D&D (2024) How D&D Beyond Will Handle Access To 2014 Rules

D&D Beyond has announced how the transition to the new 2024 edition will work on the platform, and how legacy access to the 2014 version of D&D will be implemented.

• You will still be able to access the 2014 Basic Rules and core rulebooks.
• You will still be able to make characters using the 2014 Player's Handbook.
• Existing home-brew content will not be impacted.
• These 2014 rules will be accessible and will be marked with a 'legacy' badge: classes, subclasses, species, backgrounds, feats, monsters.
• Tooltips will reflect the 2024 rules.
• Monster stat blocks will be updated to 2024.
• There will be terminology changes (Heroic Inspiration, Species, etc.)

D&D (2024) - Wizards of the Coast Backtracks on D&D Beyond and 2014 Content

Wizards of the Coast posted an overnight update stating that they are not going forward with previously released plans to require those wishing to use some 2014 content on D&D Beyond to use the Homebrew function to manually enter it. Instead, all the content including spells and magic items will...

www.enworld.org

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Individually, we can start homebrewing the spells we want to keep that are being retired. It's pretty simple to do, as we don't even have to edit them to be different as long as it is for your campaigns. They only have to be different if you want to share them with the world.

Want to keep 2014 Polymorph for your 2024 character? Just clone it.

 

[JEB]

Perhaps by design. The harder it is to stay with the old, the more enticing paying for the new will be.

"Perhaps"?

I actually didn't expect them to force users to use the 2024 rules as a base going forward, but I guess I should have.

 

[mamba]

"Perhaps"?

easier for them to implement could also be the reason, that it helps with ‘convincing’ people to switch just means they were not that interested in investing more for a more flexible solution

I actually didn't expect them to force users to use the 2024 rules as a base going forward, but I guess I should have.

yeah, to me that was pretty much expected

 

[pukunui]

So basically - people who want to stick with the 2014 rules should stop using D&D Beyond because it's not really going to be supported anymore. Yes, you can still access your 2014 content, but one of the main benefits of the digital character sheet - the tooltips - will only point you to the 2024 rules.

I also note that it says if a 2014 option has been updated to 2024, you won't be able to use the original version with the new character sheet. At least you can still use the 2014 base classes, but then all the tooltips will be "wrong" ...

Since I've invested so much into D&D Beyond, I guess I've got no choice but to switch to the revised rules and just house rule the stuff I don't like! (I was most likely going to do that anyway, but I had wanted to wait until the 2024 DMG was out at the very least if not also the 2024 MM.)

 

[Daztur]

Wow, and here I thought they'd at least put out the new core set before they started shredding their claims of backwards compatibility. I was far too optimistic.

 

[pukunui]

Wow, and here I thought they'd at least put out the new core set before they started shredding their claims of backwards compatibility. I was far too optimistic.

I mean, the revised rules are backwards compatible. They just don't seem to want to implement more than a rudimentary amount of backwards compatibility in DDB.

 

[Zardnaar]

That woukd be really annoying. Note to self don't use D&D Beyond.

 

[Cergorach]

This is why I will always favor physical media

This is not an issue inherent to digital media. As others have said, a PDF is also perfectly usable regardless of platform or system. In this case specifically it's the DDB platform that's giving you issues, that's because you don't control your purchase or the platform you run it on.

Other digital solutions you can control yourself. With Foundry VTT for example I can run whatever version I want to run. If I want to stay on D&D 2014, I can keep it running on the last 2014 rules set and FVTT on whatever version that latest rules set runs on. You can keep running what you have now forever.

The issues start when you want new stuff, supported stuff, etc. You can play Pathfinder 2e on the latest version of FVTT, but Pathfinder 1e is still stuck on the version before this one of FVTT. That's not because FVTT isn't supporting PF1e anymore, but because all the rules sets are implemented by fans and older editions just means less fans. Less fans means less people working on it. D&D 4E is for example supported by the fans for the latest FVTT version, but it was about a month slower then it's 5e younger (and more popular sibling). The 3.5e version hasn't been updated in almost 8 months for FVTT...

