Following along with this well-deserved roasting of WizBro & would like to encourage everyone who has said they're thinking about canceling their subscription to pull the trigger. You'll retain access to your current sub tier until the date it would have renewed.
Nobody's reading these comments, because they don't actually want this kind of feedback, but I assure you, someone is paying attention to the "subscription cancelled" metrics.
Except that just like back with the OGL exodus, the cancellation button is no longer working.
Following along with this well-deserved roasting of WizBro & would like to encourage everyone who has said they're thinking about canceling their subscription to pull the trigger. You'll retain access to your current sub tier until the date it would have renewed.
Nobody's reading these comments, because they don't actually want this kind of feedback, but I assure you, someone is paying attention to the "subscription cancelled" metrics.
Except that just like back with the OGL exodus, the cancellation button is no longer working.
Ah, hell, I didn't realize.
Depending how people have set up their payment to be processed, there may still be options - for example, anyone using PayPal can cancel through PP, and I believe many credit cards and banks have similar methods. I do encourage people to explore those options if they wish to make their displeasure tangibly known.
Following along with this well-deserved roasting of WizBro & would like to encourage everyone who has said they're thinking about canceling their subscription to pull the trigger. You'll retain access to your current sub tier until the date it would have renewed.
Nobody's reading these comments, because they don't actually want this kind of feedback, but I assure you, someone is paying attention to the "subscription cancelled" metrics.
Except that just like back with the OGL exodus, the cancellation button is no longer working.
Ah, hell, I didn't realize.
Depending how people have set up their payment to be processed, there may still be options - for example, anyone using PayPal can cancel through PP, and I believe many credit cards and banks have similar methods. I do encourage people to explore those options if they wish to make their displeasure tangibly known.
It was working yesterday when I cancelled. I suspect the servers are overloaded with people exporting pdfs of their characters and cancelling subscriptions.
Following along with this well-deserved roasting of WizBro & would like to encourage everyone who has said they're thinking about canceling their subscription to pull the trigger. You'll retain access to your current sub tier until the date it would have renewed.
Nobody's reading these comments, because they don't actually want this kind of feedback, but I assure you, someone is paying attention to the "subscription cancelled" metrics.
Except that just like back with the OGL exodus, the cancellation button is no longer working.
Ah, hell, I didn't realize.
I remember there being a work around back during the OGL exodus, but for the life of me can't remember what it was. I do remember a lot of people just going through the 'Contact Us' submission forms, it was clunky and took time but that did the trick.
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.
To continue using the 2014 rules going forward:
Every subclass that grants spells needs to be homebrewed
Every item that grants spells needs to be homebrewed
Every warlock invocation that grants spells - these cannot be homebrewed and will not be usable with 2014 rules
Every class that grants extra spells (mainly through the Tashas expanded spell lists) - as far as I know these also cannot be homebrewed so will be unusable.
Every monster that casts spells will need to be homebrewed
It's not easy. It's impossible to homebrew fix all the content they are removing and outright breaking with this update. It's delibrate phasing out of all the older books that are tied to the 2014 rules, spells and class features while telling us to go fix it ourselves using homebrew.
Many of us paid for dndbeyond tool access to all this content across muiltiply books over the last few years. I own almost every digital book on this site to make charactor creation on dndbeyond as fluid and inclusive as possible for myself and all my friends. I paid for no hassle access to all the charactor options and tools for 5e based on the 2014 rules set. If you go to any book in the new marketplace the character builder is the first thing listed under "Beyond Unlocks" They are removing access to all this content for the dndbeyond digital tool set. They are TAKING AWAY content I specifically paid a lot of money for and telling me to create it myself.
It's extremely insulting to everyone whose bought these digital books to have their content removed and to be told by wlto/dndbeyond that we need to fix it ourselves when it simply isn't possible to fix the impact of these changes across muiltiply sub classes and we PAID for this content already!
When buying the 2014 compatible books that contain these spells and subclasses it clearly states "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" Considering they are removing that while still selling books advertising it its now false advertising.
This is the listing below for the players handbook. Under dndbeyond toolkit unlocks it shows 350 spells amoung other features for our charactor sheets.
Just so people are clear, currently if you have purchased content a la carte, it is not accessible through the Compendium ONLY through the character sheet. When it is changed/removed you will no longer have access to it, period. (I just tested to confirm that I couldn't access a la carte purchases through the Compendium.)
A la carte purchases were never accessible via the compendium, they were accessible through the related rules pages. Ie, if I bought the races from Volo's, I couldn't read about it from going to the sourcebook and trying to read just the relevant entries. I'd have to go to the rules page for races and look up a specific race, like Tabaxi. This function still appears to work for me, though I'm also in several campaigns with content sharing. If someone who bought a la carte and isn't in any campaigns with content sharing, this is what you'd want to test.
