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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We want a unique race, not a human or elf with lipstick painted on it.

Half elves are not “a unique race” they are a supposedly incredibly rare hybrid of two species.

Apart from Eberron, were they are a separate species, and miss-named. I would expect the Eberron so called “half elves” to be renamed and treated as the separate species they are.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This isn't about superpowers

Once you remove ASIs and any abilities that favour specific class choices, you are only left with more extreme special abilities to make a noticeable mechanical difference. You can see that in the new PHB lineup.

Take the new dwarf stone cutting. It’s a very minor superpower, but it’s still something no real world human could do.

 

[Maxperson]

Half elves are not “a unique race” they are a supposedly incredibly rare hybrid of two species.

Which = unique race. What do you call a hybrid race that is not human and is not elf? A unique combination of the two. No other race is like the half-elf.

 

[Maxperson]

Once you remove ASIs and any abilities that favour specific class choices, you are only left with more extreme special abilities to make a noticeable mechanical difference. You can see that in the new PHB lineup.

Take the new dwarf stone cutting. It’s a very minor superpower, but it’s still something no real world human could do.

If you're looking at the racials as super powers, then you are arguing for the removal of every racial ability from every race. Half-elven super powers that people want in order to power game would be the equal of the super powers of humans, dwarves, halflings, orcs, gnomes, dragonborn, etc. which they must also only want for power gaming.

Are you really arguing that there should only be "race" with no special abilities, and then you get to flavor it human, elf or whatever? Because that's what the argument for the removal of half-elven "super powers" equates to.

 

[Mistwell]

You are probably right about the reason. I hope you are wrong, and players quickly learn that they can create a wide variety of characters of any mixture without needing mechanical superpowers. Unfortunately, WotC are not very good at listening to their gut and often kowtow to loud unrepresentative members of the community. See: Psionics.

It's not mechanics (their mechanics were not that special). I said it wasn't mechanics and you never replied. I explained the text supporting the species in the setting, like culture and names and place in society, all those things are rules that matter too and new players will not and eventually cannot buy that material from the 2014 book. Please stop saying things like "superpowers" when that's a strawman. People didn't choose that race in BG3 because of mechanical superpowers either. They LIKE THE RACE overall. It's popular. The flavor resonates with people. And it's not an unrepresentative number who like that species. Again, it's the number 1 most popular species in that game, and that game has more players that D&D TTRPG. But that race was popular in this TTRPG too.

 

[Bagpuss]

Once you remove ASIs and any abilities that favour specific class choices

The root of the problem with the new approach to species.

 

[GobHag]

That seems overly harsh. I get you not liking or wanting it, but why have scorn for what someone else does with his friends in a house 1000 miles away if they are all having fun doing it?

Oh I'm not referring to tables played 'realistically'--I still hate it but won't yuck their yum*--I'm talking about rules design based on 'realism'. I'd rather have inventory points(You have 5 IP, spend 2 to pull out a a long length of rope) then think about encumbrance or 4e style Marks and just leave it unexplained on why is a Fighter's able to bother an archer 100 ft away from hitting the screaming barbarian on an open field even if the Fighter is in cover.

I'd rather have every robot be able to be damaged by poison than have a poisoner subclass feel bad when in a construct adventure.

*In front of them ofc, but this is a forum so we all yum and yuck each other's yuck and yum here.

 

[Mecheon]

It's not about the strength of their racial abilities, it's that they get them at all and those racials are a large part of what makes half-elves a unique race. We want a unique race, not a human or elf with lipstick painted on it.

And the reason they're not in is the weakness of their lore in the game's history and the generally Weirdness that "Yeah you're half an elf and half a human" is suppoed to be a regular and common enough thing that's regular as an adventurer that you exclude other races. I get it used to be humanocentric back in the day, and that's the type of thing half elves thrive in, but those days are long gone.

Half elves got dropped because their niche is too hard compressed smack dab between the human and elf niches, so WotC instead decided to bring in some things that have wider niches. Aasimar and goliaths, in being the far more widespread archetype of "got celestial blood" and "kind of like a giant but not too massive", are a lot more usuable and new game friendly than half elves. Its not a case there's something wrong with half elves, its simply that the alternatives are better suited to being "Here's a basic list of things you can play"

Which = unique race. What do you call a hybrid race that is not human and is not elf? A unique combination of the two. No other race is like the half-elf.

I call that "A question for a book down the line about more advance stuff, not the starting basic book" Heck, even Basic didn't do that, it just had humans, elves, dwarves and hobbits

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh I'm not referring to tables played 'realistically'--I still hate it but won't yuck their yum*--I'm talking about rules design based on 'realism'. I'd rather have inventory points(You have 5 IP, spend 2 to pull out a a long length of rope) then think about encumbrance or 4e style Marks and just leave it unexplained on why is a Fighter's able to bother an archer 100 ft away from hitting the screaming barbarian on an open field even if the Fighter is in cover.

I'd rather have every robot be able to be damaged by poison than have a poisoner subclass feel bad when in a construct adventure.

*In front of them ofc, but this is a forum so we all yum and yuck each other's yuck and yum here.

Have you considered either playing a game that better suits your preferences, or changing the rules to do so at your table?

 

[Bagpuss]

Oh I'm not referring to tables played 'realistically'--I still hate it but won't yuck their yum*--I'm talking about rules design based on 'realism'. I'd rather have inventory points(You have 5 IP, spend 2 to pull out a a long length of rope) then think about encumbrance or 4e style Marks and just leave it unexplained on why is a Fighter's able to bother an archer 100 ft away from hitting the screaming barbarian on an open field even if the Fighter is in cover.

The problem is rules design not based on at least some level of realism, it lacks verisimilitude and that makes it feel more like a game an less like a believable world your character is inhabiting.

Like the strongest Halflings being as strong as strongest Goliath or poisons damaging constructs.

I'd rather have every robot be able to be damaged by poison than have a poisoner subclass feel bad when in a construct adventure.

I think the move over recent years has been to pamper to a few players that would get upset about a situation like that (and I know a few) rather than the players that see that as a challenge and welcome the opportunity to try different strategies to overcome a different type of monster.

A few vocal players on the internet complain that their halfling isn't the mightiest fighter in the setting, so they get rid of racial stat adjustments, wreck verisimilitude and remove the challenge of playing a character against type from everyone else.