This is bullshit. If I had known this was going to happen I never would have made a purchase here. I would have purchased on Roll20 where I get to keep what I bought.
Joining the see of "Unsubscribes". Its so disappointing and just reaffirms my decision to move back to pen and paper and physical books. This might actually be the move that gets me to try and convince folks to shift over to Pathfinder, cause I have zero interest in purchasing 5.5 at this point.
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.
The only workaround given (unacceptable as it is) is to homebrew the subclass as well, replacing the new spells with the old.
You should be able to copy ones from Tasha's etc as well though. Under "Select an existing Subclass as a template:" the drop down should list "Core Rules" with all the PHB subclasses, then "Expanded Rules" with the ones from Tasha's (and probably others), then "Critical Roles" with their subclasses.
If it's not there for you, do you own Tasha's yourself, or is it shared through a campaign? As far as I know you can only homebrew based on features you personally own.
I just cancelled my subscription. This is truly a despicable thing DND Beyond is doing to the 2014 5E players and DMs. I hope this gets fixed or I'm done with them forever.
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.
The only workaround given (unacceptable as it is) is to homebrew the subclass as well, replacing the new spells with the old.
You should be able to copy ones from Tasha's etc as well though. Under "Select an existing Subclass as a template:" the drop down should list "Core Rules" with all the PHB subclasses, then "Expanded Rules" with the ones from Tasha's (and probably others), then "Critical Roles" with their subclasses.
If it's not there for you, do you own Tasha's yourself, or is it shared through a campaign? As far as I know you can only homebrew based on features you personally own.
Ah nuts; I own the core three, but we shared book costs out in my last campaign because I couldn't afford them all myself. That'd be why I can't copy it into homebrew then, it's only shared with me. Thank you for the explanation!
This is bullshit. If I had known this was going to happen I never would have made a purchase here. I would have purchased on Roll20 where I get to keep what I bought.
Has Roll20 announced yet how this change will impact their use of the 2014 Core Rules content? As far as I know, they have not.
I saw something on the roll20 subreddit where a staff member confirmed they would keep current rules usable.
Just leave the 2014 stuff on there. There are a lot of people who are upset by these forced changes. My group doesn’t want to change systems mid campaign. Just leave 2014 and add 2024 as well. Let us choose! Don’t force us to make changes we don’t want.
This is bullshit. If I had known this was going to happen I never would have made a purchase here. I would have purchased on Roll20 where I get to keep what I bought.
Has Roll20 announced yet how this change will impact their use of the 2014 Core Rules content? As far as I know, they have not.
I saw something on the roll20 subreddit where a staff member confirmed they would keep current rules usable.
That would be pretty cool if true. I have never really cared for Roll20. Their interface makes me want to cry, but I thought Demiplane was at least okay (though not as fluid as I like with DDB). Roll20 now owns Demiplane with plans to merge content. That could be worth looking into for my future gaming.
This is so unbelievably unintuitive and anti-consumer. I pay for the subscription because of the ease of use of dndbeyond. Its pretty clear with this decision making there is no longer a reason for me to be subscribed. Going to export my stuff then dip.
Did anyone even consider that this breaks any current campaign? Because when you take the spells and items away from the many many books we purchased, you break our characters... We cant tell our DMs who are on DnDBeyond "sorry rules changed". Because they are going to keep playing the way they always have and we are going to suffer for using your product... This could have been resolved by toggle in the character creator to choose 2014 vs 2024 content for the character... Instead of making them useless by sticking our character in a middle space... Where our 2014 characters, now have 2024 underpinnings and the cant be used. You have turned them into hybrid almagamations that dont fit in either the 2014 or 2024 rules... because no DM wants to lawyer back and forth about which rules are in play for what scenario... To tell you the truth, dont be surprised when people walk off feeling betrayed...
This is bullshit. If I had known this was going to happen I never would have made a purchase here. I would have purchased on Roll20 where I get to keep what I bought.
Has Roll20 announced yet how this change will impact their use of the 2014 Core Rules content? As far as I know, they have not.
I saw something on the roll20 subreddit where a staff member confirmed they would keep current rules usable.
That would be pretty cool if true. I have never really cared for Roll20. Their interface makes me want to cry, but I thought Demiplane was at least okay (though not as fluid as I like with DDB). Roll20 now owns Demiplane with plans to merge content. That could be worth looking into for my future gaming.
They've confirmed on Twitter that both rulesets will be supported, looks like you'll have a choice of 2014 or 2024 character sheets when you create your character, and you can have a mix of both within a game. I'm not sure if thats just with their new sheets they're developing though, or whether the current sheets will do the same. Either way, the intention is to support both.
But perhaps 5e is just too much of a juggernaut for the folks at Hasbro to face consequences.
I think WOTC is, to some degree, a victim of their own success. 5E has been wildly, wildly successful, far more than ever anticipated.
The decision to make the 2024 rules "backwards compatible" was made out of greed, arrogance, and fear. The debacles of the last 20 months clearly demonstrate a lack of unity, understanding, and foresight.
