1 - we were told we would not lose access to any content we already paid for - it would simply be moved to legacy content. (This would have been a fine, even great solution. The reimplementation of legacy content was a feature we **already had access to** via a single button click in the character creator)
2 - We were told everything we paid for would be backwards compatible. Now we’re finding out that instead of DnDBeyond actually implementing said backwards compatibility, it is our responsibility to implement it ourselves with homebrew options. Except that the content I paid for isn’t homebrew - its legacy content - and therefore its lack of integration in the character creator is a **loss of content that I paid for.**
Telling us we still have compendium access is sidestepping the issue, but it sidesteps it in a really dumb way that only highlights another violation of the initial transaction.
I paid for all of the content that came with the full purchase price of several books - several times over. Compendium access was only **PART** of that and was an actual **a la carte option.** If all I wanted was compendium content, I could have purchased just that for a fraction of the price.
If you’re going to remove my access to the content I paid to have integrated into my character sheet, then that had better come with a refund for the content I can no longer access - to do otherwise is an actual violation of the transaction. If DnDBeyond’s official response to this is that we didn’t lose access to our content because we can still access it via the compendium - then I would require a pro-rated refund that refunds all but the a la carte price for compendium access - otherwise this is also a violation of the transaction.
Just make a toggle to use the 2014 version or the 2024 version of the spells and items in character creation and on character sheets. people are annoyed because you are basically forcing them to update to the new rules rather than letting them decide which version of spells and items they want to use. some people don't want update because of lack of money to buy the new books or because they just don't want to or because they have ongoing campaigns at the moment and don't want to cause issues in the game by having stuff auto switch on them. This was just a bad decision for not just adding a toggle/option to dndbeyond to choice which version of spells and items they want to use.
I for one am annoyed because i feel like you are blocking me from using the content i brought and want to play with. i don't want to update to the 2024 version at the moment. feel like we were lied to about it being backwards compatible when an entire part of the core game isn't backwards compatible is seem. that being spells and magic items. A Major part of the Core game. a lot of DMs and players' games are currently balanced around the 2014 rules. and forcing them to update can really mess up their games balance and such.
Please just listen to the people who actively play your game and just add a Toggle to DNDbeyond to chose wheather to use 2014 rules or the 2024 rules when make a character. Sinserly, Dgaan. A player since 3.5 dnd.
This. We were totally lied to about how backwards compatible this new edition would be. I'm starting my first campaign next months and I was going to organize it through dndbeyond, but now I'm not so sure. I'm only familiar with the 5e rules, it's going to be a 5e campaign, and it's going to create A LOT of confusion trying to use 5e rules while my players are using OneDnD spells and items. You really dropped the ball, Wizards. Might just switch to Roll20.
This doesn't make the changes any better. It's still making it nigh impossible to use the app to play using the 5E.14 ruleset. Why would I use the app if I have to reference the compendium? The entire USP of the app is that the spells are accessible in one place, now it's actually worse than just using a book or searching the spell on google.
Getting updated spells and magic items for free, without giving them a dime for it, does make the changes better. A lot better. Before, it seemed as though you were just up the creek without a paddle and had to homebrew to even make your character sheet functional. Now, it will just be replaced with the most up to date versions. Very different and much better.
You clearly don't understand the complaint. It being free is only a good thing if it is adding to the available options, not if it's REPLACING them. You're a DM, right? Think of how the rules changing suddenly mid-campaign would affect characters. Not to mention how the spells and items being more "up to date" has nothing to do with whether or not they'll be better written (not talking more powerful, I'm talking balanced for their purpose). It's highly likely that they'll be quite ill suited for 2014 classes, as they're being designed for how the 2024 classes work.
