That's unfair. They've literally crafted 5E on community feedback and continue to do so up to and including the 2024 update everyone is currently up in arms over.
DDB and the game are two distinct things.
Indeed, and my statement was in reference to someone saying that WOTC has never listened.
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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
"Some people are okay with these changes, and some are not"
Let me correct that for you...
"A very, very, very small percentage of people are okay with these changes, while the overwhelmingly vast majority of people are not"
Semantics. People who have negative opinions are generally more vocal about their displeasure than those who are okay with something. Those who are okay with something, as I'm seeing here, are quick to be called 'shills', 'sheep', or any other negative moniker.
There is maybe one or two posters defending these changes to a large amount of people who are extremely upset. They have replied on almost every single page of this thread saying that what we are losing in this update is trivial and this is only causing more people to get upset and angry.
I have worked in a customer facing role myself and I understand the perspective "People who have negative opinions are generally more vocal about their displeasure than those who are okay with something." but it's wrong to imply that this is the case with the community here given the circumstances. The vast majority of public opinion about these changes on facebook, reddit, here, twitter and elsewhere is hugely negative. No one I know is happy with this update. We are losing access to content we paid for and it's going to break subclasses from books we purchased.
Most of the people coming onto these forums to complain about the changes have an extremely low post count because they are not the type of people who normally complain. For a fair number of people it's their first time posting here. These changes have such a large negative impact for Dungeon Masters running games and their players that people who normally are happy with dndbeyond are coming here to give feedback in a desperate attempt to get these changes reverted or they will be unsubscribing from the dndbeyond service. This decision isn't being made lightly for these people as they have spent hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros on this site.
I am in the same position as many here. I own almost every single book on this site. I bought the legendary collection a couple of years ago. Been master tier subscriber for 5 years. I barely post on these forums. I wouldn't normally be here complaining but these changes are so damaging to the campaigns I am a part of and the players that I share content with that I feel I need to give proper feedback before this update is forced on us.
I'm just here hoping and praying that wotc or dndbeyond don't go through with the changes because if they do I will have wasted a lot of money and there will be no reason to subscribe to the digital tools or buy a single book on this site ever again. Losing access to content I paid a significant amount of money for is wrong no matter how people spin it. If I had known Wotc would do this I wouldn't have purchased a single book here, nevermind the legendary collection or kept my master tier subscription.
What's the point in subscribing if my friends and I can't carry on playing the characters we created with the content we bought over the last few years? What's the point in subscribing if we are to be locked out of content we bought for the digital character creation tools for this site? These changes break certain subclasses and break the trust we had in purchasing content here.
This is only slightly better. There really needs to be an option which version of spells our character use IN THE CHARACTER SHEETS. I made a 5e character and I would like to continue using those versions in said character(s). I was really excited about the new rules. I watched every video and there's some great stuff in there. I hadn't preordered yet but I did plan on throwing money at it eventually. But now, you're not getting a dime unless you change this. The amount of work it's going to take to fix every character you break with this change is overwhelming to think about.
1) We emphatically cannot play 2014 characters using the toolkit we have paid for.
Agreed, but D&D Beyond is not D&D and your 2014 character can most definitely be played in a 2024 game. That's all I was saying.
As to the rest of your response, you are correct, these are my educated theories but it wouldn't make much sense to do it this way if there weren't system limitations in place that made it necessary to do it this way. Again, that's all I was saying.
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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
Weird question but lets say I own the 2014 PHB and I want to look up spells will the only place I will be able to see the 2024 will be on my character sheet if I do not own the license for the 2024 PHB
WDYM "I own the 2014 PHB"?
If you bought the compendium + character sheet bundle, you can only see it on the compendium.
If you bought the compendium only, nothing changes.
If you bought a la cart, tough luck, you'll only be able to use the new rules.
*Note: All of this is in regards to things that will be auto-updated, such as spells and core rules. Other things, such as old class features, will be kept.
2) I'll say again, this policy you keep mentioning was not followed with Mordenkainens Monsters of the Multiverse or Lost Mines of Phandelver, the only cases im aware of where new versions of 5e content has been released. In both cases older content was put under a legacy tag. The only case I'm aware of are some minor *errata* (not what the new changes are), and one spell that was supposed completely broken.
