Summary
Dungeons & Dragonsis currently in a very weird transitional state. The 2024Player’s Handbookmarks the first major revision to the fifth edition rules established in 2014’s core rulebooks, but it’s not sweeping things aside in favor of a new edition or even taking up a 5.5e mantle like 3.5e did. Fifth edition has been hugely popular, and publisherWizards of the Coast is promising that the newPlayer’s Handbookwill maintain backward compatibilitywith all the adventures released over the past decade of play.
It’s a nice sentiment, but I’ve never been convinced that it would be that simple. With a copy ofDnD’s 2024Player’s Handbooknow in my hands (well, digitally), I’m more skeptical than ever. It’s true that the book doesn’t overhaul things to a degree that would completely break the system, and anyone familiar with the rules from 2014 shouldn’t have much trouble adjusting to the changes. When all is said and done, however,it doesn’t feel like slotting into the same place that the 2014Player’s Handbookdid is the new book’s highest priority.
D&D: I Wish I Could Show You My Favorite Thing About The 2024 Player’s Handbook
There’s a lot of exciting stuff to talk about in the new Player’s Handbook, but sometimes showing is better than telling, and I wish I had that power.
D&D’s 2024 Player’s Handbook Changes The Balance
Characters Are More Powerful Across The Board
One of the most-talked about aspects ofDnD’s 2024Player’s Handbookis how it addresses traditionallyunderpowered classes like the Monk and Ranger, but the new book’s approach to balance goes a lot farther than just buffing classes that lagged behind.Everyone has at least a little something to be excited about, whether that’s an interesting new feature or a tweak to something that was previously hard to use. There are a lot of changes that affect multiple classes as well, like reworked spells and feats that are often more powerful or require less to use than previous iterations did.
I completely understand why the 2024Player’s Handbookis taking this approach, and I’m not immune to its charms. The first thing I did upon getting the book was check out how some classes I was interested in fared, skipping over the new introductory material to revisit later.Buffs are exciting, and tweaking every class upward to varying degrees in an attempt to maintain balance makes everyone happierthan buffing some and nerfing others would. If players saw new versions of their classes that felt like downgrades or even sidegrades, they wouldn’t be as motivated to embrace the new rules.
Which D&D Subclass Has Been Changed The Most For The 2024 Player’s Handbook Revealed By Jeremy Crawford
During GenCon this year, Jeremy Crawford has revealed which D&D subclass has been redesigned the most extensively for the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
When backward compatibility is part of the equation, however,even minor boosts in power can threaten the maintenance of a decade-old ecosystem. Counting bothfull-lengthDnDcampaign booksand anthologies, over 20 substantial adventures have been released for fifth edition play, to say nothing of various smaller modules from starter sets, promotions, and more. All of these books were designed with 2014 characters in mind (or alternate options from books likeTasha’s Cauldron of Everythingthat built on top of that framework), and they’re about to get hit with characters that are more powerful than ever before.
Balance In Dungeons & Dragons Is A Tricky Subject
There’s Certainly Some Room For Leeway
I don’t want to make a mountain out of what’s maybe a mid-sized hill, becausebalance inDnD5e has always been a fairly loose concept. Running a campaign with three adventurers is very different from running it with five, and campaigns could be erratic in their difficulty to begin with. Some are intentionally designed to be more challenging gauntlets, while others that aren’t particularly threatening can feature random difficulty spikes. Taking the median of all this mess still results in a rough approximation of 2014 power levels, however, not 2024 ones.
Community fixes or tips for campaigns with inconsistent difficulty can typically be found online, so coming up with original reworks isn’t always necessary when things don’t feel quite right.
The biggest argument to make for the idea that this doesn’t really matter is thatDnD5e is fundamentally heroic fantasy, where heroes should feel powerful and capable of consistently triumphing over foes. Over time, a larger percentage of theDnDcommunity has skewed toward telling character stories over long stretches of time, and losing those characters in grueling dungeon crawls can be disappointing. My players tend to fall more in line with this ideal, and I tend to present them with challenges that they can consistently overcome without casualties as long as they make smart decisions.
D&D’s 2024 Player’s Handbook Fixes One Of The Least Useful Subclass Features
Some D&D subclass features get used a lot more often than others, but an adjustment to one in the 2024 Player’s Handbook should give it a big leg up.
Even so, I feel like the largely minor buffs in the newPlayer’s Handbookcould sometimes snowball into making challenges a bit too trivial. The party gains a good chunk of control over the action economy, with changes like more powerful bonus actions andmore opportunities to recharge expendable abilitiesgiving everyone more opportunities to steer the course of combat. Feeling like fights don’t present genuine threats is likely to bore even a party that’s intent on keeping every character alive, and DMs might need to make more tweaks to published campaigns to avoid this sensation.
The 2025 Monster Manual Could Rebalance D&D
2025 Will Bring Some Additional Answers
There’s still one big unknown, which is how the new balance might be affected by theMonster Manualthat’s coming in February 2025.Wizards of the Coast has made the same promises of backward compatibility for the 2025Monster Manual, but I don’t necessarily know what that means. Although the new monster tweaks are meant to make them more interesting rather than harder, if they end up just a bit more powerful in a way that matches the party, balance might be restored. If they truly are the same level of challenge as before, it won’t fix much of anything.
D&D’s New Monster Manual Will Have “Over 500 Monsters” In First Look At The Upcoming Rulebook
The 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual will be a lot bigger than the 2014 one, and it’s aiming to do more than just throw new foes into the mix.
Challenge level is only really one aspect of how tricky backward compatibility is with the 2024Player’s Handbook, as attempting to pull in subclasses, spells, and more that have appeared in past books can complicate things even more. Seasoned DMs shouldn’t have much trouble navigating these challenges as they come, and I’m not too concerned about how an adventure I’m planning with the new rules will fare. The 2024Player’s Handbookis supposed to makeDungeons & Dragonsless confusing than ever, however, and although I think that’s largely true, backward compatibility certainly isn’t that simple.
Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons and Dragons is a popular tabletop game originally invented in 1974 by Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson. The fantasy role-playing game brings together players for a campaign with various components, including abilities, races, character classes, monsters, and treasures. The game has drastically expanded since the ’70s, with numerous updated box sets and expansions.
