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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We were originally talking about mechanics to enforce the warlock/patron relationship.

Sounds good to me. Patrons are powerful beings with the ability to grant great power to those with whom they make their pacts. They should have some way to enforce the bargain they made with the Warlock, or why would they have made the deal?

 

[pemerton]

I disagree with this assessment. The player is gaining a PC with a very different style of play than any other character has. That difference in style and roleplay is very much something that the player is getting in return.

If you don't want that kind of style of play and roleplay, play the wizard instead. If I choose warlock, I am choosing it in large part BECAUSE of the nature of the patron and the PC.

Re the bolded bit: perhaps someone else is choosing the warlock because they really like invocations and the short-rest period for spell recovery.

I would expect the enthusiasm of warlock players for patron-oriented stuff to vary just as much as, over the history of the game, the enthusiasm of cleric players for gods-oriented stuff has varied.

 

[pemerton]

The DM should be playing the patron appropriately to their nature and the information that patron has to make decisions, just like a God and their cleric (or paladin sometimes). If you as a player don't trust your DM to do that fairly and with verisimilitude, you IMO have a bigger problem.

As I read them, @Imaro and @Paul Farquhar are not talking about trust. They are talking about the autonomy of the player to play their PC as they think is appropriate.

I'm sure if any player wants advice from the GM they can ask for it and hope to get it. But if the GM is proactively telling the player what sorts of actions they need to declare for their PC on pain of losing their core PC abilities if they don't go along with what they're told to do, then something has gone pretty wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Re the bolded bit: perhaps someone else is choosing the warlock because they really like invocations and the short-rest period for spell recovery.

I would expect the enthusiasm of warlock players for patron-oriented stuff to vary just as much as, over the history of the game, the enthusiasm of cleric players for gods-oriented stuff has varied.

Frankly, that's what new classes are for IMO. If you don't like the description of your class, it probably isn't the class for you. Fortunately many game systems are easy to modify.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I read them, @Imaro and @Paul Farquhar are not talking about trust. They are talking about the autonomy of the player to play their PC as they think is appropriate.

I'm sure if any player wants advice from the GM they can ask for it and hope to get it. But if the GM is proactively telling the player what sorts of actions they need to declare for their PC on pain of losing their core PC abilities if they don't go along with what they're told to do, then something has gone pretty wrong.

Where does any game force the player in that way? You can do what you like, there just might be consequences.

 

[Chaosmancer]

True. The patron can directly threaten the warlock into doing their bidding by telling them that they will lose their powers if they don't. However, there is the possibility that not all patrons operate this way towards their servants.

But that feels both incredibly boring and like it doesn't require any mechanics.

No mechanics because "or you lose your powers" is as easy as... stripping away all their class abilities, possibly their skills, saves, and feats as well. Done.

As for the story... I think people are too enamored with the idea of "well, if you are clever" to really grasp how this ends up working in practice. I was in a short game once where Vecna showed up and demanded the party do a task for him. And... we couldn't say no. I mean sure, in theory we could say no, but if we did the entire party would be killed and the game we had agreed to be a part of would be over. Then later, my character was captured and was presented with being forced to serve Kas the Betrayer completely against his will.

And so, you have to consider that, from the player's perspective, a Patron that can directly threaten them for not accomplishing a specific task can end up being a "Well, I need to either roll a new character, or betray the entire party" and that just isn't fun. There are ways to make it work, but you have to have a light touch with it. You shouldn't give specific tasks like "Kill the Archpriest" unless that is something the entire party would do. Things like "recover the ancient blade of Stark" is fine, because it is just a normal quest. Things that are vague are also great, because it gives flexibility to how it is to be accomplished.

But all of this comes down to narrative. I cannot even think of any mechanics that you could make to cover this, except maybe a piety system to show how pleased or angry your patron is with your work.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The DM should be playing the patron appropriately to their nature and the information that patron has to make decisions, just like a God and their cleric (or paladin sometimes). If you as a player don't trust your DM to do that fairly and with verisimilitude, you IMO have a bigger problem.

