D&D 2024 Player's Handbook Walkthrough

There's now an unblurred version of this video available at:

Mike dives deep into the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook!

City of Arches Kickstarter!

Note, I blurred out pictures of the book after Hasbro sent me an email saying they worried people would take screenshots of the book and build their own. Yes, it's complete bullshit, but we must all do our part to ensure four billion dollar companies maximize shareholder value.

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Video Contents

00:00 Intro
01:58 Disclaimers
02:42 Big Thoughts Up Front
03:35 Should You Buy It?
05:55 What Do I Love?
10:11 What Do I Not Love?
15:25 No Cultures, Just Species
19:46 Other Things Not Fixed
22:26 On Compatibility
27:08 Things May Be in the DMG But I Wouldn't KNow
27:49 Good for New Players?
34:49 How's the Art?
36:11 The Best Improvement in D&D 2024
37:33 New Mechanical Language and "Utilize"
40:18 No Downtime
41:49 No Gods
43:11 Not Enough On Session Zeros and Safety Tools
46:06 Backgrounds and Character Optimization
50:48 I Love the Conjure Spells
53:10 Lucky
55:27 The Awesome Rules Glossary
57:41 Marching Order
58:04 What Your Character Would Do
58:45 Final Thoughts

[SlyFlourish]

After spending hours working on this video and doing my best to help share what this book looks like, Hasbro's D&D Creator Team Relations emailed me with new rules saying we weren't able to show more than 75% of the page on a two-page spread because they're worried people will take screenshots and stitch them together into a book.

Even though every other creator and publisher I've worked with *loves* me to show off their work, Hasbro only wants us to show it their way. It's a huge disappointment to me and I'm sorry to give you such a shitty video in response.

So yeah, I blurred the pages because lawyers are expensive and I don't want to take the whole video down.

By the way, did you know the Shadowdark RPG won four ENNIEs last night? Check it out!

[JefferyBlack]

I'm bummed to hear that the Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws are gone. I thought they were a nice way to help players, especially new ones, think about their character beyond the stats. It's easy enough to add them back in, but I enjoyed having them in the core of 2014.

[JonTullett]

"Has the prone condition" has to be from some rules lawyer who's day job is on Magic: The Gathering. It's the sort of language that's absolutely necessary for competition gaming where pedantic wording a) really matters in gameplay but b) has zero to do with roleplaying. They could have had it both ways by just adding "prone is described as a condition to fit the layout, and anything that makes you prone or knocks you prone should just be assumed to also apply the prone condition. Yes, wolves."

[Knopey]

There it is! The PHB 2024 walkthrough by Mike Shea, the only PHB 2024 walkthrough I trust!

[duhg]

10:11. I teach a summer school class in which kids learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons. This summer I used Shadowdark instead, and it made a huge difference.

We were able to jump into adventures more quickly, we were able to create new characters more quickly to replace dead characters, and because the mechanics were so simple the kids were able to devote more of their attention to the fantasy of the game than to the mechanics. And they loved it.

In comparison, teaching 5E is much more taxing and time-consuming.

[Calari_Sapphire]

I have a feeling that the lack of 'Culture' and Gods is due to this book is to be setting agnostic (to my knowledge). It isn't specific to Sword Coast or Eberron.

[_zurr]

This may be a disagreement based on the fact I'm more of a player than a DM, but Re: Lucky: I personally think a feature that is a rare expendable resource that gives you a reroll or advantage should ALWAYS be done after you make a roll. Dice is gambling enough, and having to guess when you'll need that feature in the first place and then feel like it wasn't useful if you do WELL is bogus. I much prefer stuff like Reckless Attack, which allows you to gain advantage before a roll, where the penalty isn't a limited resource, but an effect you have to deal with.

[pdubb]

RE: Utilize. It might make sense if they need a word to describe a specific type of action and they don't want it to be confused with another commonly used word like used. But I say this without having seen the book, so I cannot be sure if they utilize it this way. ;)

[Tryptyophan]

You'll be happy to see that Hero's Feast no longer grants poison immunity!

[cdfreester]

Glad to hear the glossary is great. The 2014 PHB index read like an old yellow pages. "If I want pizza, I look for pizza not restaurants. But if I want hamburgers, I look under restaurants not hamburgers."

[gabrielcardoso]

On missing gods and culture - That seems setting specific. No reason to list a "dwarf kingdom" background/culture here as this means different things if you play Eberron or Forgotten. You could argue that the species are also setting specific, but they picked the most common between settings to put here. They could have just written "ask the dm".

While I'll keep playing 5e, I personally see no big reason to pick this book. I will definitely copy the surprise rule, and the art looks awesome, but thats it. Good video!

[_zurr]

Personally, I like the way codified terminology is more identifiable. It's a good hint to new players (and in the case of niche rulings) that there is some existing way to resolve those mechanics. Maybe it's not too big a deal for Prone, but in general it helps my brain "tag" things better.

[imayb]

I'm with Strunk & White-- and you! Any halfway decent text editor will recommend you get rid of "utilize" and other cumbersome phrases you can replace with a single word.

It's a shame you had to blur out the book, but I get it. Kudos for going through with it.

[GMToolbox]

I am doing my own read through on this now and plan to do a video but he fact that you had to blur AFTER the embargo was lifted is ridiculous. Especially now that they are selling them at Gen Con!

[raspberrymilkshake]

I agree that the action variants could possibly slow stuff down- but it seems to me like it's still a worthwhile change. In 2014, most martial classes have always felt sort of boring compared to the spellcasters. It'll take a bit for people to learn, but having classes like the rogue or fighter being able to exert more battlefield control will hopefully make them more dynamic to play. Feats make the game more complex, but because of 5es linear leveling system they're also the main way to add customization to your character (unless your a spellcaster), they make the game more complicated but they also make the game deeper.

5e has always been a very big game to learn, and I think embracing the potential of a little bit of mechanical crunch will be to its benifit, for a game that focuses on combat, the more potential depth to every class to the better. These new rules will be hardest on newer players who aren't used to having the book open between every turn, so I think we have to wonder: is 5e even a good introduction game? Or is something simplified and streamlined like Shadowdark the way to go.

[freman]

There was one thing I really liked about the playtest material, and that was the customizable backgrounds, a +1 and +2, or three +1s, two proficiencies, one tool, one language, one feat.

So what do WotC do?

Remove even the customization from 2014, and force Wizards to be Criminals so they can actually get the stat bumps they need to play the game.

[FangorzJeseniku]

It feels to me that wording "prone condition" has to do sth with their brothers from MTG was looking over their shoulder 😀.

And I just remember, didn't they cleaned the species to avoid situation where you pick dwarf because he is better fighter and elf as he is better wizard? I am fan of cleaned species 👍

[lm]

I am appalled to hear that WOTC asked you to blur the book.

How can I decide if I want to buy it if I'm not allowed to look at it?

[PearseNation]

Count me in as one of the players that's super hyped for more flexibility in martial classes. Cunning Strike seems really fun to me. I'm really looking forward to describing those as "fighting dirty".

[carolxs]

The backgrounds were a little disappointing, but I hope everyone does the custom background, which will certainly allow for that idea of a human raised by elves and such. They said this is coming in DMG but they surely could have added a paragraph about custom backgrounds in PHB... Unless I play with a frustrating GM who doesn't want to do custom backgrounds, I'm almost never going to use the existing ones