If you want a frozen copy of a book, you should have purchased a physical book.
This is the way Digital Works evolve these days. You can't tell Apple that you don't want to ever get an update to your iPhone and expect it to remain supported.
I think it’s slightly nuanced though. We are talking about purchasing published written content, not a software application like iOS or Microsoft Office. I don’t care if the dndbeyond mobile app user interface changes but I do care if you rewrite my digital books that I paid for. If I’m reading Lord of the Rings, I expect it won’t change one day or update to a new story even if I’m reading on kindle.
It’s hard to imagine that the people who make these decisions actually play D&D or test these decisions thoroughly. Campaigns in my experience take months or years to finish, where characters develop over time in intricate and story-dependent ways. To say my character’s weapons and spells will suddenly be different at a moment’s notice is bonkers and not grounded in how tabletop roleplaying games work.
I am in the process of homebrew copying over spells, and I can finish doing that over the next few days.
However, I am not sure I can handle magic items. The amount to copy is insane. Is there anyway we can get a list of items that are being updated so I do not have to copy everything over? Seems like mundane armor is unchanged, but what about magic armor? If I can skip copying magic armor and magic weapons, that will eliminate a huge load of work.
I am really not happy that I have to resort to homebrew copy a bunch of stuff that I paid for. As much as I love the digital tools on Beyond, I am not optimistic about Beyond's future. I am sticking with Beyond for now, so I will still continue to make purchases in the foreseeable future, but I really do not want to. I guess I should really start considering using Google Sheets, but it is such a pain in the ass to set things up.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
It makes sense to do so now. It's been indicated that we will no longer have access to the current spells as template when creating homebrew when the 5.5 PHB drops. That means right now you can simply create copies of the spells directly. But later you'd have to manually reenter text and damage dice and other things.
I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
If you don't let me keep my legacy content, I will cancel my subscription. I know that you are making D&D one to be backwards compatible... but don't force it on me. Granted, there are some things that I like about dnd1, but I don't want to leave 5e right now. I want to keep my options open.
I am in the process of homebrew copying over spells, and I can finish doing that over the next few days.
However, I am not sure I can handle magic items. The amount to copy is insane. Is there anyway we can get a list of items that are being updated so I do not have to copy everything over? Seems like mundane armor is unchanged, but what about magic armor? If I can skip copying magic armor and magic weapons, that will eliminate a huge load of work.
I am really not happy that I have to resort to homebrew copy a bunch of stuff that I paid for. As much as I love the digital tools on Beyond, I am not optimistic about Beyond's future. I am sticking with Beyond for now, so I will still continue to make purchases in the foreseeable future, but I really do not want to. I guess I should really start considering using Google Sheets, but it is such a pain in the ass to set things up.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
I do not trust Beyond to give me a timely answer, if they give an answer at all, so I rather have a head start right now. I am really disappointed in Beyond's lack of communication with eliminating individual purchases, and while they did give us a heads up this time due to the relatively timely communication from the community managers and mods, this level of communication is an exception rather than the norm. Community managers and mods cannot give us timely communication if the higher ups themselves refuses to tell them in advance or disallow them to relay that information to us.
Additionally, my confidence in them has further eroded when they simply could have just made all the spells and magic items Legacy instead of replacing and getting rid of them. While I like the stuff in 2024, I still want the option to use 2014 stuff too.
I am not too sure how I will handle copying magic items since that list is several times longer than the spell list. I think the most sensible option is to emulate what Beyond did with Dragon's Wrath weapons, so I will just make a copy of an example for now, and then homebrew the rest as needed when the time comes. That would still be a lot of magic items to homebrew, but it will cut down on the amount I have to do right now, and spread out that work into the future.
Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
They have two in development
Maps - the 2d one , its ok but I wish most updates didn't consist of them adding maps to it and instead actually fix the problems. You can't draw on it without freezing everyone's browser. You can tell in videos the devs of it seem to really want to do a good job. I just am sure there is some one telling them they have to put in maps from books before anything else , to encourage people to buy the books.