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.
To continue using the 2014 rules going forward:
Every subclass that grants spells needs to be homebrewed
Every item that grants spells needs to be homebrewed
Every warlock invocation that grants spells - these cannot be homebrewed and will not be usable with 2014 rules
Every class that grants extra spells (mainly through the Tashas expanded spell lists) - as far as I know these also cannot be homebrewed so will be unusable.
Every monster that casts spells will need to be homebrewed
It's not easy. It's impossible to homebrew fix all the content they are removing and outright breaking with this update. It's delibrate phasing out of all the older books that are tied to the 2014 rules, spells and class features while telling us to go fix it ourselves using homebrew.
Many of us paid for dndbeyond tool access to all this content across muiltiply books over the last few years. I own almost every digital book on this site to make charactor creation on dndbeyond as fluid and inclusive as possible for myself and all my friends. I paid for no hassle access to all the charactor options and tools for 5e based on the 2014 rules set. If you go to any book in the new marketplace the character builder is the first thing listed under "Beyond Unlocks" They are removing access to all this content for the dndbeyond digital tool set. They are TAKING AWAY content I specifically paid a lot of money for and telling me to create it myself.
It's extremely insulting to everyone whose bought these digital books to have their content removed and to be told by wlto/dndbeyond that we need to fix it ourselves when it simply isn't possible to fix the impact of these changes across muiltiply sub classes and we PAID for this content already!
When buying the 2014 compatible books that contain these spells and subclasses it clearly states "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" Considering they are removing that while still selling books advertising it its now false advertising.
This is the listing below for the players handbook. Under dndbeyond toolkit unlocks it shows 350 spells amoung other features for our charactor sheets.
Homebrewing subclasses is also not perfect either. I homebrewed a Tempest Domain cleric to keep my legacy homebrew copies of the domain spells and none of them show on the character sheet.
All 2014 versions of Spells will still be accessible in the D&D Beyond Compendium and available for players to access.
Cool...but that's not what i paid for. If i wanted to know about a specific spell, Google generally can tell me that (along with all the clarifications and discussions of it's use and limitations), or one of my physical books if I'm at home.
No, what i paid for was the automation.
Microsoft used this same logic, "We're giving you Windows 10 Free! but...we'll be taking your windows 7 key..." that's called barter. It's not free.
"We're giving you 2024 spells for FREE!!! but removing the automation associated with the 2014 ones" That's still not free. I'm having functionality taken away for the *generous* use of some of the new content... Hell I even pre-ordered the 2024 books, and fully expect to play from them eventually. so none of this is some kind of "free upgrade" too me, just a flat loss of access to automation.
I won't be playing any of the 2024 content for at least 6 months to a year after they get released because the games I'm in don't wont to update mid campaign. So for that whole time, I'll be homebrewing all the spells, armor, and weapons... Oh, and having tried to get ready for this nonsense... it's not even something we can help each other with. because you can't share homebrew that's too much like licensed content publicly... So *everyone* that needs to keep using 2014 content via automation, for what ever reason, is left to homebrewing it up on their own...
Cool...
Ugh... And i just thought of Avrae for discord... what a royal mess.
Why code legacy flags when you can embrace planned obsolesces...
I'm afraid I have to agree with many of the other opinions on this thread. If I cannot use the D&D Beyond app for character sheet creation/maintenance/play for our current 2014 based campaign, then what use is my Master Tier subscription to me? My decision to renew my subscription at the end of this period as well as an eventual switch to the 2024 books will depend strongly on whether or not you will include a 2014 character option in your app. It wouldn't require anything beyond keeping the current app and database as is in addition to the one you've currently got planned. This is about whether or not your customers (my players and I in this case) can trust you to support your customer base on the products they have purchased.
I'd be deeply disappointed in my 2014 characters not having access to 2014 spells in the Character tool. There's no excuse not to implement "2014 content" and "2024 content" switches (just like you have with "Expanded Rules", "Homebrew", etc) that keep my existing 2014 characters "as is". I'd strongly suggest D&D Beyond do a quick survey to find out how many subscriptions they'll lose with this change - this is shaping up to be another OGL disaster. If I log in and find my 2014 characters aren't compliant with 2014 rules, there's no point for me in having a D&D Beyond subscription.
I don't want or need to be rooting around a secondary location for my 2014 spells for my 2014 character in my 2014 campaign. The spells should be on my character sheet where I need them. Little gods, I don't even know where my compendium is. I rely on my character sheet to have what I need.