Replacement is only better if the vast majority of users prefer the updates over the pervious versions, a near impossible standard to achieve with the scale of differences being applied. This isn't the same as a simple bugfix for a video game. Remember Overwatch 2? The update to that being free didn't go well given how it meant users couldn't go back and play the previous version anymore. Now Blizzard is considering rolling back years worth of balance changes to the game because the fundamental changes made in the transition from 1 to 2 didn't go well. People still being able to use the compendium doesn't fix this either as there's no reason to use the sheets if you still need the books open or to write the spells' descriptions down manually. At that point, we might as well just use the standard sheet rather than this site at all.
wanted to share an impact on your bottom line. I have friends recently coming to D&D joining my campaigns, who so far have left me to manage their character in Beyond and print copies for the table. They were just reaching the point of comfort / investment to make beyond accounts and potentially spending $ on digital purchases etc. I’ve now advised them not to spend $ on your site while you sort out this confusing implementation. I’m also going to let my membership lapse if I find that the changes mean any pdf character sheet I output is filled with 2024 jargon and rules that will confuse players as it will not line up with what’s in the physical 2014 PHB at our table.
> You have to toggle Legacy access to it on the character sheet. But even if you do, you'll only get access to some of the old content, not all of it.
Great, so i'm losing access to sourcebooks i *purchased*?
Not quite. You're not "losing access to sourcebooks", you still have them on the compendium. You're "losing access to a portion of the sourcebooks on the character sheet". There's a slight difference.
If you've purchased just the compendium (which was cheaper), you're unaffected. If you've purchased the compendium + character sheet bloatware bundle, most of your purchase is still there, but you'll be losing part of it.
Correction: We're losing the part of it that matters most. The fact that we're losing something we paid for in the first place is already pretty unacceptable, but the fact that it's the sole thing that most people bought the content for in the first place is completely ridiculous.
Anything that references or grants a 2014 spell or feature will be switched to the new rules. To continue using the 2014 rules, spells and features going forward without constantly checking the compendium:
• every legacy subclass that grants 2014 spells needs to be homebrewed
• every legacy item that grants 2014 spells needs to be homebrewed
• every legacy monster that casts 2014 spells will need to be homebrewed
It gets more complicated though:
• every warlock invocation that grants 2014 spells cannot be homebrewed so they'll always display 2024 spells.
• every legacy class that grants extra spells (mainly through the Tasha's expanded lists) cannot be homebrewed so they'll always display 2024 spells.
Basically, if you want to use purely 2014 rules, spells and charactors on DnDBeyond you can't as they are taking the digital toolset that this site is for away from all of us who wants to play 2014-2023 content.
If you want to use D&D BEYOND official digital toolset for all the books pre-2024 you are going to start to hit problems as sub-classes, monsters and charactors tied to the old rule set will no longer work correctly. It's really not even worth trying when the whole point of the site was the convenience factor and they are taking that away from everyone who paid for books prior to this september.
The digital books being sold clearly state "Purchasing a digital copy of this book unlocks it for use in the D&D BEYOND compendium and toolset. D&D BEYOND is the official digital toolset for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS." How can you lock us out of the digital tool access we specifically bought access too?
We are being forced to use the September 2024 features, rules, spells and items to make it impossible or extremely inconvenient to try run games using the estabalished 2014-2023 ruleset that all the current books have been built around. This change breaks charactors and the dozens of adventure books tied to the 2014 rules, monsters, spells and features.
For those of us who own not just all the source books but many of the adventure books on this site these changes are horrific in scale as we can see its designed to inconvenience us into giving up all content on this site thats designed for the older rules and forcing us to rebuy it all in the future.
D&D BEYOND is the official digital toolset and all of us are being locked out of them digital tools if we want to carry on playing under 2014 rules and charactors with all the books, classes and monsters designed for the 2014 rules that have been released over the last decade.
Damn, I didn't even consider the Warlock invocations being broken beyond repair. So much for "you can still use your Legacy content"
Genuinely don't give a toss about the compendium content, and whilst I'm sure there are people who do, the reason I buy things and used DND beyond (until cancelling my sub yesterday) was the creator and the ease of access for building characters. This is pointless. All it does is clarify that what people THOUGHT you were doing, removing the content they wanted where they wanted it, is in fact happening. Well done, bud.
