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.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem.

And you aren't just not part of the solution. You are trying to prevent the problem (of rules encouraging bad behaviour from DMs - which leads to players responding in kind) from being solved.

And if you had rules that said “you are only allowed to give shocks under these rules” people would have bent the rules to give the shocks.

A few would. Most needed to be encouraged to give the shocks by the experimenter. And would have stopped without the direct cajoling of the experimenter. These are not the same.

Great lawmakers have tried to come up with a perfect set of rules that cannot be twisted for thousands of years, and have not been able to solve it. A bunch of game developers aren’t going to do better.

There is no perfect set of rules. No one thinks there is. The goal is to not have rules that make people worse. You are trying to fight this by claiming that because there isn't a perfect set of rules you can't get better rules than the ones that tell the DM to be a jerk. Any arguments you make about perfect rules are pure 100% strawman.

Perfection isn't possible any more than a frictionless environment under normal condition is. But that doesn't mean that we should therefore ignore permanently sticky tar being poured all over the surface just because perfection in terms of reducing friction is unattainable.

 

[Oofta]

Absolutely missing the point. A rule which tells someone to do bad things to people will be followed by most neutral people because that's what the rules and authority are saying. See for example the Milgeam Experiment or the original Stanford Prison Experiment.

Bad rules and bad authority will both twist ordinary people into doing and justifying bad things. Most people aren't pure good or pure bad.

Since this is theoretically a thread dedicated to the 2024 PHB what rule in the current version of D&D, exactly, tells someone to do bad things to people?

If there is no such rule, why are we having this discussion yet again?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Since this is theoretically a thread dedicated to the 2024 PHB what rule in the current version of D&D, exactly, tells someone to do bad things to people?

If there is no such rule, why are we having this discussion yet again?

In the 2024 PHB there isn't. In previous PHBs there have been. Fortunately D&D 2024 has, despite the objections of some, left them behind. For some reason people seem to think that this is a problem rather than a vast improvement.

 

[Oofta]

In the 2024 PHB there isn't. In previous PHBs there have been. Fortunately D&D 2024 has, despite the objections of some, left them behind. For some reason people seem to think that this is a problem rather than a vast improvement.

Since this is explicitly a thread about the 2024 PHB, then why have this conversation here?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Since this is explicitly a thread about the 2024 PHB, then why have this conversation here?

Go ask @Alzrius (or possibly Emerikol although he's currently banned for politics). He was the one who decided that it was worth writing as criticism. Meanwhile I don't think that advocating of bad DMing practice that leads to people creating the sort of problem players they complain about should go unchallenged.

And who made you the thread police anyway? Why do you think that this is a conversation worth having?

 

[Alzrius]

Go ask @Alzrius (or possibly Emerikol although he's currently banned for politics). He was the one who decided that it was worth writing as criticism.

I think it's more salient to note how that particular tangent (which I didn't originate) had subsequently died down, at least until you decided to resurrect it and have since kept it going quite vigorously.

 

[pemerton]

I am not dismissing the idea of them. I am suggesting that they are a predictable consequence of bad, overbearing DMing. And that we should treat the cause (bad DMing) not the symptom (players fighting for breathing room).

<snip>

I've seen about as many toxic DMs as toxic players in absolute terms so think the proportion is way higher

I think there's a possible relationship between this point, and the "Do you get bored when you're a player" thread.

I mean, if so many people who sometimes/often GM get bored playing RPGs, maybe some of the people they're GMing for get bored too. In which case the solution seems to be to find ways to reduce the boredom!

Or it has been a reaction to DMing practices you do not consider toxic that actually are. Remember that it's much harder to fire a DM for toxicity than it is a player

I agree with the first of these two sentences. I'm less sure about the second - and to the extent that it is true, I think players should be more assertive.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think there's a possible relationship between this point, and the "Do you get bored when you're a player" thread.

I mean, if so many people who sometimes/often GM get bored playing RPGs, maybe some of the people they're GMing for get bored too. In which case the solution seems to be to find ways to reduce the boredom!

I know in my case I try to be the DM I wish I had as a player. Which includes learning from all the excellent DMs I've had (and there have been a few) and getting frustrated when the DM doesn't provide the sort of hooks I do when DMing.

I also know I'm less good at being the player I wish I had as a DM than I am the DM I wish I had as a player. Partly because there's a wide range of players I like.

I agree with the first of these two sentences. I'm less sure about the second - and to the extent that it is true, I think players should be more assertive.

I'm absolutely certain it's true. You can continue the campaign without a player. You can't without the DM. How true it is is table specific but it always has at least some truth.

 

[Oofta]

Go ask @Alzrius (or possibly Emerikol although he's currently banned for politics). He was the one who decided that it was worth writing as criticism. Meanwhile I don't think that advocating of bad DMing practice that leads to people creating the sort of problem players they complain about should go unchallenged.

And who made you the thread police anyway? Why do you think that this is a conversation worth having?

If I thought the thread police were necessary I would have reported, not responded.

I've been more or less ignoring this thread since it got sidetracked into issues like this that have nothing to do with the 2024 PHB. So I thought I may have missed something.

But honestly? I don't recall any rules that encouraged bad behavior for any WotC edition. Long ago there was horrible advice on how CN alignment was basically "Play an a-hole that nobody would want in the party." Of course there was wonderful advice from Gygax that instead of talking to your players and discussing issues you should teach them a lesson by punishing their PCs.

But those issues were long ago in an edition far far away AFAIK. So I was wondering if there was anything in the rules of the current edition that caused concern.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But honestly? I don't recall any rules that encouraged bad behavior for any WotC edition. Long ago there was horrible advice on how CN alignment was basically "Play an a-hole that nobody would want in the party."

Paladin falling rules were the main one. I also recall that both 3.0 and 3.5 had a few pointed notes in the CN alignment description including something like "he is not just as likely to cross a bridge as jump off it".