The Revised Player’s Handbook for 5E and its Future

In assessing the revised DMG and MM, I’ve overall been positive. Not so for the 2024 Player’s Handbook. D&D will be fine, but this PH is not what I desired.

Understanding the Challenge

I write this post with a lot of respect for the design team. I will speak in another blog post about the why of 2024, but the team had an incredibly hard task in revising the 2014 edition of 5E. Aside from anyone’s personal preference – and I say this as a big 4E fan – it is hard to argue against 5E being the finest edition of D&D.

The easy thing, and I still contend it was the best option, would have been to release a 2024 50^th anniversary edition set of core books. Add new classic art and revise just those portions of 2014 that were commonly held to have needed work. Then begin work on either 6E or a bigger revision, with the time to do it right, with actual playtesting (more on that, next time).

Imagine you are the D&D team, facing this challenge. You are told to change everything, even the parts people love and that need no change at all. An excellent 2014 class like the Rogue has to be changed, just as much as the Monk. Every word. Every rule, every subsystem. Everything has to change, so as to prove its value. It’s also worth noting that with more than half of D&D players having started with 5E, this is their first edition change ever. And, because new editions result in old products no longer selling, 2024 has to be fully compatible. And because a fully compatible revision means you don’t actually have to buy it, the book has to both change everything and offer something new that feels major, so you will buy it.

Marketing touts each book as being the biggest ever, again, to prove value. I haven’t checked the MM, but the 2024 DMG and PH each have fewer words than their 2014 counterparts. We get larger font and more art, but when it comes to words, we are told we get more and we get less.

The Art and Fantasy Level

New Audiences

Speaking of 4E, I liked it a lot. And yet, I admire what 2014 did differently. There were clear goals to speak equally to new players and those of all previous editions. There was a deliberate attempt to harness the best rules from 4E, but to move away from its fantastic and almost super-heroic feel. This was a brilliant decision, maximizing the appeal of 5E. The massive growth of D&D was a huge financial success. 2024 should want to continue that, right?

In some ways, it really does. My favorite part of the 2024 PH is Chapter 1: Playing the Game. The book jumps right into teaching the basics of the game succinctly and clearly. The new format where we see an example of in-game dialogue, and next to it is an explanation for the reader? Superb. The term “D20 Test” is also an excellent way to be more concise and easier to learn.

But in other cases, 2024 is tougher on the new player. Classes really could have used some simplification. The number of features even at level four can be a lot for a casual or new player. 2024 doesn’t simplify classes and instead adds a feat at level one and a more cumbersome Character Origin process, requiring analyzing backgrounds for the right intersection of ability score improvements, feat, and proficiencies. Even when I try to create a quick character, I find this to take a long time and to generally be a frustrating experience. One of the playtest versions had emphasized creating your own background, but the final version of 2024 relegates that to the DMG.

The intent appears to have been to create engagement. The idea is that if you have fun features for your level one character, then you want to master them and use them and keep playing. I can understand that line of thinking, but it doesn’t match the majority of new players I see (and I see more than a thousand new players each year at conventions I help organize). Most new players already found 2014 level 1 characters to be a bit complex – especially spellcasters. I’ve never had a new player tell me they wished their 2014 character was more complex. I would have liked to have seen a level 1 with fewer features, no feats, and no weapon masteries. Then, for those additions to come in at level 3, and for level 3 to be where expert players are encouraged to start. D&D sees too few groups reach level 20 anyway. If the first two levels had been easier, that would my job easier at getting new players to fall in love with the game. It would also appeal to folks who like a faster or more streamlined game, and we see a fair amount of interest in that these days.

At the Winter Fantasy convention this year I watched even experienced players forget to use the features on their high-level characters. I myself struggled with my bard’s nearly endless bonus action options, as well as my many triggered abilities. I kept writing new cheat-sheets to run my character and it was work to both run my character well and do all the stuff I wanted to do (roleplay, support other PCs, engage with the DM, take in the terrain, etc.).

Additions and Subtractions

Weapon Masteries are the new shiny thing. I was in the crowd at the D&D Summit when WotC first announced them. The appeal was massive, and this audience had moments earlier been incredibly angry. Weapon Masteries are candy, and folks eat it up. Both casual and experienced players really liked the concept, and plenty continue to like it after trying it. For me, the candy is a bit too present. Too many Masteries across too many classes, being used every single round, with too great an effect. It can be fun, but it can also be too much (especially juggling weapons to constantly change which Mastery you are using in a round). I would rather there have been a tradeoff, and I don’t really want more things to do in a round, since I generally want players to come up with interesting ideas (jump on the monster’s back, topple the pillar, convince it to join them, etc.). Having too many features locks up player brains and keeps them from seeing other more open approaches to the scene at hand. Your experience may differ and that’s great.

