two years to plan the update. The messaging for months had been that 2024 was backwards compatible, and you could still use old characters/adventures etc. They can't then announce two weeks before switchover "oh, you can keep the character, we're just deleting all***** their spells and items and giving them new ones". They should never have been planning that in the first place, and it's no defense to claim they were surprised by the response.
Even now though, if they came out and said that they had a plan over the next few months to a) fix all the bugs, b) implement the missing PHB features and c) add a way to segregate the two rulesets****** and implement some detailed filtering options******* I'd be willing to give them some time to do so. As it stands though we've had no information on what they're planning to fix, or even what they consider a bug. There's a load of features from the new PHB that are just listed as "we are unable to implement this feature", with no indication on whether they are working on it, or just don't intend to do anything with it.
* Mostly ** Not literally. Certainly an unreasonably large amount though. *** E.g. the 2014 Monk has the wrong Martial Arts Die and the legacy rules for Initiative, Inspiration, Two Weapon Fighting, Unarmed Strike, Grapple & Shove are all missing from the sheet. ****Again, not literally. I've not asked everyone yet. ***** Yet again, not literally. But the vast majority of spells and a large number of items. ****** Easiest way would be to have a choice at the start of character building, that lead to seperate options/sheets ******* This isn't just important for 2014/204, but as more and more books come out it's not helpful to have loads of books lumped under "Expanded Rules" or "Legacy Content", you really need to be able to filter by book.
Assuming WotC don't change anything for the better, or make it worse (I'm expecting more 2024 rules creep) what are the alternatives? At our table we're all neuro-spicy people, which is why D&D Beyond was such a great help for us. Printed character sheets and printed books work, but they tend to slow us down quite a bit as our brains try to figure things out while being distracted by everything else. So, while we could cancel D&D Beyond, we'd rather not.
However... What if we have to? What are some alternatives that could do the same sort of thing? Are there any? Does Roll20 have similar functionality? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated; I'd like to look into some in case D&D Beyond becomes just too silly to work with. Thanks!
Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
We had a functioning* site. We were then told that half** of that was going to be deleted. The fact that they decided not to delete things and instead merely made it unnecessarily difficult and confusing to use (and accidently deleted a few things anyway***) is not something to celebrate. They have not "listened to the customer base", if they had we'd be able to choose which ruleset to use and only see the chosen ruleset in the character builder/sheet. Instead they've done the bare minimum to pretend they're listening. No-one**** playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through all the 2024 options to build a character, and I can't imagine 2024 players are thrilled to have legacy rules showing up all over the sheet, or having to enable all the legacy spells etc just to access the legacy subclasses.
As for the "massive course change", that was entirely self inflicted. They'd had over two years to plan the update. The messaging for months had been that 2024 was backwards compatible, and you could still use old characters/adventures etc. They can't then announce two weeks before switchover "oh, you can keep the character, we're just deleting all***** their spells and items and giving them new ones". They should never have been planning that in the first place, and it's no defense to claim they were surprised by the response.
Even now though, if they came out and said that they had a plan over the next few months to a) fix all the bugs, b) implement the missing PHB features and c) add a way to segregate the two rulesets****** and implement some detailed filtering options******* I'd be willing to give them some time to do so. As it stands though we've had no information on what they're planning to fix, or even what they consider a bug. There's a load of features from the new PHB that are just listed as "we are unable to implement this feature", with no indication on whether they are working on it, or just don't intend to do anything with it.
* Mostly ** Not literally. Certainly an unreasonably large amount though. *** E.g. the 2014 Monk has the wrong Martial Arts Die and the legacy rules for Initiative, Inspiration, Two Weapon Fighting, Unarmed Strike, Grapple & Shove are all missing from the sheet. ****Again, not literally. I've not asked everyone yet. ***** Yet again, not literally. But the vast majority of spells and a large number of items. ****** Easiest way would be to have a choice at the start of character building, that lead to seperate options/sheets ******* This isn't just important for 2014/204, but as more and more books come out it's not helpful to have loads of books lumped under "Expanded Rules" or "Legacy Content", you really need to be able to filter by book.
What do you mean “no one playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through…”? I just told you I am playing 2014 rules and it’s manageable so far. My group was ready to switch to pen and paper. Now we don’t have to.
