I'm fully on board with these changes. The rules are being updated. So should the OFFICIAL tool of D&D. Being a bona fide gognard (I started playing in 1980), these changes happen and the tools ALWAYS update with them. If anything, this is probably the most flexible change in rulesets they've done. Change is hard sometimes. We need to accept it. Congratulations, Devs. I'm sure you've been burning the midnight oil to get this ready and I, for one, am very thankful for your effort.
For users who aren't updating to the 2024 rules, putting the onus on *us* to make homebrew copies of 2014 spells and magic items is, quite frankly, a great disservice to the community.
The updated monster statblock is great, though. That design rocks.
Preferably indefinitely? Given that I paid for a tool to play 5e, the fact that it's now being piecemeal swapped out for a tool to play 5.5e, obviously I'm not going to be super pleased with that?
I also got all my books to play 5e too, and i like how they work within 5e. I shouldnt be forced to update all of my books and buy new ones just to meet 5.5e standards when i paid to play 5e.
I don't get folks, how long should D&D beyond support 2014 5e? Ten years? Twenty?
Great breakdown.
At least until EVERYTHING in the 14 core rules are available in the updated form, and then legacy it and leave it as a choice for those that paid for it. Forcing people to pay for errata or homebrew what they lost is a slimeball move.
The issue as I see it is they can't legacy the OG PHB because it is still needed, BUTthey don't want people picking and choosing between the stuff that has been updated and the OG version. If the OG PHB is tagged legacy as things have been to date there are lots of things missing from the new PHB that will likely either be updated in later books, or left as is for a while. If they let the OG PHB remain intact it is hard to stop choosing from OG or NEW at will. So their "solution is to block the parts they have updated and force people to buy the new book or HB what they paid for, pretty greasy solution to a problem they have created IMHO.
I wonder if piecemeal was still around if they could legacy the stuff they want to control? e.g. only allow the OG PHB to be bought piecemeal of the non updated stuff and legacy tag the parts that have been updated?
For users who aren't updating to the 2024 rules, putting the onus on *us* to make homebrew copies of 2014 spells and magic items is, quite frankly, a great disservice to the community.
The updated monster statblock is great, though. That design rocks.
Yeah, even as somebody who can't wait to make the switch, I absolutely support people's desire to keep using all of the rules they know, love and have purchased. The very least I'd expect is for WotC and the Beyond team to create those homebrew copies themselves and make them available to everybody. That way at least people can grab them with the click of a button instead of having to go in and copy everything by hand. Ideally they should also create a whole homebrew collection that contains all the old 2014 stuff that people can add all at once.
For users who aren't updating to the 2024 rules, putting the onus on *us* to make homebrew copies of 2014 spells and magic items is, quite frankly, a great disservice to the community.
The updated monster statblock is great, though. That design rocks.
Yeah, even as somebody who can't wait to make the switch, I absolutely support people's desire to keep using all of the rules they know, love and have purchased. The very least I'd expect is for WotC and the Beyond team to create those homebrew copies themselves and make them available to everybody. That way at least people can grab them with the click of a button instead of having to go in and copy everything by hand. Ideally they should also create a whole homebrew collection that contains all the old 2014 stuff that people can add all at once.
As much as I agree with them making it easy, what you suggest would essentially be giving the OG PHB away for free, and that is neither something I want, or expect wizbro to do. There are likely several things about a solution of this type that could jeopardize their control of their IP. I am thinking the publishing a direct copy of an item in the PHB that is not in the free rules, SRD CC et al as homebrew is now.
Thorn whip is a PHB spell. I own the current PHB but do not plan on buying the new one. Would I even see the new Thorn Whip when building a character? Because right now I can.
Needing homebrew also takes away a big reason for Content Sharing. A big ease is that players can just use what the DM owns no issue. But now it'll be, "Hey, DM, I need you to homebrew these 12 spells I want to use because they no longer work." And at that point why shouldn't the DM just edit the character sheets themself? Why even pay for Master Tier?
Noticed that the ability to choose content related to specific settings is no longer going to be in the character settings. Is that just gone, or is it being moved to campaign settings?
