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?
Who? Me because I'm still running a 2014 campaign that started in 2014!!!! It's nearing the end and switching to the new rules at this point would be a stupid move for my campaigns.
I’m also curious what will happen to a 2014 character using Warlock Invocations or Sorcerer Metamagic? Will those be automatically updated as well or will those get the legacy treatment?
I'd go as far as to say they have an obligation to everyone that's spent money on the 2014 content to have at least a toggle. They should be trying to empower DMs and players to mix and match the 2014 sources with the new ones as each group sees fit.
I have been playing and DMing using DDB as "the best reference" for 5e characters and rules since 2018. I have purchased the Legendary Bundles, I've had a Master Tier subscription for years. And yet this change just flips off everyone who is mid-campaign with 5e or on the fence and not currently looking to update to 5.5e. I play in two games, I DM a third. And this bungled handling of the transition makes me want to unsub and leave your platform.
I cannot BELIEVE the way you are telling your paying customers to hande spells is "homebrew them yourself". You have the power on your end to just slap a legacy label or "(2014)" at the end of all of them and keep them side by side with the new ones. Stick the 2014 spells behind a character sheet toggle option if you want so that your precious new players don't get all confused. But screwing those of us that don't want to upgrade at the moment after having purchased hundreds of dollars of character building options is ridiculous.
I should be able to continue to build a straight 2014 rules character, including spells after 5.5 officially drops. After all, that is the version of the rules I own! I see no reason to remove the option that literally already exists.
And a question to top it off. I saw earlier in the thread that existing spells on a character will stay, but what happens on a level up of this existing 2014 character when you choose new spells? Do you abruptly get forced to take the 2024 ones?
Please rethink this change, DDB/WotC. Because right now it makes me want to unsub, and not purchase anything 5.5e in case it ruins what I already have purchased. Which is not, I imagine, what you want your customers to be doing.
They may have just lost four subscriptions from this move. One of the members of my discord group posted this: "So, actually, this goes beyond the headline. ALL sections of character sheets will be automatically updated and you will no longer be able to create characters using the old rules." If that is, in fact true, WotC will be seeing an exodus from DnD Beyond. I dont know about anybody else, but this feels like a betrayal of trust. One, I believe many feel regarding this matter.
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?
Who? Me because I'm still running a 2014 campaign that started in 2014!!!! It's nearing the end and switching to the new rules at this point would be a stupid move for my campaigns.
My brother in dice, you are a god among men! A 10 year campaign! Truly & sincerely that is amazing.
As a player in a campaign that is going into a hybrid mode of 2014-2024 rules, depending on the wishes of the individual player (we have some people who we know will be sticking with the 2014 class for definite and some who are considering switching to 2024 once we've seen the rules in their entirity) and as someone who's co-running a 2014 RAW Discord server, this site change is going to be a nightmare. For us to stick to the 2014 rules, we are going to have to allow Homebrew be turned on (which we normally don't as we use the RAW as much as possible) and review every sheet's spell list and etc. at all times in order to ensure their usage of the 2014 versions is correct and functioning correctly. We may have the trust of our playerbase, but it is going to be ridiculously easy to make mistakes or deliberate edits to things in such a way as to slip through the cracks.
This is one of the worst decisions WOTC and/or the Beyond Team (we have no real way of knowing who's actually responsible for these decisions behind the scenes unless they come forward) could possibly have made in terms of player retention. Let's not pretend like there aren't many, many ways of utilising 2014 5e content without paying the company any bit of money (obviously not going to name any such sources here). All this is going to do is alienate long-time consumers of the decade-long tradition that is DnD 5e due to being incapable of accessing the rules they know and love on the platform they've paid for these rulesets on. The solution being offered being to go homebrew copies of things is in no way a sustainable solution, especially if all tooltips are going to link to the 2024 versions as opposed to the 2014 versions. We will have no way of knowing the range of things being affected until it is too late. The ability to toggle on and off access to many things (Partnered by specific source, expanded vs base rules, even 2014 Legacy content) is already codified into the site.
I would love to hear from a site admin / employee / team representative, in a public post focused on this issue and not just as a reply to this thread, what exactly the reasoning is behind basically forcing all of us who love, appreciate, and have spent countless hours and anywhere in the hundreds of dollars worth of our local currencies on building our best 2014 - no, our best DnD 5e experience - to adapt to the new ruleset that we might not want to reach out to yet? Why is it that you cannot use existing functionality within your site to keep it being accessible to 2014 players as well as the 2024 players to come? Could you explain it in such a way that someone not versed in coding and such could understand? And, if you read back your explanation, is it something that the billion-dollar company that owns the site could not solve with a bit of investment into customer retention?