Players shouldn't have to do that work, when they already paid for it. This is why I am suggesting people never give these fools another penny, but used copies of the books if they don't already have them, or move to a new game system. If they have to have an online character generator, Paizo has one for free for PF2e, potentially for Starfinder 2e when it comes out. I'd suggest some of the more full featured and popular VTTs that have character builders in them, but we really don't know how or if these changes will affect them.
People are blowing this up and i dont think they realise whats going on.
90% of the spells and magic items HAVENT CHANGED. The 10% that have are BETTER than the old versions. and thats just the the ones IN THE PHB.
EVERY other spell in the other books hasnt changed and you can still use them.
Over 100 spells have changed. Even if they have a similar function, some have gained or lost concentration, had their damage dice changed, or in the case of things like the Conjure Spells, are completely unrecognizable from what they used to be. Any spell that changes your form (Animal Shapes, Polymorph) gives temp HP now instead, which interacts VERY differently with other spells and abilities, since temp HP doesn't stack.
People are in the middle of years-long campaigns using THOSE spells and THOSE rules. I don't care if you think the new ones are better. They're designed for the new system, not the one people are currently, actively using and have already learned.
It's LITERALLY this easy. You could even make a toggle on, like, the table where Marketplace and Sources are, toggle one way for 2014 rules and toggle the other way for 2024 rules. In the words of Lauryn Hill, "It could all be so simple... but you'd rather make it hard."
People are blowing this up and i dont think they realise whats going on.
90% of the spells and magic items HAVENT CHANGED. The 10% that have are BETTER than the old versions. and thats just the the ones IN THE PHB.
EVERY other spell in the other books hasnt changed and you can still use them.
Over 100 spells have changed. Even if they have s similar function, some have gained or lost concentration, had their damage dice changed, or in the case of things like the Conjure Spells, are completely unrecognizable from what they used to be. Any spell that changes your form (Animal Shapes, Polymorph) gives temp HP now instead, which interacts VERY differently with other spells and abilities, since temp HP doesn't stack.
People are in the middle of years-long campaigns using THOSE spells and THOSE rules. I don't care if you think the new ones are better. They're designed for the new system, not the one people are currently, actively using and have already learned.
And then, on top of that, any items, feats, subclass features, racial features, warlock invocations, etc. that reference those spells are going to change or break as a result.
If you've purchased just the compendium (which was cheaper), you're unaffected. If you've purchased the compendium + character sheet bloatware bundle, most of your purchase is still there, but you'll be losing part of it.
What if I've only bought the character sheet content, like many of us did before a la cart purchasing was removed. Does that count as losing content, or am I supposed to consider compendium text a comparable replacement?
People are blowing this up and i dont think they realise whats going on.
90% of the spells and magic items HAVENT CHANGED. The 10% that have are BETTER than the old versions. and thats just the the ones IN THE PHB.
EVERY other spell in the other books hasnt changed and you can still use them.
We know exactly what is going on.
1. It is the principal of this change which matters to people.
2. The "small impact" you are referencing only increases with every new 2024 rule release.
3. This is once again mismanagement by a company that already lost trust during OGL where apologists for that also tried to sell it as not that big of a deal.
4. The TTRPG community has a higher average age and I would predict a higher average income to other communities. We're more likely to recognize corporate grift and vote with our wallets because we know how much we spend on our hobby and how much money they could make if they didn't try their underhanded tactics. Thus we loop back to #1 the Principal of the thing. Do right by us or lose our money.
PS - Every person they alienate from D&D is another person they will never sell digital dice, mini cosmetics, or spell effects too. If dnd next or one or 5.5 or whatever it is called was truly backwards compatible than the VTT they are planning would generate plenty of money if they provided a good service and all these 5e dms that are up in arms now would be a group of 1 to 8 (campaign sizes) who could be convinced to make a purely digital and purely profitable purchase. Everyone walking away now is 100s in future revenue they could have kept if they didn't **** around and find out.
People are blowing this up and i dont think they realise whats going on.
90% of the spells and magic items HAVENT CHANGED. The 10% that have are BETTER than the old versions. and thats just the the ones IN THE PHB.