The unarmed tooltips are what I mentioned need to be ignored however I haven’t given a monk a go since 2024. That is super unfortunate! Closer to a deal breaker than inspiration being called heroic inspiration instead anyway haha. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good though. I am no Wizbro apologist but it is impossible to deny that this is better than no more access to 2014 content in the character sheet at all, which was totally on the table.
Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
It is also important to note that a toggle would have been a better choice and easier for users, like they did for those not wanting the legacy stuff in the '24 rules. That choice added to the absolute zero response to the many confused users of this site on how they can use this mess they have made for us when there was a far superior choice that they did make for the way they want us to play the game is rather insulting.
There is a toggle. Could there have been a better toggle? Maybe. I don’t know how hard it would be for them to make the toggle something other than what they did but to claim there is no toggle is as disingenuous as the folks who want to tell you that the 2014 character sheet is the same now with the legacy content as it was before 2024 dropped.
Again, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The legacy content is pretty clearly labelled. The monk die being incorrect is the worst thing I know of but….when the home group leveled on Saturday, two of the players chose some 2024 content. It was easy to detect. The cleric/bard chose Starry Wisp and the rogue/ranger had weapon masteries. All it took to fix the problem was to remind them to scroll all the way down when choosing a class and to make sure that spells are tagged legacy. They fixed it in about as much time as it took them to level the wrong way originally. All about a billion times better than pen and paper would be in the grand scheme of things, which is what we’re comparing DDB to if you prefer 2014 over 2024.
Hopefully they fix the martial arts die at least and tune up some of the other things. TBH, I feel way it’s way worse for the 2024 players who want to play with subclasses that didn’t get republished yet so now they have to figure out how to weave the legacy stuff in with the new. We’re not early adopters so likely would not have changed but the fact that I wanted to play a Fathomless Warlock and there was no way I was doing that BS is a deciding factor for us sticking with 2014 for the campaign we started three weeks ago.
**Wanted to add that it’s not like the character sheet was flawless before 2024 dropped. It has always had a few things that you had to be careful about, things it didn’t implement properly and such. It is commonly accepted that DDB permitting something on a character sheet is not a legitimate rules test. You always had to be willing and able to look at other sources to ensure you were doing things correctly.
Kayakingpoodle, I’m not telling you or anyone how to feel about this, I am saying your criteria are skewed. If you’re thirsty and are offered a glass of water but refuse to drink only beer, is it really true or fair to say you were never offered a drink? Straight 2014 DDB was never on the table. The option to what we have now was pen and paper for legacy content. If you compare it to something that was never on offer, you’ve set yourself up so you can never be happy.
Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
We had a functioning* site. We were then told that half** of that was going to be deleted. The fact that they decided not to delete things and instead merely made it unnecessarily difficult and confusing to use (and accidently deleted a few things anyway***) is not something to celebrate. They have not "listened to the customer base", if they had we'd be able to choose which ruleset to use and only see the chosen ruleset in the character builder/sheet. Instead they've done the bare minimum to pretend they're listening. No-one**** playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through all the 2024 options to build a character, and I can't imagine 2024 players are thrilled to have legacy rules showing up all over the sheet, or having to enable all the legacy spells etc just to access the legacy subclasses.
As for the "massive course change", that was entirely self inflicted. They'd had over two years to plan the update. The messaging for months had been that 2024 was backwards compatible, and you could still use old characters/adventures etc. They can't then announce two weeks before switchover "oh, you can keep the character, we're just deleting all***** their spells and items and giving them new ones". They should never have been planning that in the first place, and it's no defense to claim they were surprised by the response.
Even now though, if they came out and said that they had a plan over the next few months to a) fix all the bugs, b) implement the missing PHB features and c) add a way to segregate the two rulesets****** and implement some detailed filtering options******* I'd be willing to give them some time to do so. As it stands though we've had no information on what they're planning to fix, or even what they consider a bug. There's a load of features from the new PHB that are just listed as "we are unable to implement this feature", with no indication on whether they are working on it, or just don't intend to do anything with it.
* Mostly ** Not literally. Certainly an unreasonably large amount though. *** E.g. the 2014 Monk has the wrong Martial Arts Die and the legacy rules for Initiative, Inspiration, Two Weapon Fighting, Unarmed Strike, Grapple & Shove are all missing from the sheet. ****Again, not literally. I've not asked everyone yet. ***** Yet again, not literally. But the vast majority of spells and a large number of items. ****** Easiest way would be to have a choice at the start of character building, that lead to seperate options/sheets ******* This isn't just important for 2014/204, but as more and more books come out it's not helpful to have loads of books lumped under "Expanded Rules" or "Legacy Content", you really need to be able to filter by book.
