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

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I mean, so maybe 12 - 20 things will change, most of which are fairly minor? As @Parmandur said, that's more of an errata than a wholesale change people are acting like it is.

Well, openness to change is something very personal. I would agree that the change to spells are minor. I personally don't like the term 'errata'' for something other than correcting errors.

Most rules ''changes'' are pretty minor, IMO, but rules ''addition'' are where they personally lost me. Giving more mechanical weight to Backgrounds, making Feats unavoidable etc are not something I wanted at my table.

 

[pukunui]

People are fixated on the spells and magic items, but those are not the only things that are going to default to 2024 rules. There's a whole slew of things in the character sheet that will default to 2024 regardless of whether you are playing a 2014 or 2024 character. And some of those things will have had major changes, like the Exhaustion rules, and others will have had subtle changes that people who haven't been following this stuff may not even notice until it becomes a problem (like all the things that no longer require a save).

I'm also curious to know what the tooltips for the skills will be, since each skill only gets single line description in the 2024 PHB.

 

[Moonmover]

Maybe now, I can finally convince my players to stop using DDB.

 

[Minigiant]

they do not need to know what changes there will be to know that they need an identifier field to be able to distinguish the two versions

Roll20 could do it and they certainly did not know more than DDB

I suspect that DNDB has a major technical issue the original owners of DNDB didn't plan on having to deal with and WOTC now lacks the staff to fix it

 

[Daztur]

This is what I was wondering - how different are 2014 spells vs 2024 spells? I get that there will be some differences but if I’m not being charged for the changes, and the changes are largely minor, how much of this is being mad at the principle rather than the actual harm?

They're different enough that it's going to be basically unworkable to use the tooltips for spells in a 5e campaign. Really basic stuff like healing spells being boosted or summoning spells being COMPLETELY changed are going to be have to manually "homebrewed" one by one. This would make play a higher level wizard in a 5e campaign a massive pain in the ass if you're using Beyond.

 

[TiQuinn]

They're different enough that it's going to be basically unworkable to use the tooltips for spells in a 5e campaign. Really basic stuff like healing spells being boosted or summoning spells being COMPLETELY changed are going to be have to manually "homebrewed" one by one. This would make play a higher level wizard in a 5e campaign a massive pain in the ass if you're using Beyond.

I can see Healing spells being an issue but then there’s only so many that get cast on a regular basis. How many summoning spells do your players cast? In my experience, they’re kind of a PITA, and people avoid them to begin with.

 

[John Lloyd1]

This is my solution. For context, I wanted to use the improved bard in Tasha's without bringing the extra book (I cycle to gaming) and I didn't want to buy the whole book from dndbeyond again for a page of rules.

 

[mamba]

I suspect that DNDB has a major technical issue the original owners of DNDB didn't plan on having to deal with and WOTC now lacks the staff to fix it

I grant them that the fact that DDB does not already have it is bad design, but they had several years to learn about the codebase and improve it, so they have no excuse as far as I am concerned

 

[Queer Venger]

Thanks. I have been going through and using that as a basis on which of the old spells I want to copy.

you are welcome!!!

 

[Queer Venger]

View attachment 377570View attachment 377571
This is my solution. For context, I wanted to use the improved bard in Tasha's without bringing the extra book (I cycle to gaming) and I didn't want to buy the whole book from dndbeyond again for a page of rules.

Old school. pen a nd paper, you. can never go wrong!