D&D 5E (2014) Books to Keep? discard?

[Weiley31]

You all are gonna love my table when I DM. You won't even know your playing 2014+2024 aka the 4,038 edition!

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

Discard books?! What nonsense is that?! (says he while hugging his hoard of rpg books).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That depends entirely on you as a person and how symmetrical you need your rules to be.

As they say in the playtest... the Custom Backgrounds right now are two skills, a tool, a language, a Level 1 feat, and 50 GP of equipment. Which means that if someone decided to use a Background from the 2014 book for whatever reason... it won't be "equal" to a 2024 Background in terms of "stuff".

This may bother you. This may not. How in-depth is your particular game's balance? Will a character built with the 2014 Background that doesn't have a Level 1 feat now become massively underpowered because they don't have it? Or is your game more open in terms of mechanics and balance and you realize that a PC without one of these feats will barely notice it?

It'll be the same way I'm sure with the eventual Class and Sub-Class playtest documents. There will be some people who will compare and contrast every single 2014 and 2024 counterpart and declare that the new stuff is in no way backwards compatible because their game's balance is on such a razor's edge that any slight boost that 2024 classes may have over the 2014 ones will screw things up in their game entirely and thus every single character thing they bought from the 2014 PHB, Xanathar's and Tasha's are now completely worthless. Whereas other people will look at the 2014 and 2024 Bards (for example) and know that they could use either one or both in their game and not a single thing will cause issue.

So take a good long look at your own game and how you run it and what facets do you put under the microscope for balance reasons (if any). That'll give you a better idea of what parts of the 2024 books might be things you'll need to look at if you decide to buy them, or convince you not to buy them and just continue to use what you already own.

Honestly, I feel like the people who are worried about "balance" between a 2014 character and a 2024 character have never played a game with a party of "regular" 5e characters and one built by an optimizer. Barring a 2014/24 hybrid-character built by a min-maxer, I suspect that a "regular" 2014 character and a "regular" 2024 character will be nearly indistinguishable power-wise.

 

[Stormonu]

More than likely, Xanathars will be the most "out of date", may even be mostly incorporated into the PHB. But if they keep their promise of compatibility, there should still be plenty usable.

As for the MM, I think the main change will be on spellcasting enemies and the alphabetization (I have a feeling beasts and NPCs won't be stuck in a seperate section in the back the second time around, seeing how they arranged MotM). Even then, the old versions should still be usable to catch PCs off-guard.

 

[SakanaSensei]

I don’t think anyone can actually tell you until we’re further into the playtest. You do have two whole years until you have to worry about it though, that’s a long time!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It seems fairly clear that older books will still be usable, but they will require adaptation. We do not know the full extent of the adaptation required, because we don't know the full extent of the changes yet--there's much still to be learned. However, from the UA doc, we can generally derive the following conclusions:

1. Races from outdated books will still be mostly usable, but you should convert Short Rest abilities to a PB/LR schedule. Further, you get your choice of racial stat bonuses or background bonuses, not both.
2. All backgrounds from outdated books should get a 1st Level (D1D) feat. They should probably include a language as well (if they don't already.)
3. Players should get their choice of either keeping their existing spell list, or getting the spell list associated with their class (Arcane, Divine, or Primal.)

There will likely be more adjustments. However, one thing I expect will not require much (if any) adaptation will be monsters. Those will likely remain exactly the same. Same with XP amounts and levelling. That, I think, is what they mean when they say "backwards-compatible." That is, you'll be able to use every adventure from before pretty much exactly as-is. It's the chargen stuff that's mostly getting changes.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I admit I am more than a little confused about the changes and what ‘backward compatible’ really means. So what books are keepers and which one are not? So will Tasha’s work with the new edition? What about Monsters of the Multiverse? Even Fizbans? The only thing I think I know is the MM and PHB are out/ being replaced and old adventures remain useable. The rest is a big mess to me.

Why would you discard any books?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Honestly, I feel like the people who are worried about "balance" between a 2014 character and a 2024 character have never played a game with a party of "regular" 5e characters and one built by an optimizer. Barring a 2014/24 hybrid-character built by a min-maxer, I suspect that a "regular" 2014 character and a "regular" 2024 character will be nearly indistinguishable power-wise.

I mean, I'm with you 100%. But I also cannot deny that there are players here on the boards that really seem to notice even the slightest differentials in game balance based upon how they play their games.

Heh heh... the one thing I'm curious about is what some responses are going to be from some players when the revised Classes and Sub-classes UA packets come out. Because we've seen over the entire lifespan of 5E that things like the Beastmaster, 4 Elements Monk, Wild Sorcerer etc. are considered "absolute trash" and that no one in their right mind should ever allow these anathemas to good taste appear in their games... but yet if/when we see Revised versions of them, will we also get complaints that the 2014 books are even more "incompatible" because of the power differential between the 2024 and 2014 versions, and that WotC "lied to us!" about backwards compatibility?

Call my cynical... but I have no doubt that we'll probably see at least one complaint of that type. Some people wanted the 4 Elements Monk fixed, but now that it's done so, the old one is now even more worthless and no one can use it at all anymore and all that talk about backwards compatibility was just hot air. WotC won't be able to win either way.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Why would you discard any books?

That was my mentality too for a long time. I had an amazing collection of 1st and 2nd edition books. But my wife eventually told me that stacks of books around the house, numbering in the hundreds, not to mention miniatures, was not how she imagined our home decor when we married . So now I tend to cull books I don’t actually use or have a nostalgic reason to keep. I try to keep my books below a hundred.

 

[jerryrice4949]

I understand that whatever comes out will be backwards compatible but I really think that works better for adventure than subclasses depending on changes to subclasses. Obviously I won’t know until I actually see the final product but I have the sinking suspicion that few will be using the old subclasses after D&D Ones release.