What do you mean “no one playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through…”? I just told you I am playing 2014 rules and it’s manageable so far. My group was ready to switch to pen and paper. Now we don’t have to.
The unarmed tooltips are what I mentioned need to be ignored however I haven’t given a monk a go since 2024. That is super unfortunate! Closer to a deal breaker than inspiration being called heroic inspiration instead anyway haha. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good though. I am no Wizbro apologist but it is impossible to deny that this is better than no more access to 2014 content in the character sheet at all, which was totally on the table.
Perhaps it’s time to remember that the original plan was for 2014/Legacy content to be completely unavailable for the online character sheet? So far, everything I have to do to use it is very manageable: scroll a little further down in dropdowns, make sure my spells have legacy tags, check the ones that don’t for 2014 eligibility, and ignore the extraneous tooltips that crop up in a couple of places. This is about a billion times better than being unable to use the online character sheet for any legacy content at all.
What we have now is a compromise and quite a serviceable one, IMHO. I mean, something has got to be first in a dropdown menu and something has to be last. It’s no one’s problem to solve but your own if you don’t look at the entirety of the options. This isn’t a matter of we got a crap thing and we’d better be grateful for it, it’s a case where they listened and responded to the customer base but people still refuse to ackowledge or appreciate the massive course change made to accommodate us because they didn’t get exactly, precisely what they wanted.
It is also important to note that a toggle would have been a better choice and easier for users, like they did for those not wanting the legacy stuff in the '24 rules. That choice added to the absolute zero response to the many confused users of this site on how they can use this mess they have made for us when there was a far superior choice that they did make for the way they want us to play the game is rather insulting.
There is a toggle. Could there have been a better toggle? Maybe. I don’t know how hard it would be for them to make the toggle something other than what they did but to claim there is no toggle is as disingenuous as the folks who want to tell you that the 2014 character sheet is the same now with the legacy content as it was before 2024 dropped.
Again, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The legacy content is pretty clearly labelled. The monk die being incorrect is the worst thing I know of but….when the home group leveled on Saturday, two of the players chose some 2024 content. It was easy to detect. The cleric/bard chose Starry Wisp and the rogue/ranger had weapon masteries. All it took to fix the problem was to remind them to scroll all the way down when choosing a class and to make sure that spells are tagged legacy. They fixed it in about as much time as it took them to level the wrong way originally. All about a billion times better than pen and paper would be in the grand scheme of things, which is what we’re comparing DDB to if you prefer 2014 over 2024.
Hopefully they fix the martial arts die at least and tune up some of the other things. TBH, I feel way it’s way worse for the 2024 players who want to play with subclasses that didn’t get republished yet so now they have to figure out how to weave the legacy stuff in with the new. We’re not early adopters so likely would not have changed but the fact that I wanted to play a Fathomless Warlock and there was no way I was doing that BS is a deciding factor for us sticking with 2014 for the campaign we started three weeks ago.
Where is the toggle to turn off the 24 content?
That is the toggle we (those unhappy with the current rollout) are talking about. Yes there are many toggles one for just about everything but turning off the 24 content. That is the gripe, I am a little surprised it had to be said, talk about being disingenuous.
A '24 toggle would clear up lots of confusion, and get rid of the bulk of the discontent with the current set up.