Thank you for bringing this up! My yearly D&D Beyond master tier subscription was about to renovate next month, so thank you very much for bringing this news earlier, so I could cancel my subscription in time and save me some money.
It's beyond outrageous to make DM and players to "homebrew" OFFICIAL CONTENT that was already paid for, in case they want to use the previous version of an item or a spell on the character sheet. Not to mention changes in other rules that affect sheet creation a usability.
If I wanted to homebrew official content, I would not have bought the book. The information for 5e rules, items and spells it's all over the internet, people can (and do) "homebrew" it when they don't bother to buy it, people who prefer the convenience of having the official content ready to use do prefer to buy it, and now wizards will take this convenience away.
It's basically forcing users to adopt at least a few rules from the new edition that are incompatible with 5e (2014) or live with the inconvenience of having to check the book every time they cast a spell or want to check a rule that was usually on the character sheet, but now it's on 6 clicks and 4 minutes away. I hope the real result is a decrease in number of users, subscriptions and sales.
We had a good thing with DnDBeyond when it was with Fandom, cursed it's the day Wizards bought it...
Forcing usability changes and language changes on users who have not bought the new content and want to remain on the content they purchased on a platform it was literally designed for, is horrible.
Force updating spells and items and so on, even if the person isn't using the 2024 version of the rules reeks of "its easier for us but harder for you, so we'll go with harder for you".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
~Never cruel nor cowardly; never give up, never give in.
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Making homebrew copies of 400 spells and 300 items isn't a minor inconvenience, it is a clear deterrent for people who want to use 5e 2014. Add to that, that they will change the character sheet to not reference 2014 rules and not give an option for those who want it, is a very clear way for them to start forcing people to move to 2024
You're right it's not difficult to implement through homebrew so why didn't they just do that for us. It is much easier for them to keep the old spells and items, tag them as legacy (they already have a tagging system in place) and just create new versions. They already have the systems in place, they have duplicate spells when it comes to named spells in phb vs basic rules (e.g. Hideous Laughter Vs Tasha's Hideous Laughter) and you can already filter by sourcebook so why is this any different? It's not, they have just made the decision that best suits their bottom line that's all
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Making homebrew copies of 400 spells and 300 items isn't a minor inconvenience, it is a clear deterrent for people who want to use 5e 2014. Add to that, that they will change the character sheet to not reference 2014 rules and not give an option for those who want it, is a very clear way for them to start forcing people to move to 2024
Plus if the spells/items are being archived (was explicitly mentioned with feeblemind and branding smite) then it also bears the question of if they'll even be as easy to homebrew-copy as they are currently. Since with this announcement, I'm no longer inclined to give WotC the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these changes.
This is an absolutely terrible decision. My group is now forced to choose between either switching to 2024 rules mid-campaign or going back to paper and pencil. The least they could do is add a toggle so that you can keep the 2014 rules IN the character sheet, and maintain access to things like 2014 spells and items in the character sheet.
If this is truly going to be forced on us, I know I won't be renewing my subscription.
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
"Minor inconveniences"
Ok, my guy, please homebrew 478 spells for me real quick, will be barely an inconvenience.
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Making homebrew copies of 400 spells and 300 items isn't a minor inconvenience, it is a clear deterrent for people who want to use 5e 2014. Add to that, that they will change the character sheet to not reference 2014 rules and not give an option for those who want it, is a very clear way for them to start forcing people to move to 2024
You're right it's not difficult to implement through homebrew so why didn't they just do that for us. It is much easier for them to keep the old spells and items, tag them as legacy (they already have a tagging system in place) and just create new versions. They already have the systems in place, they have duplicate spells when it comes to named spells in phb vs basic rules (e.g. Hideous Laughter Vs Tasha's Hideous Laughter) and you can already filter by sourcebook so why is this any different? It's not, they have just made the decision that best suits their bottom line that's all
I think the reason they did not implement the "Legacy" tag for spells (other than the obvious fact that they want to force people to use the new system) is because the way they handled that was obviously bad. Putting a legacy tag on something is enough when you are dealing with monsters, when you are only searching in a database that you can filter. There is no implementation of filters in the spell lists for character sheet, which means that every spell would have 2 copies, doubling the number of spells in the spell list, an UI/UX nightmare that they don't want to deal it. So instead, they want we to do it and deal with it, since we're going to have the same problem.