I wonder what you classify as "minor errata"... I'd say changing a major personality trait in NPCs personalities such as Esmeralda and all Stormwreck Isle residents, changing species lore such as hadooze, changing build defining mechanics such as hadooze and healing spirit, changing the artwork of a book... I'd say none of those count as minor, but to each their own.
Just give us legacy access to our PAID FOR content on our character sheets!! My group has no interest in changing things over in the middle of a campaign, and I don’t care about getting new content for free. I want the ability to easily use the content I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on as intended without spending multiple hours homebrewing it back into use because you decided to take it away.
"Some people are okay with these changes, and some are not"
Let me correct that for you...
"A very, very, very small percentage of people are okay with these changes, while the overwhelmingly vast majority of people are not"
Semantics. People who have negative opinions are generally more vocal about their displeasure than those who are okay with something. Those who are okay with something, as I'm seeing here, are quick to be called 'shills', 'sheep', or any other negative moniker.
There is maybe one or two posters defending these changes to a large amount of people who are extremely upset.
And the point being made was that the people who aren't upset by this change would have no reason to be here, thus you only see the negative. Except I'm here, trying to be rational for everyone and offer suggestions. :D
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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
Ironically, I'd been considering buying a 2024 PHB just to check it out - it's just been on the backburner because I've been busy with other stuff, and haven't checked out all the YouTube videos reviewing it and stuff. Now I'm friggin p*ssed at it because I'm using D&D Beyond for all my stuff (as do most of the folks in my gaming groups), and everyone's been assuming there aren't going to be ANY surprises with using the 2014 stuff "as is". So what happens in a game when someone casts Counterspell (or whatever) and half the folks are using 2014 and the other half 2024, and we get bogged down into rules lawyers using two different rule books? ("We're in a 2014 campaign!" "Yeah, but they said it's an eratta!" "That's just BS to force folks to buy the new stuff. My physical book says it's 2014, so it's 2014"). I remember this from D&D 3.0 vs 3.5, and it left some bad feelings (and then it was just folks had out of date books).
The very simple guidance in the book basically boils down to "use your 2014 character in the 2024 rules, not the other way around."
First off, I think your initial suggestion for a 2014-legacy-system in addition to the new 2014-moves-to-2024 system is a very good quick solution to the problem (since it seems like they've got too short of a schedule to really fix things).
However, to your point -"very simple guidance in the book", I rhetorically ask (and we both know the answer): which book, the 2014 book that they've been using for 10 years and built their campaign around, or the 2024 one that they don't own and obviously haven't read? Because I forsee a lot of DMs saying "I haven't had time/money to get the latest 2024 stuff, and the DM/MM haven't been released, so we're 2014 until I've had a copy of everything and have had time to update my campaign, so we're going by 2014 until then, and if D&D Beyond says different, well, we're just not using it. You should have printed your stuff out, or you can manually update it to the Homebrew", and a lot of players going "I don't have time for that - I subscribe to D&D Beyond so I can sit down, click a few buttons, and play".
I suspect my kids were ahead of me in switching to Cyberpunk Red a year or so ago. And Baldur's Gate 3 won't be affected, and that's all that really matters, I guess.
This is just a terrible example of customer relationship management. Sure at a minimum there should be a 12-month change-over. I want to keep using my existing subscription AS IS!!!
Old school players like myself want a less complicated game, not one with added complexity, and I'm certainly not going to rush to pay for it.
I'll initially be moving to H-lab and then eventually on to the game that just one 4 Ennies (S-dark)
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
I know there are enough people upset. So I just want to calmly add my support for an easy toggle. Some people may want to switch to 2024 descriptions, but many don’t. There are already many toggles available in character creation. It makes sense that this would be one of them.
2) I'll say again, this policy you keep mentioning was not followed with Mordenkainens Monsters of the Multiverse or Lost Mines of Phandelver, the only cases im aware of where new versions of 5e content has been released. In both cases older content was put under a legacy tag. The only case I'm aware of are some minor *errata* (not what the new changes are), and one spell that was supposed completely broken.
