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.

 

[Imaro]

GM role is not antagonistic, but they control opposition, because it is not fun to control your own opposition. The GM creates challenges for the players to overcome and dramatic situations that test their characters. You know how RPGs work, right?

Lol.... "Do you even roleplay bro? Hur hur hur."
Seriously...lol.

The patron doesn't have to be (and I would say for some probably shouldn't be) in opposition to the PC's.

 

[Corinnguard]

When a player role-plays their character, they have to separate their out-of-character knowledge from their in-character knowledge in order to role-play their character effectively during an adventure. Asking a player to roleplay their warlock character and their warlock's patron adds in an additional level of difficulty. For now, they have to keep in mind their out-of-character knowledge, the knowledge known only to their warlock character and the knowledge known only to their patron. How many players are capable of doing that juggling act while trying to have fun?

 

[pemerton]

Or maybe you should accept the consequences of your actions, and not play a PC beholden to a being whose beliefs you don't share if that's a problem for you as a player. There are non-evil (or at least non-pushy evil) patrons out there.

Maybe don't play a fiend warlock if you don't want to deal with a fiend?

The key thing is that dealing with a fiend is a property of the fiction; and so is being beholden to a being whose beliefs the character doesn't share. Whereas being told by the GM what you as a player should have your PC do, on pain of losing your PC's core abilities is not a property of the fiction. It's a property of the game play.

Getting from the fiction described, to the game play described, relies on certain premises that are not universal. (That is, premises about how game play is to be structured.) And, therefore, the idea that, if I (the player) want to play a certain sort of character, then I have to accept a certain sort of relationship to the GM (ie that the GM can take away my core PC abilities), is obviously contentious.

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.

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.

<snip>

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 am not making any assertion about what is "the norm". I am doing two things:

(1) Contesting others' claims about what is the norm, which in my view generalise too strongly from their own experience. The book "What is Dungeons & Dragons" was published in 1982, and it had ideas of players making up elements of PC background that the GM might then incorporate into adventures/scenarios. So I don't accept that what I was doing in the mid-to-late 80s was so wild and extreme that it doesn't count as a normatively reasonable way to approach D&D.

(2) Making an analytical point, that the GM cannot have a shared fiction on their own: the GM has to be able to bring the players along with them. Hence, assertions of unilateral GM power to make whatever they like part of the shared fiction necessarily must fail. The interesting differences in approach to play are about the boundaries and structures of various participants authorities over various elements of the fiction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The patron doesn't have to be (and I would say for some probably shouldn't be) in opposition to the PC's.

Sure. And not all NPCs the GM control are antagonists, some are allies. But the basic narrative and fantasy of the warlock is that in order to gain magic they made a deal with something that is not necessarily exactly nice. It is the story of how far are you willing to go for power. And I think that for this dramatic tension to properly work, it is better if the GM controls the patron and the pact actually has some teeth. Not every warlock's story needs to be that, but that's the archetype the class is based upon.

 

[Imaro]

Sure. And not all NPCs the GM control are antagonists, some are allies. But the basic narrative and fantasy of the warlock is that in order to gain magic they made a deal with something that is not necessarily exactly nice. It is the story of how far are you willing to go for power. And I think that for this dramatic tension to properly work, it is better if the GM controls the patron and the pact actually has some teeth. Not every warlock's story needs to be that, but that's the archetype the class is based upon.

I have no problem with what you think... of course once you start stating what is objectively better well thats where the issue arises.

I've had great experiences with playing my patron as an entity that is slowly taking my warlock PC over... yes I played both. But I've also had a great experience in a game where my brother played my patron and was able to steal my character's daughter... shout out to Angel. But I don't think either was better, just different experiences and different types of fun.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Isn't it the GM that typically sets the setting? Sort of like a cleric- it's a discussion between GM and player. The player chooses the deity or what kind of cleric they want to play, and the other is matched up. You can't say "I made a deal with asmodeus" if there's no asmodeus. You can, but that's a pretty adversarial relationship with the GM that you're starting off the game with.

Sure, it would be very adversarial to start with a specific entity. But, less adversarially, you could go with "My patron is a Fiend" and there is literally nothing the DM can do to stop you from making that claim. And nothing they can do to stop it from being true by level 3 when you pick Fiend Warlock.

And back on the more adversarial side, it is very adversarial, but it highlights the limit of the DM power. You cannot stop a player from taking that stance. And if all the other players also roleplay that it is Asmodeus and not whatever Highest Devil you've created in your setting... what can you as the DM actually do about it? I can't think of anything, and so you have to wonder, is the idea of the absolute unquestioned authority of the DM even a real thing? Because when push comes to adversarial guns being drawn... there are limits.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, it would be very adversarial to start with a specific entity. But, less adversarially, you could go with "My patron is a Fiend" and there is literally nothing the DM can do to stop you from making that claim. And nothing they can do to stop it from being true by level 3 when you pick Fiend Warlock.

And back on the more adversarial side, it is very adversarial, but it highlights the limit of the DM power. You cannot stop a player from taking that stance. And if all the other players also roleplay that it is Asmodeus and not whatever Highest Devil you've created in your setting... what can you as the DM actually do about it? I can't think of anything, and so you have to wonder, is the idea of the absolute unquestioned authority of the DM even a real thing? Because when push comes to adversarial guns being drawn... there are limits.

