This is absolute garbage and screws over anyone who is mid-campaign. I've been subscribed for ages and stuck with you even through some serious garbage, holding out hope that you weren't going to completely kneecap us, but here we are again. A massive middle finger to anyone who doesn't want to leap onto your new content for, yet again, another up front cost in addition to the monthly bleed.
Your decisions repeatedly serve only to make this hobby more obnoxious to partake in.
Again, technically, they're not removing the spells (yet). The 2014 books will remain on the site, in their entirety.
Yes, they're forcing users to see the 2024 content where applicable. Yes, it's been done in a sh!tty, arrogant, and poorly communicated way.
But the content will be there - it's just going to be incredibly inconvenient to access.
But the whole point of beyond is to use its tools. If i only got the digital books, i would have bought them in real life and it would have been the same price for a proper hardcover version.
The whole point of me buying them at the same price digitally on DnDbeyond is the ease pf use that their tools give. They are deleting most of the value that buying yhe books on here give.
D&D in general has been going downhill, and dndbeyond with it. Meant to cancel my sub sooner but this news was just the reminder I needed. WOTC/dndbeyond won't get another cent out of me.
Again, technically, they're not removing the spells (yet). The 2014 books will remain on the site, in their entirety.
Yes, they're forcing users to see the 2024 content where applicable. Yes, it's been done in a sh!tty, arrogant, and poorly communicated way.
But the content will be there - it's just going to be incredibly inconvenient to access.
Well, don't know about you, but I, and I'm certain most paying users of D&D Beyond, did not bought content to only access a lesser version of a .pdf...
Users bought things on this platform to use in their character sheet, the character sheet of their players or their encounter tool. No wonder why they took away À la carte purchases, most people are only interested in the usable content, they might have a physical copy of the book or a .pdf to scroll to when they want to check something that is not on their character sheet.
We should not be worrying about technicality or literality right now. They ARE factually removing the old spells from the platform by overwriting, they are just keeping the INFORMATION on the spell on some hill very far away, but the [Spell] for the platform will be overwritten, and thus, deleted.
To literally remove the spell, they would have to scrap the reality of its existence, which I don't doubt they are trying to do right now instead of releasing a statement to us.
My group has been playing since 2018. Like many folks, I've spent hundreds of dollars on D&D Beyond.
I use it because my players are not deep into the rules. We're a bunch of tired 30 and 40 year olds who get together once a week to enjoy each other's company and roll some dice. I only have one player who ever looks anything up in the PHB, otherwise they are using character sheets as their bible because they don't have time to read everything. They learned the system by doing and I keep it afloat by knowing the rules and occasionally tapping the one player at my table of 8 who is also a rules nerd. The benefit of D&D Beyond for me is ease of use for my players who don't want to memorize everything and use their character sheets strongly as a reference.
When our current campaign ended, I had planned to move us to 5.5. I was excited for 5.5, but wanted to adopt it on my own terms. I wanted to keep 5e for my current campaign to be as minimally disruptive as possible while we are near the end of it and switch when we started our next campaign. This sounds like it is no longer an option.
To keep playing our current campaign going using DnD Beyond I'm going to be forced to create each and every homebrew spells and items for my players without having to memorize a whole bunch of new rules and educate my players in changes constantly. It will create significantly more effort for me - effort I happily and literally pay DnD Beyond to reduce - and be incredibly disruptive to my players and game table.
This decision is so fundamentally out of touch with your users and lazy from a product design perspective. There are competing products with similar functions that just have a toggle on the character or campaign, for example, switching between 5e and 5.5. Heck, DnD Beyond has done similar things in the past with new noncore books and Tashas. That this decision could possibly be made by anyone with a passion for helping people play D&D is baffling to me.
I have owned consumer products before. I understand the desire to drive folks to the new shiny toy you've worked so hard on. But I was paying DnD Beyond to solve a problem for me that *you* have decided not to solve any longer. This decision has killed my enthusiasm for the game, for the platform, and desire to continue my subscription.
I can say, with confidence, that when my current campaign is over I'll simply be switching to a different system. Perhaps away from D&D completely. The last year has demonstrated how out of touch some key decision makers have become with your customers and consumers.
I have owned consumer products before. I understand the desire to drive folks to the new shiny toy you've worked so hard on. But I was paying DnD Beyond to solve a problem for me that *you* have decided not to solve any longer. This decision has killed my enthusiasm for the game, for the platform, and desire to continue my subscription.