I wonder what you classify as "minor errata"... I'd say changing a major personality trait in NPCs personalities such as Esmeralda and all Stormwreck Isle residents, changing species lore such as hadooze, changing build defining mechanics such as hadooze and healing spirit, changing the artwork of a book... I'd say none of those count as minor, but to each their own.
I was more thinking in terms of the size & number of the changes. However I'd argue that only the Healing Spirit (the spell I was referencing) and Hadooze glide were specifically a rule change, and they were both apparently broken to the point of unusablity. They were also describe more as rule corrections than new updated rules. The Hadooze lore change was due to racism concerns (as were the vistani changes) so there's justification for removal and the artwork had violated their AI policy and therefore should never have been included.
I'm not aware of the personality changes in Stormwreck/Esmeralda you mention though, what was that about?
Regardless, I'm still not seeing much evidence of this policy that only new content is kept, certainly not compared to the massive updates in MMotM.
Actually, that link goes (indirectly) exactly to my point - the first YouTube channel listed is "DungeonDudes", and they're the YouTube folks I often listen to, and I've got all their "2024 edition" episodes in my back queue, because "well, I don't have time for 2024 edition right now" - and given that the DM/MM aren't out yet, I'm not sure if WOTC/DDB have time - if they're going to force everyone to update right now, before all the books are out, I don't see it going well.
On the personal level, I started w/ the red box & AD&D in 1980, wound up skipping 2nd edition (starting career, grad school, marriage), then once I got time, played 3rd & 3.5, skipped 4th (too mathematically balanced & artificial), and got back into it with 5th. So I'm leaning towards just viewing 2024 as another even-numbered edition and skipping it (the inverse of the Star Trek movie law).
* Of course, if they adopt your two system solution, they could be saved.
I don't pay a subscription for the compendium, I pay to use the content that I purchased including the 2014 ruleset and 2014 spells in the character creator. I specifically have bought copies of books I already own in real life via dndbeyond so I can easily add their content to my character sheets and my players' character sheets!! And I swear to god if somebody hits me with the "you can reference spells in the compendium or homebrew them," I'll lose it. I pay a monthly fee for the convenience of having the rules I want and paid for easily accessible on my sheet without hassle. Without it, and a toggle to let me use it, why wouldn't I just cancel my subscription and use pen and paper instead? What value does your website have anymore for someone who wants to play exclusively the 2014 5e? I'm in the middle of a four year long campaign, I wasn't considering switching before and now there's no way in hell I'm paying more money for what is tantamount to planned obsolescence for a ruleset and spells I like and use.
Exactly, DDB is advertised as the Official D&D Toolkit, not the Official D&D Rules Compendium. The main selling point of the site are the tools, and the biggest tool* by far is the Character Builder/Sheet.
For a large percentage of spells, this effectively changes little and I can conceptually understand why this decision was chosen. We still get to use the 2014 classes, races, abilities etc. according to the changelogs, so why wouldn't it be great for the player base to get spells and magic items updated for free. However the hand has already been shown. If the team can keep all the 2014 content already, there's literally no reason to not keep the 2014 spells and magic items as well. Legacy content is already a tag on this website, so why not just make all 2014 content legacy content? Realistically I feel this is a decision on part of the higher ups to either be lazy by not implementing it, or some kind of space saving tactic to not have to pay as much for the servers.
In most cases the spell will be better, or is reasonably nerfed and the player still wants to use the broken version for some reason. There are rare cases where the 2014 version of the spell is preferrable though, for example the absolutely dogshit fix that the team attempted with Counterspell. In these cases I'd want to use the 2014 version. You also box out groups that want to just play the 2014 version, as few and far between as they may be.
You can't have the supposed go-to place for all content become difficult to navigate. Yeah sure I can LOOK at the 2014 spells, decide to use them and then homebrew them into my sheet, but then why even use the character creator when I may as well print out a sheet and write it in myself. Once convenience is out of the equation for D&DBeyond, what's the point in it existing? May as well just use the myriad of sites that allow me to look at the content for free. I support D&D because I think it's a really great system, but lately it's been pretty hard to justify.
