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.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Positive bias is just as much a thing as negative.

Sure.

It just doesn't get as much flack.

That is absolutely not true. The internet is practically fueled by outrage and negativity.

 

[mellored]

Both Chris and Colby have been unquestionably positive in their reviews. As others have posted here, that does not mean they are without criticisms.

And most of their criticism is "I wish they changed this too".

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

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.

So said 20 hours of video watching and then more than that of reading about it. That implies 20 hrs video plus 20+ hours of reading, or more than 40 hours. I am guessing from this response you didn’t mean you have spent over 20 hours reading about the new PHB, but that was how I understood your post. Regardless, 20+ hours dissecting the PHB without having the book is a ridiculous amount time to spend in 44 hours. Not sure whether to praise you or have you committed!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

ignore this I am slow.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think the biggest blunder they've made is that a lot of the changes, while I think they'd be popular in isolation, are going to slow down combat when added all together. Having the monsters make saving throws to avoid getting Toppled every single round and the various ways that PCs have of manipulating the action economy, doing more things with reactions, and getting attacks that don't cost an action come at a cost and that cost is handling time. It might be a cost worth paying, but I don't think that there's really broad awareness that this is going to be a cost that's going to have to be paid. Looking at polling data that each of these individual changes are popular in isolation and each only slow down combat by a tiny amount seems to have made them lose sight of the big picture that people are going to get annoying with combat dragging.

This isn't MY biggest problem with 5.5e, it's just the one that I think is going to create the biggest backlash when people start actually playing the rules instead of reading them. But I might be wrong, like I said I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside the target market these days due to having started with Basic way back in the day.

The trouble is, you are basing that opinion on reading the rules instead of playing it. Many of us here have been playing with those rules (using the UA playtest) and NONE of us have had that problem. I have YET to see anyone say "I've played with weapon masteries and the combat was a slog!" Not once.

I've seen a few people like yourself that "worry" that it "might" be. I don't mind the worrying, it's natural - but I do take small issue with it being treated like it's a foregone conclusion.

 

[Corinnguard]

I think that’s because according to someone who watched the video he went over the book page by page slowly

That might have been me. He did mention that you could stop his video anytime you want to get a better look at the rules. The video is an hour and a half long, but it took me longer to watch because there was so much to look at.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

At a guess, probably because they contain copyrighted artwork. Note that the actual text of the book can be freely posted and discussed, just not the pages themselves.

Probably because he signed a thing.

 

[mellored]

And yet his review, the least positive, is the one that's pulled. Hmm...

The video he showed every page of the book was taken down.

And he also has a full video complaining about how terrible WotC is as a company.

But his review of the book is still a lot more positive than negative. Here.

 

[ECMO3]

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

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.

It is only the same amount of reactions if the proportional split on Barbarians playing subclasses with reactions is equal, the opportunities to use a reaction are equal and the number of uses per day is equal. We know the second and third are not true and we have good reason to believe the first will not be true.

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

You can have 2 players from a single class. Someone asked me for examples of things that I think will cause more reactions in play. This is what that is.

The old ability also required a save for every enemy.

It is the fact that it undoes an attack that otherwise hit that will be frustrating for me (and I think for many).

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

I don't see it as a bad thing either. I said it would be frustrating for me as a DM. Those are not the same thing.

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

In 2024, yes every single player will have a feat at level 1 and a lot of them will have spells (and I suspect a proportionally large number of people will take the first level feat that gives you spells).

Such as?
Paladin Aura?

No not the Paladin Aura. Things like Lucky or Heroic Warrior.

 

[Mistwell]

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.



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



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/



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.

Here is both of them rating the new game together. Time stamp is in the video link directly: