D&D General How well does mixing 5es in one table work?

[djotaku]

So it's been a year since 2024 came out (unless you count the MM) and give or take a year or two since Tales of the Valiant and Advanced 5e. Nimble 5e is newer, so there may be less experience there.

Given all the 5es....how well do they work when mixed together at the table? If I had a 5e2014 and 5e2024 player - how well would it work? How about 5e2024 and A5e? And so on? While it's certainly simpler as the GM to gate your players to one 5e (whichever one you pick) - does it cause issues if each person made a character with a different 5e?

 

[Morrus]

give or take a year or two since ... Advanced 5e.

Coming on 5 years!

 

[jmartkdr2]

I can only speak to mixing the 2014 and 2024 rules:

It's fine. Nothing clashes.

You might run into some issues if two players are playing the same class as the 2024 ones are generally just stronger, but updating is also pretty easy to do. The only reason to stick to an old class in a mixed table is you don't care or want to use some now-forbidden multiclass shenanigans. (You can usually just plug old subclasses into the new classes and they're only a little janky)

 

[eclair~]

I'm in a group that lets players choose 2014 or 2024 content (with most non-class content using the changed 2024 versions).

There have been a lot of instances where I've wanted to make a character only to discover that some change to a 2024 feat or spell sidelines the build I wanted to make, or where I realized that making a 2014 character would just be way weaker than someone else playing a 2024 character due to general power-creep, even if the 2024 class lost out on features that I wanted to make use of.

 

[bedir than]

I mix Black Flag, both WotC 5es and some A5e at my table regularly.
My players have no idea.

PCs can be built using one main rule set with swaps of equal elements (Feats/Talents) or using a class from one system built the nature & nurture from another.

It's fine. the 5e ecosystem is fungible and fun.

 

[Sacrosanct]

My regular group mixes them. Largely because some favorite subclasses aren't in 2024 yet. No major issues or concerns.

 

[aco175]

I'm mostly bringing in the new monsters to the old game as I make new adventures. We have not 'officially' started the new edition yet but have no problem.

 

[prabe]

I adapted a bunch of stuff from 2014 to Tales of the Valiant with no problem, I wouldn't expect much difficulty with mixing and matching. My own impulse would be to decide on a single core ruleset and adapt eveything to fit that, but I know @SlyFlourish did a game where he had multiple rulesets available, and he didn't seem to have any real problems with it--I'll let him chime in with details, if he wants to.

 

[SlyFlourish]

So it's been a year since 2024 came out (unless you count the MM) and give or take a year or two since Tales of the Valiant and Advanced 5e. Nimble 5e is newer, so there may be less experience there.

Given all the 5es....how well do they work when mixed together at the table? If I had a 5e2014 and 5e2024 player - how well would it work? How about 5e2024 and A5e? And so on? While it's certainly simpler as the GM to gate your players to one 5e (whichever one you pick) - does it cause issues if each person made a character with a different 5e?

Indeed, I had a 1st to 20th level 3x5e game where we used a mix of Level Up Advanced 5e, D&D 2024, and D&D 2014. It went fine. We used just the core books so I didn't have a million subclasses come in.

I shared my experiences here:


If I were doing it again, I'd have one core set of rules at the table so we didn't have a mix of potion drinking rules and the like. I don't think its the ideal way to play but you sure can mix up a lot of subsystems from various 5es in one game – Luck and Doom from TOV, Safe Havens and Supply from A5e and so on.