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!

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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]

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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.

 

[Zehnseiter]

Regardless, I don’t believe the number of combats per day was the issue for you, but I could be wrong. I can only be sure that it is not an issue for us.

If you focus on very few but spectacular combats then 5E class balance gets even more strained then it already is when you do the slow attrition based combat play style. Admittedly its not my only nor my main reason for ditching the game but is among the reasons. A single issue I can always work around. 5E sadly had several that aren't working well for me.

 

[dave2008]

If you focus on very few but spectacular combats then 5E class balance gets even more strained then it already is when you do the slow attrition based combat play style. Admittedly its not my only nor my main reason for ditching the game but is among the reasons.

I've been running 5e since early 2015 and I have not found that to be true for how we play. We are old school gamers so my group generally tries to avoid fights, so we don't have a lot of combat generally. We have a had a few combat heavy sessions, but I have not noticed any difference in effectiveness or, more importantly, player engagement and enjoyment, between our adventure days that have 1-3 fights or those that have 6-8. However, I acknowledge that everyone plays differently and my experience is not everyone's experience. I guess I just think it is less the system and more on how each group plays.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

If you focus on very few but spectacular combats then 5E class balance gets even more strained then it already is when you do the slow attrition based combat play style. Admittedly it’s not my only nor my main reason for ditching the game but is among the reasons. A single issue I can always work around. 5E sadly had several that aren't working well for me.

Not IME, but I’ve learned that people play the game in many different ways so I am not surprised when someone has a different one.

 

[Mistwell]

I am not spinning and I have watched about 20 hours in the last two days and read more than that. As I said most of them have been neutral but I have not seen one that I would call generally positive overall. I've watched a bunch, especially from Treantmonk

Treantmonk says outright he's very positive

, but also from D4 deep dive,

D4 says outright he's very positive

D&D shorts,

He's neutral, but said to begin with he'd be neutral because he hates WOTC so much.

and some others.

Maybe you're spinning or maybe we are just interpreting things differently

There is no way to interpret Treantmonk and d4 as "neutral" when they tell you overall they are very positive. That's you spinning, not them. They're quite clear. Do you want me to link to each and quote their exact words?

or maybe I didn't listen to the specific parts where these reviewers were positive. What I know for a fact though is that you are purposely misrepresenting what I said to prove some point or win some kind of message board recognition and with that in mind I find it difficult to believe you are being completely honest and forthright.

Now that I know you are calling Treantmonk and d4 neutral or negative, my words are even more clearly absolutely correct.

Do you have an example of an objectively, definitive positive review? You don't have to run down "all the reviews" to provide just one example.

YOU gave two.

 

[Mistwell]

Please do not lie about what I claimed. I never said that "all the reviews are negative" nor that they were "overall negative" as you claimed in two other posts.

What I claimed was "most of the reviews [I saw] have been neutral and some of them negative". I stand by that statement.

Then you quoted three, two of which are unquestionably positive, an one of which said before he even got the material he was surprised they gave it to him since he hates WOTC so much!

 

[Corinnguard]

I've been running 5e since early 2015 and I have not found that to be true for how we play. We are old school gamers so my group generally tries to avoid fights, so we don't have a lot of combat generally. We have a had a few combat heavy sessions, but I have not noticed any difference in effectiveness or, more importantly, player engagement and enjoyment, between our adventure days that have 1-3 fights or those that have 6-8. However, I acknowledge that everyone plays differently and my experience is not everyone's experience. I guess I just think it is less the system and more on how each group plays.

It's the same story with my group too. We'll have a couple of combat heavy sessions every now and then. But there also has been couple of sessions where my party had been socially interacting with an important NPC or a group of NPCs about something.

 

[Mistwell]

For us it really depends on the setting for that session. It's very rare that we end a session on a long rest, but it has happened and I can see why you'd want to wrap up on a long rest for a convenience factor.

In both my weekly games we happen to be in a difficult dungeon (different ones, different groups). And for a dungeon setting, we burn through pretty much all our limited resources before a long rest and almost never have more than a slot or two left of spells. We take a long rest only when we desperately must which usually doesn't match session-end.

 

[R_J_K75]

5e is not based off 3e. It has quite a number of elements of 4e. And a lot of the thematic notes of 2e. When discussing 5e, Crawford (and Mearls before him) seemed to reference 2e the most.

The transition from 2E to 3E was major. I think it was the most radical change of any edition because it unified the resolution system by making most things d20 based.

 

[R_J_K75]

I'm tired of updating my world to new rule sets, learning new interactions

Well, IMO an edition should only last so long, if the game is going to last another 50 years it needs to evolve and offer something new

 

[R_J_K75]

Of course they did. That was...pretty much the entire point. As Ruin Explorer has put it, 5e is the apology edition.

I'd take another 4E over a revision any day. The idea of playing a revision of a game I didn't really care for to begin with for another 10 years is not appealing to me