Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Yep, that was me. I view the collector mindset as one that's detrimental to enjoying the game because at it's core it's a consumption based approach to a game that doesn't warrant it. Like, don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of owning every book. But when you're viewing a new release that you have no interest in not with "Oh, guess that's a book that's not for me, shame I'll have to wait a few more months for something I like" but instead as an active detriment to you because you "must" buy it even if you don't want it, there's a fundamental problem. It's not a healthy way to engage with a game like D&D where the books are expensive.
Also there's the fact it's bad for the game. WotC should be able to put out some books for one corner of the community, and some books for another. Not every book needs to cater to every single niche of the hobby. But the collector mindset feeds back into a homogenizing effect.
My advice—buy what you like, skip what you don't, and don't consume for the sake of consumption.
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I don't, specifically for the reason you just listed. In 5e, there were really only 2 books that were "setting agnostic", Xanathar's and Tashas.
And Swashbuckler was "locked in a setting specific book" for seven years before being reprinted in Tasha's. Where was the outrage in 2015, that Swashbuckler was locked in Forgotten Realms? Nowhere.
Because people are acting like the WoW sourcebook is any different from Ravnica, Theros, or Eberron. The only difference is that the IP isn't owned by WOTC. Everything else is the same, and the faux outrage is largely a peddled thing, by streamers who live and breath outrage. That alone is the major difference this time around from every other.
I get it, because it was my initial reaction, but I felt differently on reflection.
(Changing one’s mind after calm reflection? Am I doing the Internet wrong? 🤔)
The Dungeons and Dragons team, and the D&D Beyond Team are separate groups. The Dungeons and Dragons Team decides on the content of books, D&D Beyond just follows along with digitization.
You could skip the website entirely and not be affected by the WoW sourcebook.
Wizards has consistently supported 5.0 and is explicitly ensuring that 5.0 will remain supported during their rework of the site’s backend. In fact, the backend rebuild will be used to better support 5.0 in a way the current site infrastructure does not presently allow, such as by allowing the search to be filtered to only show 5.0 content. Frankly, Wizards has gone above and beyond in supporting 5.0, despite what some ungrateful players might try to falsely push.
Moreover, your entire post makes little sense. This does not appear to be an update to core game functionality that would require major site infrastructure changes. They are new sourcebooks, and Beyond has always had tools making it really easy to ignore certain types of product. For example, it is really easy to ignore and exclude third party or even official noncore content, and there is no reason to think UB would be treated any different.
There may be some gaslighting going on in the quote chain above, but it does not seem to be coming from Gnoll.
My statement stands, you can try and compartmentalize it all you want and use as many fallacies as you dare to shoehorn it into whatever narrative you prefer. 5.5 disrupts the gameplay to this day for anyone using this site full stop!
Gnoll didn't exclude anything in that "wall of text" why do y'all think you get to place it in any vacuum?
Waterdrinker: "Oh I simply must reframe this random quote to be about something it isn't so I can still be mad!"
I am talking about the universes beyond content and only the universe beyond content, since that is the subject of this thread. Cut the disingenuous twaddle.
Moving Goalposts so you can claim gaslighting isn't cool, and ironically, is a form of gaslighting, which as you stated, is not cool.
I should also point out that there are still people playing 5E and not upgrading to 5.5. I was in one until the DM was deployed to places I don't have security clearance to even guess at.
You can even do it on this site with the right toggles. Something the team reworking this place's back end has hinted at will be easier when they rebuild the character builder.
You also can continue to play older content if you have the books or scans of them. Stuff you can still buy through official sources, just not this integrated store here.
I know for a fact one of the people I played with in my teens still uses AD&D 2nd edition for his game. He stuck with the system we started with and won't upgrade and it hasn't gotten in his way.
Find something worth being mad about.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
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To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
By claiming "5.5 disrupts the gameplay to this day for anyone using this site fulll stop!" you're making an extraordinarily broad and unsupported claim - really, a classic faulty generalization fallacy. I'd recommend not accusing others of fallacies or of gaslighting when they are simply disagreeing with you. It's not particularly conducive to meaningful discussion and it invites criticizing your posts for hypocrisy if you're engaging in the very behaviors you accuse others of. You're misusing both terms when your posts would be better served by explaining why you disagree with other posters with supporting evidence for your arguments. As to your claim, for starters, there's simply no rational basis to claim having 5.5E rules available and working for players who want to play 5.5E is in any way disruptive. And please don't try to claim "obviously 5.5E players should be excluded from my claim" so soon after attacking GnollItAll's response because you claim they didn't explicitly exclude the totally unrelated thing you wanted to derail the conversation to complain about. Beyond that obvious counterpoint to your extreme claim, the D&D Beyond team is already working on the site rebuild that will make it easier to filter 5E from 5.5E for the small portion of players who find any reference to 5.5E unbearable. Still and all, I'd argue that "disruptive" is a stretch since not using 5.5E content is a matter of just picking what you do want to use from an extensive list of options, which has ever been the way D&D Beyond works anyway. Do some things still bleed over in the short term while the team works on the site rebuild? Sure. But calling them disruptive when you can just ignore what you don't want to use is, again, a stretch.