It is getting hard not to see the lack of a '24 toggle as the passive aggressive punishment for those not wanting to use the incomplete rules we are being forced to sift through, are see it as. It is like wizbro is just slopping the hog and waiting to get paid.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
In all fairness, it should be a "Legacy' toggle that lets you toggle between setting the defaults as 2014 or 2024. To be honest, I am not even sure it matters. You can still choose "Legacy" races, backgrounds & feats that are in the 2014 core rule books and additional content made for 2014. The only place I see it having a big impact is on weapons, armor, spells and some gear where the new stats and descriptions do not have a legacy option. I will say after buying the 2024 PHB, I like many of the changes they have made. It's going to be a little tuff to wrap my head around ASI being associated with backgrounds instead of races, but if you really think about it, it makes sense. The feat rewrites are much better (IMO) and will lend well to building characters that fit the BFH trope. (that's Big Friendly Heroes) :)
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
We can't use 14 content without the 24 content present. Being the 24 is an addition to the legacy 14 content and will work without the 24 content something that can not be said for the 24 content yet it is very frustrating and confusing to many when trying to use only the 14 content. It is very odd that the only missing toggle is to turn of the 24 stuff, and that seems to be the biggest source of confusion and frustration to most voicing the dissent about the 24 stuff. I for one refuse to buy any content until there is a toggle that allows only 14 content in a game. The groups I play with are already shopping for a non wizbro game to play due to this very issue. I understand their reasoning, but they have 0 dollars tied up in wizbro, I on the other hand have thousands in the platform and wizbro is chasing off my player group and essentially mothballing my content over not wanting players to play the game they want to play. What a joke and a slap in the face to customers like me that are now having to abandon the purchases we have made to play with our friends. Not everyone plays online or AL type games, the long running face to face campaigns are what is getting crapped on and it sucks!
To not buy anything new or the new PHB or even have it shared in the campaign and have it disrupt your games to the point of people not playing is Beyond stupid!
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
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Rule Zero: Make the game your own
Online Resources This is a small list of things that can be helpful to a DM be they new or experienced Covering everything from cartography, campaign management and virtual Tabletop environments.
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
The spells I totally understand being less than aesthetically pleasing on the character screen, but this a bit much. I have only made 3 PCs under the 2014 rules since the 2024 rules were released so I could help others navigate the changes and there have been exactly 0 times I forgot to scroll once to get to the 2014 classes.
Even if it is accepted that you somehow forgot that the worst changes you have ever experienced in the history of your life (based on the general response by 2014 hardliners), it is a simple matter to just scroll after, add the desired class, then delete the offending class. It is no more difficult than correcting the error of choosing an incorrect magical item.
All that is needed is a 2024 Rules toggle. ON and 2024 content and the construction on going is enabled. OFF and it’s everything before 2024, no 2024 access to content unless enabled.
Simple, and yet I feel WotC/DDBeyound did not think this through…….
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
The spells I totally understand being less than aesthetically pleasing on the character screen, but this a bit much. I have only made 3 PCs under the 2014 rules since the 2024 rules were released so I could help others navigate the changes and there have been exactly 0 times I forgot to scroll once to get to the 2014 classes.
Even if it is accepted that you somehow forgot that the worst changes you have ever experienced in the history of your life (based on the general response by 2014 hardliners), it is a simple matter to just scroll after, add the desired class, then delete the offending class. It is no more difficult than correcting the error of choosing an incorrect magical item.
Even simpler would be a toggle to turn off the 24 stuff.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
Forcing yourself to scroll a little further is nothing compared to homebrewing all the legacy content. Having to sort through whole bunch of extraneous spells is an acceptable compromise to homebrewing all the legacy content as well. I don’t know why they did it the way they did it and it is certainly not ideal however the comparison to how it works now is not with 2014 content prior to 2024’a drop, it’s to no 2014 content at all. What we have is a compromise between what you and Kayakingpoodle want and what DDB wants. No one is getting exactly what they want. Would you rather homebrew everything?
All that is needed is a 2024 Rules toggle. ON and 2024 content and the construction on going is enabled. OFF and it’s everything before 2024, no 2024 access to content unless enabled.
Simple, and yet I feel WotC/DDBeyound did not think this through…….
I think they did, seems too targeted of an inconvenience to be an accident, especially given they have done nothing to explain how to use the new stuff if you want to use just the old. No blog post about where to look for what used to be very apparent, what books are behind which toggles... this has all of the earmarks of a punishment for not wanting to play how wizbro says people should play, how inclusive of them.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
Forcing yourself to scroll a little further is nothing compared to homebrewing all the legacy content. Having to sort through whole bunch of extraneous spells is an acceptable compromise to homebrewing all the legacy content as well. I don’t know why they did it the way they did it and it is certainly not ideal however the comparison to how it works now is not with 2014 content prior to 2024’a drop, it’s to no 2014 content at all. What we have is a compromise between what you and Kayakingpoodle want and what DDB wants. No one is getting exactly what they want. Would you rather homebrew everything?
I would rather wizbro have the confidence in a new product and it actually be good enough that they do not feel the need to resort to sabotaging a tool to sell the new product, so they can meet profit goals.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Even simpler would be a toggle to turn off the 24 stuff.