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Making homebrew copies of 400 spells and 300 items isn't a minor inconvenience, it is a clear deterrent for people who want to use 5e 2014. Add to that, that they will change the character sheet to not reference 2014 rules and not give an option for those who want it, is a very clear way for them to start forcing people to move to 2024
You're right it's not difficult to implement through homebrew so why didn't they just do that for us. It is much easier for them to keep the old spells and items, tag them as legacy (they already have a tagging system in place) and just create new versions. They already have the systems in place, they have duplicate spells when it comes to named spells in phb vs basic rules (e.g. Hideous Laughter Vs Tasha's Hideous Laughter) and you can already filter by sourcebook so why is this any different? It's not, they have just made the decision that best suits their bottom line that's all
Well, for starters, having to homebrew several hundred spells isn’t what they said is happening at all - they are saying you will have to homebrew when there is a new version replacing the old.
A simple application of common sense can derive at least three reasons why spells are getting treated differently.
First, spells show up as dependent objects for lots of other things - feats, racial features, class features, etc. Having two different versions of a spell could confuse players - particularly new players - trying to figure out what their character’s features will do. It is far easier to have those systems link to a singular default, rather than have the system link to one version of the spells, when players might think they want another.
Second, spells are some of the longest lists out there - and can already be overwhelming to some players. Increasing the length of a list with only a couple dozen entries is not a big deal. Increasing the length of an extremely long list is - it makes something overwhelming even more so
Finally, spells, more than anything else, were really adjusted for power, with the new versions fixing some pretty big problems. Wizards does not want folks to accidentally choose the criminally underpowered 2014 healing spells, simply because they don’t know the systems that well and just select one of the two similarly names options. Nor do they want folks intentionally choosing the ridiculous 2014 version of spiritual weapon, which always should have had concentration.
All told, this really is not that big of a deal - and there are plenty of solid reasons why the new spells should, by default, supersede the old.
This move is like when they put self checkouts in everywhere around here and when people didn't use them they just stopped putting people in the manned registers and having people stand around telling customers to use the self checkouts so it would look like people wanted to use them. Then when pushed for a person to check them out they were told to go the customer service register. People would stand in that line or shop somewhere else, and only a few people using the self checkouts, now there are at least a couple of manned registers at all of the stores here.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
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I'm fully on board with these changes. The rules are being updated. So should the OFFICIAL tool of D&D. Being a bona fide gognard (I started playing in 1980), these changes happen and the tools ALWAYS update with them. If anything, this is probably the most flexible change in rulesets they've done. Change is hard sometimes. We need to accept it. Congratulations, Devs. I'm sure you've been burning the midnight oil to get this ready and I, for one, am very thankful for your effort.
For users who aren't updating to the 2024 rules, putting the onus on *us* to make homebrew copies of 2014 spells and magic items is, quite frankly, a great disservice to the community.
The updated monster statblock is great, though. That design rocks.
I don't get folks, how long should D&D beyond support 2014 5e? Ten years? Twenty?
Great breakdown.
Preferably indefinitely? Given that I paid for a tool to play 5e, the fact that it's now being piecemeal swapped out for a tool to play 5.5e, obviously I'm not going to be super pleased with that?
I also got all my books to play 5e too, and i like how they work within 5e. I shouldnt be forced to update all of my books and buy new ones just to meet 5.5e standards when i paid to play 5e.
Its especially worse because if i want to stay up to date with the new standards id also need to buy the new rule sets with the phb, dmg & mm,
At least until EVERYTHING in the 14 core rules are available in the updated form, and then legacy it and leave it as a choice for those that paid for it. Forcing people to pay for errata or homebrew what they lost is a slimeball move.