The answer has always been for them to actual make content people want. Make good products in the TTRPG world and you will make a ton of money. But nope got to be lazy with it and squeeze every ounce of money out of people. The no more piecemeal then the forced OGL change attempt and now this. I am willing to bet the next scummy move is gonna be them breaking the MM functionality on the site in a way that you have to buy the new one. Its such a dumb thing to do. Because if instead they spent time actually combining and developing good tools for DM' on here, that would have produced way more profit. Than alienating your primary buyers (dm's) , while also making the players lives harder.
This is a problem for exactly ALL campaigns currently being run on DDB. What DM in their right mind is going to immediately adopt new spell rules to a campaign in progress? None. Exactly none.
Yet another bonehead move by someone running a company that owns DnD, but who has never run a DnD game. if you hadn’t fired everyone in the company, your employees who know what’s up might have warned you this was a bad move. But now everyone is too scared to lose their job to speak up. And maybe they’re hoping that you screw up so bad you have to find a different company to ruin. stupid. Just stupid.
What I was paying for with DnDB was the convenience. I’ve got the books. I can go back to running my games on paper and never give WOTC another penny. I subscribed to DnDB, bought the content here specifically, because of the toolkit, and the way it made running my games - especially my remote, online-only games - much easier.
Take away the convenience, force me to move an in-progress campaign to a new ruleset where I’m having to keep cross-checking which spells/items/core rules behave as I remember vs how they’re newly written, adjudicating those variances with my players - why would I bother to pay for DnDBeyond?
Hi, I don't want this to sound like another rant post, but I would appreciate some clarity that isn't provided in the linked blog post.
...so that you can jump into play as soon as the new core rulebooks become available...
Does this mean that the rules are implemented for everyone, even those people who are part way through a campaign? I don't particularly want to explain all this to my players, when we started with 5th edition and it sounds like the site is being updated to 6th edition wholesale. Is it the case that the characters will stay under 5th edition but receive that legacy badge? I.e. the Character sheets visually won't change?
The below section seems to back up my main concern from above:
This change impacts the information you’ll find on your character sheet, in tooltips, and that is linked in the compendium.
This seems to imply that players who are partway through a campaign are about to see all the 6th edition rules instead of the 5th edition rules? Will it be possible to belay this change for ongoing games, so that the ruleset doesn't change partway through?
To give a real-world example, I usually have the books nearby as a quick reference, but some of my players reference the app. I don't have the new books yet so it feels like this might cause a break in gameplay while clarifications are sought, which is more hassle than it's worth.
(To clarify, I'm not against 6th edition, I would just like to start a fresh campaign with a new ruleset, not have to migrate away from D&D Beyond just to keep character sheets consistent for an ongoing game).
If you wish to use the old version of a magic item or spell that has been replaced by its 2024 counterpart, you will need to create a homebrew copy of it and enable homebrew content on your character sheet. Then, you can add it to your character sheet.
As others have already said, this seems a bit like you're undermining the convenience of D&D Beyond for DMs and Players. I realise you might think it's small, but preparation is already a bit of a time-consuming task, and putting additional overhead on users in this manner seems like a bad idea, especially when the spells are still in the source books, it just sounds like you're not bothering with the LEGACY tag for these things?
I like the update to the stat blocks. They look good.
Again, I don't mind the introduction of 6th Edition, but given the above assumptions (and please tell me if I'm wrong!) it seems like I might be best exporting all the character sheets and reverting to pen and paper for this current campaign, then renewing my subscription if/when the dust has settled for a new campaign and starting afresh when we're ready to start using the 6th Edition rules.
I too am left wondering what impact for those of us halfway through a campaign. It would be nice to toggle current character sheets vs having them suddenly changed wholesale. This overhaul is undermining the ease of use which brought us to Beyond in the first place... The options seem to be total change in the middle of a 2014 rules campaign or go back to paper to maintain some sort of consistency.
Does WoTC hate DMs? Because you run the company like you hate DMs.
no it just doesnt care about the people who play the game or its game devs or web devs. its only about money. if you dont have money to give them you dont have value simple as that.
That's how I interpret it which literally destroys the convenience of using DDB in the first place. If I want to flip between sources, I'll go back to paper and pencil.
My players are so used to 5e. So am I. So to change things with no option to decline will cause confusion at my table. But beyond that: I chose to buy the phb (among other books) through DDB specifically BECAUSE the materials would show in the compendium on DDB. Had I known this would happen, I would have no reason not to buy the physical book instead.
I'm incredibly frustrated that the source material I purchased to be in my D&DBeyond digital library will not be downloadable or refundable before 5e content is permanently removed from the site. I opted for source books in the digital format for the convenience of not having to lug around my source materials to my campaign sessions, but now I don't own what I paid for?
There must be a way to compensate your customers for their loss, such as store credit equal to the sum of their 5e digital purchases. Not all of us have the time to convert spells into homebrew content.