I'm sure that the team will go back on this decision and write up some half assed apology about listening to the community like they did with the OGL debacle, but the fact of the matter is that Wizards of the Coast has been demonstrably worse than 3rd party competitors at making D&D content for like 2 years now. The official books have been so terrible that you've had to start pulling in 3rd party books that are just so much better and crafted with way more love, the VTT is looking very much like it's not going to compete with Foundry or Roll20, and right now Roll20 has already come up with the better solution at keeping your old content. So why am I using D&Dbeyond and official content again instead of anything else?
I hate that the only solution to maintain using 2014 5e is "Oh homebrew it". I have spent the last 2 hours copying spells into homebrew and I'm only 1/4th of the way there. It is going to suck running my game on the 4th because I will have had not time to asses the changes (i have a job).
I think it’s kinda worse than that honestly… because how I understand it is that even if you manage to homebrew all the spells across and all the magical items (you might as well do all the DMG ones now because they’re gonna do exactly the same with them when the new DMG drops), things will still not work like they used to.
anything that has a hard coded spell or effect in it will not work as intended because it will redirect to 2024 content - so subclasses that give access to spells will continue to give access to 2024 versions (for people who do the manual labour and transfer over the 2014 spells, their spell lists are about to get very very busy and convoluted), eldritch invocations will mimic the 2024 adaptations, all magical items and all enemies links to spells will now only direct to the 2024 spells (and that includes monsters marked as legacy, because the links within the page will still redirect to the 2024 updated version of the spells) the only way around this is you homebrew EVERYTHING and then manually change the homebrewed items, enemies etc… to redirect to your homebrewed 2014 version of the spell.
like I could be wrong here as people don’t seem to be talking about how cumbersome that’s gonna be for DM’s - but from how I understand the changes it’s not just the character sheet that’s gonna become unusable for many of us here… it’s all the easy lead through stuff, now won’t work as we’re accustomed to. Instead it’s gonna be nonsense like you have a legacy caster boss enemy from the 2014 DMG and instead of just being able to click the spell links to see what they can do, you’re gonna have to individually search the 2014 compendium for what those spells used to do, because it will all redirect to the 2024 spell usage and so on.
The whole point of purchasing all of the materials in DnD Beyond was to be able to use them in the character sheets. Not to just have it in a book (digitally) that I could reference. If that was what I was looking for, then I would have just purchased the physical books. That is NOT what I paid for! I paid to be able to have all of the character options, spells, and items that I have purchased in my character creation/character sheets—to be able to have everything I need for my characters in one easy place for me to access all of the information for that character's abilities, spells, and items. If there truly ends up being no way for us to use our 5e character sheets and content that we have paid for, then I truly hope you are prepared for the mass exodus of subscribers from this site. Because I cannot see why we would want to continue to pay a company that seems to not care one bit about their client base.
I was more thinking in terms of the size & number of the changes. However I'd argue that only the Healing Spirit (the spell I was referencing) and Hadooze glide were specifically a rule change, and they were both apparently broken to the point of unusablity. They were also describe more as rule corrections than new updated rules. The Hadooze lore change was due to racism concerns (as were the vistani changes) so there's justification for removal and the artwork had violated their AI policy and therefore should never have been included.
I'm not aware of the personality changes in Stormwreck/Esmeralda you mention though, what was that about?
Esmeralda lost part of the leg and uses a prosthetic. She used to try and hide that to the best of her ability, fearing people would exploit that weakness... well, she used to, now she's an inclusive character that has adapted well to it (in CoS, mind you, where everything is out there to kill you, a campaign fears and insecurities are a central theme).
With Stormwreck,
There was an old lady that used to be a warrior. She used to be "a human woman whose frame, once tightly muscled, has thinned with age"; now, she is just human (no longer identified as a woman), and still muscular one despite being old. Hooray for inclusive characters!
There was a man named Tarak. He's no longer a "man", just a human. Hooray for inclusive characters!
The kobolds were servants to dragons. Now, they just like being around one, but they're not actual servants, they are creatures with free will. Hooray for inclusive characters!