EVERY other spell in the other books hasnt changed and you can still use them.
Around 25% of the spells in the 5.5 PHB were changed from their 5e counterparts. Of those, most are the same, and while some are "better", some are also "worse". What those terms mean, that's up for debate; for example, you can say Healing Word is "better" because it's more powerful, or you can say HW is "worse" because it shouldn't have been buffed to begin with.
In addition, it's not just the spells that change, so do the rules. Do you have 5e exhaustion memorize? I personally don't, so if I was to know what it does, I could just hover over it on my character sheet to see what those rules are; now, I can't, it will only show the 5.5 version. If want to know, I'll have to open a new tab and search for that on the compendium, which might bog down gameplay.
Now don't get me wrong, people are blind by rage and unable to see different points of view (see the whole clustercrap of "it's better than before"). That part is overblown, sure. But the issue itself, it's very real and warranted, and this reaffirms how I was right in my decision to stop supporting DDB and instead move to buying physical / through VTTs.
It's easy enough to make a copy of the two dozens or so 2014 PHB spells that function differently from the 2024 PHB versions. If you're playing with friends in a shared campaign, only one of you needs to create a homebrew version of the 2014 PHB spell you'd like to use (Homebew > Create homebrew spell > Create from exisiting spell).
Rename the spell (ex. Sleep (2014) or -- if you want to make it more interesting -- Efteran's Sleep (named after the original spell creator). If you toggle on the Homebrew toggle in the Character Preferences, the spell will appear with the other 2024 spells. You don't have to go through all the 2024 spells at all at once. Simple the ones that have been revised in a way you and the other players at your table don't like. Hell, the DM can even create revised (nerfed, improved, or clarified) versions of spells that don't match either the 2014 or 2024 versions and simply add a tag to the spell's name (ex. Hypnotic Pattern ᴮᴹ ).
[ D&D Beyond homebrewer tip: in a Word document, you can find all these nice superscript Times New Roman letters to copy/paste after the name of your homebrew to tag your homebrew content :
Supercript ᴬ ᴮ ᴰ ᴱ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ ᴹ ᴺ ᴼ ᴾ ᴿ ᵀ ᵁ ᵂ (In Word, Insert > Symbol > More Symbols > Font: Times New Roman > scroll down until you find these characters > Insert each character you want to use in your Word document. Save the doc. , then copy/paste the letters to tag your homebrew)
When I tag the name of a feat, subclass, magic item, monster etc., I use ᴴ for homebrew, ᴷᴾ for Kobold Press, ᴸᵁ for Level Up 5e, ᴰᴿ for Drakenheim, and my own initials ᴮᴹ when I want to indicate to my players that they need to pick THAT feat/spell/magic item option instead of the default one.]
But if you're not bothering with tags, it takes about 15 minutes of work to copy 30 2014 spells with the homebrew spell creator if you're simply changing the spell name (30 seconds per spell).
Yes, they could've created a TOGGLE 2014 ON/OFF button and 2024 ON/OFF button... But they're a company, they want to sell their new toy. Frustrating, perhaps, but not really unexpected. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• every legacy subclass that grants 2014 spells needs to be homebrewed
Yes and no.
The Good: For warlocks you can just homebrew the spells, have the subclass tagged in the spell, and it will show up in their list of options. I tested this with my GOOlock and my homebrew copies of dissonant whispers, detect thoughts, etc showed up as options for her without changing to a homebrew subclass.
The Bad: Clerics (and I assume other classes too) do not. I tested this with my Tempest cleric. The homebrew copies of his domain spells did not show up on the character sheet. They were totally blank. Which suggests you can't even homebrew-fix cleric domain spells.
1 - we were told we would not lose access to any content we already paid for - it would simply be moved to legacy content. (This would have been a fine, even great solution. The reimplementation of legacy content was a feature we **already had access to** via a single button click in the character creator)
2 - We were told everything we paid for would be backwards compatible. Now we’re finding out that instead of DnDBeyond actually implementing said backwards compatibility, it is our responsibility to implement it ourselves with homebrew options. Except that the content I paid for isn’t homebrew - its legacy content - and therefore its lack of integration in the character creator is a **loss of content that I paid for.**
Telling us we still have compendium access is sidestepping the issue, but it sidesteps it in a really dumb way that only highlights another violation of the initial transaction.