This is a massive inconvenience for those of us who are in the midst of 2014 campaigns or have no intention (as of yet) of using the 2024 rules. It will slow down play at the table as people dig around for what they need, and it will make it very confusing for newbie players who are just starting to get comfortable with the mechanics of this website in their 2014 campaigns.
Why is it so difficult for DNDBeyond to grasp this? Why is it so hard to create a toggle that allows us to determine what version of the spells we want to use? You have toggles for everything else.
You're not appeasing us with this solution. You also are not listening to your customer base. I suppose enough cancelled subscriptions might drive you to listen, just like with the OLG fiasco.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. I'm just disappointed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Magda Grayson | Human | Blood Hunter/Cleric | Barovia/Feywild
That doesn't help me in the slightest actually. I paid for content on this website with the understanding that I would be able to use that content. Them giving me a bunch of stuff I don't want, didn't ask for, won't purchase and won't use doesn't do a damn thing for me.
Taking away access to the services and features I paid for in exchange for something I didn't even ask for is a terrible policy; I'm not going to suddenly feel un-robbed just because somebody else insists that it's actually better this way.
The entire reason I give you guys money every month is to make things EASY and STRAIGHTFORWARD for my party.
If you take away the ability to use the rules and mechanics that I pay you for in an easy and straightforward way, AKA IN THE CHARACTER SHEET, I'll just stop paying you.
I think I’ll give up my DnD Beyond subscription. I’ll stick to the 2014 rulebooks but will probably use a different platform for character creation and campaign management. I recommend others do the same—maybe then DnD Beyond will understand that forcing us into something doesn't end well. There are plenty of other platforms that allow character creation using 2014 materials, and they are free.
I'm in the middle of a game and we're going to finish it out using the 2014 rules rather than switching over. It sounds like when I level up and get access to new spells, they'll be the 2024 versions of those spells instead. Why???? Why can't I finish out the game using the 2014 rules and wait until I create a new character to use the new spells? I understand that I can still access the compendium versions of the old spells but that's not the same as using them in the character sheet. Not to mention how my DM will have to handle things for NPCs since they just have links to the spells (the new ones now) rather than being embedded in their statblocks.
I'm really disappointed that we're losing access to the spells in the tools. Still having access to them in the compendium is not good enough.
I've purchased much of dnd 5e with the understanding that I was purchasing compendium content to be used on the digital character sheet. If you are in fact discontinuing that feature I will pursue refunds and charge backs. I paid for digital content that has been intentionally altered to the point of no longer being what I purchased; even if I am not successful in pursuing a charge back I will certainly never buy more content on this website again. What a terribly pointless way to divide this community and burn all your good will again.
I'm obviously going to cancel my subscription too, since the entire point of the sub is to allow my players to access this content on their character sheets. I literally pay an additional fee to have this feature, why on earth would you think it is a good idea to take away a feature that people are currently paying subs over?
Furthermore, my play group uses a variety of digital character sheets; not everybody at my table uses dndbeyond. This didn't matter until now because the content was all the same, but Wizards has created a situation where parties playing 5e dnd can use almost any character sheet apparatus except for dndbeyond.
With this move, dndbeyond somehow became the worst way to play DND, almost overnight.
You really don’t get it do you? Nobody at Hasbro or WoTC do clearly. YOU ARE GUTTING THE CORE FEATURE OF D&D BEYOND TO SHILL THE NEW SLOP! The character sheet for a 6 year campaign is gonna break because you want to push a poorly made, poorly planned, over monetized new version of the game. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on this site and you’re gonna break my ability to use it in the way I paid for it. I hate it. I hate the higher ups of this company and I feel bad for the public relations staff that have to try and fight this dumpster fire. Do the people making the big decisions understand that a huge chunk of the community is done with this website? Nobody is buying shit from here anymore because we have no guarantee anything we buy stays accessible. I want money back and I want out of this crap
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Except that just like back with the OGL exodus, the cancellation button is no longer working.
Ah, hell, I didn't realize.
Depending how people have set up their payment to be processed, there may still be options - for example, anyone using PayPal can cancel through PP, and I believe many credit cards and banks have similar methods. I do encourage people to explore those options if they wish to make their displeasure tangibly known.
It was working yesterday when I cancelled. I suspect the servers are overloaded with people exporting pdfs of their characters and cancelling subscriptions.
I remember there being a work around back during the OGL exodus, but for the life of me can't remember what it was. I do remember a lot of people just going through the 'Contact Us' submission forms, it was clunky and took time but that did the trick.