They need to give everyone a reason to spend more money. They also don't want to lose any customers. And the sales for supplements has been steadily dropping over the last several years while the costs have gone up.
The brave, smart thing to do would've been a complete redesign of the game, with a long lead time and plenty of warning, and clear communications about how long 5E and the next version's content would be available online.
Instead, they chose to try and make everyone happy, and have instead just bungled the living sh!t out of this.
This is categorically a bad move. This decision was clearly made by someone who doesn't use their own product and is an insult to every tabletop gamer. How disappointing. If this is note revisited and changed, it will have major repercussions. Please do better.
Recent events reminded me of this post from 2022 on twitter.
I think this is a useful framing for what happens when the owners of a platform or service believe that they can enshittify with impunity.
But perhaps 5e is just too much of a juggernaut for the folks at Hasbro to face consequences.
That's a great read. And really does capture this.
First Grumble: Not being able to purchase legacy content. Being locked out of things like Volo's and Tome of Foes. But those that had already purchased them got to keep what they owned. So while disappointing, anyone that already had them was unaffected.
Second Grumble: Removal of a la carte. Personally I was quite bummed since there were some things I'd been eyeing, but at the end of the day it didn't affect anything we owned. An inconvenience to be sure, particularly if you had to contact customer support to get your discount on the full product, but you could use what you had.
Thermocline Breach: Deleting content we own. Now it's personal. This isn't some "Oh, would've like to buy stuff but now I can't. At least I have what I purchased." It's "You're really gonna delete what I bought? You're going to remove what I paid for? You're directly impacting my experience with what I've been using this site for?" It shows that even what you bought is not safe. It's not just prohibiting you from spending money. It's prohibiting you from benefiting from what you spent money on. And that's a big shift.
Yeah it would make sense for them to be doing that on the 27th maintenance plan. Which gives us an even shorter timeline than even having the labor day weekend to work on homebrew copies.
Would be nice to get some feedback from the wotc/hasbro, whether this change log will be pushed out as-is, or is there a way for the customers to keep the once acquired digital items (not talking about homebrewing them).
Many have the sunken costs already in dndbeyond, changing service might be difficult - odds of winning the game of chicken might be too tempting at the corporate decision makers.
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'm a bit late jumping into this thread of the conversation, but for what it's worth, I have access to the 2024 PHB now, and I actually gave up on trying to make such a list after getting through the first four pages of spells and finding that Animate Dead was the only one that wasn't changed in some way. Even spells that function identically to the 2014 versions, which is most of them, typically have wording changes, or use keywords that aren't found in the 2014 PHB, like Emanation for an effect that extends in a radius around a character, or changing the option you chose for Alter Self being a Magic action. A few others, like Aid, have nearly identical wording but appear on spell lists that they didn't in 2014. Eventually, I just concluded that making or even referencing a list would probably take more time than just copying every spell, since the vast majority are changing in some way anyway.
This is bullshit. If I had known this was going to happen I never would have made a purchase here. I would have purchased on Roll20 where I get to keep what I bought.
Joining the see of "Unsubscribes". Its so disappointing and just reaffirms my decision to move back to pen and paper and physical books. This might actually be the move that gets me to try and convince folks to shift over to Pathfinder, cause I have zero interest in purchasing 5.5 at this point.
The only workaround given (unacceptable as it is) is to homebrew the subclass as well, replacing the new spells with the old.
You should be able to copy ones from Tasha's etc as well though. Under "Select an existing Subclass as a template:" the drop down should list "Core Rules" with all the PHB subclasses, then "Expanded Rules" with the ones from Tasha's (and probably others), then "Critical Roles" with their subclasses.
If it's not there for you, do you own Tasha's yourself, or is it shared through a campaign? As far as I know you can only homebrew based on features you personally own.
I just cancelled my subscription. This is truly a despicable thing DND Beyond is doing to the 2014 5E players and DMs. I hope this gets fixed or I'm done with them forever.
Ah nuts; I own the core three, but we shared book costs out in my last campaign because I couldn't afford them all myself. That'd be why I can't copy it into homebrew then, it's only shared with me. Thank you for the explanation!
I saw something on the roll20 subreddit where a staff member confirmed they would keep current rules usable.
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Just leave the 2014 stuff on there. There are a lot of people who are upset by these forced changes. My group doesn’t want to change systems mid campaign. Just leave 2014 and add 2024 as well. Let us choose! Don’t force us to make changes we don’t want.
That would be pretty cool if true. I have never really cared for Roll20. Their interface makes me want to cry, but I thought Demiplane was at least okay (though not as fluid as I like with DDB). Roll20 now owns Demiplane with plans to merge content. That could be worth looking into for my future gaming.
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This is so unbelievably unintuitive and anti-consumer. I pay for the subscription because of the ease of use of dndbeyond. Its pretty clear with this decision making there is no longer a reason for me to be subscribed. Going to export my stuff then dip.
Did anyone even consider that this breaks any current campaign?
