D&D Fans Rejoice: WotC Releases the 5th Edition Player’s Handbook Tomorrow! (EN World's Review; Part 1)
The long wait is finally over, and the diehard fans will finally have their first tangible experience this week with the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons: buying their own shiny Player’s Handbook!
Today, Friday August 8th, select retailers across the country will be receiving advanced copies of the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook as a reward for their participation in the Wizards of the Coast Play Network. And while the book is scheduled to be released on August 19th to the remaining hobby stores and online booksellers, Wizards of the Coast was kind enough to rush an advance copies to EN World! This is Part 1 of a 2-part review dealing wiht the first half of the Player's Handbook; you can find the second part here. A review of the hardcover adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen will also come separately.
There has been plenty of speculation on the web regarding this new D&D Player's Handbook, all intermixed with tantalizing glimpses of pages released for the D&D fans to examine. But the real question on everyone's mind has to be...
...just what wonders lurk between the covers of this quintessential rule book of the new Dungeons & Dragons?
D&D Player’s Handbook (5th Edition)
The D&D Player’s Handbook is the first hardbound book released of the new 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. The D&D Player’s Handbook contains all the essential rules and content needed for players to be able to create their characters and participating in the game. The book contains nine races and twelve classes for players to select from when making a character, and include rules for leveling, multi-classing, and building a character’s personality and background. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook contains a wide range of equipment and gear to outfit adventurers, including armor, weapons, tools, and more – even mounts and other vehicles. The book covers all the rules for game mechanics, combat, and adventuring, as well as providing a library of spells which can be used by several of the character classes. Finally, the Player’s Handbook has Appendices covering the Pantheons of the gods, the planes of existence, a selection of common monsters, and more.
Production Quality
The production quality of the Player’s Handbook is downright jaw-dropping. It's a stunningly gorgeous book – everything a bibliophile gamer wants in a new sourcebook. Given the previous body of works published by Wizards of the Coast, this new Player’s Handbook might well be one of the most impressive releases to date. The writing is exceptional, which one would expect given the caliber of game designers participating in the creation of this rulebook, and the layout is not merely easy to use but artful in the way it presents the contents. The book possesses both a table of contents and an index for ease of reference, and there is a nifty blank character sheet on the last pages for reproduction and use during play.
Physically, the new Player’s Handbook is a hefty tome at around two and a half pounds. Its binding is quite sturdy and the cover panels are heavy enough to let the book lay open on the table on almost every page. The covers are glossy and quite slick, with full color art on front and back, and possess heavy duty black endpapers. The inner pages themselves have a slick feel to them and are of decent weight, easily riffled through and tactilely pleasing overall. All the pages have a faint parchment shade hue, which allows the charts to stand out by contrast in stark white and faint mint green.
But it is the illustrations and artwork that truly elevates the Player’s Handbook from a mere rulebook to the pride of any gamers’ library. Clearly, WotC’s art directors devoted some very serious time and effort in their gathering the dozens of skilled artists who produced artwork for this book. The cover art depicting characters battling a horrendous fire giant is just a tantalizing taste of the eye-candy waiting inside the book. While leafing through the Player’s Handbook, the Reader might well feel as though nearly every page has some kind of illustration on it – and that’s very nearly true! It’s definitely a lot of artwork, and each chapter is divided off by a full page art piece as a demarcation.
The overall effect of the production quality is pure enticement and attractiveness. After all, when you’re offering a PDF version of your game for free online, the hardbound book in the retail store had better be amazing if you want to move it off the shelves!
Everything a player needs…
The front cover of the new D&D Player’s Handbook touts these words:
Due to time constraints imposed by the hour of the receipt of the review copy and the deadline for the review post itself, this review will cover the first half of the Player’s Handbook – which is conveniently divided into sections and Part 1 covers the first half almost to the page. The first half covers character creation while the second half deals with rule mechanics, combat, adventuring, and the spell lists and descriptions.
Part 1 of the Player’s Handbook is divided into six chapters following an introduction section. The Introduction has been reprinted elsewhere, and covers the generalities of playing a roleplaying game - the sort of the ubiquitous “boiler plate” necessary to start almost any roleplaying game book.
Chapter 1 is a short section outlining six steps to create a D&D character – general concepts about choosing a race and class, rolling up ability scores, and outfitting the character. The designers even include an example, "Building Breunor", at each step of the way. This overview is covered very nicely in a few pages, and even includes basic information on leveling.
