For those who say that it's not WotC/DDB's fault, these things are just impossible with the code and resources they have
1) They decided to lay off a load of devs last year, rather than use them to fix the back end of the site
2) They decided to create and release the 2024 ruleset, apparently without plans on how to support it.
3) They have been telling us for months that we can still use the old rules. They should not have said this if they are not capable of supporting them.
This is an entirely unforced error on WotC/DDB's part. They decided to bring out a new ruleset without putting in the resources to implement it, and they've advertised something that they had no capability of providing.
If they'd said months ago that they wouldn't support 2014 rules, sure there'd be complaints, but we would have had time to switch to 2024 or move elsewhere. Instead they've promised something then pulled it away at the last moment.
Worst of all, they're trying to hide it. Most users of this site aren't on the forums or looking at changelogs. This should be a main article ob the front page of the site. Instead they've snuck it out where most people won't see it, so that when people complain later they can say "Look, we did announce it, not our fault no-one read it".
I use DnD Beyond for the character sheets! If I wanted to use pen and paper I would have just bought the physical books! I've purchased literally every single digital book you offer. I've have multiple master subs for people in my household since damn near the launch of DNDBeyond. I've spent thousands just because I enjoyed how the digital character sheets make creating characters so easy. I have MULTIPLE characters and campaigns that have no intention of switching to the 2024 rule set. Everything we've been doing for years is ruined because we're being forced to switch without giving us the option. To make us do extra work to homebrew shit that already exists is insane. Especially since you weren't transparent about it sooner. What an absolute slap in the face to evey person who who has used their hard earned money to support and use your product. I swear, I hope we can get in on a class action lawsuit because this is absolute trash. Just give us the option to toggle between 2014 and 2024 rules if we want! It's that simple.
the only problem with this is WOTC doesnt want to admit that most people will just use the old content, and then they wont make money
Here's the thing: I LIKE the new content. It looks like good changes. But I don't want to lose the old content. Both are good.
Getting to look through one of the Gen Con copies, they've actually taken a little more care to specify things in some of the higher-level spells along with touching up others. Such as: -Simulacrum can't cast Simulacrum -Simulacrum can't take Short or Long Rests (settling the debate on whether or not it can recover things like Action Surge) -Wish failures can come from various causes and the spell offers guidance for the DM to help craft wishes to avoid consequences (literal divine intervention) -Lower level, but Find Familiar explicitly allows any CR 0 Beast now
I don't usually comment in many places on the internet because I generally figure that everyone else cares as much about what I think as I care about what they think. That said, this change is the final push that I needed in order to finally break free of D&D. I have run D&D for going on 8 years now, mostly because it's the only game that will attract players in my rural area, and it is one of the few games with resources to make a site like this. I have been a Master tier subscriber for 7 years with a couple of hiatuses in there when there wasn't a game going, and I have the majority of the sourcebooks in my library.
I have canceled my subscription, and I am doing what I wanted to and what I should have done during the OGL debacle: refusing to run or play D&D any longer. WotC is running the game into the ground from my perspective (and that's all this is, my opinion and perspective, so don't start on the objectively better or objectively successful semantics). When I bought the content here on this site, I bought it with the understanding that it would be available to make characters with. For certain things now, that will not be the case.
I understand that you're "upgrading" the descriptions and functionality of the content without making players pay for it, but as far as I can tell, this only applies to the core rules, and when it is clarified in your statement like that, it leads me to believe (given my experience with other companies, and knowing this company's history) that while we will have "upgraded" content from the basic rules, once you start full-on publishing the new PHB and other books, the sheets will likely be "upgraded" to use all of the 2024 content. The fact that you're not "upgrading" the books as you have done with others leads me to believe that soon my ability to use any of the functionality of this site - outside of it being a glorified PDF reader - will be dependent upon me purchasing the 2024 books, in essence re-buying content that I have already purchased. I categorically refuse to do this. If I am wrong, I welcome a staff member to correct me and tell me definitively, with no prevarication or obfuscation, that any and all owners of the 2014 PHB, MM, DMG, etc. will receive the "upgraded" versions for free.