To continue using the 2014 rules going forward:
It's not easy. It's impossible to homebrew fix all the content they are removing and outright breaking with this update. It's delibrate phasing out of all the older books that are tied to the 2014 rules, spells and class features while telling us to go fix it ourselves using homebrew.
Many of us paid for dndbeyond tool access to all this content across muiltiply books over the last few years. I own almost every digital book on this site to make charactor creation on dndbeyond as fluid and inclusive as possible for myself and all my friends. I paid for no hassle access to all the charactor options and tools for 5e based on the 2014 rules set. If you go to any book in the new marketplace the character builder is the first thing listed under "Beyond Unlocks" They are removing access to all this content for the dndbeyond digital tool set. They are TAKING AWAY content I specifically paid a lot of money for and telling me to create it myself.
It's extremely insulting to everyone whose bought these digital books to have their content removed and to be told by wlto/dndbeyond that we need to fix it ourselves when it simply isn't possible to fix the impact of these changes across muiltiply sub classes and we PAID for this content already!
When buying the 2014 compatible books that contain these spells and subclasses it clearly states "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" Considering they are removing that while still selling books advertising it its now false advertising.
This is the listing below for the players handbook. Under dndbeyond toolkit unlocks it shows 350 spells amoung other features for our charactor sheets.
When I try to access my subscription, the page crashes and redirects to the 500 - Internal Server Error page. How convenient…
A la carte purchases were never accessible via the compendium, they were accessible through the related rules pages. Ie, if I bought the races from Volo's, I couldn't read about it from going to the sourcebook and trying to read just the relevant entries. I'd have to go to the rules page for races and look up a specific race, like Tabaxi. This function still appears to work for me, though I'm also in several campaigns with content sharing. If someone who bought a la carte and isn't in any campaigns with content sharing, this is what you'd want to test.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
Homebrewing subclasses is also not perfect either. I homebrewed a Tempest Domain cleric to keep my legacy homebrew copies of the domain spells and none of them show on the character sheet.
This is a signature. It was a simple signature. But it has been upgraded.
Belolonandalogalo, Sunny | Draíocht, Kholias | Eggo Lass, 100 Dungeons
Talorin Tebedi, Vecna: Eve | Cherry, Stormwreck | Chipper, Strahd
We Are Modron
Get rickrolled here. Awesome music here. Track 48, 5/23/25, Immaculate Mary
All 2014 versions of Spells will still be accessible in the D&D Beyond Compendium and available for players to access.
Cool...but that's not what i paid for. If i wanted to know about a specific spell, Google generally can tell me that (along with all the clarifications and discussions of it's use and limitations), or one of my physical books if I'm at home.
No, what i paid for was the automation.
Microsoft used this same logic, "We're giving you Windows 10 Free! but...we'll be taking your windows 7 key..." that's called barter. It's not free.
"We're giving you 2024 spells for FREE!!! but removing the automation associated with the 2014 ones" That's still not free. I'm having functionality taken away for the *generous* use of some of the new content... Hell I even pre-ordered the 2024 books, and fully expect to play from them eventually. so none of this is some kind of "free upgrade" too me, just a flat loss of access to automation.
I won't be playing any of the 2024 content for at least 6 months to a year after they get released because the games I'm in don't wont to update mid campaign. So for that whole time, I'll be homebrewing all the spells, armor, and weapons... Oh, and having tried to get ready for this nonsense... it's not even something we can help each other with. because you can't share homebrew that's too much like licensed content publicly... So *everyone* that needs to keep using 2014 content via automation, for what ever reason, is left to homebrewing it up on their own...
Cool...
Ugh... And i just thought of Avrae for discord... what a royal mess.
Why code legacy flags when you can embrace planned obsolesces...
Yep, posted this on Reddit too in the thread about this shit-show.
I'm afraid I have to agree with many of the other opinions on this thread. If I cannot use the D&D Beyond app for character sheet creation/maintenance/play for our current 2014 based campaign, then what use is my Master Tier subscription to me? My decision to renew my subscription at the end of this period as well as an eventual switch to the 2024 books will depend strongly on whether or not you will include a 2014 character option in your app. It wouldn't require anything beyond keeping the current app and database as is in addition to the one you've currently got planned. This is about whether or not your customers (my players and I in this case) can trust you to support your customer base on the products they have purchased.
I'd be deeply disappointed in my 2014 characters not having access to 2014 spells in the Character tool. There's no excuse not to implement "2014 content" and "2024 content" switches (just like you have with "Expanded Rules", "Homebrew", etc) that keep my existing 2014 characters "as is". I'd strongly suggest D&D Beyond do a quick survey to find out how many subscriptions they'll lose with this change - this is shaping up to be another OGL disaster. If I log in and find my 2014 characters aren't compliant with 2014 rules, there's no point for me in having a D&D Beyond subscription.
