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

 

[SlyFlourish]

The fact that this came as a surprise to them shows they REALLY REALLY don't have their finger on the pulse of the community, which is a real failing, especially after their PR blundering last year.

Yeah, absolutely. They clearly don't have a handle on their audience – or those that do aren't being consulted or listened to which must really be frustrating to them. Again, I saw this first-hand at their community summit last year.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

It's only reasonable to not want to have to second-guess what's changed when you're mid-campaign.

Like, a player sees a bunch of goblins, goes to cast Sleep... it's a single-target control spell now, what.

EDIT: okay, the new Sleep is a 5ft sphere, you know what I mean.

 

[Minigiant]

I still have lots of questions about why they didn't start this way in the beginning instead of, once again, pissing off a bunch of their customers, but that's not totally important

I strongly suspect they didn't know of a way get the 2014/2024 PC toggle to work with duplicates without involving a ton of work and guessed that few would want the old spells and items over the new ones.

"It's gonna take 6 guys a whole week to do it. Maybe 2. For what? The bad version of Truestrike and Conjure spells that both down the game? Nah."

A Sunday night blogpost doesn't scream easy. I've heard "That's a lot of work.w I ain't doing it" or "I can't do that and my real job" multiple times at work today.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I strongly suspect they didn't know of a way get the 2014/2024 PC toggle to work with duplicates without involving a ton of work and guessed that few would want the old spells and items over the new ones.

"It's gonna take 6 guys a whole week to do it. Maybe 2. For what? The bad version of Truestrike and Conjure spells that both down the game? Nah."

A Sunday night blogpost doesn't scream easy. I've heard "That's a lot of work.w I ain't doing it" or "I can't do that and my real job" multiple times at work today.

It seems like a fair number of folks at WOTC are working nights and weekends to clean up the messes of a bunch of bad decisions. This is the second time in two weeks where we got new official word from WOTC on policy changes on the weekend – the other being the "blur your videos – ok don't blur your videos" stuff.

 

[Daztur]

I strongly suspect they didn't know of a way get the 2014/2024 PC toggle to work with duplicates without involving a ton of work and guessed that few would want the old spells and items over the new ones.

"It's gonna take 6 guys a whole week to do it. Maybe 2. For what? The bad version of Truestrike and Conjure spells that both down the game? Nah."

A Sunday night blogpost doesn't scream easy. I've heard "That's a lot of work.w I ain't doing it" or "I can't do that and my real job" multiple times at work today.

So either:

1. Not a single person in the room where the decision was bring made piped up and said "people aren't going to want to change what spells do in the middle of a campaign."

2. Someone did say "people aren't going to want to change what spells do in the middle of a campaign" but nobody listened to them.

Neither is a good look for WotC. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of what D&D fans want and think. They should work on improving that or they'll be stepping on rakes like this over and over and over.

 

[Minigiant]

So either:

1. Not a single person in the room where the decision was bring made piped up and said "people aren't going to want to change what spells do in the middle of a campaign."

2. Someone did say "people aren't going to want to change what spells do in the middle of a campaign" but nobody listened to them.

Neither is a good look for WotC. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of what D&D fans want and think. They should work on improving that or they'll be stepping on rakes like this over and over and over.

Nope.

I'm sure is

"The 2024 spells are better. We are giving them for free. The fans will be happy to get the better more balanced spells for free. The system is even going to automatically update it for them."

"But what if they want the old spells?"

"The broken spells. What maybe 20 people? Are we going to give a whole programming team a week of overtime for 20 customers?"

 

[Daztur]

Nope.

I'm sure is

"The 2024 spells are better. We are giving them for free. The fans will be happy to get the better more balanced spells for free. The system is even going to automatically update it for them."

"But what if they want the old spells?"

"The broken spells. What maybe 20 people? Are we going to give a whole programming team a week of overtime for 20 customers?"

So basically #1 then. Nobody in the room thought that there would be a big backlash over this when there being a big backlash over this was incredibly predictable. If they didn't see this backlash coming then they need to hire new people who have a better sense of what the customer base wants and expects because right now their current staff seems to be really really bad at that very simple thing.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

Nope.

I'm sure is

"The 2024 spells are better. We are giving them for free. The fans will be happy to get the better more balanced spells for free. The system is even going to automatically update it for them."

"But what if they want the old spells?"

"The broken spells. What maybe 20 people? Are we going to give a whole programming team a week of overtime for 20 customers?"

And then the secret subtext is

"Players will love having powered up spells! Many of them heal more and do more damage! Cool for players right?"

"Yeah, screw the DMs. Challenge Ratings are already only vague approximations so if we throw off CR calculations that DMs are already using, who cares? It's a mess anyway."

 

[Mistwell]

The old versions from 2014.

Specifically

 

[Mistwell]

And then the secret subtext is

"Players will love having powered up spells! Many of them heal more and do more damage! Cool for players right?"

"Yeah, screw the DMs. Challenge Ratings are already only vague approximations so if we throw off CR calculations that DMs are already using, who cares? It's a mess anyway."

That's not an educated position. About as many spells were nerfed as increased in power. Most changes though were just fixing unintended stuff or clarifying stuff, like errata.