The onus is on me for not fully understanding the predatory subscription models that have been proliferating on the web nowadays before buying into this particular service, and for not realizing that the content we "purchase" here on the site is merely a license that can be "upgraded" at any time. It's an expensive lesson, and one that I will take to heart in the future. Pen and paper cannot be "upgraded" without my permission, and so that is where I will go once more. As strange as it sounds, this change is freeing, because it made me realize how much of my game time has been struggling with all the technology and integrations to get it all to work. Between Beyond20, Discord, Avrae, DNDBeyond, and a myriad of other things, I spent half my prep time just getting everything to work, and in the end, it has not been nearly as satisfying as having actual, physical ephemera of the game. Rolling dice on the screen cannot beat the feeling of them in my hand and the sound of them in the dice tower, and there is something special about actually interacting with the character sheet, marking hit points off with an eraser and a pencil.
Maybe I'm just old and crotchety (an allegation I shall not deny after 30+ years of TTRPGs), but I will be far happier to return to pencil and paper. Perhaps I'm a 'hardliner' as has been pointed out in the thread, since a comparison between this and nothing nets a null value. Neither is any better than the other because both will eventually render my use of this site impossible, and both lead to the same conclusion.
The kicker is that I'm one of those who might eventually have bought the 2024 version, if only because of pressure from my players. I can't say one way or the other for certain because I wasn't planning on buying the new stuff until we'd finished the campaign we are in the middle of, but with this change I will not be playing or DM'ing any D&D any more. Not 5e2014, not 5e2024, and not any of the other versions, either. Next up for us is Cyberpunk RED, and then we will see where the winds of change take us.
So perhaps this is 'thanks WotC / DNDBeyond' for pushing hard enough to snap that last string keeping me to the system. One thing this certainly is, is farewell. I do hope that you listen to the feedback from this forum post and make it right for the ones who stick around, but I suppose I know better.
It feels to me that this will end up harming the sales even if this decision is made purely by greed.
I would suggest that if this is the case then you should take it as evidence of the opposite. That they made this decision not out of "greed" but because it's much harder to implement. More evidence suggesting this is the fact that they're not stopping you from using 2014 classes, subclasses and races with the new content.
The charge of greed etc... IMO doesn't make much sense.
Sure, they will let you use that content you purchased for 5e.2014, but only on paper. The integration with character sheets ( which is the only thing you really purchase ) is broken with hopes you will give up having to "home brew" every dang thing you've used for the past 10 years and buy new versions off all the books you already "purchased".
You would have to swap the spells on your list - but that's not that big a deal. Half the caster classes in the game do that every long rest anyway.
What exactly do you think it would not fix?
All the links to all the spells on all the items and all the monsters; all the rules text people are complaining about changing; etc.
That is where it gets down to the whole data model probably never being created for this.
Like most tech its locked into decisions someone made in a hurry several years ago. We can mitigate some of the stuff - pretty much anything on the character sheet can be mitigated although it does get increasingly complex to do so (needing homebrew versions of things that point to the homebrew spells) but when it comes to monsters, links in adventure modules etc I don't think we have an answer and I very much suspect that Beyond don't either because it was not engineered for this when it was still owned by Fandom.
Most of the complaints are about the character builder. I think there is a possible solution that would be adequate and Beyond should do the work on it (any of us could do it but Beyond staff should do it). But the 100% perfect solution for all the other stuff that hardly anyone is currently complaining about - my guess from decades in the tech industry is that its not feasible in any reasonable timescale.
the only problem with this is WOTC doesnt want to admit that most people will just use the old content, and then they wont make money
Here's the thing: I LIKE the new content. It looks like good changes. But I don't want to lose the old content. Both are good.
Getting to look through one of the Gen Con copies, they've actually taken a little more care to specify things in some of the higher-level spells along with touching up others. Such as: -Simulacrum can't cast Simulacrum -Simulacrum can't take Short or Long Rests (settling the debate on whether or not it can recover things like Action Surge) -Wish failures can come from various causes and the spell offers guidance for the DM to help craft wishes to avoid consequences (literal divine intervention) -Lower level, but Find Familiar explicitly allows any CR 0 Beast now
I might give the new content a fair shake ( I've never seen it ), but only if they don't screw me over and break the integration to books that I've purchased. Don't tell me to go use pencil and paper and tell me that I still have my access if I want to go read... my old eyes don't do that too well anymore. Not that they care, it seems.
