D&D 5E (2024) Take A Deeper Look At The New D&D Starter Set's Card-Based Characters

Heroes of the Borderlands, the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 2024 starter set due out in September, was on display at New York Toy Fair, and the YouTube channel Otakus & Geeks were given a brief demo. The way the cards, standees, and maps are presented it looks like they took some inspiration from 1989's boardgame HeroQuest!

• Character creation is card-based.
• Each player has a 'class board', such Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Warrior (it's not clear if the demonstrator misspoke and meant to say Rogue or not).
• Then you pick a species card and a background card and place them on your class board.
• Those components the tell you what equipment or spell cards to also pick up--for example, the Fighter takes the cards for chainmail. greatsword, a lantern, and one additional item.
• The class board and the equipment cards tell the players what dice to roll for attacks, etc.

• The DM has a small, 10-page guide.
• There's a big battlemap for each of the three main areas (presumably Keep, Caves, and Wilderness?), and a booklet for each.
• Monsters have tokens and corresponding monster cards for the DM.

 

[BruceWright]

Both of these things already exist.

I have not yet found them. For example, i purchased the 2014 DMG on DNDBeyond. I would like to print the Immovable Rod as a nice Magic The Gathering-esque card with art and flavor one side and mechanics and rules on the back. Since I purchased it, i would like to print two, one for each of the groups i DM for.

 

[Stormonu]

TSR tried doing random trading cards back in the 90's (it had NPCs, monsters, items and the like in it). It didn't do so well back then, and I doubt it would again.

As for cards covering things like the Rod of Lordly Might, take a look at The Deck Of Many's products. They probably have one that covers what you're looking for.

 

[Metroido]

I have not yet found them. For example, i purchased the 2014 DMG on DNDBeyond. I would like to print the Immovable Rod as a nice Magic The Gathering-esque card with art and flavor one side and mechanics and rules on the back. Since I purchased it, i would like to print two, one for each of the groups i DM for.

Here, these, and many other similar sets have been around for many, many years:

https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Spellbook-Cards-Accessory/dp/078696670X?ref_=ast_sto_dp

 

[Parmandur]

I have not yet found them. For example, i purchased the 2014 DMG on DNDBeyond. I would like to print the Immovable Rod as a nice Magic The Gathering-esque card with art and flavor one side and mechanics and rules on the back. Since I purchased it, i would like to print two, one for each of the groups i DM for.

Right here, official and everything:

https://a.co/d/j0JJXbo

 

[beaumontsebos]

How so...? They quite literally streamlined the process.

Feats. Weapon Master stuff. Choosing where to put ability bonuses. More choice is great for experienced players. Not so much for newbies.

If the process was so streamlined now, they wouldn't have felt the need to further simplify it in this starter set.

To be clear, I like more choice, personally. Not crapping on 5E 2024. But, in my view, character creation is more complex.

 

[Stormonu]

Right here, official and everything:

https://a.co/d/j0JJXbo

I didn't realize that set had artifacts in it!

 

[Parmandur]

Feats. Weapon Master stuff. Choosing where to put ability bonuses. More choice is great for experienced players. Not so much for newbies.

If the process was so streamlined now, they wouldn't have felt the need to further simplify it in this starter set.

To be clear, I like more choice, personally. Not crapping on 5E 2024. But, in my view, character creation is more complex.

Feat is part of a package in Backgrounds.

 

[Lazybones]

In terms of character building for new players in 2024, I noticed that they removed the "Quick Build" sections from the class descriptions, but there are still recommendations for many of the choices that a new player will need to make (e.g., a caster's spell selections, a fighting style feat, etc.). They have also added new guidance for new players, such as how to build a balanced party (with recommended substitutions for standard archetypes) and recommended standard ability score arrays for all of the classes. I like the new table that lays out how complex each of the classes is, another aid for newer players.

Personally I think the new order of class-origin-scores is a little more intuitive, but I realize that's subjective. I think I would have an easier time teaching a new player how to build a character using the 2024 PH than the 2014 one.

 

[Uta-napishti]

Some thoughts on (what we know about) the new starter set:

• Cards: Putting together characters from cards is brilliant. It seems like a way to really speed things up as it avoids copying things onto a character sheet and avoids pages of character options in a rulebook. The cards that make up your character sheet ARE THE LIST of character options, just pick one.
• Art: I wonder what art will be included to portray the character. Will there be representative art on the the species card or the class card, or as a separate stack of portraits to pick from? The biggest missed opportunity with past WotC pregens has been the lack of evocative art that could show a new player at a glance what a given character is like. If players are making their own characters, rather than picking from a few pregens, providing art is even more difficult. For a full sized PHB, you can't have a card with art for every possible combination of male/female gender, class and species (12x10x2 = 240 ) BUT for a starter set with limited species and classes, it just might work ( 4x4x2 = 32). I will be keen to see which way they go tackling this problem.
• Board Game-ish: Great choice to have maps, tokens etc and make getting into being a GM or roleplayer as much like learning a nice board game as possible.
• Price: HOWEVER, All the different printed material makes me scared this will be expensive and the starter set will be outside of impulse-buy territory for the first time in 5E.
• Translations: The multitude of different cards, formats etc, also makes me scared it will be offered in only english, or with quite a delay in other languages.

 

[beaumontsebos]

Feat is part of a package in Backgrounds.

Correct.