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]

Why not?

Speaking only for myself, I generally try to minimize talking to myself in game. Also I very much prefer players to just play their PCs, even if I'm the player. Feels more real.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Seems pretty obvious to me. There usually is some sort of conflict or tension inherent in the patron/warlock relationship, and it is less fun to play if you're playing both sides of the conflict.

Yup. Part of what makes it feel more real is not controlling both sides of a conversation.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Dungeon Dudes are pretty great, content wise. Of course, I think they are Canadian, not American, but nitpicks

Canada is like “little America” so it’s fine.

 

[EthanSental]

Thanks @DarkCrisis, a nice chuckle to start the day with the comment above

 

[Azzy]

Bonus action magic item use is the one new thing Thief got.

In 2014, Thieves could take the Use an Object action. I incorrectly thought that that's the action used for activating a magic item, but I double-checked and the DMG specifically calls out Fast Hands not being able to activate a magic item. I'll blame nobody playing a Thief Rogue in any of my gaming groups for this mistake.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The patron/warlock relationship is better off if the DM role-plays as the warlock's patron. Especially if the player and the DM are on good terms with one another during their role-playing sessions. Before or during session zero, the two can talk it out on what kind of relationship exists between the warlock and their patron.

Now if the player and the DM aren't on good terms with one another, then someone should be brought into the session who could take up the role of the warlock's patron during those moments when the patron and the warlock are going to interact with one another. If they can't find someone, then maybe they should amicably part ways.

I didn't get the impression, nor does my understanding and practice of narrativist play especially support, the notion that the GM would not be playing the role of the patron where that is relevant. The GM can, for example, frame a scene in which the patron demands some kind of service which is in conflict with the PC's other interests. Or a GM might even construct a more long term threat around the patron, if that seems to be the way the game wants to play out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't get the impression, nor does my understanding and practice of narrativist play especially support, the notion that the GM would not be playing the role of the patron where that is relevant. The GM can, for example, frame a scene in which the patron demands some kind of service which is in conflict with the PC's other interests. Or a GM might even construct a more long term threat around the patron, if that seems to be the way the game wants to play out.

Perhaps, but narrativist play and scene-framing are neither of them terms (or even concepts really) that apply to most forms of D&D, or indeed most traditional RPGs, as part of the actual rules. Making them part of your play is a choice some gamers make.

 

[wrightdjohn]

I wouldn't regard it as adversarial. Since the mid-to-late 80s, I've taken it for granted that players will establish key details about their PCs.

I mean, if the GM says "Well, instead of Asmodeus how about <so-and-so> who plays that sort of role in my preferred cosmology" maybe the player says yes and maybe no. Social negotiation can sometimes be tricky. But I don't accept that it is adversarial if it comes from one side, while being reasonable if it comes from the other.

I think in the style of game you run pemberton it would not be adversarial. It would be in a game that I run or perhaps the person you are responding to runs. We just run things differently. The details about the world including to some degree even the PC background is DM territory. I know that runs afoul of the way you like to play so I'm not saying you are wrong in your style of game but there are other styles ran differently. And players and GMs love both styles of games. It depends on your taste.

 

[SteveC]

I started GMing in the first half of the 1980s. Within a couple of years, I had learned that there are limits to the GM's authority - that as a GM you can try and make certain things part of the shared fiction, but if the players don't agree then there is no practical option but to talk it out with them, and potentially to go back to the drawing board.

Because, as I've said, there is no shared fiction on one's own.

So I don't agree with you about what is much more modern. I think the need for everyone to accept that the GM's posited fiction is the fiction is core to the whole activity. (And the same is true, obviously, for any given player's posited fiction,)

This is a situation where I think we're going to have to disagree, even though I appreciate how you're running games. This absolutely was not my experiences in the 70s and into the 80s. I think the first time I even heard some of these ideas expressed was in the Amber Diceless Roleplaying game. And even that had a GM with ultimate authority, but with the consideration that the players had reality-altering powers.

I'm not going to say what you're talking about isn't a great way to play a game. I just finished up a short Monster of the Week game, and there are a lot of those ideas are there. My experiences with Blades in the Dark and Fabula Ultima are similar. It's just not something that's standard in D&D. That's not to say it's something bad (far from it) but those aren't the expectations for a D&D game.

I think back to those early days and we had people coming to gaming from wargaming, where any roleplaying at all was a big deal. I'm sure there were people who played D&D more as a story game from the beginning, but it was very much not the norm. I say that as someone who was getting Zines from the coast shipped to me as a little kid. There was a lot of experimentation going on. It just wasn't the norm in D&D. If you have those expectations in 5E there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that the game is not doing things to support you. And I expect most D&D players would look at you as if you were expecting something the game wasn't designed to do. There are plenty of games that are designed from the ground up to support that style of play. And that's a good thing.

 

[Mistwell]

In 2014, Thieves could take the Use an Object action. I incorrectly thought that that's the action used for activating a magic item, but I double-checked and the DMG specifically calls out Fast Hands not being able to activate a magic item. I'll blame nobody playing a Thief Rogue in any of my gaming groups for this mistake.

Indeed and since it was in the DMG some people are speculating the rules for using a scroll with fast hands might be called out in the 2024 DMG. I am not sure how though, as casting a spell requires the magic action unless it's already a bonus action (in which case fast hands isn't applicable). But I guess we will see.