D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal #1: "Everything You Need To Know!"

Each day this week, Wizards of the Coast will be releasing a new live-streamed preview video based on the upcoming Player's Handbook. The first is entitled Everything You Need To Know and you can watch it live below (or, if you missed it, you should be able to watch it from the start afterwards). The video focuses on weapon mastery and character origins.

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There will be new videos on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, focusing on the Fighter, the Paladin, and the Barbarian, with (presumably) more in the coming weeks.

 

[Scribe]

Sitting around rolling dice and pretending to be elves has always been twee.
There's never been anything tough or hard about it.

I'd agree with the later, certainly.

If this is twee, the word is meaningless.

 

[Staffan]

Sounds mostly good.

I still wish backgrounds retained 2014 style features instead of feats, but it is what it is.

2014 background features were a cool idea poorly implemented. Something like half of them have some variant of "Claim to hospitality in exchange for work" as their feature.

I'm also still pretty meh about cutting half-elves and half-orcs.

I see the point of it, but it's going to feel weird in Eberron in particular where half-elves in particular have a culture distinct from that of either elves or humans, and most half-elves are born to two half-elven parents, and also where half-elves have different dragonmarks than either humans or elves.

Eberron half-orcs don't really have the same distinctiveness – their role in the setting is more to demonstrate the closeness of human and orc populations in the Shadow Marches. So I think the setting could better accommodate something like "half-orcs are mechanically either humans or orcs but can trade in some traits for those of the other species" than the same principle applied to half-elves.

FWIW, my own personal preference for a Warlock class would be more like John Constantine or the Goetic Mage in Invisible Sun. The Goetic Mage does not a make a pact with a single power; instead, they specialize in ritually summoning a variety of otherworldly entities (e.g., fiends, angels, spirits, eldritch horrors, etc.), with whom they bargain/bribe/trick/persuade/coerce for magical favors. So that would be the Warlock's specialty. They are the best at ritual summons, mostly out of combat, and bargaining with otherworldly entities. But it's active. It's something that you are doing all the time with your character. It's not offscreen. It's an onscreen process that the player engages in.

IME, the Goetic Mage does not run into the Ghostrider or Paladin problem.

Sounds a lot like the 3.5e Binder class. They would make short-lived pacts with otherworldly entities (not quite fiends or celestials, but weird) that would provide them with various benefits, and depending on how well they rolled to bargain they would also have to abide by certain restrictions.

I think they were a neat concept – basically being able to swap out class features much like a wizard swaps spells. But the main issue I saw was that getting a bunch of class features and proficiencies in 3.5e didn't do much for you unless you had other things to support them in the form of stats, feats, and most of all equipment. So I figure that in practice, most Binders would settle on a couple of vestiges to bind regularly and only deviate from their standard loadout in very particular circumstances.

Because maybe I want to play a healer and D&D decided healers are all God Toadies?Get back to me when wizards get healing magic.

The bard is that-a-way.

Heh. I go the opposite way. No character is ever under my thumb as a dm. Clerics are just cabalistic wizards. They learn their spells from other clerics in their cult. If they go ahead and completely ignore their deity? No consequences from their deity.

Now their cult might be a different story.

As I recall, this was explicitly the case in 4e. I don't recall if it was cleric-specific or part of the divine power source in general, but at least clerics went through a process of being invested with divine authority, giving them the ability to use divine powers. I find this to be more interesting than the old style of being explicitly dependent on divine goodwill, because it means you can have turncoat clerics without their lack of magic being a telltale sign.

I also noted that some of the 2024 material talk about warlocks as being about "occult lore". Perhaps their Patron serves more as a teacher than a power source? That would be more interesting to me.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I understand what you are saying. But dwarves baking cookies is a very different vibe for D&D. That's not something that would ever occur to me to have in the PHB. Or anywhere else, really. If this is the kind of thing new(-ish) players want, have at it. Harms no one. I just find it--and the orc family picnic-- to be a startlingly different take on Dungeons&Dragons. It's like...cozy.

Cookies! Bah! that's battlebread that is, them's drop scones, lethal in the right hands.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I saw some of the artwork--a multi-generational orc family, and dwarves working a forge while being served cookies. This is a very different game than it was! "Oh brave new world..."
View attachment 368176

Well I like the covers of the books…?

That is something…

 

[Parmandur]

I understand what you are saying. But dwarves baking cookies is a very different vibe for D&D. That's not something that would ever occur to me to have in the PHB. Or anywhere else, really. If this is the kind of thing new(-ish) players want, have at it. Harms no one. I just find it--and the orc family picnic-- to be a startlingly different take on Dungeons&Dragons. It's like...cozy.

Literally the current hot trend in best-selling Fantasy novels is Valles "Cozy Fantasy", like "Legends & Lattes".

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I understand what you are saying. But dwarves baking cookies is a very different vibe for D&D. That's not something that would ever occur to me to have in the PHB. Or anywhere else, really. If this is the kind of thing new(-ish) players want, have at it. Harms no one. I just find it--and the orc family picnic-- to be a startlingly different take on Dungeons&Dragons. It's like...cozy.

Yikes. Yeah.

My kids won’t bat an eye. My pals…this will not be well received.

 

[AstroCat]

I saw some of the artwork--a multi-generational orc family, and dwarves working a forge while being served cookies. This is a very different game than it was! "Oh brave new world..."

Yeah I pretty much despise all of this art, the style of it, the "feel", all of it is just so lame to me, it's just awful, but hey that's me. I imagine in turn the "game" it has become is not for me at all either any more. There is absolutely nothing about this art that makes me go, "That looks awesome, can't wait to play some D&D!" It has the opposite effect, it is literally repulsive, I'd rather run some errands, or do some laundry, or take out the garbage. Thank goodness there is plenty of other art and d&d games to have fun with. Maybe everyone loves this neo-d&d style, but it just doesn't connect with me at all.

 

[AstroCat]

Yikes. Yeah.

My kids won’t bat an eye. My pals…this will not be well received.

Haha, even my 10 year old son will think this all lame as could be. He'll probably wonder if this is even d&d or come other game for for his younger cousins or something.

 

[Laurefindel]

With everything I’ve been seeing so far, I’m really torn between embracing the new rules or go back to play a PHB-only 2014 campaign. The new rules are cool but the latter is starting to have a very appealing simplicity…

 

[Chaosmancer]

Individual list of unique effects per spell, and the page count to prove it. That level of detail can be applied to any aspect of the game if you want it.

So you want to enforce pacts with otherworldly entities, by having every warlock subclass have unique effects for every warlock spell... potentially adding 50 or more pages to the warlock alone?

No? Why would anyone think that is a good idea?