If it's that much harder to offer the toggle option so many have suggested, then why is it not so difficult for other sites to do so?? Your logic is invalid.
Because different websites are completely different? I can easily counter that no other website has nearly the integration with their system as dnd beyond does and that different websites are made differently lol.
Why didn't they just make it so that you couldn't use 2014 classes with the character creator if their goal was "greed" and trying to push people into just the new content? Maybe because (as it's been explained well by others) one thing is much easier to do then another.
The people who code for dndbeyond and make the game/rules LOVE the game. They want people to like what they're doing.
The people who actually code for dndbeyond do not get to vote for the feature set. They do as they are told or they are replaced.
On a subscription based website I think it's unreasonable to say Hasbro do not have the resources to do something as universal in modern web design as a toggle between an old and a new text file. (They do manage to toggle just fine between historic and standard MTG cards on their other MTG services for example.)
So the question is "Does the business care enough to do it?"
If the answer is yes then I think it's reasonable for the company to ask for time.
If the answer is no then I think it's reasonable for people to be upset that a website they have been paying a subscription fee to has less filter features than a website designed by a crypto scam artist.
Except you're forgetting that they've made the promise that the 2024 rules will be available on 9/3. So it's not as easy as asking for time either. No matter what way they go, they're messing someone up. Unless they fork the site and call it a day. #DDBClassic
That is a perfectly acceptable short term solution to this dumpster fire.
Grant K. Smith A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
On a subscription based website I think it's unreasonable to say Hasbro do not have the resources to do something as universal in modern web design as a toggle between an old and a new text file. (They do manage to toggle just fine between historic and standard MTG cards on their other MTG services for example.)
So the question is "Does the business care enough to do it?"
If the answer is yes then I think it's reasonable for the company to ask for time.
If the answer is no then I think it's reasonable for people to be upset that a website they have been paying a subscription fee to has less filter features than a website designed by a crypto scam artist.
Except you're forgetting that they've made the promise that the 2024 rules will be available on 9/3. So it's not as easy as asking for time either. No matter what way they go, they're messing someone up. Unless they fork the site and call it a day. #DDBClassic
That is a perfectly acceptable short term solution to this dumpster fire.
Agreed. I've been advocating for that solution all weekend. #DDBClassic
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Grant K. Smith A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
The more I think about it, the more I realize this is a stupidly simple solution. All they would need to do for spells is:
1. Instead of overwriting the spell entries, create new entries for the 2024 versions of spells. (Easier done than some might think, since just like monsters and races, spells have a number in the URL as part of their indexing. New spells can just use later numbers.) 2. Tag the old spells as Legacy using the existing system. 3. Set up a list with 2 columns; First is the 2024 names, second is the 2014 names of spells. Most of these are the same; a few are not. Each entry in the column should link to the correct entry in the database. 4. Implement a legacy toggle for spells in the Character Builder. 5. As long as the toggle is on, the Character Builder looks at the second column for spells instead of the first. 6. In the Spells search page, include a new dropdown in the same style as the recent addition of Partnered Content labeled Legacy Content that allows us to search that.
By doing this, the new content would be the default like they want and we'd lose nothing. A similar toggle could be done for the tooltips, but each of those could be handled separately.
This wouldn't take very much work on their end with the infrastructure they already have, a lot of this would just be copying code.
Would be a bit wonky when someone is mixing a legacy race without a replacement (like half-orc) and 5.5 spells, but should work. They'd just need to enable legacy during race selection and then turn it off when selecting spells. But as the official statements from WotC have always been that under 5.5 if there's a 5.5 option then it shouldn't be unexpected that the sheet wouldn't naturally support mix-and-matching 5.0 and 5.5 spells on the same character. At which point, "homebrew is the workaround" becomes an acceptable answer.
It could also get tricky when they try another ruleset in the future, but by that point they better have gotten their act together and redesigned the underlying structure.
It was perfectly clear from the email I got the other day. You're pulling the rug out from under my usage of the character builder. All the spells used by my players will automatically change to updated versions which may or may not be the same as the versions I want in my game. I'd rather not have to look up in a physical book or (deity forbid) the compendium to get the details of something I should only have to click in the character builder.
Sounds like back to paper and physical books for us.