And that's just the stuff I'm aware of, in regards to characters being changed.
Indeed, and my statement was in reference to someone saying that WOTC has never listened.
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
There is maybe one or two posters defending these changes to a large amount of people who are extremely upset. They have replied on almost every single page of this thread saying that what we are losing in this update is trivial and this is only causing more people to get upset and angry.
I have worked in a customer facing role myself and I understand the perspective "People who have negative opinions are generally more vocal about their displeasure than those who are okay with something." but it's wrong to imply that this is the case with the community here given the circumstances. The vast majority of public opinion about these changes on facebook, reddit, here, twitter and elsewhere is hugely negative. No one I know is happy with this update. We are losing access to content we paid for and it's going to break subclasses from books we purchased.
Most of the people coming onto these forums to complain about the changes have an extremely low post count because they are not the type of people who normally complain. For a fair number of people it's their first time posting here. These changes have such a large negative impact for Dungeon Masters running games and their players that people who normally are happy with dndbeyond are coming here to give feedback in a desperate attempt to get these changes reverted or they will be unsubscribing from the dndbeyond service. This decision isn't being made lightly for these people as they have spent hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros on this site.
I am in the same position as many here. I own almost every single book on this site. I bought the legendary collection a couple of years ago. Been master tier subscriber for 5 years. I barely post on these forums. I wouldn't normally be here complaining but these changes are so damaging to the campaigns I am a part of and the players that I share content with that I feel I need to give proper feedback before this update is forced on us.
I'm just here hoping and praying that wotc or dndbeyond don't go through with the changes because if they do I will have wasted a lot of money and there will be no reason to subscribe to the digital tools or buy a single book on this site ever again. Losing access to content I paid a significant amount of money for is wrong no matter how people spin it. If I had known Wotc would do this I wouldn't have purchased a single book here, nevermind the legendary collection or kept my master tier subscription.
What's the point in subscribing if my friends and I can't carry on playing the characters we created with the content we bought over the last few years? What's the point in subscribing if we are to be locked out of content we bought for the digital character creation tools for this site? These changes break certain subclasses and break the trust we had in purchasing content here.
This is only slightly better. There really needs to be an option which version of spells our character use IN THE CHARACTER SHEETS. I made a 5e character and I would like to continue using those versions in said character(s). I was really excited about the new rules. I watched every video and there's some great stuff in there. I hadn't preordered yet but I did plan on throwing money at it eventually. But now, you're not getting a dime unless you change this. The amount of work it's going to take to fix every character you break with this change is overwhelming to think about.
Agreed, but D&D Beyond is not D&D and your 2014 character can most definitely be played in a 2024 game. That's all I was saying.
As to the rest of your response, you are correct, these are my educated theories but it wouldn't make much sense to do it this way if there weren't system limitations in place that made it necessary to do it this way. Again, that's all I was saying.
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
WDYM "I own the 2014 PHB"?
*Note: All of this is in regards to things that will be auto-updated, such as spells and core rules. Other things, such as old class features, will be kept.
I wonder what you classify as "minor errata"... I'd say changing a major personality trait in NPCs personalities such as Esmeralda and all Stormwreck Isle residents, changing species lore such as hadooze, changing build defining mechanics such as hadooze and healing spirit, changing the artwork of a book... I'd say none of those count as minor, but to each their own.
Just give us legacy access to our PAID FOR content on our character sheets!! My group has no interest in changing things over in the middle of a campaign, and I don’t care about getting new content for free. I want the ability to easily use the content I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on as intended without spending multiple hours homebrewing it back into use because you decided to take it away.
And the point being made was that the people who aren't upset by this change would have no reason to be here, thus you only see the negative. Except I'm here, trying to be rational for everyone and offer suggestions. :D
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
First off, I think your initial suggestion for a 2014-legacy-system in addition to the new 2014-moves-to-2024 system is a very good quick solution to the problem (since it seems like they've got too short of a schedule to really fix things).
