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.

 

[SteveC]

Or... people can play howevere they want to play as long as the game isn't actively hindering it... much less providing rules for it.

Of course. The thing that I think you, and other posters who like this playstyle, are forgetting is that if you've only read the 5E PHB you don't have the ideas that people who have played other games have experienced. If you look through Dungeon World, for instance (which isn't that great of a game, mind you...) you will see a lot about narrative play. You might say "Hey, why don't I just give players authority to do this..." but the game itself doesn't tell you anything about how to do this or mechanically support this playstyle. The game Fabula Ultima is great for giving you tools to do narrative things within the rules of the game, and I highly recommend it.

here's no reason you couldn't play D&D narratively, just like there's no reason you couldn't play in solo. And yet I would suggest looking at a game like Ironsworn if you want actual rules to play it that way. So yeah, you can do anything you want with 5E, I'd just suggest that if you don't have experience outside of the basic rules, you're going to have trouble. There is a difference between "There's nothing stopping you from doing this..." and "...Here's how to do it."

 

[Imaro]

Of course. The thing that I think you, and other posters who like this playstyle, are forgetting is that if you've only read the 5E PHB you don't have the ideas that people who have played other games have experienced. If you look through Dungeon World, for instance (which isn't that great of a game, mind you...) you will see a lot about narrative play. You might say "Hey, why don't I just give players authority to do this..." but the game itself doesn't tell you anything about how to do this or mechanically support this playstyle. The game Fabula Ultima is great for giving you tools to do narrative things within the rules of the game, and I highly recommend it.

here's no reason you couldn't play D&D narratively, just like there's no reason you couldn't play in solo. And yet I would suggest looking at a game like Ironsworn if you want actual rules to play it that way. So yeah, you can do anything you want with 5E, I'd just suggest that if you don't have experience outside of the basic rules, you're going to have trouble. But there is a difference between "There's nothing stopping you from doing this..." and "...Here's how to do it."

But we aren't speaking to playing D&D narratively... We are speaking to a single optional mechanic that gives the players some (but not complete) narrative control over a specific thing. Again D&D has always had small exceptions like this, where PC's can play things or manage things or take actions outside of their character.

EDIT: The only reason this is ruffling some feathers is because it explicitly states that DM's cannot have control over it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well, the vast majority of D&D corebooks straight say the DM controls the NPCs, do one answer for "why" is that they're following directions.

That is a really really poor argument.

Another, perhaps more controversial, answer is that it makes logical sense that the person who created a character plays that character, and that the person who created everything else plays everything else.

As you say, it could easily be done a different way. But it makes logical sense to me.

And this is a worse one, since many Player's create NPCs that are in their background. Heck, I'm about to start a new character, likely doing character creation next week. Very very simple backstory, and I've only gone into sketch levels of detail.

I've come up with at least an entire tribe in the broad strokes, a parent, a mentor figure, a dead antagonist, at least two living antagonists, a potentially helpful NPC and am considering more. So, I've created a minimum of four NPCs, therefore I should control them?

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is the sort of thing I would expect to be very common in establishing PC backstory - ie the player writing some stuff about the NPCs who constitute their friends, family, mentors, etc.

GMs who just swoop in and rewrite that stuff are in my view terrible, and it rather baffles me that any player would go along with it.

Agreed. I've rarely seen it in person, luckily.

Would they really? The GM who can't find anything more interesting to present, as fiction, than a subverting/undoing of fiction that a player has brought into the game via the build and backstory of their PC, strikes me as a terrible GM. Again, it baffles me that players would go along with this sort of thing.

Yeah, almost none that I know personally, but it is out there. I think it is the same sort of thing that plagues a lot of movies and video game development. There is a feeling that, if the players/Audience know what is going to happen, then it is bad and should be changed to be a surprise. So, they will constantly look to subvert or undo fiction that is expected, so they can make it "better" by making it a surprise. I think this is a larger creative problem than just DnD, to be fair, but it is here as well, as people feel that same need.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's not the only reason why you might subscribe to this separation of character control, but it's a straight-forward one where it applies.

Another reason, one that works well for me, is simply that roleplay works better IMO when two actual people are talking. So a PC and his Patron, or a PC and his mentor, or a PC and his father, should IMO be portrayed by different people for authenticity sake is nothing else.

So when the player's return the kidnapped princess to her Father's castle, and the two start arguing... who roleplays the other NPC?

It can't be the player, because player's aren't allowed to RP NPCs in your set-up, so do you need to bring in a temp DM?

 

[Chaosmancer]

When I said senses I was talking about the five senses. I think your use of that term is in a different way than I used it.

No, I stuck to the five senses. You can absolutely "feel" as in the sense of touch, those sensastions.

As a DM, I work with players but I also absolutely reserve the right to reject a particular backstory. If the PC says, I come from a desert nomad clan, and there isn't a desert within a thousand miles, I might reject that backstory. Now, I might work with it too. The point isn't what would be worked with or not. Most things would be if possible. The point is that anything coming into a campaign world created by a DM has to be approved.

The Silk Road was over 4,000 miles long. What if the PC wanted to be a stranger in a strange land, who had spent a year traveling thousands of miles for some reason or another? Sure, sure, you "reserve the right" to reject anything. But we never hear "I reserve the right to reject you being a local orphan from temple I told you about" or "I reserve the right to reject you being a local farmer with a heart of gold". I'm sure you do reserve the right to reject those things as well.... but you won't ever reject them. And you didn't even answer the given example, because you didn't explain why you would reject someone writing their backstory to involve their parent's motivations. You just generally would reserve the right to reject any backstory for any reason, just in case a player does something you don't like.

