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.

 

[Greg Benage]

Some random (personal, subjective!) observations on the thread:

• Based on post history, of which there is typically an extraordinary volume, the loudest critics don't actually play 5e. The people who don't like and don't play 5e are terribly disappointed in a version of 5e they don't actually possess and were never going to play. I guess this is pretty typical of edition wars.
• I think we really tend to memory hole all the clarifications that occurred with 5e, setting aside the relatively modest amount of official errata (along with the question of whether more might have been helpful). There were 23 pages of "sage advice" in the last version I saved, but only a fraction of the rulings and commentary from the designers actually made it into the compendium document.
• I don't know what led anyone to expect that Wizards would produce a revision without significant errors and issues. Tasha's was a good book, and it still went to press with the twilight and peace clerics. The publishing model for D&D at Wizards is just not going to produce flawless masterpieces, whether rules design, campaigns or anything else.
• Both the positive and negative reactions often seem to be fatally infected with hyperbole.
  • Example 1: "Spiritual weapon was OP and needed a nerf!" It was a 1d8+mod bonus action attack with fairly poor scaling. It wasn't all that, and especially wouldn't appear to be game-shattering in a revision where bonus or free-action (!) attacks are even easier to come by.
  • Example 2: "Changes such as the ones to command suck all the creativity out of the game"...by freeing the DM from having to rule on your situationally ambiguous verbs. Come on, man. The magic system still provides plenty of opportunity to torment your DM (and fellow players) with your "creativity."
  • As far as I can tell, the game isn't going to be any better at the table because spiritual weapon uses concentration, nor will it be worse because command is free from investigations into the philosophy of language. It's just not a big deal.
• The real pain points in 5e seem to be mostly intact. For me, these are issues such as the 15MAD and particularly the mix of short- and long-rest dependent characters, pop-up healing words, maximized class dips (perhaps mitigated if not eliminated), ranged vs. melee disparity (mitigated by weapon masteries, maybe?) and the martial-caster divide over the second half of the level range. That doesn't terribly bother me, either, because I only ever DM this game outside of cons and I've developed ways to address these issues with my group over the last decade.
• I've preordered it and I'll run it because it's the 50th anniversary of a game that's been a major part of my life and it seems like a slightly different version of 5e, which I've enjoyed. I'm not convinced it will be better or worse, but it will be a little different and that's welcome at this point. At least hand crossbows won't be the dominant weapon of war for a while, right? Right?

 

[Valetudo]

I don't have those problems with my group. They don't know how to power game really. A couple did multiclass, but mote for character reasons.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

ranged vs. melee disparity (mitigated by weapon masteries, maybe?)

If ranged was limited to Slow/Push, I could see this, but they also get Vex (so expect to still see a lot of hand crossbows).

I want to say that it's mitigated by there not being a way to increase your ranged dmg output through feats now (big weapons get GWM/PAM, TWF gets Dual-Wielder for an extra attack)... ranged + feat just gets to ignore cover while benefiting from Archery style's +2 to hit (so their thing is just hitting really accurately?).

We'll see how much Topple mastery there ends up being, because that's also something melee would be able to benefit from.

 

[Greg Benage]

I don't have those problems with my group. They don't know how to power game really. A couple did multiclass, but mote for character reasons.

Assuming you're responding to me, I very carefully attempted to communicate that I was making no claims about "objective" problems with 5e. These are personal pain points. I think some of them, at least, are broadly shared, but clearly there will be many, many players for whom none of them are issues at all.

 

[Greg Benage]

If ranged was limited to Slow/Push, I could see this, but they also get Vex (so expect to still see a lot of hand crossbows).

There's Vex, and then there's the interaction of CBE + SS + Archery + easy Advantage + multiple attacks to create a superior formula for both ranged and melee if you're interested in single-target DPR. I expect there's always going to be some optimal combo in a game like 5e, I'm just hoping it's some combo that doesn't involve squirrel-shooters.

