Tasha's and Xanathar's subclasses in 5.5e

I've been searching and can't get a straight answer. Do the subclasses from both books hold up to 5.5e subclasses, and do any not function at all anymore? If they are underpowered, are there any easy asjuatments that can be made to make them more in line? Are they worth getting or should I wait and see if they revise them?

1) “Do the subclasses from both books hold up to 5.5e subclasses”- Not sure what you mean by “hold up”, please elaborate.

2) “do any not function at all anymore”- Nothing about the core class changes in 5.5 keeps a 5.0 subclass from functioning. There’s some 5.5 subclasses that won’t work perfectly on a 5.0 class chassis, such as Rogue ones that add to the Cunning Strikes feature introduced in the 5.5 version of the class, but that’s it.

3) “If they are underpowered, are there any easy asjuatments that can be made to make them more in line?”- In general I’d say there’s no significant power disparity, and there’s no simple and broad way to attempt to tune up subclasses in any case.

4) “Are they worth getting or should I wait and see if they revise them?”- If you mean the ones in XGtE and TCoE, I’d say get them now if you’d like. There’s a lot that haven’t been updated yet, and current releases seem to be aimed more at creating new subclasses than updating existing ones, so you could be in for a long wait.

Hold up I specifically meant power-wise, not that I'm intending to min-max, but I don't want to stumble into an underpowered build. And I'd heard about circle of Shepherd Druid being a little borked due to conjuration. I just mostly wanna know if they'd still be satisfying to play imposed into the 2024 rules.

The only 5e subclass that I'd say doesn't work super well in 5.5e is the Circle of the Shepherd Druid from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. This isn't due to anything in particular about the new Druid class; it's just that it depends very heavily on the use of spells that summon creatures, and its features work best on spells that summon multiple creatures. While there are still summoning spells in 5.5e, many of the spells the Shepherd Druid relied on have been changed in 5.5e so that they create area effects rather than summon creatures, including one specific one that's referenced by name in the highest level feature of the subclass. This is not to say you can't play a Shepherd Druid in 5.5e, but you'd have a lot fewer options for summoning spells, your features that improve them would have less impact, and your level 14 feature wouldn't work at all as written.

That's an outlier, though; in general, the 5e subclasses that haven't been updated will work just fine in 5.5e.

Power-wise, it really depends on the subclass. Some pre-2024 ones are still fine, while others are weaker than newer ones.

It heavily depends on the class.   Ranger is a mixed bag, being functionally better in some respects and objectively worse in others. Yet the tashas ranger is marginally better because of how resources are used.

Spell casters in 5.5 have fixed number of prepared spells, but 5e and tashas scales off of main stat for spell casting, and has less regulated subclasses  

You’ll find endless edge case comparisons like this all over, since 5.5 shifted most of the power out of classes and moved them to spells and spell access. So there is no solid answer, since the question of “underpowered” is a build specific question requiring looking at 2 variations of  a build and comparing it to other classes or party members. 

But as a rule of thumb for 5e, access to spells trumps all first party subclass features, with only a few notable exceptions. And in 5.5e access to spell lists is better than spells that replaced class and subclass abilities. 

The only one that is outright broken currently (as in, does not function in 5.5e as written) is Shepherd Druid, because the spells it's designed to work with have been drastically changed in the update.

All the rest will work fine; their performance will vary as all subclasses do, so you'll have to be specific about which ones you're considering to get more specific guidance.

Quote from AintEvenTheDoodoo >>

Hold up I specifically meant power-wise, not that I'm intending to min-max, but I don't want to stumble into an underpowered build. And I'd heard about circle of Shepherd Druid being a little borked due to conjuration. I just mostly wanna know if they'd still be satisfying to play imposed into the 2024 rules.

 "Satisfying to play" depends heavily on what you find satisfying, but if you want to share which ones you're looking at and maybe a bit about what you typically like we can help you get a meaningful answer.

5.5e and 5e are supposed to be cross compatible but also Tasha is a horrible person who is responsible for attempting to utterly destroy Alchemy as a craft. Every potion she makes she decides to turn into a spell because she is a subpar Alchemist and an evil witch. While I respect her as a spell caster she had done great damage to the craft and spells are more often than not a completely inefficient use of resources and time. If Tasha actually had the drive and intelligence to be a full on Alchemist she might be a halfway decent person but she doesn't so she is just a lowly evil witch who knows she can only craft subpar potions so as a result she still relies heavily on casting spells. Tasha is trash.... good book though. 😅

Edit: Tasha is only evil because she doesn't make enough potions and instead converts them into spells. The rest of what she does I don't care enough about to say whether or not it is good or evil. Simply the act of refusing to convert spells into potions is evil to me.