Because that is what making this site fully accessible to the 2014 and 2024 rulesets will be. Retention of customers who utilise the subscription services. Retention of the loyal customers who have been screwed over repeatedly by the parent company recently. Retention of those of us who wish with all our hearts to continue playing the games we've been running and playing for years without having to adapt to a drastic change. Retention of those who are loyal to the ruleset we have grown to love and cherish and work within. Just scrolling through this thread demonstrates the level of retention this change is bringing - a negative level, as you are losing people. Please reconsider, for the sake of all of us who play this game.
You make valid points there.
And even if spells having the same name would cause issues with how tooltips work, should be fairly simple to do a SELECT from the database and then WHERE the source = BasicRules/PHB 2014 they could SET the name to be SPELL_NAME = SPELL_NAME + ' (2014)'.
It would cause some issues with pre-existing tooltips. So a hex would no longer point to the current hex but the 5.5 one. But it's a simple way to keep them in their database and definitely less storage-intensive than all the homebrew copies that will be made.
indefinitely is the answer, especially with all the claims of full compatability that have done the rounds
We're not even asking them to "support" 2014, really. Support would be updating the game & 2014 sheets.
We just don't want them to pull functionality we paid for out of the sheets & encounter builders, etc. & expect us to use their homebrew tools that are genuinely worse than just using a pen & paper sheet.
People are so used to paying to get nothing they think not having a rug pulled from under them is a gift.
I honestly believe there should be a very big push in response to this for mass refunds on purchased materials. I myself have purchased specifically the spells from many books in my time on this website, and for it to simply be hand waved away is a slap in the face to an otherwise extremely loyal customer base you've built. You're the pinnacle of access to D&D, this is pathetic. You can't hide behind things being "too much work" being bankrolled by Hasbro now.
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?
Who? Me because I'm still running a 2014 campaign that started in 2014!!!! It's nearing the end and switching to the new rules at this point would be a stupid move for my campaigns.
My brother in dice, you are a god among men! A 10 year campaign! Truly & sincerely that is amazing.
Wow for real! That's fantastic, OP, congrats on such a long term campaign!
I have purchased every WOTC book available on dndbeyond, have a Master's subscription, and have also had two places I work with buy out full accounts to play with fellow employees. I am the definition of a whale. If you remove the 2014 spells/etc. content and tell me to add it back in as homebrew--or indeed if you do anything that prevents me from just continuing to use the 2014 rules at my tables as they are now and without taking any extra steps, as I could with physical materials--I will never give you another dollar. HTH and HAND.
I'm overall pretty happy with what I'm seeing here. My group intends to convert our campaign as soon as the PHB drops, rebuilding characters under the new rules. I DO agree that it's strange that we can keep races, classes, subclasses and monsters accessible with legacy tags, but not spells. It would seem like those could be legacied as well to allow for use without needing to homebrew them all, putting that work on us, your supporters, when they are already all there in the databases asking to "simply" be retagged.
I can understand the frustration from people who want to stick with 2014 and not update. They've invested a lot of money here over the past 10 years - I've spent hundreds here myself between books and years of a Master tier subscription. On the one hand, DDB isn't taking away the books we've purchased, so with those and homebrew we can still play the 2014 game. But I also recognize that Beyond is the official toolset, so the rules here should reflect the current iteration.
THE ONLY REASON I HAVE DND BEYOND IS TO CREATE 2014 CHARACTERS EASILY AND THAT YOUR ADDING NEW NONE DND CONTENT. YOU CAN TAKE 2024 AND SHOVE IT AS THERE IS NO WAY IM UPDATING TO IT AS IT ISN'T AN UPGRADE IN ANYWAY. JUST ADDS A FEW HOMECREW WE'VE ALREADY BEEN USING.
i WANT MY 2014 SPELLS LEFT ALLONE AS i PAID FOR THEM.
I regret the money I spent on DnD Beyond, and my efforts to get my group to also use it. I'll be finishing my current campaign with the sheet as I've got it set up but sadly I'm going to walk away from the platform at that point because there's a persistent insistence on making choices for the platform which diminish the usability of the platform to access the content which we have paid to use.