Feel the need to pile on to express displeasure with the plan. I would much prefer a tick box to select 2014 or 2024 content across the board. The current plan is going to make it 'beyond' difficult to use the toolset for an in-progress 2014 campaign -- unnecessarily so. I get the desire to drive adoption and sales, but the current approach is literally half-assed in that regard; it's not a complete deprecation, and it's not friendly to your customer base. It's like you're taking every opportunity to make the 2024 rollout as convoluted and painful as possible.
Pro tip: pulling the rug out from underneath your customer base isn't good business practice.
I think in an ideal situation you'd have an overall Legacy toggle for the sheet, but also individual toggles for different features, e.g. have overall legacy toggle for character creation and to decide which rules\references are shown on the sheet, but then when adding spells etc be able to switch between the two lists. Once you've got a main toggle in place and everything tagged it shouldn't be too much work to add more toggles elsewhere (and could be a later update rather than being needed for release).
3) They have been telling us for months that we can still use the old rules. They should not have said this if they are not capable of supporting them.
This is an entirely unforced error on WotC/DDB's part. They decided to bring out a new ruleset without putting in the resources to implement it, and they've advertised something that they had no capability of providing.
If they'd said months ago that they wouldn't support 2014 rules, sure there'd be complaints, but we would have had time to switch to 2024 or move elsewhere. Instead they've promised something then pulled it away at the last moment.
Worst of all, they're trying to hide it. Most users of this site aren't on the forums or looking at changelogs. This should be a main article ob the front page of the site. Instead they've snuck it out where most people won't see it, so that when people complain later they can say "Look, we did announce it, not our fault no-one read it".
This really can't be emphasized enough.
For months there's been threads from users asking if current content will still be usable once the 5.5 books drop. The official answers from mods were always "We don't have that information. We'll tell you when there's a statement."
Now to be clear I do believe the mods didn't know. And that they hadn't been given that information.
But I also have to believe D&D Staff saw this question. Take LaTiaJacquise for example, odds are she probably asked someone, "Hey, this question comes up. Can you give me information so we can let them know what's going to happen?" And whether they didn't give her the info, there was a gag on when to say it, or whatever. That's a failure on WotC's part with informing us.
Because like you pointed out, there's no way this was a decision made just last week. (And if it was then I don't even know...) I purchased the DMG during the summer sale because it was a really nice price. And I purchased it with the assumption that I'd get the functionality it had. If I'd know I was actually "pre-ordering" a subset of 5.5 rules I would not have bought it. And I have to believe WotC knew their plans by that time.
There might be a case for breach of contract here. For those who have paid money, the agreement was essentially that we'd have access to the stuff we purchased. They're revoking that access in part (in the character sheet) and/or degrading the service we agreed to pay for.
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the only problem with this is WOTC doesnt want to admit that most people will just use the old content, and then they wont make money
For those who say that it's not WotC/DDB's fault, these things are just impossible with the code and resources they have
1) They decided to lay off a load of devs last year, rather than use them to fix the back end of the site
2) They decided to create and release the 2024 ruleset, apparently without plans on how to support it.
3) They have been telling us for months that we can still use the old rules. They should not have said this if they are not capable of supporting them.
This is an entirely unforced error on WotC/DDB's part. They decided to bring out a new ruleset without putting in the resources to implement it, and they've advertised something that they had no capability of providing.
If they'd said months ago that they wouldn't support 2014 rules, sure there'd be complaints, but we would have had time to switch to 2024 or move elsewhere. Instead they've promised something then pulled it away at the last moment.
Worst of all, they're trying to hide it. Most users of this site aren't on the forums or looking at changelogs. This should be a main article ob the front page of the site. Instead they've snuck it out where most people won't see it, so that when people complain later they can say "Look, we did announce it, not our fault no-one read it".
I use DnD Beyond for the character sheets! If I wanted to use pen and paper I would have just bought the physical books! I've purchased literally every single digital book you offer. I've have multiple master subs for people in my household since damn near the launch of DNDBeyond. I've spent thousands just because I enjoyed how the digital character sheets make creating characters so easy. I have MULTIPLE characters and campaigns that have no intention of switching to the 2024 rule set. Everything we've been doing for years is ruined because we're being forced to switch without giving us the option. To make us do extra work to homebrew shit that already exists is insane. Especially since you weren't transparent about it sooner. What an absolute slap in the face to evey person who who has used their hard earned money to support and use your product. I swear, I hope we can get in on a class action lawsuit because this is absolute trash. Just give us the option to toggle between 2014 and 2024 rules if we want! It's that simple.
