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]

Yeah, by those standards I think I can see what you mean.

For me, the vast amounts of published setting materiel in the later 1e and the 2e period are more than I want to grapple with. I like it a lot if the themes of species or classes can be conveyed succinctly and implicitly in brief without me feeling like I need to read a whole supplement about them, never mind multiple setting books.

This is one reason I like the B/X race-classes, because they establish a role for each demihuman which is kind of baked-in setting material. I also like the fact that they way they were implemented dodged the way they leant themselves to min-maxing in AD&D and its descendents.

I do like the base implementation in B/X like you say, but I almost always want more to be available. You can always ignore what you don't need.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I will never understand why people are so salty that WoTC doesn't constantly reprint books that they already own, saying the exact same things that they already know, and which is freely available online in a dozen different places. "They wrote a small library's worth of information in the past, but since they didn't print it again, it is all utterly worthless trash floating in the wind now."

Meanwhile, despite everyone here hating the orc for not being powerful enough, my next character is going to be an orc, because it is exactly the aesthetic and mechanics I want.

 

[Pauln6]

Quite a few things I like but quite a few have left me scratching my head.

Two characters make use of the Ritual Caster Feat in our campaign - my Tome Warlock via invocation and our highly intelligent fighter, who multiclassed into bard because he became obsessed with lore and prophecy. He uses augury and divination rituals regularly. My warlock probably uses phantom Steed the most, because she was converted over from a 2e shadow mage and it was one of her signature spells.

Rituals in 5e are nowhere near as useful or varied as 4e and they are mostly used as fluff to further the story. Detect Magic and Comprehend Languages are the only ones that see regular use.

The new version seems... a bit pointless for everyone? If you want to emulate a low level caster without multiclassing it seems like you need a lot of feat investment and I guess you can cross class poach? If you are already a caster, having one free quick casting of a Ritual may be useful as you save a spell slot I guess but is it something people were clamouring for?

I get that warlocks can take a feat now so the old invocation isn't strictly needed, although this does mean one less modification for Pact of the Tome specifically, which is disappointing.

What problem was it they were trying to fix? I did think the old version could have required you to pick a class list but I never heard anyone complain that it was unbalanced in any way? Is this change a power up or a power down?

We will have to stick to the old version or trash two longstanding character concepts but I was curious.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

The new version seems... a bit pointless for everyone?

The new Ritual Caster does let you pick your rituals from among all the classes as you wish. It could argue for itself as an origin feat, but not when it's up against, say, War Caster.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Quite a few things I like but quite a few have left me scratching my head.

Two characters make use of the Ritual Caster Feat in our campaign - my Tome Warlock via invocation and our highly intelligent fighter, who multiclassed into bard because he became obsessed with lore and prophecy. He uses augury and divination rituals regularly. My warlock probably uses phantom Steed the most, because she was converted over from a 2e shadow mage and it was one of her signature spells.

Rituals in 5e are nowhere near as useful or varied as 4e and they are mostly used as fluff to further the story. Detect Magic and Comprehend Languages are the only ones that see regular use.

The new version seems... a bit pointless for everyone? If you want to emulate a low level caster without multiclassing it seems like you need a lot of feat investment and I guess you can cross class poach? If you are already a caster, having one free quick casting of a Ritual may be useful as you save a spell slot I guess but is it something people were clamouring for?

I get that warlocks can take a feat now so the old invocation isn't strictly needed, although this does mean one less modification for Pact of the Tome specifically, which is disappointing.

What problem was it they were trying to fix? I did think the old version could have required you to pick a class list but I never heard anyone complain that it was unbalanced in any way? Is this change a power up or a power down?

We will have to stick to the old version or trash two longstanding character concepts but I was curious.

If I had to make a guess, it was to close the gap with Wizards.

In 2014, ignoring the feat and special abilities for a moment, the following classes had innate ritual magic: Wizard, Druid, Cleric, and Bard. However, out of all of those, only the Wizard could ritually cast spells that they did not prepare. So, the heirarchy went a bit like this.

Can cast any ritual spell you know at any time --> Wizard
Can cast any ritual spell you have prepared with a preparation slot --> Bard, Cleric, Druid
Have magic, but can't access rituals innately --> Warlock, Sorcerer, Ranger, Paladin, Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight

Now, look at what the abilities did:
Tome of Ancient Secrets made Warlocks the BEST ritualists, better than wizards.
Ritual Caster made anyone who took it as good as a wizard, but better than the other classes. So, modified you get

Ritual anytime, any spell --> Warlock
Ritual anytime, choose a spell list --> Ritual Caster Feat, Wizard
Can use Rituals if prepared for the day --> Cleric, Druid, Bard
Literally everyone else.