I am playing in a game that uses 5.0 on this site and am experiencing no problems. I am also playing in a game that uses 5.5 and find no meaningful difference in terms of barriers to use. Maybe this mountain is really just a molehill.
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Speaking for myself, I’d first say outrage really overstates my feelings about the situation. It’s more annoyed. (And fwiw, I’m not a streamer, nor do I watch any.)
Also, I’d argue books like Fizban’s and Bigby’s, that deck of many things book, in an weird way, planescape and maybe a couple others are setting agnostic. I guess they assume a meta-setting, but they’re meant to be played anywhere in the multiverse. There’s a lot more than 2 out there.
But anyway, the issue here is different. In the swashbuckler example, they took something that was setting specific, and then opened it up to be setting agnostic. Now they are doing the reverse; something that is setting agnostic today will soon have an updated version locked behind a setting. It’s moving in the opposite direction. Something that had been universally available will now be tucked into a corner I’m not otherwise interested in visiting. It’s probably why you don’t hear a lot of folks complaining about the new subclasses they’re adding with the WoW book, just the ones they are updating. (At least I don’t, but as I said, I don’t watch streamers, so maybe they are.)
Additionally, back in the times when you cited, there was still à la carte purchasing, so it was much easier to add in something like swashbuckler to a game without all the other baggage that came with the book. I know it’s been a while since then. And print players never had that as an option, but it’s an important distinction between content availability then vs. now.
Your molehill can very well be a others mountain, in a few of my groups both 5 and 5.5 games pencil and paper along with digital have been abandoned due to the amount of times the gameplay stopped to sort out issues caused solely by complications directly related to conflating the two rulesets. New players and expected players alike just don't want to play D&D in my groups any longer well not enough to get a game going. Nice to see the same people ignoring another users experience because they don't like that experience. Carry on with the propaganda, my point has been made and being unpopular has resulted in the all to predictable dog pile for having a different experience.
This is still a molehill. It might be a molehill your group keeps tripping over, but that does not a mountain make.
The simple reality is that folks have been able to figure out different rule sets for over five decades now. Edition updates. Errata. Quirky setting or location specific rules. Countless house rules. Tables that interpret the same rule differently.
If your group is struggling, that is a problem with your group, not with the existence of 5.5. Wizards should not be blamed because your group is struggling with something most folks have proven for half a century is a pretty easy issue.
And, as has been pointed out, your complaints are not relevant to this thread. This thread is on Universes Beyond and you are trying to hijack it to discuss a completely different issue. If you want to complain about this issue, then you should make a thread to discuss it rather than trying to take this one.
Yeah, I am a monster.
Sorry, but if your table quit because there was a brief pause to sort out a rule, then that is going to be a problem for literally any TTRPG game you play always. Maybe your friends just don't like tabletop roleplaying games and need to find something else to do as a group.
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I agree with you on this, but it actually supports the point that there's nothing to be concerned about here. Setting-agnostic/multiversal books are clearly still a priority for them, with them continuing to make those right up until the tail end of 5.0 with BoMT.
That's still consistent with the overall trend though:
And even if the WoW book is the only time we ever even see the word "Swashbuckler" for the rest of 5.5 - if you want to play one so badly, is it that hard for your group to pick up that book and file off the serial numbers? It's not like a Swashbuckler is some inalienable concept to Azeroth that you need a ton of guidance to envision anywhere else; it's a pirate rogue, a fantasy concept right up there with "woodsman ranger" in terms of its ubiquity.
In short, I'll believe the sky is falling when it actually... falls.
Swashbuckler isn’t even particularly piratey, it’s a mixture of one-on-one duelist and a few CHA based features. A very broad archetype.
And the name doesn't come from pirates either; well known early examples that fit the archetype well include the Three Musketeers and Cyrano de Bergerac.
When I hear swashbuckler I don't usually think pirates. Usually I think of Errol Flynn and Nightcrawler. Which really ties in with what Ace mentioned about it being CHA based.
Well hold on now. Your assertion doesn't support your conclusion. You're claiming that having 5E and 5.5E rules available on D&D Beyond makes players not want to play at your table. That's a nonzero possibility, sure, but I can imagine any number of reasons players don't want to play at your table.
At any rate, I'd recommend not assuming your experience is universal and accusing people who don't agree with you of malicious behavior. Maybe you'd have a more productive experience in this discussion about Universes Beyond if you expressed an opinion about Universes Beyond?
The main issue with subclasses in worldbooks is it means that getting access to the subclass requires buying a lot of stuff that you may not care about, but it's not like that's a problem unique to Universes Beyond.
Again, not saying the sky is falling. I know others are, but I’ll let them answer for themselves. I’m just saying I find it annoying.
And this isn’t quite analogous. The thing already exists out there in the world, setting agnostic. Now it won’t be. And while it’s a trend that things go from setting specific to general, it’s not the only trend. There are things printed in setting books that didn’t make the leap to general. I think that’s great. I love for settings to have their own flavor. I’m not at all upset there’s going to be new setting-specific subclasses. The issue is this one in particular is going the other way. (Yes, the 5.0 version will still be around. And maybe the changes they make will be minimal enough that there’s no real difference, or no difference at all. I’m very open to the idea that this might be nothing.)
And I know it will be easy enough to use in another setting, that’s not that the point. The point is, before I can use it in another setting, I need to purchase this one.