Dungeons & Dragons Confirms That Old Subclasses Can Be Used With 2024 Class Rules

Dungeons & Dragons has provided further clarification about backwards compatibility.

By Christian Hoffer

Dungeons & Dragons has confirmed that the game's new character class ruleset will be backwards compatible with older subclasses. This week, Wizards of the Coast started to roll out details about the finalized 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebooks that will be released starting in September. While Wizards of the Coast noted that the new revised rules would be "backwards compatible" with existing rulebooks, there was still some confusion as to what exactly that meant. Wizards of the Coast has clarified recently that players can use characters built with the 2014 rules alongside characters built using the 2024 Player's Handbook, provided that the campaign uses the 2024 rules. Additionally, players can also use 2024 characters in older adventures, again, provided that the campaign itself uses the 2024 ruleset as the underlying game system.

A common question that's come up on the Internet is whether existing subclasses originally made for what Wizards of the Coast is calling the "2014 rules" can be used with the new class rules found in the new Player's Handbook. For instance, can the Bladesinger (a popular Wizard subclass) be used with the 2024 Wizard rules? ComicBook has received confirmation from Wizards of the Coast that older subclasses can be used with the 2024 character class rules. Assumably, this means there will be guidance in the Player's Handbook on how to do this, similar to how players can use races and backgrounds from older books to use when making characters using the 2024 rules. 

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One thing to keep clear – players should not mix abilities from their 2014 subclasses with their 2024 subclass equivalent. So, for example, if a player chooses to build a 2024 Assassin (a Rogue subclass), they can't swap in a feature from the 2014 ruleset in place of a similar feature in the 2024 ruleset. Likewise, players can't build a 2014 Assassin but utilize a 2024 subclass equivalent to a subclass feature.

The 2024 Player's Handbook comes out on September 17th.  

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