So, without the feat, wizards were the best, unless a Warlock wanted to be better. With the feat, everyone was a wizard (usually literally as Wizard was the best ritual spell list) and the worst ritualists were the people who had the ability innately. And, it really is hard to overstate how POWERFUL wizard ritual casting is. Having an answer to a problem just 10 minutes away with no immediate resource cost is really big. Clerics and Druids rarely considered their rituals, because rituals are best for unforeseen problems. But, it was also hard to justify taking Ritual Caster when you could cast rituals.

With the changes, everyone is now at the same level, except for wizards which edge out ahead. And now ritual caster is nearly equally good for everyone, with it actually being best for Wizards, who previously would (almost) never take it, because they gained so little from doing so.

 

[Pauln6]

If I had to make a guess, it was to close the gap with Wizards.

In 2014, ignoring the feat and special abilities for a moment, the following classes had innate ritual magic: Wizard, Druid, Cleric, and Bard. However, out of all of those, only the Wizard could ritually cast spells that they did not prepare. So, the heirarchy went a bit like this.

Can cast any ritual spell you know at any time --> Wizard
Can cast any ritual spell you have prepared with a preparation slot --> Bard, Cleric, Druid
Have magic, but can't access rituals innately --> Warlock, Sorcerer, Ranger, Paladin, Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight

Now, look at what the abilities did:
Tome of Ancient Secrets made Warlocks the BEST ritualists, better than wizards.
Ritual Caster made anyone who took it as good as a wizard, but better than the other classes. So, modified you get

Ritual anytime, any spell --> Warlock
Ritual anytime, choose a spell list --> Ritual Caster Feat, Wizard
Can use Rituals if prepared for the day --> Cleric, Druid, Bard
Literally everyone else.

So, without the feat, wizards were the best, unless a Warlock wanted to be better. With the feat, everyone was a wizard (usually literally as Wizard was the best ritual spell list) and the worst ritualists were the people who had the ability innately. And, it really is hard to overstate how POWERFUL wizard ritual casting is. Having an answer to a problem just 10 minutes away with no immediate resource cost is really big. Clerics and Druids rarely considered their rituals, because rituals are best for unforeseen problems. But, it was also hard to justify taking Ritual Caster when you could cast rituals.

With the changes, everyone is now at the same level, except for wizards which edge out ahead. And now ritual caster is nearly equally good for everyone, with it actually being best for Wizards, who previously would (almost) never take it, because they gained so little from doing so.

Yeah I would have said limiting the number of rituals can learn to your intelligence score plus proficiency would have been better. Only changing one you know when you level up. Still favours wizards then but wouldn't bar higher level rituals from non casters.

 

[Mistwell]

The characteristic that is important to most players about being an orc is being big and green and having tusks. The fraction of players who want to squeeze the absolute maximum mechanical advantage out of character creation choices is tiny. Most players don’t care about that stuff.

As for being big, green and having tusks is better accomplished by orc. Which is why they were already far more popular with players than half orcs ever were.

Agreed. It's why I don't care about the loss of half-orc. Orc is fine for that.

I do care about the loss of half-elf. Because Elf isn't fine for that. They're more distinct from elves than half-orcs were from orcs.

 

[Maxperson]

We followed LMOP to POTA with these same characters. She ended up completely destroying other martials in terms of damage with a combination of Divine Smite from her 5 level Paladin dip and spell slots from Arcane Trickster.

5 levels isn't a dip!

That's 25% of the total character levels in the game and more than half the total levels that the typical campaign reaches.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Agreed. It's why I don't care about the loss of half-orc. Orc is fine for that.

I do care about the loss of half-elf. Because Elf isn't fine for that. They're more distinct from elves than half-orcs were from orcs.

By being able to multiclass into ranger/clerics?

Historically, half elves were not distinct at all, being nothing but humans who could multicass. From 3rd edition onwards they tried to make them distinct by making them overpowered, leading to the ridiculous situation where half elves where more common than elves and humans put together amongst powergamers, even though the lore said they were incredibly rare.

I’m quite happy for a player to call their character a half elf, but I don’t want them to have a powergamey mechanical advantage for doing so. It’s a role play choice.

 

[pemerton]

By being able to multiclass into ranger/clerics?

Hey, don't knock it! I have my own set of AD&D rules, written up by compilation and modest systematisation of what is found across Gygax's books, a hint of 2nd ed, and the original OA; and that replace multi-classing with appropriate new classes.

And in my rules, the only class that is excluded for humans, but that is available (solely) to half-elves, is Cleric-Ranger.