The issue as I see it is they can't legacy the OG PHB because it is still needed, BUT they don't want people picking and choosing between the stuff that has been updated and the OG version. If the OG PHB is tagged legacy as things have been to date there are lots of things missing from the new PHB that will likely either be updated in later books, or left as is for a while. If they let the OG PHB remain intact it is hard to stop choosing from OG or NEW at will. So their "solution is to block the parts they have updated and force people to buy the new book or HB what they paid for, pretty greasy solution to a problem they have created IMHO.
I wonder if piecemeal was still around if they could legacy the stuff they want to control? e.g. only allow the OG PHB to be bought piecemeal of the non updated stuff and legacy tag the parts that have been updated?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Yeah, even as somebody who can't wait to make the switch, I absolutely support people's desire to keep using all of the rules they know, love and have purchased. The very least I'd expect is for WotC and the Beyond team to create those homebrew copies themselves and make them available to everybody. That way at least people can grab them with the click of a button instead of having to go in and copy everything by hand. Ideally they should also create a whole homebrew collection that contains all the old 2014 stuff that people can add all at once.
As much as I agree with them making it easy, what you suggest would essentially be giving the OG PHB away for free, and that is neither something I want, or expect wizbro to do. There are likely several things about a solution of this type that could jeopardize their control of their IP. I am thinking the publishing a direct copy of an item in the PHB that is not in the free rules, SRD CC et al as homebrew is now.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Two things that are also coming to mind.
Thorn whip is a PHB spell. I own the current PHB but do not plan on buying the new one. Would I even see the new Thorn Whip when building a character? Because right now I can.
Needing homebrew also takes away a big reason for Content Sharing. A big ease is that players can just use what the DM owns no issue. But now it'll be, "Hey, DM, I need you to homebrew these 12 spells I want to use because they no longer work." And at that point why shouldn't the DM just edit the character sheets themself? Why even pay for Master Tier?
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny | DraĂocht, Kholias | Eggo Lass, 100 Dungeons
Tendilius Mondhaven Paxaramus, Drakkenheim | Talorin Tebedi, Vecna: Eve
Bombil, Hunt for Yeenoghu | Cherry Littleoak, Stormwreck | Phait, Lost Mine of Phandelver
Beneath the Mountain | Let's Test Monsters!
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 36, 10/3/24, How Can I Keep From Singing?
Noticed that the ability to choose content related to specific settings is no longer going to be in the character settings. Is that just gone, or is it being moved to campaign settings?
Thank you for bringing this up! My yearly D&D Beyond master tier subscription was about to renovate next month, so thank you very much for bringing this news earlier, so I could cancel my subscription in time and save me some money.
It's beyond outrageous to make DM and players to "homebrew" OFFICIAL CONTENT that was already paid for, in case they want to use the previous version of an item or a spell on the character sheet. Not to mention changes in other rules that affect sheet creation a usability.
If I wanted to homebrew official content, I would not have bought the book. The information for 5e rules, items and spells it's all over the internet, people can (and do) "homebrew" it when they don't bother to buy it, people who prefer the convenience of having the official content ready to use do prefer to buy it, and now wizards will take this convenience away.
It's basically forcing users to adopt at least a few rules from the new edition that are incompatible with 5e (2014) or live with the inconvenience of having to check the book every time they cast a spell or want to check a rule that was usually on the character sheet, but now it's on 6 clicks and 4 minutes away. I hope the real result is a decrease in number of users, subscriptions and sales.
We had a good thing with DnDBeyond when it was with Fandom, cursed it's the day Wizards bought it...
Just echoing everyone else's sentiment.
Forcing usability changes and language changes on users who have not bought the new content and want to remain on the content they purchased on a platform it was literally designed for, is horrible.
Force updating spells and items and so on, even if the person isn't using the 2024 version of the rules reeks of "its easier for us but harder for you, so we'll go with harder for you".
~Never cruel nor cowardly; never give up, never give in.
