D&D (2024) The 2014 vs 2024 PHB Compatibility Thread

Monsters and magic items should be trivial to import (unless they reference an outmoded rule that is). As for characters I fully believe you can't simply mix-and-match 2024 and 2014 rules without significant effort.

One of the craziest things I have heard is that Artificers have seem to have lost access to Cure Wounds.

Source:
Take the artificer comment with a lump of salt; artificer is a supplemental class and not in the PHB, unless they specifically call out other artificer spells in the PHB (for Sir Not Appearing in the Book) I would assume the influencer just didn't see it listed in the spell write up and assumed it was removed.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Someone help me out. Do we take this to mean that all subclasses printed before the new 2024 Players Handbook will not be compatible with 2024 PHB characters?
No. They will be "it probably works but use at your own risk". There are cases where you need to do a bit of obvious tweaking (moving the first subclass level to level 3 and in the case of clerics taking away the extra d8 damage and proficiencies as they moved to the main class).

There might be as many as three officially published subclasses that don't work because of changes but I'd be surprised if it was that high (not counting e.g. Undying warlocks, Battlerager fighters, and Twilight Clerics which never worked).

Just because something is out of warranty doesn't make it stop working.
What about spells and magic items from older books or sources? What about magic items? Monsters? Backgrounds?
Again. Out of warranty but still mostly work. I suspect old monsters will feel like trying to use MM1 monsters in a Monster Vault game in 4e.
 

When I think about compatibility, what I expect, and what I want, this is where my head is:

I expect that monsters, magic items, and spells from other 5e sources should work fine with 2024 D&D. Maybe something takes a little tweaking but I bet most of them would work as-is. I'm not expecting that I'd take 2014 D&D spells and mix them into 2024 D&D – there's little reason to bother. It's books like Deep Magic 1 & 2 or other 5e published sources of spells that I'd want to still be able to use and I expect I could.

Same with monsters. They might feel a little different but that's true now already. Monsters from the various Tomes of Beasts feel different from one another and always felt different from the 2014 D&D monsters. Same with A5e Monstrous Menagerie monsters and Flee Mortals monsters. I bet they can still all work as is without any modification.

I expect magic items won't be a problem either. A few tie closely to character options which might take some tweaking but Vault of Magic items from Kobold Press should still work.

Backgrounds probably require some modification by adding ASIs or feats or whatever. I think it'll be easy to add some blanket "use the +2 / +1 or +1 +1 +1 ability modifiers to backgrounds" and access to level 1 feats.

I think races and subraces from older material might work when you remove the ability score connection. Some might be weaker and some stronger but overall I bet they work fine.

I expect subclasses might take a little more work but many of them should probably work fine once you move the 1st level feature to 3rd. Some of them that expect baseline character abilities – like paladins with smites – might not work perfectly. That's true also when trying to take a 5e subclass and applying it to a Level Up Advanced 5e character or a Tales of the Valiant character. You can do it but it might take tweaking and conversations between DMs and players to do. That's fine.

Adventures and campaign settings, of course, should be mostly fine. The DC ladder is the same I expect. There's little mechanics in those books that focus on particular class abilities that might change. We've been converting adventures from entire other systems without much effort so I don't think that's an issue.

It makes perfect sense that a group will likely want to select a core ruleset when they choose to play a 5e campaign, and everything else surrounds that core ruleset. That said, that core ruleset can likewise be modified. I'm running Level Up Advanced 5e right now but it's easy to replace inspiration with the Tales of the Valiant Luck system, which I prefer.

I can also use monsters from anything in my A5e game. We didn't include other subclasses but I bet we could use races from other systems if we wanted to, but A5e has a ton already so we probably don't need more.

I guess we'll see what the practical implications of this all are when the books come out and we actually start playing it. I don't know that we'll know what we're really going to do until the books hit the table.
 

What about spells and magic items from older books or sources? What about magic items? Monsters? Backgrounds?
Again. Out of warranty but still mostly work. I suspect old monsters will feel like trying to use MM1 monsters in a Monster Vault game in 4e.

As far as I'm concerned, WOTC's own material is out of warranty ever since Silvery Barbs and the Twilight Cleric were published without errata. All bets are off and we're on our own when we choose what material to put on the table.
 

Someone help me out. Do we take this to mean that all subclasses printed before the new 2024 Players Handbook will not be compatible with 2024 PHB characters?
it sounds like it, even though I have no idea why they would be. They specifically did not move to a unified subclass progression to remain compatible, so if they somehow still aren’t then imo they should have fixed that progression. Worst of both worlds, if true…

That is certainly different from what we heard at the summit last year and I believe what we’ve heard in previous videos that said you could use them with some modifications like ensuring they begin at 3rd level.
I assume that is still true, even though it does not mesh with what they said - unless that extra work is why they said it in the first place

What about spells and magic items from older books or sources? What about magic items? Monsters? Backgrounds?
don’t see why anything but backgrounds would not work. Backgrounds are very different now, so they will need adjustments
 
Last edited:

Backgrounds probably require some modification by adding ASIs or feats or whatever. I think it'll be easy to add some blanket "use the +2 / +1 or +1 +1 +1 ability modifiers to backgrounds" and access to level 1 feats.

I think races and subraces from older material might work when you remove the ability score connection. Some might be weaker and some stronger but overall I bet they work fine.
For these two, at least, Crawford said there was an explicit explanation in a sidebar as to how to use old Backgrounds and Species in 2024 rules. And during the playtest, they did maintain that they were going to do the same for old Subclasses even if the base Class is being overhauled.
 

For what I see, old material and preps can be used as is. A 2014 monster can be used without problems, maybe it will feel weaker, but they already feel weak most of the time.

Most Players will be glad to upgrade their characters, if not creating new ones, with the new rules.

In the rare rare case where a players bring a 2014 PC at a game that run on 2024 rules, nothing will break. I guess that it will be most of the time an emergency, and that PC will be upgrade for the next session.
 

Someone help me out. Do we take this to mean that all subclasses printed before the new 2024 Players Handbook will not be compatible with 2024 PHB characters? That is certainly different from what we heard at the summit last year and I believe what we’ve heard in previous videos that said you could use them with some modifications like ensuring they begin at 3rd level.
Seeing how the Tasha's subclasses were put in the playtest but refered to TCOE as the document my guess is TCOE is the cut off:

  1. Subclasses, Spells, and Feats printed in Tasha's and later are compatible with 2024 classes.
  2. Races and Monsters printed in MOTM and later are compatible with 2024 classes.
  3. 3PP who uses guidelines after TCOE or MTOM FOR Subclasses/Spells/Feats or Races/Monsters respectively are compatible with 2024 classes.
Crawford was on record saying that TCOE and MOTM were designed in mind to be backwards compatible with the 2024 version several times.
 

Take the artificer comment with a lump of salt; artificer is a supplemental class and not in the PHB, unless they specifically call out other artificer spells in the PHB (for Sir Not Appearing in the Book) I would assume the influencer just didn't see it listed in the spell write up and assumed it was removed.

I wonder if Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron is specifically called out as a Artificer spell in her preview material? 🤔
 

Well Paladins would definitely play the 2014 version if they are allowed to. The 2024 version was nerfed into the ground in the UA, which might change a bit but the 2014 version is so overpowered that it's definitely not going to go live in 2024 without major nerfs
I haven't been following the playtests, so could you enlighten me in this regard? What change was made to paladins we think is carrying to the new books?
 

Remove ads

Top