Roll20 Reveals Their 5.5E Update Plan – “Your D&D Game is YOURS, Play By Your Rules!”

In the wake of D&D Beyond’s upcoming 5.5E rollout, Roll20 has revealed its plans for updating the site to the latest ruleset.

Earlier this week D&D Beyond revealed their plans to update character sheets with the new 5.5E/2024 ruleset, heralding the fact that the new Player’s Handbook may as well be a new Edition even if WotC insists that it isn’t. On D&D Beyond’s character sheets/character creator, tooltips and rules references will soon automatically refer to the 2024 version of things like core rules and spells. If you want to use the older version of a spell, you’ll need to homebrew the 5E version and put it on your character sheet to keep the tooltip functionality.

Yesterday, Roll20 revealed what its D&D 5.5E rollout will look like. And, let’s just say it sounds a whole lot simpler. You won’t need much of a changelog post to understand how it’s going to unfold. Here’s why.

Roll20’s 5.5E Update Plan Really is THAT Easy

It’s an update plan so simple they fit everything they needed to say in a tweet.

You choose how you play D&D on Roll20!

This year we want you to have options:
Keep using 5e 2014 classes, spells, magic items, & monsters
Use both Character Sheets in one game
Know the sourcebook of everything you use

Your D&D game is YOURS. Play by your rules!

Roll20 via Twitter

And the new 5.5E character builder is in beta right now, but will be launching along with the updated rules in September. Roll20 followed up their tweet with some more info, stating that giving “GMs & players agency was a huge priority for [Roll20] as soon as the new rules were announced.”

You can continue to use the 2014 sheet with the old rulebooks, or you can use both rulebooks on the 2024 sheet. The interactions on the post serve to highlight the different mindsets of the virtual tabletop platforms. A reminder that some GMs may want more out of their VTT than pure functionality.

At any rate, D&D 5.5E comes to a tabletop, virtual or otherwise, in a few short weeks.

Happy adventuring!

Author: J.R. Zambrano

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]