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 would also like to know exactly how features are going to be silently updated on existing character sheets. Will existing characters just see a bunch of Legacy tags appear next to everything that's been updated but isn't being deleted, like subclasses, backgrounds, etc.? I have two campaigns currently in-progress, and none of us are eager to adopt a whole new ruleset midstream. I'd like to know if the characters in those campaigns will stay as they are, or if my players and I will need to go in and manually swap features back to their legacy versions after the switch for the things we won't be adopting this time around.
I mean D&D Insider (the D&D Beyond equivalent for 4E) stayed up for years. While updates ended for it in 2014 with the launch of 5E, they allowed new subscribers until December 2015 (so roughly a year & half after the release of 5E). And they allowed existing subscribers to continue to pay for the service until 2020 when Microsoft Silverlight shutdown. Removing access on basically day 1 is super disruptive to campaigns that are currently in progress. D&D Beyond originally sold different tiers of content - most people bought the compendium + tooltips version although you could have purchased just the compendium for cheaper. So it's not unreasonable to be angry that something you've paid for (the functionality of using the compendium in the various tools such as character sheets) is being removed and being told it's fine because you're not losing access to the compendium. If I wanted just the compendium, I could have spent less money and purchased only that. Hopefully EU users will report because they have better legal protections around digital services when shenanigans like this occur.
It would reasonable to limit legacy content to D&D Beyond and not port it over to the new VTT as an incentive to move to 5.5. Circling back to D&D Insider, the wikipedia article on it highlights:
Academic Nicholas J. Mizer in his book Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds (2019) characterized D&D Insider as a way for Wizards of the Coast to maintain control over Dungeons & Dragons and shift the game towards producing a predictable McDonaldized product:
If Wizards can succeed at convincing players that D&DI is convenient [...], they need not necessarily convince them that the content provided is better. [...] If Wizards wants to change a rule, they do not need to convince players to change the way they play, they simply update the entry in the database. Everyone subscribing to the service will see the new rule as written the next time they access the database. [...] Players can theoretically develop customized, homebrewed characters and rules, but once they have bought into the McDonaldized system, they often find it too inconvenient. Wizards even provides the extra-convenient "Choose for me" button every step of the way for the player who is overwhelmed by the pre-cooked options presented to them.
This is fundamentally what the D&D Beyond update is about; instead of making a good UX choice, they've made a choice to push people to 5.5 because they want people to move on. It's about making it just inconvenient enough to use the 2014 version of D&D (ie. taking the time to manually input 40+ spells into the homebrew feature, needing to dig in the compendium because the search bar is limited to the update, etc) that people default to 5.5 which then leads them to buying new products down the line. The compendium is annoying to use because the books don't have search features built in (because there's the big search bar on top) and you're limited to hoping you've clicked on the right section when you use ctrl+F to find something. A recent Hasbro investor meeting highlighted that D&D Beyond is 50% of the revenue for tabletop D&D (D&D as an entire brand has other larger revenue sources); during the OGL scandal, reporters confirmed that part of Hasbro backing down was because of users cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions en masse. Fundamentally, unless people are willing to leave D&D Beyond over this, Hasbro isn't going to change this to be more UX friendly for the 2014 version of the game.
I mean D&D Insider (the D&D Beyond equivalent for 4E) stayed up for years. While updates ended for it in 2014 with the launch of 5E, they allowed new subscribers until December 2015 (so roughly a year & half after the release of 5E). And they allowed existing subscribers to continue to pay for the service until 2020 when Microsoft Silverlight shutdown. Removing access on basically day 1 is super disruptive to campaigns that are currently in progress. D&D Beyond originally sold different tiers of content - most people bought the compendium + tooltips version although you could have purchased just the compendium for cheaper. So it's not unreasonable to be angry that something you've paid for (the functionality of using the compendium in the various tools such as character sheets) is being removed and being told it's fine because you're not losing access to the compendium. If I wanted just the compendium, I could have spent less money and purchased only that. Hopefully EU users will report because they have better legal protections around digital services when shenanigans like this occur.
It would reasonable to limit legacy content to D&D Beyond and not port it over to the new VTT as an incentive to move to 5.5. Circling back to D&D Insider, the wikipedia article on it highlights:
Academic Nicholas J. Mizer in his book Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds (2019) characterized D&D Insider as a way for Wizards of the Coast to maintain control over Dungeons & Dragons and shift the game towards producing a predictable McDonaldized product:
If Wizards can succeed at convincing players that D&DI is convenient [...], they need not necessarily convince them that the content provided is better. [...] If Wizards wants to change a rule, they do not need to convince players to change the way they play, they simply update the entry in the database. Everyone subscribing to the service will see the new rule as written the next time they access the database. [...] Players can theoretically develop customized, homebrewed characters and rules, but once they have bought into the McDonaldized system, they often find it too inconvenient. Wizards even provides the extra-convenient "Choose for me" button every step of the way for the player who is overwhelmed by the pre-cooked options presented to them.
