D&D 5E (2024) 2024 PHB - a short review

[evilbob]

I love the art!!!

That's all.

 

[pukunui]

I don't love all of it ... but I love that there's a lot of it!

 

[Larrin]

The fact that the art for each Background is actual Background Art (as in pictures of backgrounds, landscape format, with no characters/foreground etc) is a nice touch.

I also think the decision that each species art shows a community/group of them interacting rather than just one example character, or one of each gender looking posed, is a welcome touch.

 

[evilbob]

Oh I can go on and on with specific examples. I love that each subclass has its own feature. I love that so many examples of spells or characters made me - someone who has played over 20 yrs - go "ohhhh, so THAT is how that could look!" (Like Entangle! They made that dumb spell actually cool!) I LOVE that they captured so much description and emotion in just one image. The trickery cleric and the glamour bard and devotion paladin are great examples of this.

My favorite is probably the first page of Chapter 2, how to make a character, that has the characters from the 80s D&D cartoon imagined as actual characters (instead of weird kids). That is an awesome easter egg and I'm surprised no one has made a bigger deal of that yet.

But mostly I LOVE the huge full-page art for each character class!! They're all AMAZING and all of them are like someone said: show me the coolest possible way to represent the true essence of this class. As a sidebar: one of the things I've loved the most about Dungeon World (another TTRPG that has the same "high fantasy" setting as D&D and uses Apocalypse World rules - which are far, far lighter and a much better introduction to role-playing for new players) are the opening paragraphs for each class, which absolutely nail the most passionate, coolest essence of what it's like to play those classes, summed up in a few short words. Those paragraphs alone have blown anything written in any D&D book I've ever read out of the water - by miles. But these images - the ones at the beginning of each class - they are the closest that D&D has ever come to capturing the same amazing feeling of Dungeon World's class descriptions.

 

[pukunui]

My favorite is probably the first page of Chapter 2, how to make a character, that has the characters from the 80s D&D cartoon imagined as actual characters (instead of weird kids). That is an awesome easter egg and I'm surprised no one has made a bigger deal of that yet.

The real Easter egg there is that Sheila is mentioned in the caption but you can’t actually see her anywhere in the picture!

 

[sevenbastard]

There are some cool pieces, mostly the ones showing charachters adventuring versus static poses, but a lot of it is just too cartoonish for my tates.

And this is a weird complaint, but I feel like too many people in the art are smiling.

And what's up with the Bard on page 65?

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

All of the race entry pictures go out of their way to not make any race seem cool, but as mundane as possible.

That aside, the book is nicely colorful. Though I do wish each subclass got their own page.

And this is a weird complaint, but I feel like too many people in the art are smiling.

Now that you mention it...

 

[evilbob]

And what's up with the Bard on page 65?

That's one of my favorite ones!!! I think it does a great job of evoking the feeling you'd want to feel while playing that character!

 

[pukunui]

All of the race entry pictures go out of their way to not make any race seem cool, but as mundane as possible.

I’d rate that as a positive. It shows you what that species is like as a community, just doing regular things, not adventuring.


I’m not entirely sure why but I really like the elf sorceress with her outlandish headpiece and stuff.

My absolute favorite is the halflings wild sorceress with the bionic arm.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I’d rate that as a positive. It shows you what that species is like as a community, just doing regular things, not adventuring.

I think that sort of images would fit in with crafting and stuff like that, not when you're picking a character to play, whose whole purpose is to go on adventures and blow stuff up. I mean, that is the game.

Perhaps this art is a result of their chosen order of presenting things: class -> race, rather than the other way around. I do know that I have never recoiled from a race entry quite like seeing how lame orcs were presented in the one image they get - it's not like there's going to be many pictures of them elsewhere in the book to make up for that.