I've said this before: "the players" are not a homogenous block. They each have their own feelings and opinions, and some if might even (gasp!) agree with the DM, or at least be fine with their narrative. In my experience, that is usually the case, actually. Just because one player disagrees doesn't mean anyone else does, or wants to support getting into a conflict with the DM over it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So in a RPG, if things have got to this point, something has gone terribly wrong: the participants can't agree on some basic elements of the ostensibly shared fiction.

I fully agree. I was simply pointing out that things CAN reach that point, which they could not if the GM has absolute unilateral authority over the fiction.

I think it is more helpful to speak in terms of what the GM (or anyone else at the table) is trying to do with their authority. So I would put it this way: the GM can only contribute to the shared fiction if the people with whom he's hoping to share that fiction accept his proposals and incorporate them into the shared fiction.

If they don't do that, there is no shared fiction that includes the GM's proposal, and the GM protesting abstractly about "their authority" won't change that basic state of affairs.

Agreed, that is a very good way to look at it.

I find the widespread expectation that players should share crappy fiction put forward by their GMs one of the weirder features of the RPG hobby.

Agreed again. I tend to trace it back to the word choice, and the shifting of the role. The GM was conceived from the idea of a rules referee whose authority to decide the outcome of a conflict was unquestioned. And our word choice often uses "Master", and I think those things contributed to the later advice of the DM's authority being the final authority, and the fear of players overstepping leading to DM's getting the advice to be harsh and unmoving in their decisions.

But, wherever it comes from, there is a consistent undercurrent of GMs being perceived as the only one capable of putting forth the story, and the truth of the fiction.

 

[Chaosmancer]

About the Dungeon Dudes Video .. they totaly overlooked the Thiefs most powerful Ability, that they can use magic Items as a bonus Action. Together with clever uses of mundane Objects as bonus Action (Caltrops, Nets, etc.) makes them really flexible and strong.

I do like the rest of the Video but this isn't the first time they overlooked important features, so you should't completelly really on their videos.

I mean... I guess sure, but I don't "completely" rely on anyone's videos. Everyone makes mistakes, and this was a pretty forgivable one. It was a change to a single ability, in a single subclass that otherwise didn't change, while they were reviewing everything for every subclass.

I mean, I think them forgetting that the mundane items were changed affects the game more, but it just means that the thief goes up to an A instead of a B, in their arbitrary ranking system.

 

[pemerton]

GM role is not antagonistic, but they control opposition

I agree with @Imaro - where is the premise coming from that the patron is an opponent of the warlock?

Also, @Micah Sweet upthread mentions the feeling of reality of the fiction. So here's an actual play report from 1990 (the system was Rolemaster, but I don't think there's any reason why D&D couldn't play out the same way):

The paladin PC had killed someone in circumstances that, in the view of the PC as played by the player, amounted to wrongdoing. Therefore, the player (again playing his PC) had the paladin go out into the wilderness to pray for forgiveness.

I (as GM) therefore made a roll for a wilderness encounter, on the appropriate encounter chart. The resulting encounter was with a (relatively minor) demon. The demon appeared in the vicinity of the praying paladin, and started taunting him about his conduct and his faith. I had assumed that the player would have his PC fight the demon (my first thought was that the sound inference was demons are liars, and therefore the demon's denigration of the PC's faith and conduct must be a sign that the paladin in fact remains in good standing). But the player (as his character) interpreted the demon as a sort of tempter, trying to lure him into more unjustified violence. And so even when the demon started beating up on the paladin, the paladin (as played by his player) did not resist.

After a bit of un-resisted pounding of the paladin had taken place, I (as the demon) decided that it had become boring, and the demon left the bruised and bloodied paladin alone.​

That scene, as it played out, felt vividly real. The way the paladin responded to the taunting by the demon - his rejection of it by way of his determination to avoid violence - was utterly unexpected (by me at least). The emotions were intense; the demon beating the paladin up was gruelling . At that point in time, it was the most powerful play of a religiously devoted character that I had ever seen in RPGing. It showed me that it was possible for FRPGing to be moving in a way that I hadn't experienced before.

If we look at how that moment of play worked, we can see that it was the player who initiated the scene - I (as my PC) go out into the wilderness to pray. It was the GM who framed the basic antagonism in the scene - As you are praying, a demon appears and says <stuff that constitutes the taunting of the paladin about his faith>. And it was the player who decided what that antagonism meant, in moral and thematic terms, by adopting a certain interpretation of it from the perspective of his PC.

This shows that it is quite possible for a religious character to experience the demands of their faith, to suffer for it, to do penance for their wrongs, to experience crisis, etc, without the GM having to take the part of the divinity and present those considerations to the player in some external, third party fashion. And so far from undermining realism, letting the player take the lead can be a foundation for vivid, compelling and realistic fiction.

As a result of this RPGing experience, and many others I've had since, I'm quite confident that similar considerations can apply in the play of a warlock PC, and that character's relationship to their patron and the patron's temptations, demands, etc.