 

[Valetudo]

That's fine I was just noting hiw my group plays. They really stacked melee feats this time around. I think that range weapon masteries might be the reason. I like the thought of dervish style rangers now but the dual battleaxe wielding barby is gone.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

That's a crude work-around that only highlights how extremely bizarre the decision to delete customization of backgrounds and custom backgrounds from the PHB was. It also requires the DM to agree to allow you to use a 2014 background with a 2024 character.


They literally changed the rules, so I don't know what you think you're talking about here!

The RULES in the PHB 2014 and the Playtest, are that the PLAYER can CUSTOMIZE the backgrounds. Not the DM. The player. No DM permission is needed to do this in either case.

I can't be bothered to dig out the Playtest, but here's the 2014 wording:



Changing it so that you need DM permission to do this is a huge change, especially in the context of backgrounds now locking down what ability scores you're allowed to increase and what Feat you receive.

So you're just literally wrong when you're saying they didn't change the rules. This isn't from "beige to tan", this is literally removing something from player choice, and replacing it with 100% DM control. It's a bizarre move that no-one asked for.

I prefer to see the Core Rules as 1 set of rules that are separated into 3 books. They are intended to work together.

I think it is appropriate for alternate/variant/modular campaign-affecting options, and the advice that they want to provide to implement them, to live in the DMG rather than the PHB.

I think a cohesive New Player Experience is just fine in a PHB that is supposed to last 10+ years as a Core Book, knowing that the functionality to alter the Backgrounds will exist in the same ruleset through the DMG, where alternate/variant/modular rules live.

When it comes to DDB, that functionality will likely be a toggle, if that, and be divide will be essentially invisible to veteran players.

As a veteran DM and player, the current PHB design for Backgrounds was never going to affect how characters would be created by my table, unless we CHOSE to opt into the basic, limited design in the PHB, to make the choices matter. It was almost a non-issue for me.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

There's Vex, and then there's the interaction of CBE + SS + Archery + easy Advantage + multiple attacks to create a superior formula for both ranged and melee if you're interested in single-target DPR.

While Archery is as amazing as ever, CBE is just a feat tax to use crossbows in the first place, and Sharpshooter just ignores cover now (that is, feat tax for shooting into melee)... And, while it's nice to hit reliably and that's fine as the ranged niche, melee feats actually raise your damage ceiling (with GWM+PAM as the obvious king). There is nothing in ranged that competes - it's just the laid back, always in range, never need to worry about positioning option if you are not optimizing for damage.

And while the bonus damage part of GWM does work for Heavy Crossbow and Longbow, then you'd be giving up on the extra hand crossbow attack (and GWM is only able to raise your Strength score), so that's a bit of a wash (though I am happy the non-hand crossbows are at least some sort of an option again).

EDIT: Actually, Dual-Wielder does work with hand crossbows + thrown dagger... which might look like we're not actually done with hand crossbows as the default go-to. But, you need to pick CBE first, so DW gets delayed. And, unless you have a returning magic dagger, there may be issues with how effective the extra attack ends up being against monster resistances. And the dagger won't benefit from Archery, seeing how it's not a ranged weapon. And if you were to pick up CBE anyway (that gives the TWF style benefit to your hand crossbow), then you're not incentivized to pick up the actual TWF style, so this extra dagger attack wouldn't get the stat mod...

 

[Valetudo]

Well if you go CBE, you basically want 3 xbows. 2 handxbows and a heavy for range. Put that feat to work.

 

[ECMO3]

EDIT: Actually, Dual-Wielder does work with hand crossbows + thrown dagger... which might look like we're not actually done with hand crossbows as the default go-to. But, you need to pick CBE first, so DW gets delayed. And, unless you have a returning magic dagger, there may be issues with how effective the extra attack ends up being against monster resistances. And the dagger won't benefit from Archery, seeing how it's not a ranged weapon. And if you were to pick up CBE anyway (that gives the TWF style benefit to your hand crossbow), then you're not incentivized to pick up the actual TWF style, so this extra dagger attack wouldn't get the stat mod...

You can pick up DW first, you would just be limited to 1 attack with the crossbow and three with the daggers.

If you take dual wielder it is pretty much a given you are going TWF and not archery anyway. You can do dual wielding with crossbows without that, but you lose the bonus to damage