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

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

So far, it looks like no one's giving them motivation to improve. Griping hasn't translated to lost revenue, so why should they bother?

Hopefully with the rise of 5.5 that may change.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think I'm the one who is confused.

The "family" analogy is so bad and irrelevant to what's being discussed that it's actively obfuscatory. The reality is that Beyond generates significant revenue for WotC whilst incurring few costs, thus is a "centre of profit". If you don't understand that, then I can't really help you.

Beyond is clearly not receiving significant reinvestment despite being such a centre of profit. This is hardly surprising. In fact it's a pattern with companies buying other companies with successful subscription-based products, then just taking that revenue and using it elsewhere, whilst leaving the subscription-based product underinvested and underdeveloped. It is however disappointing that despite WotC and Beyond initially signalling that WotC would improve Beyond significantly after purchasing it, and make it an even better product, that it's basically exactly the same as it was when they bought it, more than two years later.

Yup. They were motivated to tell you they were making it better, but not to actually make it better.

 

[Mistwell]

All this money going in, and the platform is still hot garbage for actually running a game

No, it's not. Millions have run games using it, it seems to have pretty high approval and utility. My groups have used it for nearly a decade now.

Can you add a custom new class? No

You can it's just not as easy as you want. You need to start with the skeleton of something else, and then modify many elements to suit you.

Can you make a custom invocation? No.

You homebrew subclass is add a new feature call "Additional Invocations" and have the feature contain Options for each of you new Invocations with all the actions, spells, or modifiers that option allows

Can you do basic stuff like make a longsword that deals 2d8 or give a character an extra death save box? No.

You can. See this thread.

Want to make a scroll that actually hyperlinks the spell? Insert Geocities under construction gif.

Not sure on this one?

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.

LOL this is not a common opinion. And for it to be embarrassing I think it needs a pretty meaningful number of people viewing it that way around you.

 

[Mistwell]

Which is even sadder because Pathbuilder is a 1 man operation and the developer managed to figure out how to make the legacy PF2e OGL material and the Remaster material both available with a toggle to allow Core Rulebook/Advanced Player's Guide material.

View attachment 377403

Toggling that on allows me to use both the CRB spells and the Player Core spells, even if they're the same thing renamed (Magic Missile and Force Barrage for example).

View attachment 377406

DNDBeyond does this. It's called Legacy Content.

 

[Mistwell]

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.

How is this topic about backwards compatibility?

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Which is even sadder because Pathbuilder is a 1 man operation and the developer managed to figure out how to make the legacy PF2e OGL material and the Remaster material both available with a toggle to allow Core Rulebook/Advanced Player's Guide material.

View attachment 377403

Toggling that on allows me to use both the CRB spells and the Player Core spells, even if they're the same thing renamed (Magic Missile and Force Barrage for example).

View attachment 377406

Pathbuilder and Archives of Nethys both have excellent solutions to the remaster issue and are tiny, indie teams. The difference is that they care about user experience instead of just trying to extract as much money from as many people as possible.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Anyways, reminder that you do not own anything digital unless you have it saved on your own hard drive and can access it without an internet connection. Further reminder that Piracy is Media Preservation.

 

[theCourier]

That does seem to have been their plan all along. Feels manipulative, huh?

Only if you didn't see it coming from a mile away

 

[Micah Sweet]

Only if you didn't see it coming from a mile away

I never said they were competent manipulators.

 

[Velderan]

DNDBeyond does this. It's called Legacy Content.

And spells and magic items won't have a legacy feature. You need to manually go in and create a homebrew version of the 2014 spell yourself.

Changelog

D&D Beyond - Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Tools, Rules, Races, Classes, Items, Spells, Monsters, and More

www.dndbeyond.com