Sigil - The 3d one you probably read about , it legit looks cool. So its sad I am having my group switch back to pen and paper.
I guarantee this change was the result of one person somewhere up the line , who is unable to hear criticism that is forcing this change. It makes literally 0 sense why they would do it this way other than greed. A toggle system for content is already built in. Its not a database thing because they want us all to homebrew the old stuff back in. Its just some person who thinks DM's will magically flock to new books if forced to, and they are out of their mind. Make the players lives miserably by changing up links forcing the DM to just switch to 5.5. This legit might get them sued if implemented. There are countries who do not screw around with that.
Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
You missed out the most important reason they've misled people over compatibility. They knew if they announced the end of 5e no one would have bought the last few books. This way people have continued buying on the promise of compatibility, only to have the rug pulled out from under them <2 weeks before switchover.
I have no reason to doubt that the content creators at WotC have worked to make the two rulesets compatible, probably with the best of intentions, and from what I've seen there's no reason the two can't exist side by side. It's a business decision by WotC\DnDBeyond to end support for the 2014 rules and force people to the new ruleset.
Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
You missed out the most important reason they've misled people over compatibility. They knew if they announced the end of 5e no one would have bought the last few books. This way people have continued buying on the promise of compatibility, only to have the rug pulled out from under them <2 weeks before switchover.
I have no reason to doubt that the content creators at WotC have worked to make the two rulesets compatible, probably with the best of intentions, and from what I've seen there's no reason the two can't exist side by side. It's a business decision by WotC\DnDBeyond to end support for the 2014 rules and force people to the new ruleset.
All they're doing is forcing folks to go back to Pen and Paper, or switch to a different source such as Roll20 and cancel their subscriptions here. They are shooting themselves in the foot if they follow their current course.
On a side note, I'm having problems trying to download pdfs of my characters. Keeps hanging up. Anyone else having the same problem??
WotC hasn't considered that these changes will break all our current DND Campaigns and the adventure books released before 2024. Campaigns are designed for the rules, items and spells we have now and not the 2024 changes.
DND Campaigns often takes years to come to a conclusion and forcing massive changes to a players spells and magic items mid campaign will break game balance and anger thousands of people playing dnd 5e as they will feel their characters have been "forcefully" changed without their permission. Some players bought specfic spells that fit the roleplay and back story of their charactors and you are taking that away from them.
Your taking away spells and items that players and DM's have paid for and have been using for years. You are forcing changes to charactors we have created over the last 5+ years. Many DM'S and Campaigns carefully consider the spells and items provided to their players and now your destroying all of that to try force us to buy the new 2024 books.
I paid for all the current items and spells from the books released before 2024. I own almost every single book on this site and had a master subscription for 5 years. You are significantly changing and removing all the content I bought without my permission and without any prior warning or knowledge. I haven't recieved a email that your taking away or significantly changing a huge amount of the content I paid for' nor have i been offered a refund or compensation for it.
Other than this thread there's been no communication about the huge amount of content we are about to lose access too and its likely that 90% of community don't check these forums. Just wait till the changes roll out and thousands of people will be flooding these forums asking whats happened to their spells and items. There's going to be thousands upon thousands of players who will be logging in one day to play their Campaigns only to suddenly find out their spells & items are gone. This will break the trust of most of the community.
We were given assurances that we wouldn't lose access to older content we bought with releases of new rules or editions. Myself and I'm sure thousands of others feel they have been completely lied too.
You are not allowed to take that content from me. I do not give permission for you to revoke access to content i paid for myself and the people i play with using my master tier subscription. If you do this I may as well cancel my sub and never buy a single book from you again as you can't be trusted to not take away the digital books i bought over the last 5 years!