I don't want or need to be rooting around a secondary location for my 2014 spells for my 2014 character in my 2014 campaign. The spells should be on my character sheet where I need them. Little gods, I don't even know where my compendium is. I rely on my character sheet to have what I need.
This is a massive inconvenience for those of us who are in the midst of 2014 campaigns or have no intention (as of yet) of using the 2024 rules. It will slow down play at the table as people dig around for what they need, and it will make it very confusing for newbie players who are just starting to get comfortable with the mechanics of this website in their 2014 campaigns.
Why is it so difficult for DNDBeyond to grasp this? Why is it so hard to create a toggle that allows us to determine what version of the spells we want to use? You have toggles for everything else.
You're not appeasing us with this solution. You also are not listening to your customer base. I suppose enough cancelled subscriptions might drive you to listen, just like with the OLG fiasco.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. I'm just disappointed.
Magda Grayson | Human | Blood Hunter/Cleric | Barovia/Feywild
Jericho Grayson | Half-Orc | Blood Hunter | Barovia/Feywild
Vesper de Rolo | Half-Elf | Gunslinger/Artificer | Exandria
Daron Tasithar | Myrk'alfen | Monk | Exandria
Pyra Kosteas | Tiefling | Wildfire Druid | Water Deep
That doesn't help me in the slightest actually. I paid for content on this website with the understanding that I would be able to use that content. Them giving me a bunch of stuff I don't want, didn't ask for, won't purchase and won't use doesn't do a damn thing for me.
Taking away access to the services and features I paid for in exchange for something I didn't even ask for is a terrible policy; I'm not going to suddenly feel un-robbed just because somebody else insists that it's actually better this way.
The entire reason I give you guys money every month is to make things EASY and STRAIGHTFORWARD for my party.
If you take away the ability to use the rules and mechanics that I pay you for in an easy and straightforward way, AKA IN THE CHARACTER SHEET, I'll just stop paying you.
I think I’ll give up my DnD Beyond subscription. I’ll stick to the 2014 rulebooks but will probably use a different platform for character creation and campaign management. I recommend others do the same—maybe then DnD Beyond will understand that forcing us into something doesn't end well. There are plenty of other platforms that allow character creation using 2014 materials, and they are free.
I'm in the middle of a game and we're going to finish it out using the 2014 rules rather than switching over. It sounds like when I level up and get access to new spells, they'll be the 2024 versions of those spells instead. Why???? Why can't I finish out the game using the 2014 rules and wait until I create a new character to use the new spells? I understand that I can still access the compendium versions of the old spells but that's not the same as using them in the character sheet. Not to mention how my DM will have to handle things for NPCs since they just have links to the spells (the new ones now) rather than being embedded in their statblocks.
I'm really disappointed that we're losing access to the spells in the tools. Still having access to them in the compendium is not good enough.
**** you, DnD Beyond.
**** you, WotC.
What a truly terrible decision.
I've purchased much of dnd 5e with the understanding that I was purchasing compendium content to be used on the digital character sheet. If you are in fact discontinuing that feature I will pursue refunds and charge backs. I paid for digital content that has been intentionally altered to the point of no longer being what I purchased; even if I am not successful in pursuing a charge back I will certainly never buy more content on this website again. What a terribly pointless way to divide this community and burn all your good will again.
I'm obviously going to cancel my subscription too, since the entire point of the sub is to allow my players to access this content on their character sheets. I literally pay an additional fee to have this feature, why on earth would you think it is a good idea to take away a feature that people are currently paying subs over?
Furthermore, my play group uses a variety of digital character sheets; not everybody at my table uses dndbeyond. This didn't matter until now because the content was all the same, but Wizards has created a situation where parties playing 5e dnd can use almost any character sheet apparatus except for dndbeyond.
With this move, dndbeyond somehow became the worst way to play DND, almost overnight.
You really don’t get it do you? Nobody at Hasbro or WoTC do clearly. YOU ARE GUTTING THE CORE FEATURE OF D&D BEYOND TO SHILL THE NEW SLOP! The character sheet for a 6 year campaign is gonna break because you want to push a poorly made, poorly planned, over monetized new version of the game. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on this site and you’re gonna break my ability to use it in the way I paid for it. I hate it. I hate the higher ups of this company and I feel bad for the public relations staff that have to try and fight this dumpster fire. Do the people making the big decisions understand that a huge chunk of the community is done with this website? Nobody is buying shit from here anymore because we have no guarantee anything we buy stays accessible. I want money back and I want out of this crap