I paid for all of the content that came with the full purchase price of several books - several times over. Compendium access was only **PART** of that and was an actual **a la carte option.** If all I wanted was compendium content, I could have purchased just that for a fraction of the price.
If you’re going to remove my access to the content I paid to have integrated into my character sheet, then that had better come with a refund for the content I can no longer access - to do otherwise is an actual violation of the transaction. If DnDBeyond’s official response to this is that we didn’t lose access to our content because we can still access it via the compendium - then I would require a pro-rated refund that refunds all but the a la carte price for compendium access - otherwise this is also a violation of the transaction.
This. We were totally lied to about how backwards compatible this new edition would be. I'm starting my first campaign next months and I was going to organize it through dndbeyond, but now I'm not so sure. I'm only familiar with the 5e rules, it's going to be a 5e campaign, and it's going to create A LOT of confusion trying to use 5e rules while my players are using OneDnD spells and items. You really dropped the ball, Wizards. Might just switch to Roll20.
You clearly don't understand the complaint. It being free is only a good thing if it is adding to the available options, not if it's REPLACING them. You're a DM, right? Think of how the rules changing suddenly mid-campaign would affect characters. Not to mention how the spells and items being more "up to date" has nothing to do with whether or not they'll be better written (not talking more powerful, I'm talking balanced for their purpose). It's highly likely that they'll be quite ill suited for 2014 classes, as they're being designed for how the 2024 classes work.
Replacement is only better if the vast majority of users prefer the updates over the pervious versions, a near impossible standard to achieve with the scale of differences being applied. This isn't the same as a simple bugfix for a video game. Remember Overwatch 2? The update to that being free didn't go well given how it meant users couldn't go back and play the previous version anymore. Now Blizzard is considering rolling back years worth of balance changes to the game because the fundamental changes made in the transition from 1 to 2 didn't go well. People still being able to use the compendium doesn't fix this either as there's no reason to use the sheets if you still need the books open or to write the spells' descriptions down manually. At that point, we might as well just use the standard sheet rather than this site at all.
wanted to share an impact on your bottom line. I have friends recently coming to D&D joining my campaigns, who so far have left me to manage their character in Beyond and print copies for the table. They were just reaching the point of comfort / investment to make beyond accounts and potentially spending $ on digital purchases etc. I’ve now advised them not to spend $ on your site while you sort out this confusing implementation. I’m also going to let my membership lapse if I find that the changes mean any pdf character sheet I output is filled with 2024 jargon and rules that will confuse players as it will not line up with what’s in the physical 2014 PHB at our table.
Correction: We're losing the part of it that matters most. The fact that we're losing something we paid for in the first place is already pretty unacceptable, but the fact that it's the sole thing that most people bought the content for in the first place is completely ridiculous.
Damn, I didn't even consider the Warlock invocations being broken beyond repair. So much for "you can still use your Legacy content"
If you add them as home brew you can.
Genuinely don't give a toss about the compendium content, and whilst I'm sure there are people who do, the reason I buy things and used DND beyond (until cancelling my sub yesterday) was the creator and the ease of access for building characters. This is pointless. All it does is clarify that what people THOUGHT you were doing, removing the content they wanted where they wanted it, is in fact happening. Well done, bud.
People are blowing this up and i dont think they realise whats going on.
90% of the spells and magic items HAVENT CHANGED. The 10% that have are BETTER than the old versions. and thats just the the ones IN THE PHB.
EVERY other spell in the other books hasnt changed and you can still use them.
I would love a Toggle to use to use 2014 rules or the 2024 rules when make a character.
And keep them separate so if we want to stay with the old rule set we can with out forcibly made to use something we don't want to use.
Maybe having two toggles:
That way if some people want to use a mix they can or just use one of the rules.