So, to get back to the question of why, what sort of criteria do you use to reject player contributions to the plot of your game?

Why would anyone decide that? To make the game more fun. Though I do try to design things before any particular character gets the item. I work to be unbiased in my adjudication. I'm not against player proposals but they must be approved. Maybe I as DM know things about the world that the players don't yet know. If their suggestion conflicted with what I know then I might reject it. I might make a counterproposal that was a compromise.

But the item is the source of their powers. It is WHY they became a warlock. You may as well say you need to approve the Player deciding that they studied swordsmanship and became a fighter, or that they found religion and became a cleric.

Now, I don't disbelieve your answer that you would do something like that "to make the game more fun" but here's a small hint about people. When they come to you with an idea? They think that idea will be fun. Now, I myself have had to stop a player and make sure they understood that their fun can't lead to them ruining the fun of the other four players at the table. I'm not going to say I never check a player and make sure we are working on the same page, but it just seems rather odd to me to see people saying "I need to have the ability to reject the things the players want to do, so that I can make sure the player has the best time possible."

 

[Corinnguard]

It can't be the player, because player's aren't allowed to RP NPCs in your set-up, so do you need to bring in a temp DM?

A DM can probably role-play more than one NPC at a time with the right amount of time and practice. Some voice actors in the cartoon industry are capable of doing it.

As for players role-playing a NPC, if an NPC is role-played by a player, doesn't that make the NPC into another PC?

 

[SteveC]

But we aren't speaking to playing D&D narratively... We are speaking to a single optional mechanic that gives the players some (but not complete) narrative control over a specific thing. Again D&D has always had small exceptions like this, where PC's can play things or manage things or take actions outside of their character.

I get that 100%. What you should think about is, for a new player, where do you get this idea? The PHB talks about how the DM handles the environment and NPCs. It doesn't talk about shared narrative control at all. I think we're sort of running around in circles because of course a DM can give control or a player can request control, but for new players or DMs, the PHB isn't telling them this is an option. There is nothing keeping them from doing this, but there isn't anything keeping them from running a Cyberpunk game with the core PHB either or any other thing they might want to try. You just have to work it out for yourself. So there's no support by the rules for it. That's all I'm saying (and I've said it too much!) because I'm not against the idea. I think there are some other folks in the thread who are against it, so I'll let them argue that.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The players can't do it in THAT DM's world. They can go off and find another DM or one of them become a DM themselves and do whatever they want. They will not be doing it in the DM's campaign though.

Why is it the DM's world? Why is it the DM's campaign? Do you think neither of those things would change if they had radically different players? I know for a fact that it is a common experience (which I have had as well) to have a set of pre-gen characters in a one-shot run at a convention, and out of 5 different sets of players, you will have 5 radically different games. So... is it really, solely, the DM's property if it is utterly changed and completely different if you change the players?

And here is the thing. I could DM 7 days a week, night and day if I wanted to do that. I have a good reputation and I run an immersive game. I don't shortchange my players in that regard but I absolutely live by rule 0.

Good for you, entirely not the point of this conversation. This isn't about your reputation or how you personally treat anyone.

Again perhaps we are debating absolutes. While I live by rule 0 absolutely, that doesn't mean I am not willing to work with players especially when it fits. The player can suggest all sorts of ideas and I may very well take those ideas. The point is would I allow the player to actually roleplay the conversation in game between them and their Patron? No. I would not. If they said they wanted a patron like X, then I might very well say yes to that and roleplay the X that way but in game the players remain in actor stance. And this is why to some degree I don't play D&D because they do their best to force me to treat the PC like a pawn instead.

I think there is a degree of absolutes here, and we may be closer than you think. But I am going to keep questioning those absolute statements. You say you would never allow a player to roleplay a conversation between their patron and their PC in game? Not even if it was a one-sided conversation? Not even if they are a Forever DM who is a superbly talented roleplayer and could pull off voices and the conversation better than you could? There is never any situation, in any scenario where you would consider it ever? That doesn't seem right to me. That seems close-minded, because I CAN think of situations where I would be intrigued by a player who came to me with that sort of idea.

I also think it is rather frustrating, as a player and sometimes even as a DM, to have this idea that DMs must always control every part of the game. It is an incredibly heavy burden to know and run all of history, time, ect ect for an entire world. DMing can be a lot of work if you want a lot of detail to your game world. But anytime it is even hinted to let player's be in charge of part of that, making it something the DM doesn't have to do.... then there is this tendency to shut it down immediately and completely, because what if the players DO IT WRONG! And I think that knee-jerk reaction should be examined.

 

[Imaro]

I get that 100%. What you should think about is, for a new player, where do you get this idea? The PHB talks about how the DM handles the environment and NPCs. It doesn't talk about shared narrative control at all. I think we're sort of running around in circles because of course a DM can give control or a player can request control, but for new players or DMs, the PHB isn't telling them this is an option. There is nothing keeping them from doing this, but there isn't anything keeping them from running a Cyberpunk game with the core PHB either or any other thing they might want to try. You just have to work it out for yourself. So there's no support by the rules for it. That's all I'm saying (and I've said it too much!) because I'm not against the idea. I think there are some other folks in the thread who are against it, so I'll let them argue that.

Ok let me try to clarify my position and address your points....

1. It's not in the PHB because it is an optional rule that would be instituted or not by the DM.
2. Bastions have an explanation, rules and guidelines.... I would assume if a DM wanted to run bastions he would go over said explanation rules and guidelines with teh players in session zero or sometime before they reached 5th level... this is the support from the book.
3. The 2024 PHB is one of 3 core rulebooks and the designers have been very clear that the books are interconnected so if you are basing everything off the PHB you are basing it on an incomplete rules set.