Up until this point I've had a pleasant experience with D&DBeyond, and was even considering subscribing, but if I won't be refunded or given store credit I will quit D&DBeyond altogether. Stunts like this not only make your customers feel like we are not valued, we feel we are being exploited.
I’m open to changes, but my character sheet removed my old spells and didn’t provide new spells. Now I’m a cleric who only knows two cantrips and three spells. Is cleric just a straight melee class now?
I’m open to changes, but my character sheet removed my old spells and didn’t provide new spells. Now I’m a cleric who only knows two cantrips and three spells. Is cleric just a straight melee class now?
Can you link your sheet? I just checked a cleric of mine and he still has the current spells prepared.
Where are the characters that my players and I built? The stories we've crafted. Each of these abilities/spells that are changed detract from a game that we've made. I paid for the enjoyment of a game, one that has been abused and micro-transactioned to death. Here's my brother's game that he crafted after he got pissed off by WoTC: https://metalweavegames.com/collections/tales-from-myriad?srsltid=AfmBOoq7FnJ4XCAkyJgVpepWNQ8bSQNuGB0Bhdxnl3bGEmfrZa66BUoK , @SarahisCoffee. I think you and yours would probably enjoy this more.
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This is absolute garbage and screws over anyone who is mid-campaign. I've been subscribed for ages and stuck with you even through some serious garbage, holding out hope that you weren't going to completely kneecap us, but here we are again. A massive middle finger to anyone who doesn't want to leap onto your new content for, yet again, another up front cost in addition to the monthly bleed.
Your decisions repeatedly serve only to make this hobby more obnoxious to partake in.
Again, technically, they're not removing the spells (yet). The 2014 books will remain on the site, in their entirety.
Yes, they're forcing users to see the 2024 content where applicable. Yes, it's been done in a sh!tty, arrogant, and poorly communicated way.
But the content will be there - it's just going to be incredibly inconvenient to access.
lmao, the Subscription page has been broken for me all day. I can't even get in to cancel it. I wonder if that's intentional.
But the whole point of beyond is to use its tools. If i only got the digital books, i would have bought them in real life and it would have been the same price for a proper hardcover version.
The whole point of me buying them at the same price digitally on DnDbeyond is the ease pf use that their tools give. They are deleting most of the value that buying yhe books on here give.
D&D in general has been going downhill, and dndbeyond with it. Meant to cancel my sub sooner but this news was just the reminder I needed. WOTC/dndbeyond won't get another cent out of me.
Well, don't know about you, but I, and I'm certain most paying users of D&D Beyond, did not bought content to only access a lesser version of a .pdf...
Users bought things on this platform to use in their character sheet, the character sheet of their players or their encounter tool. No wonder why they took away À la carte purchases, most people are only interested in the usable content, they might have a physical copy of the book or a .pdf to scroll to when they want to check something that is not on their character sheet.
We should not be worrying about technicality or literality right now. They ARE factually removing the old spells from the platform by overwriting, they are just keeping the INFORMATION on the spell on some hill very far away, but the [Spell] for the platform will be overwritten, and thus, deleted.
To literally remove the spell, they would have to scrap the reality of its existence, which I don't doubt they are trying to do right now instead of releasing a statement to us.
I'm just going to pile on here.
My group has been playing since 2018. Like many folks, I've spent hundreds of dollars on D&D Beyond.
I use it because my players are not deep into the rules. We're a bunch of tired 30 and 40 year olds who get together once a week to enjoy each other's company and roll some dice. I only have one player who ever looks anything up in the PHB, otherwise they are using character sheets as their bible because they don't have time to read everything. They learned the system by doing and I keep it afloat by knowing the rules and occasionally tapping the one player at my table of 8 who is also a rules nerd. The benefit of D&D Beyond for me is ease of use for my players who don't want to memorize everything and use their character sheets strongly as a reference.
When our current campaign ended, I had planned to move us to 5.5. I was excited for 5.5, but wanted to adopt it on my own terms. I wanted to keep 5e for my current campaign to be as minimally disruptive as possible while we are near the end of it and switch when we started our next campaign. This sounds like it is no longer an option.
To keep playing our current campaign going using DnD Beyond I'm going to be forced to create each and every homebrew spells and items for my players without having to memorize a whole bunch of new rules and educate my players in changes constantly. It will create significantly more effort for me - effort I happily and literally pay DnD Beyond to reduce - and be incredibly disruptive to my players and game table.
