2024 Player's Handbook Officially Live on D&D Beyond

The 2024 Player's Handbook has officially launched on D&D Beyond after a longer-than-expected wait. The new rulebook, which contains major revisions to the current 5th Edition ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons, is now live for "Master Tier" subscribers of the online character builder and rules compendium website, provided they pre-ordered the book. "Hero Tier" subscribers will gain access to the new Player's Handbook next week (again, provided they pre-ordered it), while the full book will be available to all subscribers starting on September 17th.

The integration of the 2024 Player's Handbook was not without hiccups, with the service initially opting to switchover the rules text for magic spells, magic items, and mundane items before reversing course after a significant uproar among some users. While D&D Beyond was supposed to be down for a four hour maintenance window this morning, assumably to "go live" with the 2024 Player's Handbook, it took an additional two hours to finish the maintenance period.

NOTE: As of 2:52 PM ET, the full suite of character building options for the 2024 Player's Handbook were not available on D&D Beyond. Users can create a Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, or Fighter character using the 2024 Basic Rules set, but all other new material is not available.

 

[pukunui]

It's okay, no-one's playing Ranger for Foe Slayer. I just like the straight-forward 'we cannot'.

Which is silly - why can't they just make a special version of the hunter's mark spell that does 1d10 damage that is only available to 20th level rangers?

 

[Zaukrie]

All of these issues......maybe they should have had two versions of the character sheet...one for legacy and one for new stuff....with different back ends. Because, as someone that made a living trying to make OLD back ends work with new applications, yikes.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Which is silly - why can't they just make a special version of the hunter's mark spell that does 1d10 damage that is only available to 20th level rangers?

On that note, you still cannot combine different die sizes in a custom attack (so no, I dunno, dagger+sneak attack, who even heard of that).

It's like they've made no updates to Beyond. Which is very possibly the case - either the people knowing the back-end got laid off, or any time they try to mention spending time on improving it, the higher-ups act confused about such a waste of time being presented to them, why aren't you making 3d models to sell on the virtual tabletop.

I just thought we'd at least have the basic PHB features working (like races granting a lv5 feature).

 

[pukunui]

On that note, you still cannot combine different die sizes in a custom attack (so no, I dunno, dagger+sneak attack, who even heard of that).

It's like they've made no updates to Beyond. Which is very possibly the case - either the people knowing the back-end got laid off, or any time they try to mention spending time on improving it, the higher-ups act confused about such a waste of time being presented to them, why aren't you making 3d models to sell on the virtual tabletop.

I just thought we'd at least have the basic PHB features working (like races granting a lv5 feature).

I seem to recall people who know more about coding and stuff talking about how the original D&D Beyond creators messed things up by creating a bad backend that can't easily be updated or something. I think WotC would basically have to rebuild the system from the ground up to give it all the functionality it should have.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I seem to recall people who know more about coding and stuff talking about how the original D&D Beyond creators messed things up by creating a bad backend that can't easily be updated or something. I think WotC would basically have to rebuild the system from the ground up to give it all the functionality it should have.

AFAIK, WotC was adamant that Beyond should only support things that have been officially printed up to then, you should have no functionality beyond those (for fear of people homebrewing everything?)... so the base of it was built on a bad premise in the first place, with every feature being its own entity.

So yeah, I bet it's a mess, and now this official tool cannot support their own, official core features.

 

[Zaukrie]

Likely going to have my virtual group leave dndbeyond over the lack of basic support of core features of the new classes.....and a real doubt they ever fix these things. Ever.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Okay, they really mean to restrict you to the 16 backgrounds in the PHB. That's a choice. Custom background is still there, but it has not been updated from 2014 (tells you to pick a background feature rather than lv1 feat).

You can muck about with homebrewed backgrounds taking an existing one as a template or use one provided here.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Likely going to have my virtual group leave dndbeyond over the lack of basic support of core features of the new classes.....and a real doubt they ever fix these things. Ever.

Oh come on. You know that everything past your ellipsis is not going to be the case. They'll get everything that's having issues functioning as quickly as they can (some very quickly, some will inevitably take longer). Because not doing so will just have sent millions of dollars down the drain.

This is a big switch-over. And you, especially, as you've said you've personally dealt with sort of thing before, should know that issues will occur and that some leeway should be granted.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

You can muck about with homebrewed backgrounds taking an existing one as a template or use one provided here.

Oh yeah, we can homebrew backgrounds. You just select a pool of skills/feats they can pick one from.

Thanks for pointing that out! Sadly, this means I won't get to see my players' reaction to forced 16 stock options.

 

[Zaukrie]

Oh come on. You know that everything past your ellipsis is not going to be the case. They'll get everything that's having issues functioning as quickly as they can. Because not doing so will just have sent millions of dollars down the drain.

This is a big switch-over. And you, especially, as you've said you've personally dealt with sort of thing before, should know that issues will occur.

they don't really indicate they will fix some things....unless I'm reading that update wrong.

they've had a long time to work on the backend, knowing what is coming, and can't implement them. What I know from experience is that htye might NOT be able to.......not without new code.