However, to your point -"very simple guidance in the book", I rhetorically ask (and we both know the answer): which book, the 2014 book that they've been using for 10 years and built their campaign around, or the 2024 one that they don't own and obviously haven't read? Because I forsee a lot of DMs saying "I haven't had time/money to get the latest 2024 stuff, and the DM/MM haven't been released, so we're 2014 until I've had a copy of everything and have had time to update my campaign, so we're going by 2014 until then, and if D&D Beyond says different, well, we're just not using it. You should have printed your stuff out, or you can manually update it to the Homebrew", and a lot of players going "I don't have time for that - I subscribe to D&D Beyond so I can sit down, click a few buttons, and play".
I suspect my kids were ahead of me in switching to Cyberpunk Red a year or so ago. And Baldur's Gate 3 won't be affected, and that's all that really matters, I guess.
This is just a terrible example of customer relationship management. Sure at a minimum there should be a 12-month change-over. I want to keep using my existing subscription AS IS!!!
Old school players like myself want a less complicated game, not one with added complexity, and I'm certainly not going to rush to pay for it.
I'll initially be moving to H-lab and then eventually on to the game that just one 4 Ennies (S-dark)
I know, I know, you said it was rhetorical. However, it's been making the rounds on the Internet for awhile now. https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/199719-2024-core-books-content-creator-previews-index. I think there may even be an official post about it around here somewhere.
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
I know there are enough people upset. So I just want to calmly add my support for an easy toggle. Some people may want to switch to 2024 descriptions, but many don’t. There are already many toggles available in character creation. It makes sense that this would be one of them.
I was more thinking in terms of the size & number of the changes. However I'd argue that only the Healing Spirit (the spell I was referencing) and Hadooze glide were specifically a rule change, and they were both apparently broken to the point of unusablity. They were also describe more as rule corrections than new updated rules. The Hadooze lore change was due to racism concerns (as were the vistani changes) so there's justification for removal and the artwork had violated their AI policy and therefore should never have been included.
I'm not aware of the personality changes in Stormwreck/Esmeralda you mention though, what was that about?
Regardless, I'm still not seeing much evidence of this policy that only new content is kept, certainly not compared to the massive updates in MMotM.
Actually, that link goes (indirectly) exactly to my point - the first YouTube channel listed is "DungeonDudes", and they're the YouTube folks I often listen to, and I've got all their "2024 edition" episodes in my back queue, because "well, I don't have time for 2024 edition right now" - and given that the DM/MM aren't out yet, I'm not sure if WOTC/DDB have time - if they're going to force everyone to update right now, before all the books are out, I don't see it going well.
On the personal level, I started w/ the red box & AD&D in 1980, wound up skipping 2nd edition (starting career, grad school, marriage), then once I got time, played 3rd & 3.5, skipped 4th (too mathematically balanced & artificial), and got back into it with 5th. So I'm leaning towards just viewing 2024 as another even-numbered edition and skipping it (the inverse of the Star Trek movie law).
* Of course, if they adopt your two system solution, they could be saved.
I don't pay a subscription for the compendium, I pay to use the content that I purchased including the 2014 ruleset and 2014 spells in the character creator. I specifically have bought copies of books I already own in real life via dndbeyond so I can easily add their content to my character sheets and my players' character sheets!! And I swear to god if somebody hits me with the "you can reference spells in the compendium or homebrew them," I'll lose it. I pay a monthly fee for the convenience of having the rules I want and paid for easily accessible on my sheet without hassle. Without it, and a toggle to let me use it, why wouldn't I just cancel my subscription and use pen and paper instead? What value does your website have anymore for someone who wants to play exclusively the 2014 5e? I'm in the middle of a four year long campaign, I wasn't considering switching before and now there's no way in hell I'm paying more money for what is tantamount to planned obsolescence for a ruleset and spells I like and use.
It's all about the character sheet.
If I can't use the tool I paid for I want my money back.
Exactly, DDB is advertised as the Official D&D Toolkit, not the Official D&D Rules Compendium. The main selling point of the site are the tools, and the biggest tool* by far is the Character Builder/Sheet.