I agree entirely. That would make things extremely easy and make the forums a lot less exhausting to be on again. I would honestly welcome it at this point.
However, it makes no business sense and would absolutely harm future sales of 2024 content to do so. Part of my job includes operating a small team of clinicians in a behavioral health program. One of the key things I teach my clinicians about our program is to not give the patient the option to refuse you. If someone gives a patient the option to engage in behavioral health, it is almost a universal fact that the patient will say no. Once the patient breathes life into that decision by voicing it, they will become so committed to refusing it, they will reject help even when they know it will harm them to refuse it. The opportunity to save a life is gone until their next crisis and we have to cross our fingers that they don't check out of life early once they discharge and are out of our reach. Many people are change averse, even if that change is ultimately good for them.
Why am I bringing this up? WotC has a product that they want you to use. That product is the 2024 toolset. If they give you the option to not use it or even see it, well, that would be like one of my clinicians asking a patient if they want to engage in behavioral health.
It is also important to note that a toggle would have been a better choice and easier for users, like they did for those not wanting the legacy stuff in the '24 rules. That choice added to the absolute zero response to the many confused users of this site on how they can use this mess they have made for us when there was a far superior choice that they did make for the way they want us to play the game is rather insulting.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I just bought used copies of PHB and TCoE online for pretty cheap so I could have those at the table when we play. That way, if the players have a hard time finding it in DDB, we have the hard copies. I think I'll probably use this to wean them (and me) off of DDB altogether. It kind of sucks because I love the campaign feature where I can see all of their character sheets, but hey... we did it that way for decades, so no biggie.
I subscribed to DnDB to have an easy way to make characters for my teenage players.
With all the recent changes it is not easy anymore. So why should i keep my subscription?
We had a functioning* site. We were then told that half** of that was going to be deleted. The fact that they decided not to delete things and instead merely made it unnecessarily difficult and confusing to use (and accidently deleted a few things anyway***) is not something to celebrate. They have not "listened to the customer base", if they had we'd be able to choose which ruleset to use and only see the chosen ruleset in the character builder/sheet. Instead they've done the bare minimum to pretend they're listening. No-one**** playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through all the 2024 options to build a character, and I can't imagine 2024 players are thrilled to have legacy rules showing up all over the sheet, or having to enable all the legacy spells etc just to access the legacy subclasses.
As for the "massive course change", that was entirely self inflicted. They'd had over two years to plan the update. The messaging for months had been that 2024 was backwards compatible, and you could still use old characters/adventures etc. They can't then announce two weeks before switchover "oh, you can keep the character, we're just deleting all***** their spells and items and giving them new ones". They should never have been planning that in the first place, and it's no defense to claim they were surprised by the response.
Even now though, if they came out and said that they had a plan over the next few months to a) fix all the bugs, b) implement the missing PHB features and c) add a way to segregate the two rulesets****** and implement some detailed filtering options******* I'd be willing to give them some time to do so. As it stands though we've had no information on what they're planning to fix, or even what they consider a bug. There's a load of features from the new PHB that are just listed as "we are unable to implement this feature", with no indication on whether they are working on it, or just don't intend to do anything with it.
* Mostly
** Not literally. Certainly an unreasonably large amount though.
*** E.g. the 2014 Monk has the wrong Martial Arts Die and the legacy rules for Initiative, Inspiration, Two Weapon Fighting, Unarmed Strike, Grapple & Shove are all missing from the sheet.
****Again, not literally. I've not asked everyone yet.
***** Yet again, not literally. But the vast majority of spells and a large number of items.
****** Easiest way would be to have a choice at the start of character building, that lead to seperate options/sheets
******* This isn't just important for 2014/204, but as more and more books come out it's not helpful to have loads of books lumped under "Expanded Rules" or "Legacy Content", you really need to be able to filter by book.
So...
Assuming WotC don't change anything for the better, or make it worse (I'm expecting more 2024 rules creep) what are the alternatives? At our table we're all neuro-spicy people, which is why D&D Beyond was such a great help for us. Printed character sheets and printed books work, but they tend to slow us down quite a bit as our brains try to figure things out while being distracted by everything else. So, while we could cancel D&D Beyond, we'd rather not.
