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.

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!

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.


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.
2Dec 2021.jpg
 

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Chaosmancer

Legend
I've already received this objection. Wanting each creator to voice their own creation isn't the only reason. Perhaps you should read below? Coordinate with your rhetorical teammate?

If two people raised the exact same objection to your point, then maybe it was an obvious objection to a poor point?
 

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Chaosmancer

Legend
I am sure a player could be just as capable of role-playing multiple characters, again with the right amount of time and practice. However, role-playing a single character is a lot easier than trying to role-play several characters, and this is true for both player (new and old) and the DM.

Right, so if we trace this conversation back we had that Players were not capable of RPing two characters, which we now acknowledge was false. Players and DMs are equally capable of RPing. Players and DMs are equally capable of caring about the setting and whatever else it is people declare that they care about.

So where-in lies the issue?

Also, the DM would have to do a lot to accommodate the extra characters in a given adventure. Most adventures in DM are built around a party of 4-8 players.

This has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. I'm not talking about expanding the party.

If a player wants to play a warlock and the warlock's patron, wouldn't the latter become a PC (and a high level one at that)?

No. Why would the Patron automatically become a PC?
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
You just told us about a slew of characters you invented for your PCs background. Since you came up with those NPCs and their motivations, would they become PCs by your definition if you started RPing them?

See, I can fire off binary targeted arguments to support my point too.

No they would not.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
Because the GM is not trying to immerse to the point of view of the NPC in the same way than the player is trying to immerse to the PC. Having to constantly jump between headspaces of several people is bad for immersion. And if there is a conflict or tension, playing both sides of it is not fun.

That is an argument from a specific approach. Not everyone immerses deeply into a POV. And not every scene that is RP'd are two beings or PoVs in conflict. So neither of these things necessarily prevents this from happening.

Like I don't get what is so controversial about this. RPGs are not solitaire, I'm not there to write fan fiction about my character, I'm there to play with other people, and that requires the GM to portray the NPCs and orchestrate conflict and challenges for the PCs. This is the bloody core structure of RPGs, and now people somehow are not getting it?

I absolutely get what the core structure of DnD is. However, "this is the most common way to play" does not mean "all other possible avenues are impossible and cannot be done."

A warlock player CAN write the motivations, schemes and attitudes of their patron. I would go as far as to say that, in my personal experience, it is only WHEN the warlock player engages at that level of writing the patron that the patron becomes a character that deeply impacts the story. Often warlocks who shrug and don't care... don't care. A warlock player also CAN Roleplay their patron. There are a lot of times when that might be appropriate. Possession, voices in their head, hallucinations, at least a dozen examples. Is that the default method of play? No, but that does not make it an impossible method of play, despite what people keep insisting.
 



Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
That is an argument from a specific approach. Not everyone immerses deeply into a POV. And not every scene that is RP'd are two beings or PoVs in conflict. So neither of these things necessarily prevents this from happening.



I absolutely get what the core structure of DnD is. However, "this is the most common way to play" does not mean "all other possible avenues are impossible and cannot be done."

A warlock player CAN write the motivations, schemes and attitudes of their patron. I would go as far as to say that, in my personal experience, it is only WHEN the warlock player engages at that level of writing the patron that the patron becomes a character that deeply impacts the story. Often warlocks who shrug and don't care... don't care. A warlock player also CAN Roleplay their patron. There are a lot of times when that might be appropriate. Possession, voices in their head, hallucinations, at least a dozen examples. Is that the default method of play? No, but that does not make it an impossible method of play, despite what people keep insisting.
Again, where are you getting anyone telling you what you want is impossible? Please show me. Otherwise, please take the hyperbole down a couple notches. I honestly don't know who it's helping.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
I know you're smart enough to understand that deals with devils are associated with more conflict than relationship with one's mother, even though we can imagine nice devils and difficult mothers. Pretending that this difference in implication doesn't exist is weird.

I'm sure Pemerton addressed a lot of these points, but I wanted to step in here and make a few points of my own.

The first being, not all deals are with Devils. I know you know this, but this really needs to be stated because of this insistence that the Warlock and their patron are antagonists. Maybe my patron is a Fey Lord who took me as part of a deal and raised me as their child. Maybe my Patron is a Genie who I freed from captivity. Maybe my patron is a Celestial Dragon who has taken me on as their apprentice in the Celestial Bureaucracy. When discussing Warlocks as a class, we have to remember that warlocks are not bound to "I sold my soul to the devil for power". Sure, that was kind of the root inspiration, sort of, but it has grown to encompass a much wider range of situations.

Heck, even with Devils it isn't that cut and dry. There are dozens of ways to subvert the classic trope.

Because being beholden to the patron is part of the fiction of the class. Like having to follow the oath is part of paladin's, like upholding the tenets of their faith is cleric's. There can be exceptions, and not every character needs to be like that, but the classes do come with fiction, and that fiction will affect the narrative.

But you do not need to be beholden. You need to have made a Pact. Making a deal with an incomprehensible mass of energy (GOO) that you will give them your left eye in exchange for a sliver of their power. That is a pact, that makes a warlock, but in no way are you beholden to them.

I'm sure they are. But what exactly was the deal? I think it is weird that the class doesn't address this.


I have in no point said that the player couldn't be part of defining the initial parameters of the warlock/patron relationship, merely that it is regardless probably for the best if the GM plays the patron. And like you see here, conflict narrative is offered as an example here, yet there is no guidance of how to actually handle it.

My initial point was that patron and the pact are narratively a huge part of the warlock's story, yet there is next to no advice or guidance on how to actually handle it and what the pact actually means.

Well, I think that is largely because such advice is nearly impossible to actually give. A Warlock's "Pact" can be almost anything. A contract, a verbal agreement, a debt for a service (either way), stolen power, a whim, the concept is so broad that any sort of advice for it needs to be equally vague and broad... to the point where it is basically identical to any advice you could give about "how to handle a NPC from a character's backstory"
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I'm sure Pemerton addressed a lot of these points, but I wanted to step in here and make a few points of my own.

The first being, not all deals are with Devils. I know you know this, but this really needs to be stated because of this insistence that the Warlock and their patron are antagonists. Maybe my patron is a Fey Lord who took me as part of a deal and raised me as their child. Maybe my Patron is a Genie who I freed from captivity. Maybe my patron is a Celestial Dragon who has taken me on as their apprentice in the Celestial Bureaucracy. When discussing Warlocks as a class, we have to remember that warlocks are not bound to "I sold my soul to the devil for power". Sure, that was kind of the root inspiration, sort of, but it has grown to encompass a much wider range of situations.

Heck, even with Devils it isn't that cut and dry. There are dozens of ways to subvert the classic trope.



But you do not need to be beholden. You need to have made a Pact. Making a deal with an incomprehensible mass of energy (GOO) that you will give them your left eye in exchange for a sliver of their power. That is a pact, that makes a warlock, but in no way are you beholden to them.



Well, I think that is largely because such advice is nearly impossible to actually give. A Warlock's "Pact" can be almost anything. A contract, a verbal agreement, a debt for a service (either way), stolen power, a whim, the concept is so broad that any sort of advice for it needs to be equally vague and broad... to the point where it is basically identical to any advice you could give about "how to handle a NPC from a character's backstory"
Except every pact gives the PC power they would not otherwise have, which means the patron was in a position to provide such power. That is a built-in disparity at the very least.
 


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