Races are covered in Chapter 2 and there are nine presented in the Player’s Handbook – seventeen if you include the demi-human sub-races and the nine human ethnicities. The designers include just about every popular racial type here - Dwarf (Hill, Mountain), Elf (High, Dark), Halfling (Lightfoot, Stout), Humans (Calishite, Chondathan, Damaran, Ulluskan, Mulan, Rashemi, Shou, Tethyrian, Turami), Dragonborn, Gnome (Forest, Rock), Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Tiefling. Of course, it’s interesting to note that the Humans ethnicities are Forgotten Realms based, the setting which has been stated as going to be the “official” core campaign world. Each of the racial entries is accompanied by a considerable amount of descriptive text about the particular race, with illustrations, potential names, racial traits, and sub-races. The content strikes presents each races’ game mechanic information, but surrounds it with plenty of character creation and roleplay material – a good very balance of “crunch” and “fluff”.
Chapter 3 delves into the Classes in 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and the Player’s Handbook presents an even dozen of them to choose from. The classes include the Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Each class section has a full write-up with both game mechanics and roleplaying inspiration mixed together, and include an advancement table up to Level 20 with the class features gained along the way. Each class also has a couple class options which further differentiate the character. For instance, the Bard class can choose between either the College of Lore or the College of Valor; Monks get to choose from three Monastic Traditions – the Ways of the Open Hand, Shadow, or Four Elements. Clerics are back to having Domains again and Wizards can specialize in Schools of magic. There is definitely a considerable number of ways to differentiate a character in this new edition of D&D, so that even two Fighters in the group need not be cast from the same mold.
Chapter 4 presents content to help players add Personality and Background to their heroes. There is both practical information like height/weight charts, alignment (back to nine), and language lists, as well as advice on crafting a personality for a character based upon traits and characteristics. There are also character Backgrounds listed here in the Player’s Handbook, and these cover some 13 common medieval fantasy tropes, such as a Criminal, Guild Artisan, Noble, and Sage.
Lists of Equipment and adventuring gear is offered in Chapter 5 – armor, weapons, clothing, delving gear, foodstuffs, mounts – everything a hero might ever need. Other considerations like money, donning armor, and container capacity are described here as well, plus there is a very cool list of 100 trinkets which might be used as a family heirloom or as an odd item found in a dungeon.
Finally, the last section of Part 1 covers Character Customization. In Chapter 6, the designers explore rules for multi-classing (ala 3.5 style) and feats, although the list is far from the massive pile presented in 3rd Edition. There are a little more than 40 feats presented in this Player’s Handbook – although in past editions that number has continued to expand constantly throughout the edition’s lifespan until it becomes unwieldy. It will be interesting to see if 5th Edition D&D follow the same track.
Initial Conclusions
Based upon the first half of the new D&D Player’s Handbook, this is quite an impressive game release. There are about 170 pages of character creation content - and that does not yet include the spell lists! On face value, without dissecting each class or race for mechanics balance, the characters that can be created with the D&D Player’s Handbook would seem to be quite diverse and with great potential for a unique feel play experience for every type.
Part 2 of this review of the D&D Player’s Handbook will cover the last half of the book and examine the combat mechanics and spells in this new edition. Check back for more information and a final rating for this Wizard of the Coast new release!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in hardbound format from which the review was written.
The long wait is finally over, and the diehard fans will finally have their first tangible experience this week with the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons: buying their own shiny Player’s Handbook!
Today, Friday August 8th, select retailers across the country will be receiving advanced copies of the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook as a reward for their participation in the Wizards of the Coast Play Network. And while the book is scheduled to be released on August 19th to the remaining hobby stores and online booksellers, Wizards of the Coast was kind enough to rush an advance copies to EN World! This is Part 1 of a 2-part review dealing wiht the first half of the Player's Handbook; you can find the second part here. A review of the hardcover adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen will also come separately.
...just what wonders lurk between the covers of this quintessential rule book of the new Dungeons & Dragons?