However... What if we have to? What are some alternatives that could do the same sort of thing? Are there any? Does Roll20 have similar functionality? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated; I'd like to look into some in case D&D Beyond becomes just too silly to work with. Thanks!
What do you mean “no one playing the 2014 rules is happy having to wade through…”? I just told you I am playing 2014 rules and it’s manageable so far. My group was ready to switch to pen and paper. Now we don’t have to.
The unarmed tooltips are what I mentioned need to be ignored however I haven’t given a monk a go since 2024. That is super unfortunate! Closer to a deal breaker than inspiration being called heroic inspiration instead anyway haha. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good though. I am no Wizbro apologist but it is impossible to deny that this is better than no more access to 2014 content in the character sheet at all, which was totally on the table.
There is a toggle. Could there have been a better toggle? Maybe. I don’t know how hard it would be for them to make the toggle something other than what they did but to claim there is no toggle is as disingenuous as the folks who want to tell you that the 2014 character sheet is the same now with the legacy content as it was before 2024 dropped.
Again, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The legacy content is pretty clearly labelled. The monk die being incorrect is the worst thing I know of but….when the home group leveled on Saturday, two of the players chose some 2024 content. It was easy to detect. The cleric/bard chose Starry Wisp and the rogue/ranger had weapon masteries. All it took to fix the problem was to remind them to scroll all the way down when choosing a class and to make sure that spells are tagged legacy. They fixed it in about as much time as it took them to level the wrong way originally. All about a billion times better than pen and paper would be in the grand scheme of things, which is what we’re comparing DDB to if you prefer 2014 over 2024.
Hopefully they fix the martial arts die at least and tune up some of the other things. TBH, I feel way it’s way worse for the 2024 players who want to play with subclasses that didn’t get republished yet so now they have to figure out how to weave the legacy stuff in with the new. We’re not early adopters so likely would not have changed but the fact that I wanted to play a Fathomless Warlock and there was no way I was doing that BS is a deciding factor for us sticking with 2014 for the campaign we started three weeks ago.
**Wanted to add that it’s not like the character sheet was flawless before 2024 dropped. It has always had a few things that you had to be careful about, things it didn’t implement properly and such. It is commonly accepted that DDB permitting something on a character sheet is not a legitimate rules test. You always had to be willing and able to look at other sources to ensure you were doing things correctly.
Kayakingpoodle, I’m not telling you or anyone how to feel about this, I am saying your criteria are skewed. If you’re thirsty and are offered a glass of water but refuse to drink only beer, is it really true or fair to say you were never offered a drink? Straight 2014 DDB was never on the table. The option to what we have now was pen and paper for legacy content. If you compare it to something that was never on offer, you’ve set yourself up so you can never be happy.
Where is the toggle to turn off the 24 content?
That is the toggle we (those unhappy with the current rollout) are talking about. Yes there are many toggles one for just about everything but turning off the 24 content. That is the gripe, I am a little surprised it had to be said, talk about being disingenuous.
A '24 toggle would clear up lots of confusion, and get rid of the bulk of the discontent with the current set up.
It is getting hard not to see the lack of a '24 toggle as the passive aggressive punishment for those not wanting to use the incomplete rules we are being forced to sift through, are see it as. It is like wizbro is just slopping the hog and waiting to get paid.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Kayakingpoodle, having to turn ON the 2014 content is the same as turning OFF the 2024 content. If you don’t turn on the 2014, you have straight 2024. If you do, the 2014 supersedes or adds the content you need. It’s not perfect because it doesn’t take out the 2024. Could the toggle be better? I already said there is a chance of that but there is definitely a toggle for content. I mean, come on.