(* no jokes please 😋)
Hi Sarah,
For a large percentage of spells, this effectively changes little and I can conceptually understand why this decision was chosen. We still get to use the 2014 classes, races, abilities etc. according to the changelogs, so why wouldn't it be great for the player base to get spells and magic items updated for free. However the hand has already been shown. If the team can keep all the 2014 content already, there's literally no reason to not keep the 2014 spells and magic items as well. Legacy content is already a tag on this website, so why not just make all 2014 content legacy content? Realistically I feel this is a decision on part of the higher ups to either be lazy by not implementing it, or some kind of space saving tactic to not have to pay as much for the servers.
In most cases the spell will be better, or is reasonably nerfed and the player still wants to use the broken version for some reason. There are rare cases where the 2014 version of the spell is preferrable though, for example the absolutely dogshit fix that the team attempted with Counterspell. In these cases I'd want to use the 2014 version. You also box out groups that want to just play the 2014 version, as few and far between as they may be.
You can't have the supposed go-to place for all content become difficult to navigate. Yeah sure I can LOOK at the 2014 spells, decide to use them and then homebrew them into my sheet, but then why even use the character creator when I may as well print out a sheet and write it in myself. Once convenience is out of the equation for D&DBeyond, what's the point in it existing? May as well just use the myriad of sites that allow me to look at the content for free. I support D&D because I think it's a really great system, but lately it's been pretty hard to justify.
I'm sure that the team will go back on this decision and write up some half assed apology about listening to the community like they did with the OGL debacle, but the fact of the matter is that Wizards of the Coast has been demonstrably worse than 3rd party competitors at making D&D content for like 2 years now. The official books have been so terrible that you've had to start pulling in 3rd party books that are just so much better and crafted with way more love, the VTT is looking very much like it's not going to compete with Foundry or Roll20, and right now Roll20 has already come up with the better solution at keeping your old content. So why am I using D&Dbeyond and official content again instead of anything else?
I think it’s kinda worse than that honestly… because how I understand it is that even if you manage to homebrew all the spells across and all the magical items (you might as well do all the DMG ones now because they’re gonna do exactly the same with them when the new DMG drops), things will still not work like they used to.
anything that has a hard coded spell or effect in it will not work as intended because it will redirect to 2024 content - so subclasses that give access to spells will continue to give access to 2024 versions (for people who do the manual labour and transfer over the 2014 spells, their spell lists are about to get very very busy and convoluted), eldritch invocations will mimic the 2024 adaptations, all magical items and all enemies links to spells will now only direct to the 2024 spells (and that includes monsters marked as legacy, because the links within the page will still redirect to the 2024 updated version of the spells) the only way around this is you homebrew EVERYTHING and then manually change the homebrewed items, enemies etc… to redirect to your homebrewed 2014 version of the spell.
like I could be wrong here as people don’t seem to be talking about how cumbersome that’s gonna be for DM’s - but from how I understand the changes it’s not just the character sheet that’s gonna become unusable for many of us here… it’s all the easy lead through stuff, now won’t work as we’re accustomed to. Instead it’s gonna be nonsense like you have a legacy caster boss enemy from the 2014 DMG and instead of just being able to click the spell links to see what they can do, you’re gonna have to individually search the 2014 compendium for what those spells used to do, because it will all redirect to the 2024 spell usage and so on.
The whole point of purchasing all of the materials in DnD Beyond was to be able to use them in the character sheets. Not to just have it in a book (digitally) that I could reference. If that was what I was looking for, then I would have just purchased the physical books. That is NOT what I paid for! I paid to be able to have all of the character options, spells, and items that I have purchased in my character creation/character sheets—to be able to have everything I need for my characters in one easy place for me to access all of the information for that character's abilities, spells, and items. If there truly ends up being no way for us to use our 5e character sheets and content that we have paid for, then I truly hope you are prepared for the mass exodus of subscribers from this site. Because I cannot see why we would want to continue to pay a company that seems to not care one bit about their client base.
Esmeralda lost part of the leg and uses a prosthetic. She used to try and hide that to the best of her ability, fearing people would exploit that weakness... well, she used to, now she's an inclusive character that has adapted well to it (in CoS, mind you, where everything is out there to kill you, a campaign fears and insecurities are a central theme).
With Stormwreck,
And that's just the stuff I'm aware of, in regards to characters being changed.