This is fundamentally what the D&D Beyond update is about; instead of making a good UX choice, they've made a choice to push people to 5.5 because they want people to move on. It's about making it just inconvenient enough to use the 2014 version of D&D (ie. taking the time to manually input 40+ spells into the homebrew feature, needing to dig in the compendium because the search bar is limited to the update, etc) that people default to 5.5 which then leads them to buying new products down the line. The compendium is annoying to use because the books don't have search features built in (because there's the big search bar on top) and you're limited to hoping you've clicked on the right section when you use ctrl+F to find something. A recent Hasbro investor meeting highlighted that D&D Beyond is 50% of the revenue for tabletop D&D (D&D as an entire brand has other larger revenue sources); during the OGL scandal, reporters confirmed that part of Hasbro backing down was because of users cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions en masse. Fundamentally, unless people are willing to leave D&D Beyond over this, Hasbro isn't going to change this to be more UX friendly for the 2014 version of the game.
On a note about Insider, they allowed you to download PDFs of everything you purchased. Something DnDB removed a few years ago.
On a note about Insider, they allowed you to download PDFs of everything you purchased. Something DnDB removed a few years ago.
If they are absolutely set on this route returning the ability to download PDFs of the old content would do wonders for me. I much prefer being able to find all my stuff in a file than navigate the sources tab on the site, especially as I imagine the 2014 stuff will slowly become harder to find.
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Who? Me because I'm still running a 2014 campaign that started in 2014!!!! It's nearing the end and switching to the new rules at this point would be a stupid move for my campaigns.
I’m also curious what will happen to a 2014 character using Warlock Invocations or Sorcerer Metamagic? Will those be automatically updated as well or will those get the legacy treatment?
I'd go as far as to say they have an obligation to everyone that's spent money on the 2014 content to have at least a toggle. They should be trying to empower DMs and players to mix and match the 2014 sources with the new ones as each group sees fit.
They may have just lost four subscriptions from this move. One of the members of my discord group posted this: "So, actually, this goes beyond the headline. ALL sections of character sheets will be automatically updated and you will no longer be able to create characters using the old rules." If that is, in fact true, WotC will be seeing an exodus from DnD Beyond. I dont know about anybody else, but this feels like a betrayal of trust. One, I believe many feel regarding this matter.
My brother in dice, you are a god among men! A 10 year campaign! Truly & sincerely that is amazing.
You make valid points there.
And even if spells having the same name would cause issues with how tooltips work, should be fairly simple to do a SELECT from the database and then WHERE the source = BasicRules/PHB 2014 they could SET the name to be SPELL_NAME = SPELL_NAME + ' (2014)'.
It would cause some issues with pre-existing tooltips. So a hex would no longer point to the current hex but the 5.5 one. But it's a simple way to keep them in their database and definitely less storage-intensive than all the homebrew copies that will be made.
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some minor jankiness would certainly be preferable to "just homebrew all legacy spells and magic items lol"
Good job on making your platform inferior to your competitors for short term profits! I'm sure that'll work out just fine :)
We're not even asking them to "support" 2014, really. Support would be updating the game & 2014 sheets.
We just don't want them to pull functionality we paid for out of the sheets & encounter builders, etc. & expect us to use their homebrew tools that are genuinely worse than just using a pen & paper sheet.
People are so used to paying to get nothing they think not having a rug pulled from under them is a gift.
Because Robots.
I honestly believe there should be a very big push in response to this for mass refunds on purchased materials. I myself have purchased specifically the spells from many books in my time on this website, and for it to simply be hand waved away is a slap in the face to an otherwise extremely loyal customer base you've built. You're the pinnacle of access to D&D, this is pathetic. You can't hide behind things being "too much work" being bankrolled by Hasbro now.
Wow for real! That's fantastic, OP, congrats on such a long term campaign!
I have purchased every WOTC book available on dndbeyond, have a Master's subscription, and have also had two places I work with buy out full accounts to play with fellow employees. I am the definition of a whale. If you remove the 2014 spells/etc. content and tell me to add it back in as homebrew--or indeed if you do anything that prevents me from just continuing to use the 2014 rules at my tables as they are now and without taking any extra steps, as I could with physical materials--I will never give you another dollar. HTH and HAND.