You could easily keep all the spells and items in a optional toggle of 2014 ruleset for all our character sheets and by not giving that option you are revealing that you CHOSE to take this away from the thousands of people who purchased these items. You are choosing to deprive us of content we paid for across many books in a effort to force us to buy the new rule books. The reality is people will refuse to buy the new books because your removing huge amounts of content from books released over the last decade.
Give the new 2024 rules spells & items a new ID's and leave the current content we bought alone or prepare to lose your community.
Why should we ever trust you enough to buy a single book from you again if you will always choose to remove content from previous books we bought when you want to sell us a new one?
I will never buy another book from you or carry on my subscription if you go through with this as why buy books if you can delete content from them whenever you want?
I specifically use D&DB for character creation easy link to source books. You are screwing over your members. I stuck around through the last wave of mass subscription cancels and now I massively regret it. You are especially screwing people who purchased the source books in bulk. It be one thing if I were losing the feature for a few books, but for my FULL library. I feel like an idiot for being duped. Jokes on me trying to be high tech. Canceling my preorder and master level subscription. You suck.
It does suck to lose access to the spells, but who is actually interested in using the older version of those spells? The vast majority very much needed the changes. Could just treat it as errata, no?
A lot of people are currently playing 2014 rules and are using the current versions of spells. A lot of them have been badly nerfed and are all but worthless in 2024 (looking at you, Spiritual Weapon) and people don't want them.
Not to be that guy, but "without any prior warning or knowledge" isn't actually true.
This thread would not exist if that were true.
The problem is that very short lead time to the change, and the lack of transparency and clear answers in the information we do have.
As well as not giving owners of 2014 content easy, intuitive ways to choose that content.
Technically, yes they've given us "prior warning", but do you really think <2 weeks warning for something that makes DnDBeyond unusable for many campaigns is adequate time, especially when all prior communication (such as it is) was that both rulesets would be coexist side by side.
As I said in the post you quoted: it's a very short lead time. Communication has been poor. And there's little or no evident care for loyal gamers who've invested hundreds of dollars in content.
If we're homebrewing 2014 spells, how do we handle spells given by subclass features? We can add a homebrew feat to give the 2014 spell, but there's nothing we can do to take the 2024 version out of the spellbook. For some of the players at my table, this is going to be really confusing, and something I definitely want to avoid. I did look at homebrewing the subclass to update the spell references in it, but you can only duplicate core subclasses, not any of the ones found in Tasha's or other books.
As far as I can tell that means that even doing the official suggestion of copying 2014 content into homebrew, there is no way for me to avoid the forced update to 2024 versions of spells granted by a subclass? I'm looking for example at Sleep on the Redemption Paladin, which has noticeable differences between 2014 and 2024.
From a 2014 to 2024 standpoint, what was the process that went into deciding not to offer blanket legacy versions of spells alongside their 2024 counterparts, if they were changed?
This is probably the biggest change I can see where older content is just being updated wholesale, and the solution is "Create a Homebrew" version of it if you want the older version.
Especially since creating homebrew items often does not work as intended with your character sheet.
Yea I'm unsubscribed now. All the conveniences my membership offers will be useless. If I have to homebrew all my spells and items back in I'll just go dicecloud. Hell I might just finally convince my server to go Pathfinder since it'll be easier than reteaching everyone and reworking all the other homebrew we have integrated into our game.
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I don’t think I’ll buy more content if this holds
I think it’s slightly nuanced though. We are talking about purchasing published written content, not a software application like iOS or Microsoft Office. I don’t care if the dndbeyond mobile app user interface changes but I do care if you rewrite my digital books that I paid for. If I’m reading Lord of the Rings, I expect it won’t change one day or update to a new story even if I’m reading on kindle.
It’s hard to imagine that the people who make these decisions actually play D&D or test these decisions thoroughly. Campaigns in my experience take months or years to finish, where characters develop over time in intricate and story-dependent ways. To say my character’s weapons and spells will suddenly be different at a moment’s notice is bonkers and not grounded in how tabletop roleplaying games work.