Honestly, nothing here seems like that big of a deal. There’s some minor inconveniences if you want to stick with the older versions of spells, but nothing that seems all that difficult to implement through the homebrewing system. Granted, the fact the inconveniences are minor clearly hasn’t stopped the “we want Wizards to fail for.. reasons…” crowd from making a mountain out of this molehill
Making homebrew copies of 400 spells and 300 items isn't a minor inconvenience, it is a clear deterrent for people who want to use 5e 2014. Add to that, that they will change the character sheet to not reference 2014 rules and not give an option for those who want it, is a very clear way for them to start forcing people to move to 2024
You're right it's not difficult to implement through homebrew so why didn't they just do that for us. It is much easier for them to keep the old spells and items, tag them as legacy (they already have a tagging system in place) and just create new versions. They already have the systems in place, they have duplicate spells when it comes to named spells in phb vs basic rules (e.g. Hideous Laughter Vs Tasha's Hideous Laughter) and you can already filter by sourcebook so why is this any different? It's not, they have just made the decision that best suits their bottom line that's all
Plus if the spells/items are being archived (was explicitly mentioned with feeblemind and branding smite) then it also bears the question of if they'll even be as easy to homebrew-copy as they are currently. Since with this announcement, I'm no longer inclined to give WotC the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these changes.
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny | DraĂocht, Kholias | Eggo Lass, 100 Dungeons
Tendilius Mondhaven Paxaramus, Drakkenheim | Talorin Tebedi, Vecna: Eve
Bombil, Hunt for Yeenoghu | Cherry Littleoak, Stormwreck | Phait, Lost Mine of Phandelver
Beneath the Mountain | Let's Test Monsters!
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 36, 10/3/24, How Can I Keep From Singing?
This is an absolutely terrible decision. My group is now forced to choose between either switching to 2024 rules mid-campaign or going back to paper and pencil. The least they could do is add a toggle so that you can keep the 2014 rules IN the character sheet, and maintain access to things like 2014 spells and items in the character sheet.
If this is truly going to be forced on us, I know I won't be renewing my subscription.
"Minor inconveniences"
Ok, my guy, please homebrew 478 spells for me real quick, will be barely an inconvenience.
I think the reason they did not implement the "Legacy" tag for spells (other than the obvious fact that they want to force people to use the new system) is because the way they handled that was obviously bad. Putting a legacy tag on something is enough when you are dealing with monsters, when you are only searching in a database that you can filter. There is no implementation of filters in the spell lists for character sheet, which means that every spell would have 2 copies, doubling the number of spells in the spell list, an UI/UX nightmare that they don't want to deal it. So instead, they want we to do it and deal with it, since we're going to have the same problem.
Well, for starters, having to homebrew several hundred spells isn’t what they said is happening at all - they are saying you will have to homebrew when there is a new version replacing the old.
A simple application of common sense can derive at least three reasons why spells are getting treated differently.
First, spells show up as dependent objects for lots of other things - feats, racial features, class features, etc. Having two different versions of a spell could confuse players - particularly new players - trying to figure out what their character’s features will do. It is far easier to have those systems link to a singular default, rather than have the system link to one version of the spells, when players might think they want another.
Second, spells are some of the longest lists out there - and can already be overwhelming to some players. Increasing the length of a list with only a couple dozen entries is not a big deal. Increasing the length of an extremely long list is - it makes something overwhelming even more so
Finally, spells, more than anything else, were really adjusted for power, with the new versions fixing some pretty big problems. Wizards does not want folks to accidentally choose the criminally underpowered 2014 healing spells, simply because they don’t know the systems that well and just select one of the two similarly names options. Nor do they want folks intentionally choosing the ridiculous 2014 version of spiritual weapon, which always should have had concentration.
All told, this really is not that big of a deal - and there are plenty of solid reasons why the new spells should, by default, supersede the old.
This move is like when they put self checkouts in everywhere around here and when people didn't use them they just stopped putting people in the manned registers and having people stand around telling customers to use the self checkouts so it would look like people wanted to use them. Then when pushed for a person to check them out they were told to go the customer service register. People would stand in that line or shop somewhere else, and only a few people using the self checkouts, now there are at least a couple of manned registers at all of the stores here.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.