Here's the thing: I LIKE the new content. It looks like good changes. But I don't want to lose the old content. Both are good.
Getting to look through one of the Gen Con copies, they've actually taken a little more care to specify things in some of the higher-level spells along with touching up others. Such as:
-Simulacrum can't cast Simulacrum
-Simulacrum can't take Short or Long Rests (settling the debate on whether or not it can recover things like Action Surge)
-Wish failures can come from various causes and the spell offers guidance for the DM to help craft wishes to avoid consequences (literal divine intervention)
-Lower level, but Find Familiar explicitly allows any CR 0 Beast now
I don't usually comment in many places on the internet because I generally figure that everyone else cares as much about what I think as I care about what they think. That said, this change is the final push that I needed in order to finally break free of D&D. I have run D&D for going on 8 years now, mostly because it's the only game that will attract players in my rural area, and it is one of the few games with resources to make a site like this. I have been a Master tier subscriber for 7 years with a couple of hiatuses in there when there wasn't a game going, and I have the majority of the sourcebooks in my library.
I have canceled my subscription, and I am doing what I wanted to and what I should have done during the OGL debacle: refusing to run or play D&D any longer. WotC is running the game into the ground from my perspective (and that's all this is, my opinion and perspective, so don't start on the objectively better or objectively successful semantics). When I bought the content here on this site, I bought it with the understanding that it would be available to make characters with. For certain things now, that will not be the case.
I understand that you're "upgrading" the descriptions and functionality of the content without making players pay for it, but as far as I can tell, this only applies to the core rules, and when it is clarified in your statement like that, it leads me to believe (given my experience with other companies, and knowing this company's history) that while we will have "upgraded" content from the basic rules, once you start full-on publishing the new PHB and other books, the sheets will likely be "upgraded" to use all of the 2024 content. The fact that you're not "upgrading" the books as you have done with others leads me to believe that soon my ability to use any of the functionality of this site - outside of it being a glorified PDF reader - will be dependent upon me purchasing the 2024 books, in essence re-buying content that I have already purchased. I categorically refuse to do this. If I am wrong, I welcome a staff member to correct me and tell me definitively, with no prevarication or obfuscation, that any and all owners of the 2014 PHB, MM, DMG, etc. will receive the "upgraded" versions for free.
The onus is on me for not fully understanding the predatory subscription models that have been proliferating on the web nowadays before buying into this particular service, and for not realizing that the content we "purchase" here on the site is merely a license that can be "upgraded" at any time. It's an expensive lesson, and one that I will take to heart in the future. Pen and paper cannot be "upgraded" without my permission, and so that is where I will go once more. As strange as it sounds, this change is freeing, because it made me realize how much of my game time has been struggling with all the technology and integrations to get it all to work. Between Beyond20, Discord, Avrae, DNDBeyond, and a myriad of other things, I spent half my prep time just getting everything to work, and in the end, it has not been nearly as satisfying as having actual, physical ephemera of the game. Rolling dice on the screen cannot beat the feeling of them in my hand and the sound of them in the dice tower, and there is something special about actually interacting with the character sheet, marking hit points off with an eraser and a pencil.
Maybe I'm just old and crotchety (an allegation I shall not deny after 30+ years of TTRPGs), but I will be far happier to return to pencil and paper. Perhaps I'm a 'hardliner' as has been pointed out in the thread, since a comparison between this and nothing nets a null value. Neither is any better than the other because both will eventually render my use of this site impossible, and both lead to the same conclusion.
The kicker is that I'm one of those who might eventually have bought the 2024 version, if only because of pressure from my players. I can't say one way or the other for certain because I wasn't planning on buying the new stuff until we'd finished the campaign we are in the middle of, but with this change I will not be playing or DM'ing any D&D any more. Not 5e2014, not 5e2024, and not any of the other versions, either. Next up for us is Cyberpunk RED, and then we will see where the winds of change take us.