What we see on FVTT is that most people use the latest and 'greatest' rules set of their chosen system and that's also what most people will develop for. So it's a matter of popularity. When we had 3.0 to 3.5 20+ years ago, that was a drastic improvement and even though there was some grumbling from some corners, I think there was pretty much total adoption with 3.5e. With 5.0 to 5.5, people that are normally very open to such changes now weren't really all the positive, they didn't see much upgrades to justify an upgrade at all. I would even go so far as to say that it's a downgrade in some cases looks at the stealth thread on ENworld... So in this case it might be possible that way more people stay on the 2014 edition compared to 20+ years ago. It will also not initially help that the core books are spread out over a six month period and I don't expect a new SRD before the MM is released.

That said, I already preordered the 2024 core books for FVTT, but am not certain IF or when we'll migrate. It depends on a whole lot of factors, one of which is how the group as a whole feels about it and how we'll work around the downgrades. The implementations of FVTT D&D products is often stellar, so that might pull us in... I certainly won't buy the physical 2024 core books anytime soon.

There are other digital solutions out there that give you more control, DDB just isn't one of them. The best thing about DDB I can say about it is that others have figured out how to import DDB stuff you 'own' into other VTTs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not really a fan of what they are doing with spells and magic items. I have an ongoing 2014 campaign and it will be a bit of a hassle.

That's an extremely strange one. More than anything else, D&D has a tradition of "legacy" magical item, and further, I know it's easy to have multiple versions of a magical item in the system Beyond uses.

I strongly suspect this is a technical issue that they're passing off as an editorial decision. Like maybe they forgot to code in an ability to make magic items "legacy". It's pretty crap either way.

Also it's rather pathetic that we still can't create homebrew versions of mundane equipment in 2024, when Beyond said they were working on that in like, 2017, and said it was coming soon in 2019.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

All this money going in, and the platform is still hot garbage for actually running a game. Can you add a custom new class? No. Can you make a custom invocation? No. Can you do basic stuff like make a longsword that deals 2d8 or give a character an extra death save box? No. Want to make a scroll that actually hyperlinks the spell? Insert Geocities under construction gif.

The campaign page is one public notes section and one private notes section. That's it!

D&D Beyond would have been embarrassing 10 years ago. It's an insult today.

It is genuinely surprising how bad Beyond seems to be at:

A) Fixing basic stuff that they said they'd make possible literally 5+ years ago.

B) Adding really straightforward features.

I get that some codebases can be a PITA to work with, but this wasn't some horrific legacy mangle from 20+ years ago, this was a brand-new thing in 2017, custom developed, not using someone else's solution, and at this point, we're so far beyond there being any excuse for them not doing certain stuff it's just more funny than anything else.

No wonder the 3D VTT/Sigil isn't really integrating closely with Beyond!

Given that they had fairly rapid progress until like, 2019/2020, then lost a bunch of staff, I presume they lost all the institutional knowledge about how to fix/improve their own product, but that should have taken 1-2 years to get back on track, and even if we allow extra time for the pandemic, this is ridiculous. Especially as they've got to be making an insane amount of money compared to their costs!

I mean, last we heard, they had 13 million registered users, and that was like 2 years ago. If even say, 10% of them are full-price subscribers (let's ignore the cheap subscribers for simplicity's sake), at the absolute minimum full-price value of $4.58/month, and even if no-one ever bought a single book, Beyond would be pulling in $71m/year! That's pretty much the absolute worst case scenario. Last I hear, there were like 25 people work at Beyond. Even if the average salary of those people was $150k, that'd be a cost of $3.75m, and salary costs are pretty much always the highest costs for software development. Obviously they'll cost the company more than that, so we bump it up to $5m, and it's still nothing compared to $71m/year. Okay double the number of employees to 50? $10m - again still nothing compared to the annual revenue.

And the likelihood is $71m is a gross underestimate of how much Beyond is pulling in because it doesn't include book sales. WotC are making insane profits here, and they're clearly completely failing to reinvest them in Beyond.