It makes sense to do so now. It's been indicated that we will no longer have access to the current spells as template when creating homebrew when the 5.5 PHB drops. That means right now you can simply create copies of the spells directly. But later you'd have to manually reenter text and damage dice and other things.
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I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
If you don't let me keep my legacy content, I will cancel my subscription. I know that you are making D&D one to be backwards compatible... but don't force it on me. Granted, there are some things that I like about dnd1, but I don't want to leave 5e right now. I want to keep my options open.
I do not trust Beyond to give me a timely answer, if they give an answer at all, so I rather have a head start right now. I am really disappointed in Beyond's lack of communication with eliminating individual purchases, and while they did give us a heads up this time due to the relatively timely communication from the community managers and mods, this level of communication is an exception rather than the norm. Community managers and mods cannot give us timely communication if the higher ups themselves refuses to tell them in advance or disallow them to relay that information to us.
Additionally, my confidence in them has further eroded when they simply could have just made all the spells and magic items Legacy instead of replacing and getting rid of them. While I like the stuff in 2024, I still want the option to use 2014 stuff too.
I am not too sure how I will handle copying magic items since that list is several times longer than the spell list. I think the most sensible option is to emulate what Beyond did with Dragon's Wrath weapons, so I will just make a copy of an example for now, and then homebrew the rest as needed when the time comes. That would still be a lot of magic items to homebrew, but it will cut down on the amount I have to do right now, and spread out that work into the future.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
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Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
They have two in development
Maps - the 2d one , its ok but I wish most updates didn't consist of them adding maps to it and instead actually fix the problems. You can't draw on it without freezing everyone's browser. You can tell in videos the devs of it seem to really want to do a good job. I just am sure there is some one telling them they have to put in maps from books before anything else , to encourage people to buy the books.
Sigil - The 3d one you probably read about , it legit looks cool. So its sad I am having my group switch back to pen and paper.
I guarantee this change was the result of one person somewhere up the line , who is unable to hear criticism that is forcing this change. It makes literally 0 sense why they would do it this way other than greed. A toggle system for content is already built in. Its not a database thing because they want us all to homebrew the old stuff back in. Its just some person who thinks DM's will magically flock to new books if forced to, and they are out of their mind. Make the players lives miserably by changing up links forcing the DM to just switch to 5.5. This legit might get them sued if implemented. There are countries who do not screw around with that.
You missed out the most important reason they've misled people over compatibility. They knew if they announced the end of 5e no one would have bought the last few books. This way people have continued buying on the promise of compatibility, only to have the rug pulled out from under them <2 weeks before switchover.
I have no reason to doubt that the content creators at WotC have worked to make the two rulesets compatible, probably with the best of intentions, and from what I've seen there's no reason the two can't exist side by side. It's a business decision by WotC\DnDBeyond to end support for the 2014 rules and force people to the new ruleset.
All they're doing is forcing folks to go back to Pen and Paper, or switch to a different source such as Roll20 and cancel their subscriptions here. They are shooting themselves in the foot if they follow their current course.
On a side note, I'm having problems trying to download pdfs of my characters. Keeps hanging up. Anyone else having the same problem??
WotC hasn't considered that these changes will break all our current DND Campaigns and the adventure books released before 2024. Campaigns are designed for the rules, items and spells we have now and not the 2024 changes.
DND Campaigns often takes years to come to a conclusion and forcing massive changes to a players spells and magic items mid campaign will break game balance and anger thousands of people playing dnd 5e as they will feel their characters have been "forcefully" changed without their permission. Some players bought specfic spells that fit the roleplay and back story of their charactors and you are taking that away from them.
Your taking away spells and items that players and DM's have paid for and have been using for years. You are forcing changes to charactors we have created over the last 5+ years. Many DM'S and Campaigns carefully consider the spells and items provided to their players and now your destroying all of that to try force us to buy the new 2024 books.