In all fairness, it should be a "Legacy' toggle that lets you toggle between setting the defaults as 2014 or 2024. To be honest, I am not even sure it matters. You can still choose "Legacy" races, backgrounds & feats that are in the 2014 core rule books and additional content made for 2014. The only place I see it having a big impact is on weapons, armor, spells and some gear where the new stats and descriptions do not have a legacy option. I will say after buying the 2024 PHB, I like many of the changes they have made. It's going to be a little tuff to wrap my head around ASI being associated with backgrounds instead of races, but if you really think about it, it makes sense. The feat rewrites are much better (IMO) and will lend well to building characters that fit the BFH trope. (that's Big Friendly Heroes) :)
We can't use 14 content without the 24 content present. Being the 24 is an addition to the legacy 14 content and will work without the 24 content something that can not be said for the 24 content yet it is very frustrating and confusing to many when trying to use only the 14 content. It is very odd that the only missing toggle is to turn of the 24 stuff, and that seems to be the biggest source of confusion and frustration to most voicing the dissent about the 24 stuff. I for one refuse to buy any content until there is a toggle that allows only 14 content in a game. The groups I play with are already shopping for a non wizbro game to play due to this very issue. I understand their reasoning, but they have 0 dollars tied up in wizbro, I on the other hand have thousands in the platform and wizbro is chasing off my player group and essentially mothballing my content over not wanting players to play the game they want to play. What a joke and a slap in the face to customers like me that are now having to abandon the purchases we have made to play with our friends. Not everyone plays online or AL type games, the long running face to face campaigns are what is getting crapped on and it sucks!
To not buy anything new or the new PHB or even have it shared in the campaign and have it disrupt your games to the point of people not playing is Beyond stupid!
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Sitting on a cancelled sub until the ability to hide all 2024 content is provided for.
I get that you believe that turning on legacy content is turning off 2024 but it is not 2024 content is extant while trying to create a legacy character. I caught myself half a dozen times making a character and having to force myself to scroll down further. It is bad right now. when the DMG and Monster Manual are released it is going to be nightmarish what they have done is not a best practice when you are maintaining a database of any kind
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The spells I totally understand being less than aesthetically pleasing on the character screen, but this a bit much. I have only made 3 PCs under the 2014 rules since the 2024 rules were released so I could help others navigate the changes and there have been exactly 0 times I forgot to scroll once to get to the 2014 classes.
Even if it is accepted that you somehow forgot that the worst changes you have ever experienced in the history of your life (based on the general response by 2014 hardliners), it is a simple matter to just scroll after, add the desired class, then delete the offending class. It is no more difficult than correcting the error of choosing an incorrect magical item.
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Exactly what I did.
All that is needed is a 2024 Rules toggle. ON and 2024 content and the construction on going is enabled. OFF and it’s everything before 2024, no 2024 access to content unless enabled.
Simple, and yet I feel WotC/DDBeyound did not think this through…….
Even simpler would be a toggle to turn off the 24 stuff.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Forcing yourself to scroll a little further is nothing compared to homebrewing all the legacy content. Having to sort through whole bunch of extraneous spells is an acceptable compromise to homebrewing all the legacy content as well. I don’t know why they did it the way they did it and it is certainly not ideal however the comparison to how it works now is not with 2014 content prior to 2024’a drop, it’s to no 2014 content at all. What we have is a compromise between what you and Kayakingpoodle want and what DDB wants. No one is getting exactly what they want. Would you rather homebrew everything?
I think they did, seems too targeted of an inconvenience to be an accident, especially given they have done nothing to explain how to use the new stuff if you want to use just the old. No blog post about where to look for what used to be very apparent, what books are behind which toggles... this has all of the earmarks of a punishment for not wanting to play how wizbro says people should play, how inclusive of them.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I would rather wizbro have the confidence in a new product and it actually be good enough that they do not feel the need to resort to sabotaging a tool to sell the new product, so they can meet profit goals.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I agree entirely. That would make things extremely easy and make the forums a lot less exhausting to be on again. I would honestly welcome it at this point.
However, it makes no business sense and would absolutely harm future sales of 2024 content to do so. Part of my job includes operating a small team of clinicians in a behavioral health program. One of the key things I teach my clinicians about our program is to not give the patient the option to refuse you. If someone gives a patient the option to engage in behavioral health, it is almost a universal fact that the patient will say no. Once the patient breathes life into that decision by voicing it, they will become so committed to refusing it, they will reject help even when they know it will harm them to refuse it. The opportunity to save a life is gone until their next crisis and we have to cross our fingers that they don't check out of life early once they discharge and are out of our reach. Many people are change averse, even if that change is ultimately good for them.
Why am I bringing this up? WotC has a product that they want you to use. That product is the 2024 toolset. If they give you the option to not use it or even see it, well, that would be like one of my clinicians asking a patient if they want to engage in behavioral health.
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | He/Him/They/Them
Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock
Try DDB free: Free Rules (2024), premade PCs, adventures, one shots, encounters, SC, homebrew, more
Answers: physical books, purchases, and subbing.
Check out my life-changing EXTENDED SIGNATURE!