This decision is so fundamentally out of touch with your users and lazy from a product design perspective. There are competing products with similar functions that just have a toggle on the character or campaign, for example, switching between 5e and 5.5. Heck, DnD Beyond has done similar things in the past with new noncore books and Tashas. That this decision could possibly be made by anyone with a passion for helping people play D&D is baffling to me.
I have owned consumer products before. I understand the desire to drive folks to the new shiny toy you've worked so hard on. But I was paying DnD Beyond to solve a problem for me that *you* have decided not to solve any longer. This decision has killed my enthusiasm for the game, for the platform, and desire to continue my subscription.
I can say, with confidence, that when my current campaign is over I'll simply be switching to a different system. Perhaps away from D&D completely. The last year has demonstrated how out of touch some key decision makers have become with your customers and consumers.
The answer has always been for them to actual make content people want. Make good products in the TTRPG world and you will make a ton of money. But nope got to be lazy with it and squeeze every ounce of money out of people. The no more piecemeal then the forced OGL change attempt and now this. I am willing to bet the next scummy move is gonna be them breaking the MM functionality on the site in a way that you have to buy the new one. Its such a dumb thing to do. Because if instead they spent time actually combining and developing good tools for DM' on here, that would have produced way more profit. Than alienating your primary buyers (dm's) , while also making the players lives harder.
This is a problem for exactly ALL campaigns currently being run on DDB. What DM in their right mind is going to immediately adopt new spell rules to a campaign in progress? None. Exactly none.
Yet another bonehead move by someone running a company that owns DnD, but who has never run a DnD game. if you hadn’t fired everyone in the company, your employees who know what’s up might have warned you this was a bad move. But now everyone is too scared to lose their job to speak up. And maybe they’re hoping that you screw up so bad you have to find a different company to ruin.
stupid. Just stupid.
enjoy your lackluster sales numbers.
What I was paying for with DnDB was the convenience. I’ve got the books. I can go back to running my games on paper and never give WOTC another penny. I subscribed to DnDB, bought the content here specifically, because of the toolkit, and the way it made running my games - especially my remote, online-only games - much easier.
Take away the convenience, force me to move an in-progress campaign to a new ruleset where I’m having to keep cross-checking which spells/items/core rules behave as I remember vs how they’re newly written, adjudicating those variances with my players - why would I bother to pay for DnDBeyond?
I too am left wondering what impact for those of us halfway through a campaign. It would be nice to toggle current character sheets vs having them suddenly changed wholesale. This overhaul is undermining the ease of use which brought us to Beyond in the first place... The options seem to be total change in the middle of a 2014 rules campaign or go back to paper to maintain some sort of consistency.
Does WoTC hate DMs? Because you run the company like you hate DMs.
Exactly! Hmmm start in the middle with a new rule set or give up the convenience to use paper for continued consistency?
no it just doesnt care about the people who play the game or its game devs or web devs. its only about money. if you dont have money to give them you dont have value simple as that.
That's how I interpret it which literally destroys the convenience of using DDB in the first place. If I want to flip between sources, I'll go back to paper and pencil.
My players are so used to 5e. So am I. So to change things with no option to decline will cause confusion at my table. But beyond that: I chose to buy the phb (among other books) through DDB specifically BECAUSE the materials would show in the compendium on DDB. Had I known this would happen, I would have no reason not to buy the physical book instead.
I'm incredibly frustrated that the source material I purchased to be in my D&DBeyond digital library will not be downloadable or refundable before 5e content is permanently removed from the site. I opted for source books in the digital format for the convenience of not having to lug around my source materials to my campaign sessions, but now I don't own what I paid for?
There must be a way to compensate your customers for their loss, such as store credit equal to the sum of their 5e digital purchases. Not all of us have the time to convert spells into homebrew content.
Up until this point I've had a pleasant experience with D&DBeyond, and was even considering subscribing, but if I won't be refunded or given store credit I will quit D&DBeyond altogether. Stunts like this not only make your customers feel like we are not valued, we feel we are being exploited.
I’m open to changes, but my character sheet removed my old spells and didn’t provide new spells. Now I’m a cleric who only knows two cantrips and three spells. Is cleric just a straight melee class now?
Can you link your sheet? I just checked a cleric of mine and he still has the current spells prepared.
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Where are the characters that my players and I built? The stories we've crafted. Each of these abilities/spells that are changed detract from a game that we've made. I paid for the enjoyment of a game, one that has been abused and micro-transactioned to death. Here's my brother's game that he crafted after he got pissed off by WoTC: https://metalweavegames.com/collections/tales-from-myriad?srsltid=AfmBOoq7FnJ4XCAkyJgVpepWNQ8bSQNuGB0Bhdxnl3bGEmfrZa66BUoK , @SarahisCoffee. I think you and yours would probably enjoy this more.