Everything you need to know about 2024 Player Handbook video:
If you are playing a 2014 character with 2024 characters, we have designed things so that 2024 rules should be used in that situation. Those rules can handle a 2014 character being present, but the 2014 version of the rules will grind in a few places with a 2024 characters
So apparently only these combinations are fully supported:
And you can mix-and-match the first three of those options at the same table. Old subclass support is a good thing for fans of third-party stuff since that often had custom subclasses.
You can use “adventures” from 5.1 but the rulebook itself with conditions, combat system etc is supposed to be 5.2 (D&D “2024”, since referring to this new edition as a new edition is taboo) if you want to to support 5.2 characters.
I’m trying to not slag WotC since I’m so grateful for the creative commons SRD, but this is a little cumbersome for where I’m at right now.
Of course I’m not saying that they should hold up their entire release, I’m just complaining about my own bad luck and poor timing a little bit: I’ve moved to a smaller apartment and can no longer have all kinds of rulebooks and setting books handily available.
I’ve been using an app as I’m getting settled in but it’s been so glitchy and I wanna get away from having my tablet at the game table, get back to it being a offscreen hobby.
I’ve been thinking of switching from our huge mix of 5e, 2e, B/X, RC, and houserules to instead use Rules Cyclopedia since it’s a single book and I happened to already have it and so does one of the players. And what’a great is that it’s more compatible with the type of OSR modules and prep we use anyway.
But another player is giving me so much pushback on that as he’s so hyped for the new release.
I was wracking my brains in anguish but then I figured out I had a solution to the rules creep by me switching to the super light Dungeonesque booklets on the DM side (along with Forge of Foes as a more complete monster book) while letting the players themselves juggle all of their many special books and expansions that some of them love so much. They can drown in books and new versions and hype—and I wasn’t begrudging that, being on the consumer train checking out D&D videos and articles online based around the newest stuff can be a lot of fun.
I was like “old adventures are compatible, right? So that means everything I do on the DM’s side is compatible” and I was really happy, thinking I had settled in with a 5.2 compatible future firmly rooted in the past.
But it seems they’ve changed conditions and fighting rules and a couple of other things so that solution isn’t gonna work.
I still wanna keep it super light. For 5.1, there was the orginal Starter Set and the Essentials Kit, both which had pretty much all the rules (exhaustion levels were maybe the biggest omission) but only low tier spells so running spellslinging non-player characters would be a problem.
What woulda been great for my plan going forward would’ve been if the game itself could’ve been 5.1 so I as DM wouldn’t need to get new books. SRD 5.2 is coming out in February 2025 (if I’m alive then). Not sure when a booklet version of it akin to Dungeonesque or Essentials Kit would be out.