I'm overall pretty happy with what I'm seeing here. My group intends to convert our campaign as soon as the PHB drops, rebuilding characters under the new rules. I DO agree that it's strange that we can keep races, classes, subclasses and monsters accessible with legacy tags, but not spells. It would seem like those could be legacied as well to allow for use without needing to homebrew them all, putting that work on us, your supporters, when they are already all there in the databases asking to "simply" be retagged.
I can understand the frustration from people who want to stick with 2014 and not update. They've invested a lot of money here over the past 10 years - I've spent hundreds here myself between books and years of a Master tier subscription. On the one hand, DDB isn't taking away the books we've purchased, so with those and homebrew we can still play the 2014 game. But I also recognize that Beyond is the official toolset, so the rules here should reflect the current iteration.
THE ONLY REASON I HAVE DND BEYOND IS TO CREATE 2014 CHARACTERS EASILY AND THAT YOUR ADDING NEW NONE DND CONTENT. YOU CAN TAKE 2024 AND SHOVE IT AS THERE IS NO WAY IM UPDATING TO IT AS IT ISN'T AN UPGRADE IN ANYWAY. JUST ADDS A FEW HOMECREW WE'VE ALREADY BEEN USING.
i WANT MY 2014 SPELLS LEFT ALLONE AS i PAID FOR THEM.
I regret the money I spent on DnD Beyond, and my efforts to get my group to also use it.
I'll be finishing my current campaign with the sheet as I've got it set up but sadly I'm going to walk away from the platform at that point because there's a persistent insistence on making choices for the platform which diminish the usability of the platform to access the content which we have paid to use.
So will you give me a refund for all the stuff I purchased and can't use anymore in the future or what?
I would also like to know exactly how features are going to be silently updated on existing character sheets. Will existing characters just see a bunch of Legacy tags appear next to everything that's been updated but isn't being deleted, like subclasses, backgrounds, etc.? I have two campaigns currently in-progress, and none of us are eager to adopt a whole new ruleset midstream. I'd like to know if the characters in those campaigns will stay as they are, or if my players and I will need to go in and manually swap features back to their legacy versions after the switch for the things we won't be adopting this time around.
I mean D&D Insider (the D&D Beyond equivalent for 4E) stayed up for years. While updates ended for it in 2014 with the launch of 5E, they allowed new subscribers until December 2015 (so roughly a year & half after the release of 5E). And they allowed existing subscribers to continue to pay for the service until 2020 when Microsoft Silverlight shutdown. Removing access on basically day 1 is super disruptive to campaigns that are currently in progress. D&D Beyond originally sold different tiers of content - most people bought the compendium + tooltips version although you could have purchased just the compendium for cheaper. So it's not unreasonable to be angry that something you've paid for (the functionality of using the compendium in the various tools such as character sheets) is being removed and being told it's fine because you're not losing access to the compendium. If I wanted just the compendium, I could have spent less money and purchased only that. Hopefully EU users will report because they have better legal protections around digital services when shenanigans like this occur.
It would reasonable to limit legacy content to D&D Beyond and not port it over to the new VTT as an incentive to move to 5.5. Circling back to D&D Insider, the wikipedia article on it highlights:
This is fundamentally what the D&D Beyond update is about; instead of making a good UX choice, they've made a choice to push people to 5.5 because they want people to move on. It's about making it just inconvenient enough to use the 2014 version of D&D (ie. taking the time to manually input 40+ spells into the homebrew feature, needing to dig in the compendium because the search bar is limited to the update, etc) that people default to 5.5 which then leads them to buying new products down the line. The compendium is annoying to use because the books don't have search features built in (because there's the big search bar on top) and you're limited to hoping you've clicked on the right section when you use ctrl+F to find something. A recent Hasbro investor meeting highlighted that D&D Beyond is 50% of the revenue for tabletop D&D (D&D as an entire brand has other larger revenue sources); during the OGL scandal, reporters confirmed that part of Hasbro backing down was because of users cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions en masse. Fundamentally, unless people are willing to leave D&D Beyond over this, Hasbro isn't going to change this to be more UX friendly for the 2014 version of the game.
On a note about Insider, they allowed you to download PDFs of everything you purchased. Something DnDB removed a few years ago.
If they are absolutely set on this route returning the ability to download PDFs of the old content would do wonders for me. I much prefer being able to find all my stuff in a file than navigate the sources tab on the site, especially as I imagine the 2014 stuff will slowly become harder to find.