Maybe. But I would take a second and remove the discussion from the warlock specifically.

Is it good DMing to have the players wake up in a dungeon at level 1, and be informed by the Ruler of a Nation that they've been marked with arcane sigils, and if they don't obey the orders they are given, then their heads are going to explode? I don't think it is. That is a very hard campaign to run well without causing hard feelings.

You've posited that the patron's requests might be fulfilled partially, or poorly... but do you really think, if you want to go with full in-story logic here, that a being of pure evil who wants you dead to get your soul, isn't going to just kill you for not being a good enough follower? It is a rather classic villain move to kill their underlings for their failures.

And sure, if the player agrees to it, yadda yadda yadda, but the point of making it a mechanical rule of the class would be to assume that all players at all times are going to agree to have bombs in their character's heads that you can set off at any point they annoy their all-powerful patron who has complete control over their character's path. By not making it part of the rules, the DM can be flexible about what story the player actually wants to explore, instead of forcing the story that YOU think they should all be lock-step with.

 

[pemerton]

Where does any game force the player in that way? You can do what you like, there just might be consequences.

In what way?

I posted "if the GM is proactively telling the player what sorts of actions they need to declare for their PC on pain of losing their core PC abilities if they don't go along with what they're told to do, then something has gone pretty wrong." You seem to be disagreeing with that, on the assumption that the "consequences" you refer to are the player losing their core PC abilities.

Frankly, that's what new classes are for IMO. If you don't like the description of your class, it probably isn't the class for you. Fortunately many game systems are easy to modify.

Well the "modification" being canvassed here is so easy it barely needs to be stated - the player plays a Warlock, but the GM does not play the patron as an aggressive NPC. Rather, as @Paul Farquhar posted not too far upthread, "the player creates the patron as a secondary character, with the distinction that they can’t actually do anything apart from talk to the primary character".

 

[SkidAce]

You know its not one extreme or another, but thats what all these discussions/forum arguments end up as.

Just talk to each other (dm and player)...

"Hey DM, I like the flavor of warlock, but I want my patron to be non-involved other than said flavor"
"Okay"

"Hey DM, I want my patron to tempt me further than I would normally go down the dark path, I'll decide if I follow though, but I want the patron to keep hanging a hook in front of me, trying to trick me, while I fight to deny the temptation of power"
"Okay"

"Hey Player, how about your patron is a corrupting influence, and you need to make WIS save in stressful situations to avoid corruption (tbd)
"Okay" or "Nah"

"Hey Player, we could use the rules for Intelligent Weapons* whenever you and the patron have a direct conflict"
"Okay" or "Nah"

etc,

etc.

*our fighter got taken over by a yugoloth in a sword, said yugoloth claims he was king of the cosmos. Player now has two personalities in one character and loves it. Albeit, the sword did cut down an innocent, much like Elric and Stormbringer.

 

[SteveC]

In threads like this, you always find out some really interesting things about people's larger beliefs about what you can do when running a game, and what you should as well. I'm reminded of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norwell and want to paraphrase it "could a DM take a player's powers from them?" I suppose they could, but a gentleman never would. Okay that's a horrible paraphrase. but hopefully it isn't too odd.

Could a DM decide to take a warlock character's powers for not doing what the patron wanted? Yes. Could they do the same thing for a paladin or cleric? Yes. I've played in a game where the DM short-circuited magic altogether, and it was our job to get the server rebooted. The DM can do that because of their authority. Should they? That's a different question. If that happens, the DM turns these characters into a fighter without the bonus feats (Order of the Stick, anyone?)

I think the long and the short of it is that the players need to trust their DM, and buy-in on the game, or there simply is no game. Would I like to play that game as a player? I honestly don't know. I know that I wouldn't like it just sprung on me but I also play with people who are great DMs and I trust them.

The DM gets authority in the game, but if they put on the Viking Helmet too often, I expect their players to want to go elsewhere. But to say that the same person who can say "rocks fall, everyone dies," can't take powers doesn't make sense to me.