Because when you take the spells and items away from the many many books we purchased, you break our characters... We cant tell our DMs who are on DnDBeyond "sorry rules changed". Because they are going to keep playing the way they always have and we are going to suffer for using your product... This could have been resolved by toggle in the character creator to choose 2014 vs 2024 content for the character... Instead of making them useless by sticking our character in a middle space... Where our 2014 characters, now have 2024 underpinnings and the cant be used. You have turned them into hybrid almagamations that dont fit in either the 2014 or 2024 rules... because no DM wants to lawyer back and forth about which rules are in play for what scenario... To tell you the truth, dont be surprised when people walk off feeling betrayed...
Recent events reminded me of this post from 2022 on twitter.
I think this is a useful framing for what happens when the owners of a platform or service believe that they can enshittify with impunity.
But perhaps 5e is just too much of a juggernaut for the folks at Hasbro to face consequences.
They've confirmed on Twitter that both rulesets will be supported, looks like you'll have a choice of 2014 or 2024 character sheets when you create your character, and you can have a mix of both within a game. I'm not sure if thats just with their new sheets they're developing though, or whether the current sheets will do the same. Either way, the intention is to support both.
I think WOTC is, to some degree, a victim of their own success. 5E has been wildly, wildly successful, far more than ever anticipated.
The decision to make the 2024 rules "backwards compatible" was made out of greed, arrogance, and fear. The debacles of the last 20 months clearly demonstrate a lack of unity, understanding, and foresight.
They need to give everyone a reason to spend more money. They also don't want to lose any customers. And the sales for supplements has been steadily dropping over the last several years while the costs have gone up.
The brave, smart thing to do would've been a complete redesign of the game, with a long lead time and plenty of warning, and clear communications about how long 5E and the next version's content would be available online.
Instead, they chose to try and make everyone happy, and have instead just bungled the living sh!t out of this.
Well, this answers my question as to when this issue was going to make it to mainstream: https://www.polygon.com/dnd-dungeons-dragons/443394/dnd-beyond-changelog-phb-launch-date-character-sheets
This is categorically a bad move. This decision was clearly made by someone who doesn't use their own product and is an insult to every tabletop gamer. How disappointing. If this is note revisited and changed, it will have major repercussions. Please do better.
That's a great read. And really does capture this.
First Grumble: Not being able to purchase legacy content. Being locked out of things like Volo's and Tome of Foes.
But those that had already purchased them got to keep what they owned. So while disappointing, anyone that already had them was unaffected.
Second Grumble: Removal of a la carte. Personally I was quite bummed since there were some things I'd been eyeing, but at the end of the day it didn't affect anything we owned. An inconvenience to be sure, particularly if you had to contact customer support to get your discount on the full product, but you could use what you had.
Thermocline Breach: Deleting content we own.
Now it's personal. This isn't some "Oh, would've like to buy stuff but now I can't. At least I have what I purchased." It's "You're really gonna delete what I bought? You're going to remove what I paid for? You're directly impacting my experience with what I've been using this site for?" It shows that even what you bought is not safe. It's not just prohibiting you from spending money. It's prohibiting you from benefiting from what you spent money on. And that's a big shift.
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny
Eggo Lass, Bone and Oblivion | Tendilius Mondhaven Paxaramus, Drakkenheim
Karl Erikson, No Guts No Glory | Chipper, Curse of Strahd
Silverwood Group 1 | Silverwood Group 2
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 51, 10/23/25, Viva La Vida
Yeah it would make sense for them to be doing that on the 27th maintenance plan. Which gives us an even shorter timeline than even having the labor day weekend to work on homebrew copies.
That's really short notice for a major change.
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny
Eggo Lass, Bone and Oblivion | Tendilius Mondhaven Paxaramus, Drakkenheim
Karl Erikson, No Guts No Glory | Chipper, Curse of Strahd
Silverwood Group 1 | Silverwood Group 2
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 51, 10/23/25, Viva La Vida
Would be nice to get some feedback from the wotc/hasbro, whether this change log will be pushed out as-is, or is there a way for the customers to keep the once acquired digital items (not talking about homebrewing them).
Many have the sunken costs already in dndbeyond, changing service might be difficult - odds of winning the game of chicken might be too tempting at the corporate decision makers.
I'm a bit late jumping into this thread of the conversation, but for what it's worth, I have access to the 2024 PHB now, and I actually gave up on trying to make such a list after getting through the first four pages of spells and finding that Animate Dead was the only one that wasn't changed in some way. Even spells that function identically to the 2014 versions, which is most of them, typically have wording changes, or use keywords that aren't found in the 2014 PHB, like Emanation for an effect that extends in a radius around a character, or changing the option you chose for Alter Self being a Magic action. A few others, like Aid, have nearly identical wording but appear on spell lists that they didn't in 2014. Eventually, I just concluded that making or even referencing a list would probably take more time than just copying every spell, since the vast majority are changing in some way anyway.
Been trying to download pdfs of my characters. Been getting a "site wasn't available' error when I clicked download...