D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Reviews

On Thursday August 1st, the review embargo is lifted for those who were sent an early copy of the new Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. In this post I intend to compile a handy list of those reviews as they arrive. If you know of a review, please let me know in the comments so that I can add it! I'll be updating this list as new reviews arrive, so do check back later to see what's been added!

---

Review List

• The official EN World review -- "Make no mistake, this is a new edition."
• ComicBook.com -- "Dungeons & Dragons has improved upon its current ruleset, but the ruleset still feels very familiar to 5E veterans."
• Comic Book Resources -- "From magic upgrades to easier character building, D&D's 2024 Player's Handbook is the upgrade players and DMs didn't know they needed."
• Wargamer.com -- "The 2024 Player’s Handbook is bigger and more beginner-friendly than ever before. It still feels and plays like D&D fifth edition, but numerous quality-of-life tweaks have made the game more approachable and its player options more powerful. Its execution disappoints in a handful of places, and it’s too early to tell how the new rules will impact encounter balance, but this is an optimistic start to the new Dungeons and Dragons era."
• RPGBOT -- "A lot has changed in the 2024 DnD 5e rules. In this horrendously long article, we’ve dug into everything that has changed in excruciating detail. There’s a lot here."

Video Reviews
Note, a couple of these videos have been redacted or taken down following copyright claims by WotC.

• 2024 PHB Rules Changes D&D 5.24 (Treantmonk's Temple)
• Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook 2024 Preview & Review | Key Takeaways and Comparisons with 2014 (Awesome Black)
• 10 Unexpected Changes in the D&D 5E 2024 Player's Handbook (This Effin' GM Games)
• Every Class and Subclass Change for 2024 (d4: Deep Dive)
• D&D Player's Handbook 2024 Winners & Losers! (The Character Sheet on ComicBook.com)
• 2024 Player's Handbook First Look Review (Dungeon Dudes)
• The 2024 Player's Handbook: Full Spoilers Review (DnD Shorts)
• Full Early Review! D&D 2024 Player's Handbook (JoeFudge)
• First Look at the 2024 Player's Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons (GameMasters)
• 2024 PHB Flip through (Jorphdan) [taken down]
• D&D New Player's Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual, and Project Sigil Info (maturemindedgamers)
• 2024 Player's Handbook: Questions Answered! (Alphastream)
• D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Walkthrough (Sly Flourish) [redacted]

---

Release timeline (i.e. when you can get it!)

• August 1st: Reviewers. Some reviewers have copies already, with their embargo lifting August 1st.
• August 1st-4th: Gen Con. There will be 3,000 copies for sale at Gen Con.
• September 3rd: US/Canada Hobby Stores. US/Canada hobby stores get it September 3rd.
• September 3rd: DDB 'Master' Pre-orders. Also on this date, D&D Beyond 'Master Subscribers' get the digital version.
• September 10th: DDB 'Hero' Pre-orders. On this date, D&D Beyond 'Hero Subscribers' get the digital version.
• September 17th: General Release. For the rest of us, the street date is September 17th.

 

[Corinnguard]

I got summoned!

Yeah, not super interested in buying the 2024 PHB. I'll wait 'til the SRD comes out and review it, but I can't give WotC any more of my money after everything that's happened.

But who knows? Maybe they'll have some good ideas I can adapt for Level Up?

I hope I didn't summon you from anything majorly important.

 

[Steampunkette]

I hope I didn't summon you from anything majorly important.

Not really, no. I've been sick for the past week to the point where I spent most of my time either in bed, asleep, or on the couch, asleep.

 

[Corinnguard]

Not really, no. I've been sick for the past week to the point where I spent most of my time either in bed, asleep, or on the couch, asleep.

Get better soon, okay.

 

[Mistwell]

Do you know what's included in that section?

And yeah a lot of people when they say "exploration" mean "wilderness survival and overland travel", exclusively. Which is only one small part of it.

We're playing through Tomb of Annihilation, in the final dungeon, and most of our time is spent in exploration. Which could also be termed "Being extremely over the top paranoid because lack of information can and will kill us all."

So many spell slots used on locate object, speak with dead, summoning familiars, flying, detection spells, invisibility, things to help us move silently, etc.. So much time just waiting for the rogue to invisibly scout ahead, the familiar to look in areas that are hard to get to, and us just studying and analyzing things we find, clues, riddles, warnings, etc.. A thousand perception and investigation checks. Probing ceilings and floors and walls with a ten foot pole. Rigging ropes and pullies. Getting light placed in the right areas. Acrobatics checks over unbalanced surfaces, athletics checks to lift something up so others can get through. Swimming, climbing, squeezing through tight spaces. Securing areas for a long rest, or even a short rest.

We did a lot of the other type of exploration outside the dungeon (wilderness survival and overland travel). Literally two years of weekly games doing that to get to this death trap of a dungeon.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I may be in the minority here, but I quite like that the rules for the Exploration and Social pillars of the game are even more vague for PCs. I want to keep those sections as rule-lite and story based as possible for my players, only getting into real crunch when combat happens. I feel it allows the story to develop and move smoothly as a conversation between me and my players, occasionally interrupted by an ability check when the outcome is uncertain.

Nice! Do you have examples of how that works out in actual play for you? I like the concept, but I'm not always sure that the route I've taken with this in the past is the best one.

 

[Mistwell]

Teos’s video is fantastic and I agree with him about everything in it except that we should have a 6e. Nope, not for me. Certainly not now or in the near future. Lucky for me, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.

I totally disagree with him on a number of things he says, and some of them he's claiming "I think if you ask people they'd agree" on things I know for certain (based on survey feedback) his view is in a vast minority. For example, there was widespread agreement the new ranger was a huge improvement - but to him, he seems to think there is widespread agreement on the opposite.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I totally disagree with him on a number of things he says, and some of them he's claiming "I think if you ask people they'd agree" on things I know for certain (based on survey feedback) his view is in a vast minority. For example, there was widespread agreement the new ranger was a huge improvement - but to him, he seems to think there is widespread agreement on the opposite.

I haven't been keeping my finger on the pulse of the next release, so maybe I'm missing something. Didn't I read that the new Ranger was a step back in many ways from the Tasha's Ranger (which was a massive improvement on the base 5E Ranger... IMO at least)?

 

[Mistwell]

No, the Hide action is one of the possible actions you can take in combat. Outside of combat, if you describe your character trying to sneak past the guards, the DM will ask for an Dex (stealth) check against a DC they set if the outcome is uncertain.

Not seeing rules support for that so far. Where did you read that?

 

[SlyFlourish]

D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Walkthrough #dnd #dnd2024 #phb #slyflourish

Thank you!

 

[SlyFlourish]

In @SlyFlourish's video above - this is the first I've heard that "you get a Feat AND an ability bump" at level four. Care to elaborate? Is it just BOTH the 2014 options of ASI and a Feat or is it the "half-feats" of the playtest? (Where you can just take the ASI feat if you want to ignore feats).

Every feat includes a +1 bonus to one of the ability scores. So if you have a 17 in your primary stat and grab a feat that has a +1 bonus to that stat, you get both an 18 in that stat and the rest of the feat, which is the same power as the old 2014 feats.