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.

 

[Corinnguard]

Just so people know according to other people under NDA Nerd Immersion there are still a few sections that you can not show the creature stat blocks and the index. By showing a page by page shot of the book including the pages that they were still under an NDA for he has broken his NDA and was probably slapped with a cease order to pull down the video.

Last time I checked, the video is still on YouTube. But now you can only access it if you have a YouTube account.

As for what DnD Shorts did, a lot of people, including myself, have watched his review. That can't be undone. We have seen what's in the new PHB and it has influenced our decision to get or not to get it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

They're not out of passionate ideas now? What passionate ideas are currently being explored?

Chris Perkins was passionate about Spelljammer. Jeremy Crawford has appeared very passionate about the rule updates in all of his recent videos about the 2024 core books. I’m sure the people working on Planescape, Dragonlance, and the recent adventure compilations were passionate about their work. And, yes, some level of this public enthusiasm in their own work is performative to attract customers, but as a publisher freelancer for 5e, it is my experience that most people will passionately discuss their own works for more reasons than trying to get people to buy their products.

I know you’re one of the people that thinks Tasha’s ruined 5e, and therefore you consider basically everything after to be bland, corporate, passionless cash grabs, but it’s pretty ridiculous and offensive to the people that made the books to suggest that they’re passionless because you don’t like the recent rule and lore direction.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I somewhat agree with @Micah Sweet but with my own twist that the hobby seems to slowly but surely be losing the Tabletop portion of it the more digital tools and on online content become more prevalent.

This is somewhat inevitable given the times but table top will never die. Table top wargaming did not die. It was not replaced by either rpgs not Magic: The Gathering, despite the fears at the time. It will not completely die in the future but there is likely be more growth at the moment in the digital space than in the table top space.

 

[ECMO3]

Edit: just did the math and you just claimed to have spent over 40 hours digesting the 2024 phb information that had, at the time of your posting, been out only 44 hours. I tip my hat to you - that is some serious work! Maybe get a rest and look at this with fresh eyes!

I said 20 hours total, not 20 hours a day. I spent 5 hours listening to one video from D4 and about 6 hours listening to a bunch of Videos Treantmonk posted. Then I listened to DND shorts, a bit to some Dungeon Dudes videos, looked for and found a video from someone I never heard of showing all the backgrounds and researched what people reporting here, on reddit and on some discord servers I am on.

I also had time to squeeze in a game as DM for 3 hours last night.

 

[ECMO3]

Treantmonk says outright he's very positive

Can you provide the video and timestamp? I have not hear that. I have listened to a lot of his videos but I haven;t listened to one end-to-end.

I just went ahead and listened to the entire intro again from his embargo video (released August 1st) and I never heard him say he thought it was positive.

Treatmonk's report on spells that were not changed is one of the videos I saw that was negative.

D4 says outright he's very positive

I did not catch that. He reports things and is positive about a lot of it. I don't really think he is

There is no way to interpret Treantmonk and d4 as "neutral" when they tell you overall they are very positive. That's you spinning, not them. They're quite clear. Do you want me to link to each and quote their exact words?

I listened to the entire video from D4 and I would call it neutral. I don't remember him saying the rules were good or better or anything like that. He did say a lot of positive things about the classes he was reviewing, but to me that is different than saying/

YOU gave two.

None of the videos I listened to were objectively positive as far as I can tell.

Saying it over and over doesn't make it true.

 

[ECMO3]

Then you quoted three, two of which are unquestionably positive, an one of which said before he even got the material he was surprised they gave it to him since he hates WOTC so much!

IMO they were neutral.

Regardless this does not explain why you lied about what I said and claimed that I said "all the reviews are negative" when I said no such thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

IMO they were neutral.

Regardless this does not explain why you lied about what I said and claimed that I said "all the reviews are negative" when I said no such thing.

Positive bias is just as much a thing as negative. It just doesn't get as much flack.

 

[mellored]

You have another reaaction you can use when you can't or down't want to use Retaliation

You litterally can not have both a berserker reaction and a world tree reaction.

I don't know that only half the Barbarian subclasses have reactions. I only provided examples for half of them.

1 of 2 barbarian subclass in the 2014 PHB had reactions.
2 of 4 barbarian subclass in 2024 have reactions.

That's the same amount of reactions per barbarian player.

Not mutually exclusive, those are two different subclasses and it is not the same net reactions because they have more uses.

Again. You can't take 2 different subclasses from the same class.

The new ability requires enemies to save the first time every round they hit you and if they fail they miss you instead. When this is active it is going to be affecting every single enemy that attacks you and retroactively changing the outcome of that attack.

The old ability also required a save for every enemy.

In fact. This is less rolls because the attack simply misses instead of rerolling it against a new target.

consider there are going to be more players coming to the table with spells and feats too.

I don't see having more players as a bad thing.

And they always came to the table with spells and feats...

Some things do not require a reaction

Such as?
Paladin Aura?

 

[Corinnguard]

Positive bias is just as much a thing as negative. It just doesn't get as much flack.

Plus, negative bias apparently sells better than positive bias does because the former makes people curious enough to buy a product.

 

[Hatmatter]

Can you provide the video and timestamp? I have not hear that. I have listened to a lot of his videos but I haven;t listened to one end-to-end.

I can help Mistwell out here:

At 42:47 of the following Youtube review, both Chris and Colby, who host the channels Treantmonk's Temple and D4 Deep Dive respectively, rate the new Player's Handbook as having 4.5 stars out of a 5 star system that Chris creates:
Both Chris and Colby have been unquestionably positive in their reviews. As others have posted here, that does not mean they are without criticisms.