D&D Player’s Handbook (5th Edition)
- Lead Designers: Mike Mearls & Jeremy Crawford
- Designers: Rodney Thompson & Peter Lee (Rules Development); James Wyatt, Robert J. Schwalb, Bruce R. Cordell (writers)
- Cover Art: Tyler Jacobson
- Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
- Year: 2014
- Media: Hardbound (320 pages)
- Price: $49.99 (Available for pre-order on Amazon.com for $29.97)
The D&D Player’s Handbook is the first hardbound book released of the new 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. The D&D Player’s Handbook contains all the essential rules and content needed for players to be able to create their characters and participating in the game. The book contains nine races and twelve classes for players to select from when making a character, and include rules for leveling, multi-classing, and building a character’s personality and background. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook contains a wide range of equipment and gear to outfit adventurers, including armor, weapons, tools, and more – even mounts and other vehicles. The book covers all the rules for game mechanics, combat, and adventuring, as well as providing a library of spells which can be used by several of the character classes. Finally, the Player’s Handbook has Appendices covering the Pantheons of the gods, the planes of existence, a selection of common monsters, and more.
Production Quality
The production quality of the Player’s Handbook is downright jaw-dropping. It's a stunningly gorgeous book – everything a bibliophile gamer wants in a new sourcebook. Given the previous body of works published by Wizards of the Coast, this new Player’s Handbook might well be one of the most impressive releases to date. The writing is exceptional, which one would expect given the caliber of game designers participating in the creation of this rulebook, and the layout is not merely easy to use but artful in the way it presents the contents. The book possesses both a table of contents and an index for ease of reference, and there is a nifty blank character sheet on the last pages for reproduction and use during play.
Physically, the new Player’s Handbook is a hefty tome at around two and a half pounds. Its binding is quite sturdy and the cover panels are heavy enough to let the book lay open on the table on almost every page. The covers are glossy and quite slick, with full color art on front and back, and possess heavy duty black endpapers. The inner pages themselves have a slick feel to them and are of decent weight, easily riffled through and tactilely pleasing overall. All the pages have a faint parchment shade hue, which allows the charts to stand out by contrast in stark white and faint mint green.
The overall effect of the production quality is pure enticement and attractiveness. After all, when you’re offering a PDF version of your game for free online, the hardbound book in the retail store had better be amazing if you want to move it off the shelves!
Everything a player needs…
The front cover of the new D&D Player’s Handbook touts these words:
But there’s definitely more to this book than just the character creation section – that’s just the first half of the book. The other half contains all the rules for the game, participating in combats, casting spells, and all the other working parts of playing the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
Due to time constraints imposed by the hour of the receipt of the review copy and the deadline for the review post itself, this review will cover the first half of the Player’s Handbook – which is conveniently divided into sections and Part 1 covers the first half almost to the page. The first half covers character creation while the second half deals with rule mechanics, combat, adventuring, and the spell lists and descriptions.
Part 1 of the Player’s Handbook is divided into six chapters following an introduction section. The Introduction has been reprinted elsewhere, and covers the generalities of playing a roleplaying game - the sort of the ubiquitous “boiler plate” necessary to start almost any roleplaying game book.
Chapter 1 is a short section outlining six steps to create a D&D character – general concepts about choosing a race and class, rolling up ability scores, and outfitting the character. The designers even include an example, "Building Breunor", at each step of the way. This overview is covered very nicely in a few pages, and even includes basic information on leveling.
Chapter 4 presents content to help players add Personality and Background to their heroes. There is both practical information like height/weight charts, alignment (back to nine), and language lists, as well as advice on crafting a personality for a character based upon traits and characteristics. There are also character Backgrounds listed here in the Player’s Handbook, and these cover some 13 common medieval fantasy tropes, such as a Criminal, Guild Artisan, Noble, and Sage.
Finally, the last section of Part 1 covers Character Customization. In Chapter 6, the designers explore rules for multi-classing (ala 3.5 style) and feats, although the list is far from the massive pile presented in 3rd Edition. There are a little more than 40 feats presented in this Player’s Handbook – although in past editions that number has continued to expand constantly throughout the edition’s lifespan until it becomes unwieldy. It will be interesting to see if 5th Edition D&D follow the same track.
Initial Conclusions
Based upon the first half of the new D&D Player’s Handbook, this is quite an impressive game release. There are about 170 pages of character creation content - and that does not yet include the spell lists! On face value, without dissecting each class or race for mechanics balance, the characters that can be created with the D&D Player’s Handbook would seem to be quite diverse and with great potential for a unique feel play experience for every type.
Part 2 of this review of the D&D Player’s Handbook will cover the last half of the book and examine the combat mechanics and spells in this new edition. Check back for more information and a final rating for this Wizard of the Coast new release!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in hardbound format from which the review was written.
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