Quote from heydanseegil >>

5.5e and 5e are supposed to be cross compatible but also Tasha is a horrible person who is responsible for attempting to utterly destroy Alchemy as a craft. Every potion she makes she decides to turn into a spell because she is a subpar Alchemist and an evil witch. While I respect her as a spell caster she had done great damage to the craft and spells are more often than not a completely inefficient use of resources and time. If Tasha actually had the drive and intelligence to be a full on Alchemist she might be a halfway decent person but she doesn't so she is just a lowly evil witch who knows she can only craft subpar potions so as a result she still relies heavily on casting spells. Tasha is trash.... good book though. 😅

Edit: Tasha is only evil because she doesn't make enough potions and instead converts them into spells. The rest of what she does I don't care enough about to say whether or not it is good or evil. Simply the act of refusing to convert spells into potions is evil to me.

sir, this is an Iggwendy's

I'm leaning towards getting them at this point, and I appreciate the lore dump, but wtf man, this did NOT help lmao

Quote from heydanseegil >>

5.5e and 5e are supposed to be cross compatible but also Tasha is a horrible person who is responsible for attempting to utterly destroy Alchemy as a craft. Every potion she makes she decides to turn into a spell because she is a subpar Alchemist and an evil witch. While I respect her as a spell caster she had done great damage to the craft and spells are more often than not a completely inefficient use of resources and time. If Tasha actually had the drive and intelligence to be a full on Alchemist she might be a halfway decent person but she doesn't so she is just a lowly evil witch who knows she can only craft subpar potions so as a result she still relies heavily on casting spells. Tasha is trash.... good book though. 😅

Edit: Tasha is only evil because she doesn't make enough potions and instead converts them into spells. The rest of what she does I don't care enough about to say whether or not it is good or evil. Simply the act of refusing to convert spells into potions is evil to me.

 You leave our queen Iggwylv alone. 

To the question asked, there's nothing particularly underpowered about 5e subclasses compared to the 5.5e classes save for the already known stragglers like Undying Warlock, Purple Dragon Knight, etc. I'd say on the whole, the backwards compatible subclasses hold up really well since for the most part base class features that received updates. 

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from heydanseegil >>

5.5e and 5e are supposed to be cross compatible but also Tasha is a horrible person who is responsible for attempting to utterly destroy Alchemy as a craft. Every potion she makes she decides to turn into a spell because she is a subpar Alchemist and an evil witch. While I respect her as a spell caster she had done great damage to the craft and spells are more often than not a completely inefficient use of resources and time. If Tasha actually had the drive and intelligence to be a full on Alchemist she might be a halfway decent person but she doesn't so she is just a lowly evil witch who knows she can only craft subpar potions so as a result she still relies heavily on casting spells. Tasha is trash.... good book though. 😅

Edit: Tasha is only evil because she doesn't make enough potions and instead converts them into spells. The rest of what she does I don't care enough about to say whether or not it is good or evil. Simply the act of refusing to convert spells into potions is evil to me.

sir, this is an Iggwendy's

 Hahaha!

Quote from LemonPaws2319 >>

Quote from heydanseegil >>

5.5e and 5e are supposed to be cross compatible but also Tasha is a horrible person who is responsible for attempting to utterly destroy Alchemy as a craft. Every potion she makes she decides to turn into a spell because she is a subpar Alchemist and an evil witch. While I respect her as a spell caster she had done great damage to the craft and spells are more often than not a completely inefficient use of resources and time. If Tasha actually had the drive and intelligence to be a full on Alchemist she might be a halfway decent person but she doesn't so she is just a lowly evil witch who knows she can only craft subpar potions so as a result she still relies heavily on casting spells. Tasha is trash.... good book though. 😅

Edit: Tasha is only evil because she doesn't make enough potions and instead converts them into spells. The rest of what she does I don't care enough about to say whether or not it is good or evil. Simply the act of refusing to convert spells into potions is evil to me.

 You leave our queen Iggwylv alone. 

To the question asked, there's nothing particularly underpowered about 5e subclasses compared to the 5.5e classes save for the already known stragglers like Undying Warlock, Purple Dragon Knight, etc. I'd say on the whole, the backwards compatible subclasses hold up really well since for the most part base class features that received updates. 

 Yeah, they do. I have a player in my 5.5e campaign who are using 5e class. No issues yet.

TO BOTH OF YOU...

They have progressively depowered Alchemist in each edition since they were introduced. They may still be the most broken OP class in the entire game if you know how to play them because they were designed to capitalize on the rules to bypass them but they are still way less powerful than they were and I blame Tasha. She is the one with a cauldron but then her book has like no potions in it or anything. This is because Tasha is a Witch and does lame weak boring inefficient magic. She'll always be under Mystra's thumb.

Look, honestly, Tasha isn't really all that bad. I just have a professional rivalry going because she's wasted all her potential by becoming a Witch and casting spells instead of brewing potions. It is like what if Elminster decided to never to cast a spell and instead became a farmer. It's just sad. Like recently divorced Dad who lost custody to an unfit mother because they had a misdemeanor prior from 20 years ago. Heartbreaking, really it is. She could have been the best of us Alchemist. So much wasted potential.