So perhaps this is 'thanks WotC / DNDBeyond' for pushing hard enough to snap that last string keeping me to the system. One thing this certainly is, is farewell. I do hope that you listen to the feedback from this forum post and make it right for the ones who stick around, but I suppose I know better.
Sure, they will let you use that content you purchased for 5e.2014, but only on paper. The integration with character sheets ( which is the only thing you really purchase ) is broken with hopes you will give up having to "home brew" every dang thing you've used for the past 10 years and buy new versions off all the books you already "purchased".
Get off my lawn or roll for initiative!
Hi
annnnnnd 1000!
Hi
I might give the new content a fair shake ( I've never seen it ), but only if they don't screw me over and break the integration to books that I've purchased. Don't tell me to go use pencil and paper and tell me that I still have my access if I want to go read... my old eyes don't do that too well anymore. Not that they care, it seems.
Get off my lawn or roll for initiative!
The people who actually code for dndbeyond do not get to vote for the feature set. They do as they are told or they are replaced.
Get off my lawn or roll for initiative!
That is a perfectly acceptable short term solution to this dumpster fire.
Get off my lawn or roll for initiative!
Hello!
Grant K. Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
Agreed. I've been advocating for that solution all weekend. #DDBClassic
Grant K. Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
Would be a bit wonky when someone is mixing a legacy race without a replacement (like half-orc) and 5.5 spells, but should work. They'd just need to enable legacy during race selection and then turn it off when selecting spells. But as the official statements from WotC have always been that under 5.5 if there's a 5.5 option then it shouldn't be unexpected that the sheet wouldn't naturally support mix-and-matching 5.0 and 5.5 spells on the same character. At which point, "homebrew is the workaround" becomes an acceptable answer.
It could also get tricky when they try another ruleset in the future, but by that point they better have gotten their act together and redesigned the underlying structure.
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
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Silverwood Group 1 | Silverwood Group 2
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 51, 10/23/25, Viva La Vida
It was perfectly clear from the email I got the other day. You're pulling the rug out from under my usage of the character builder. All the spells used by my players will automatically change to updated versions which may or may not be the same as the versions I want in my game. I'd rather not have to look up in a physical book or (deity forbid) the compendium to get the details of something I should only have to click in the character builder.
Sounds like back to paper and physical books for us.
Feel the need to pile on to express displeasure with the plan. I would much prefer a tick box to select 2014 or 2024 content across the board. The current plan is going to make it 'beyond' difficult to use the toolset for an in-progress 2014 campaign -- unnecessarily so. I get the desire to drive adoption and sales, but the current approach is literally half-assed in that regard; it's not a complete deprecation, and it's not friendly to your customer base. It's like you're taking every opportunity to make the 2024 rollout as convoluted and painful as possible.
Pro tip: pulling the rug out from underneath your customer base isn't good business practice.
I think in an ideal situation you'd have an overall Legacy toggle for the sheet, but also individual toggles for different features, e.g. have overall legacy toggle for character creation and to decide which rules\references are shown on the sheet, but then when adding spells etc be able to switch between the two lists. Once you've got a main toggle in place and everything tagged it shouldn't be too much work to add more toggles elsewhere (and could be a later update rather than being needed for release).
This really can't be emphasized enough.
For months there's been threads from users asking if current content will still be usable once the 5.5 books drop. The official answers from mods were always "We don't have that information. We'll tell you when there's a statement."
Now to be clear I do believe the mods didn't know. And that they hadn't been given that information.
But I also have to believe D&D Staff saw this question. Take LaTiaJacquise for example, odds are she probably asked someone, "Hey, this question comes up. Can you give me information so we can let them know what's going to happen?" And whether they didn't give her the info, there was a gag on when to say it, or whatever. That's a failure on WotC's part with informing us.
Because like you pointed out, there's no way this was a decision made just last week. (And if it was then I don't even know...) I purchased the DMG during the summer sale because it was a really nice price. And I purchased it with the assumption that I'd get the functionality it had. If I'd know I was actually "pre-ordering" a subset of 5.5 rules I would not have bought it. And I have to believe WotC knew their plans by that time.
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
There might be a case for breach of contract here. For those who have paid money, the agreement was essentially that we'd have access to the stuff we purchased. They're revoking that access in part (in the character sheet) and/or degrading the service we agreed to pay for.