I have been searching fruitlessly for the official guidance from the devs on how to use the new 2024 ruleset with older products. I'm sure I've seen it but cannot find it now.
We are having some contention on what builds are legal in the official ruleset and need the reference.
Any campaign material from 2014 to the release of the 2024 PHB will work just fine. The game balance of 2024 characters in those modules might tilt in the players favor because classes are just inherently stronger, but from a rules perspective they are entirely playable.
What you shouldn't do though is take 2014 characters and put them into a campaign designed in the 2024 rules. While they will functionally work? 2024 monsters are designed to work against 2024 players and will typically overpower the 2014 ones.
"Legal" is a table discussion. Per the PHB if the subclass exists in the 24 rules you should be using it and not its prior version. If the subclass doesn't exist you can layer it onto the new 2024 core class but if a feature gets duplicated because of the 24 core class changes, you only get one version of the feature and not both.
I'm going to copy a thing from the Basic Rules here. It's the only guidance I see. Then I'll summarize each adaptation to make below, based on what's been said in various places, though I'm not in the mood to go searching for each piece. I'd refer to articles here on Beyond around the time of the 2024 PHB's release. The basic gist is to use the most updated version of anything you're using when using the 2024 ruleset.
The real difference is in Classes and Subclasses. For anything else, you just use the older version if you're after that item (such as the Ravnica backgrounds, or the Genasi from Monsters of the Multiverse). For classes, the base 12 have been updated and you use the new ones for those classes, but you can still multiclass with things like old Artificer and Blood Hunter. For subclasses, use updated versions where they exist (such as Thief Rogue or Evoker Wizard, which replaces School of Evocation Wizard in 2014). If the subclass isn't updated, use the old subclass with the updated base class and make sure you take any subclass features that were from level 1 or 2 at level 3 instead.
I have been searching fruitlessly for the official guidance from the devs on how to use the new 2024 ruleset with older products. I'm sure I've seen it but cannot find it now.
We are having some contention on what builds are legal in the official ruleset and need the reference.
Please help!
You just use it.
Any campaign material from 2014 to the release of the 2024 PHB will work just fine. The game balance of 2024 characters in those modules might tilt in the players favor because classes are just inherently stronger, but from a rules perspective they are entirely playable.
What you shouldn't do though is take 2014 characters and put them into a campaign designed in the 2024 rules. While they will functionally work? 2024 monsters are designed to work against 2024 players and will typically overpower the 2014 ones.
"Legal" is a table discussion. Per the PHB if the subclass exists in the 24 rules you should be using it and not its prior version. If the subclass doesn't exist you can layer it onto the new 2024 core class but if a feature gets duplicated because of the 24 core class changes, you only get one version of the feature and not both.
I'm going to copy a thing from the Basic Rules here. It's the only guidance I see. Then I'll summarize each adaptation to make below, based on what's been said in various places, though I'm not in the mood to go searching for each piece. I'd refer to articles here on Beyond around the time of the 2024 PHB's release. The basic gist is to use the most updated version of anything you're using when using the 2024 ruleset.
The real difference is in Classes and Subclasses. For anything else, you just use the older version if you're after that item (such as the Ravnica backgrounds, or the Genasi from Monsters of the Multiverse). For classes, the base 12 have been updated and you use the new ones for those classes, but you can still multiclass with things like old Artificer and Blood Hunter. For subclasses, use updated versions where they exist (such as Thief Rogue or Evoker Wizard, which replaces School of Evocation Wizard in 2014). If the subclass isn't updated, use the old subclass with the updated base class and make sure you take any subclass features that were from level 1 or 2 at level 3 instead.
Basic Rules, I didn't think to look there! I was looking in the PHB (where upon a second read I overlooked it), DMG, all over the place.
Thanks guys!