More art, bigger font, fewer words, new Weapon Masteries… something had to go. One of those was Downtime. At the D&D Summit designers had said that Tasha’s and Xanathar’s would be reprinted because those books had so much good stuff that was being brought into the core books. Clearly, plans changed. Very little from those books ended up fitting into the new books. Downtime, which was so good in Xanathar’s, is gone. Instead, we get a serviceable but uninteresting crafting system. The system zeroes in on crafting stuff players want, with very little story and no complications or interesting results. Buying a magic item that turns out to be stolen from a rival? Amazing. Crafting a magic item requiring harvesting something form a strange creature? Awesome. All gone now.

Imagine if the 2024 PH had pulled in Xanathar’s rules for determining character backstory and life events, random encounters by terrain, complex traps, and of course, downtime and rivals. And from Tasha’s, Group Patrons, Puzzle advice, and Sidekicks. Sidekicks in particular seem to be such a great idea for enabling DMs to more easily run games for one or two players.

Rules Changes and the Glossary

Rules in some cases are worded more clearly. But this was generally fine in 2014. The few exceptions, such as hiding, have not improved. This is worsened by what at first seemed a great idea: a rules glossary. This runs into the reality of too little space, resulting in some rules being in Chapter One, some being in the glossary, and every now and then a rule being somewhere else. For example, if you read the section on Tools, in Chapter 6, you might think that the DCs listed for each tool (such as DC 15 for picking a lock) are fixed. The general wording at the start of the section sure sounds that way. But if you look in Chapter One, you might find the phrase, “The rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them.” (And if you check out the DCs in the Door section of the DMG, you will find lock DCs can scale by lock quality and this section also fails to tell us whether a DM must use these DCs and only these DCs.)

The glossary is also a problem with Hiding. Hiding comes up because some players will want their character to stay out of trouble, yet always attack. “Can my rogue peer around the door from hiding, attack with advantage, then duck back behind… and, you know, do this in every combat for ever?” Some DMs will say yes, some will say no, and it sure would be great if there was any guidance on this. 2024 manages to be even more confusing on stealth and hiding than 2014 by assigning an Invisible condition that seems not to represent actually being invisible and ends if any enemy finds you. There are other problems too. Stealth is just one example, but in general I don’t find the glossary to be a net positive.

I won’t dwell on the Travesty of Too Much Capitalization, but I will say that I find the gathering of skills into the Search, Study, and Influence actions to be well intended but a hindrance to play. It’s a sound design concept, but one that ultimately gets in the way. Ideally, I want players to use real language (“I look around for clues”) and I want to be the one to decide when using a skill takes an action. 2024 bakes in these skills being an Action, including through features like Feats, forcing a DM’s hand. In play, there are times when I just want to give out information or encourage interacting with NPCs or the environment, even during combat. This is a big negative for me, especially when teaching new players. (Also, the rules impose particular DCs, but those default DCs really limit play and don’t scale well.)

In places, the revisions don’t go far enough. Exhaustion was a problem before, but it isn’t sufficiently improved. The core problem, of becoming too large a penalty too quickly, remains. We can’t use Exhaustion as something a monster inflicts, and a trek through wilderness inflicts, and something a spell causes. The condition is doing too much work and generally falls short for most uses as a result. In a wilderness trek, you are better off as DM coming up with a unique mechanic than using Exhaustion as written.

The Test of Time

When I first looked at the Player’s Handbook for 2024, I really couldn’t come to grips with it. Instead of a full review, I did a question and answer session. The 2024 DMG and MM have issues, as I’ve already covered, but they also seemed to understand the key challenges (make monsters tougher, especially at high CRs; make a DMG DMs are more likely to read and use at the table). The challenge in revising the PH should have been to improve on 5E’s already excellent play. As I spend more time with the PH, I find it does the opposite: it gets in the way of the flow of the game. It can stymie good storytelling, set up incorrect assumptions about the nature of play, and intrude on a scene rather than further it.

I am confident that the 2024 edition of D&D will continue to be fun to play. I’ve enjoyed my games so far. But I am having fun in spite of the PH instead of because of it. I suspect (and will be happy to be wrong) that we will look back on the 2024 PH as taking a step back compared to the advances of 2014. This is the one book that has me already wanting a PH revision, if not a completely new 6E.