I paid for all the current items and spells from the books released before 2024. I own almost every single book on this site and had a master subscription for 5 years. You are significantly changing and removing all the content I bought without my permission and without any prior warning or knowledge. I haven't recieved a email that your taking away or significantly changing a huge amount of the content I paid for' nor have i been offered a refund or compensation for it.
Other than this thread there's been no communication about the huge amount of content we are about to lose access too and its likely that 90% of community don't check these forums. Just wait till the changes roll out and thousands of people will be flooding these forums asking whats happened to their spells and items. There's going to be thousands upon thousands of players who will be logging in one day to play their Campaigns only to suddenly find out their spells & items are gone. This will break the trust of most of the community.
We were given assurances that we wouldn't lose access to older content we bought with releases of new rules or editions. Myself and I'm sure thousands of others feel they have been completely lied too.
You are not allowed to take that content from me. I do not give permission for you to revoke access to content i paid for myself and the people i play with using my master tier subscription. If you do this I may as well cancel my sub and never buy a single book from you again as you can't be trusted to not take away the digital books i bought over the last 5 years!
You could easily keep all the spells and items in a optional toggle of 2014 ruleset for all our character sheets and by not giving that option you are revealing that you CHOSE to take this away from the thousands of people who purchased these items. You are choosing to deprive us of content we paid for across many books in a effort to force us to buy the new rule books. The reality is people will refuse to buy the new books because your removing huge amounts of content from books released over the last decade.
Give the new 2024 rules spells & items a new ID's and leave the current content we bought alone or prepare to lose your community.
Why should we ever trust you enough to buy a single book from you again if you will always choose to remove content from previous books we bought when you want to sell us a new one?
I will never buy another book from you or carry on my subscription if you go through with this as why buy books if you can delete content from them whenever you want?
I specifically use D&DB for character creation easy link to source books. You are screwing over your members. I stuck around through the last wave of mass subscription cancels and now I massively regret it. You are especially screwing people who purchased the source books in bulk. It be one thing if I were losing the feature for a few books, but for my FULL library. I feel like an idiot for being duped. Jokes on me trying to be high tech. Canceling my preorder and master level subscription. You suck.
A lot of people are currently playing 2014 rules and are using the current versions of spells. A lot of them have been badly nerfed and are all but worthless in 2024 (looking at you, Spiritual Weapon) and people don't want them.
Not to be that guy, but "without any prior warning or knowledge" isn't actually true.
This thread would not exist if that were true.
The problem is that very short lead time to the change, and the lack of transparency and clear answers in the information we do have.
As well as not giving owners of 2014 content easy, intuitive ways to choose that content.
Unsubscribed. tyvm
Technically, yes they've given us "prior warning", but do you really think <2 weeks warning for something that makes DnDBeyond unusable for many campaigns is adequate time, especially when all prior communication (such as it is) was that both rulesets would be coexist side by side.
As I said in the post you quoted: it's a very short lead time. Communication has been poor. And there's little or no evident care for loyal gamers who've invested hundreds of dollars in content.
If we're homebrewing 2014 spells, how do we handle spells given by subclass features? We can add a homebrew feat to give the 2014 spell, but there's nothing we can do to take the 2024 version out of the spellbook. For some of the players at my table, this is going to be really confusing, and something I definitely want to avoid. I did look at homebrewing the subclass to update the spell references in it, but you can only duplicate core subclasses, not any of the ones found in Tasha's or other books.
As far as I can tell that means that even doing the official suggestion of copying 2014 content into homebrew, there is no way for me to avoid the forced update to 2024 versions of spells granted by a subclass? I'm looking for example at Sleep on the Redemption Paladin, which has noticeable differences between 2014 and 2024.
Especially since creating homebrew items often does not work as intended with your character sheet.
Yea I'm unsubscribed now. All the conveniences my membership offers will be useless. If I have to homebrew all my spells and items back in I'll just go dicecloud. Hell I might just finally convince my server to go Pathfinder since it'll be easier than reteaching everyone and reworking all the other homebrew we have integrated into our game.