Players shouldn't have to do that work, when they already paid for it. This is why I am suggesting people never give these fools another penny, but used copies of the books if they don't already have them, or move to a new game system. If they have to have an online character generator, Paizo has one for free for PF2e, potentially for Starfinder 2e when it comes out. I'd suggest some of the more full featured and popular VTTs that have character builders in them, but we really don't know how or if these changes will affect them.
Over 100 spells have changed. Even if they have a similar function, some have gained or lost concentration, had their damage dice changed, or in the case of things like the Conjure Spells, are completely unrecognizable from what they used to be. Any spell that changes your form (Animal Shapes, Polymorph) gives temp HP now instead, which interacts VERY differently with other spells and abilities, since temp HP doesn't stack.
People are in the middle of years-long campaigns using THOSE spells and THOSE rules. I don't care if you think the new ones are better. They're designed for the new system, not the one people are currently, actively using and have already learned.
It's LITERALLY this easy. You could even make a toggle on, like, the table where Marketplace and Sources are, toggle one way for 2014 rules and toggle the other way for 2024 rules. In the words of Lauryn Hill, "It could all be so simple... but you'd rather make it hard."
And then, on top of that, any items, feats, subclass features, racial features, warlock invocations, etc. that reference those spells are going to change or break as a result.
What if I've only bought the character sheet content, like many of us did before a la cart purchasing was removed. Does that count as losing content, or am I supposed to consider compendium text a comparable replacement?
We know exactly what is going on.
1. It is the principal of this change which matters to people.
2. The "small impact" you are referencing only increases with every new 2024 rule release.
3. This is once again mismanagement by a company that already lost trust during OGL where apologists for that also tried to sell it as not that big of a deal.
4. The TTRPG community has a higher average age and I would predict a higher average income to other communities. We're more likely to recognize corporate grift and vote with our wallets because we know how much we spend on our hobby and how much money they could make if they didn't try their underhanded tactics. Thus we loop back to #1 the Principal of the thing. Do right by us or lose our money.
PS - Every person they alienate from D&D is another person they will never sell digital dice, mini cosmetics, or spell effects too. If dnd next or one or 5.5 or whatever it is called was truly backwards compatible than the VTT they are planning would generate plenty of money if they provided a good service and all these 5e dms that are up in arms now would be a group of 1 to 8 (campaign sizes) who could be convinced to make a purely digital and purely profitable purchase. Everyone walking away now is 100s in future revenue they could have kept if they didn't **** around and find out.
How do you access the compendium for content when you didn't buy the book, but purchased it a la carte?
Around 25% of the spells in the 5.5 PHB were changed from their 5e counterparts. Of those, most are the same, and while some are "better", some are also "worse". What those terms mean, that's up for debate; for example, you can say Healing Word is "better" because it's more powerful, or you can say HW is "worse" because it shouldn't have been buffed to begin with.
In addition, it's not just the spells that change, so do the rules. Do you have 5e exhaustion memorize? I personally don't, so if I was to know what it does, I could just hover over it on my character sheet to see what those rules are; now, I can't, it will only show the 5.5 version. If want to know, I'll have to open a new tab and search for that on the compendium, which might bog down gameplay.
Now don't get me wrong, people are blind by rage and unable to see different points of view (see the whole clustercrap of "it's better than before"). That part is overblown, sure. But the issue itself, it's very real and warranted, and this reaffirms how I was right in my decision to stop supporting DDB and instead move to buying physical / through VTTs.
I dunno, I'm not sure how ALC functions. I've just answered your question on what the compendium is and how you can access it.
Yes and no.
The Good: For warlocks you can just homebrew the spells, have the subclass tagged in the spell, and it will show up in their list of options. I tested this with my GOOlock and my homebrew copies of dissonant whispers, detect thoughts, etc showed up as options for her without changing to a homebrew subclass.
The Bad: Clerics (and I assume other classes too) do not. I tested this with my Tempest cleric. The homebrew copies of his domain spells did not show up on the character sheet. They were totally blank. Which suggests you can't even homebrew-fix cleric domain spells.
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