2024 Player's Handbook Officially Live on D&D Beyond

The 2024 Player's Handbook has officially launched on D&D Beyond after a longer-than-expected wait. The new rulebook, which contains major revisions to the current 5th Edition ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons, is now live for "Master Tier" subscribers of the online character builder and rules compendium website, provided they pre-ordered the book. "Hero Tier" subscribers will gain access to the new Player's Handbook next week (again, provided they pre-ordered it), while the full book will be available to all subscribers starting on September 17th.

The integration of the 2024 Player's Handbook was not without hiccups, with the service initially opting to switchover the rules text for magic spells, magic items, and mundane items before reversing course after a significant uproar among some users. While D&D Beyond was supposed to be down for a four hour maintenance window this morning, assumably to "go live" with the 2024 Player's Handbook, it took an additional two hours to finish the maintenance period.

NOTE: As of 2:52 PM ET, the full suite of character building options for the 2024 Player's Handbook were not available on D&D Beyond. Users can create a Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, or Fighter character using the 2024 Basic Rules set, but all other new material is not available.

 

[Queer Venger]

Fire and Dice in the San Fernando Valley has many copies. Good store too. Lots of space for running and playing games.

Thank you! I went back to Game Odyssey (used to be Game Empire and its close to my neighborhood of Eagle Rock) and they had a ton of both covers! I picked up the alternate for myself and regular for my players, they are all super excited for Saturday!

 

[Mistwell]

Thank you! I went back to Game Odyssey (used to be Game Empire and its close to my neighborhood of Eagle Rock) and they had a ton of both covers! I picked up the alternate for myself and regular for my players, they are all super excited for Saturday!

That's a great store too just have not been out that way in the past couple weeks.

 

[Queer Venger]

Yeah, it used to be called Game Empire, back when. 5e started I would run games for. AL there, I met a couple of awesome friends who continue to play in my campaign, I hadn't been there for a few years but they have a huge open game space.

 

[Demetrios1453]

As much as the art has been great, I've been puzzling over what the dwarf on page 264 (the illustration for divine smite) is actually doing with that weapon swing. The glow-y lines show the motion of her hammer, which at first glance seem to indicate that she's about to smash that mezzoloth. But the haft of the weapon is behind her head, which means she's trying some weird, behind-the-back swing which would never work (she's either going to hit herself with the haft across the back of her head or topple over). Maybe she's just completed the wind-up and will swing it around again (although that takes time that that the mezzoloths should use wisely to hit her), but if that's the case, given how the weapon is positioned, she'll be leading with the back part of hammer, which would be far less effective than using, you know, the flat part of the hammer that actually designed to hit.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I picked up the alternate for myself and regular for my players

Suck it, players!

 

[SlyFlourish]

Hopefully WOTC puts out a PDF of their errata. My sacrilegious recommendation is to take a sharpie and put a little dot next to rules in the PHB they've errata'd so you know which ones to look up in your printed errata sheet. That worked for me in the 4e days.

Mark up your books! Make them unique to you and now they're truly special.

 

[Clint_L]

Okay, they really mean to restrict you to the 16 backgrounds in the PHB. That's a choice. Custom background is still there, but it has not been updated from 2014 (tells you to pick a background feature rather than lv1 feat).

This is a problem when you try to recreate a 2024 character from a 2014 character, as I discovered. Because now you get ability score increases from background, not species. Unless you pick custom background, which doesn't give the ability score increases, because it is still the 2014 custom background option even on the 2024 sheet.

It's an easy workaround to manually change the stat scores as required, but still is a big thing for them to miss.

 

[Queer Venger]

This is a problem when you try to recreate a 2024 character from a 2014 character, as I discovered. Because now you get ability score increases from background, not species. Unless you pick custom background, which doesn't give the ability score increases, because it is still the 2014 custom background option even on the 2024 sheet.

It's an easy workaround to manually change the stat scores as required, but still is a big thing for them to miss.

yeah my feeling is that they are still working on these fixes before the official launch. next Tuesday.

 

[Zaukrie]

Hopefully WOTC puts out a PDF of their errata. My sacrilegious recommendation is to take a sharpie and put a little dot next to rules in the PHB they've errata'd so you know which ones to look up in your printed errata sheet. That worked for me in the 4e days.

Mark up your books! Make them unique to you and now they're truly special.

I'm going to write in it

 

[Remathilis]

Hopefully WOTC puts out a PDF of their errata. My sacrilegious recommendation is to take a sharpie and put a little dot next to rules in the PHB they've errata'd so you know which ones to look up in your printed errata sheet. That worked for me in the 4e days.

Mark up your books! Make them unique to you and now they're truly special.

My DM at college used to mark up his 3e books. Once he got very drunk and thus was born the obscure rule: "you have a -10 on Concentration checks if a bear is masticating your dong."