New D&D Player's Handbook Deep Dive Shows A Promising First Look At Improved Classes, Subclasses, & Weapons (2024)

is set to receive a big shake-up with the introduction of new core rulebooks in 2024 and 2025, and the one with the biggest potential to change the game is the Player's Handbook. As the tome that contains all the game's core rules and character options, the Player's Handbook is the one resource that everyone needs at the game table. The new version will be released in September, making it the first of the trio to land on store shelves.

A DnD press briefing offered a deep dive into the 2024 edition of the Player's Handbook, including some details on what to expect from classes, subclasses, weapons, and more. Although the book is intended to be backward compatible with previously published DnD 5e material, it's still changing a lot about the game. Any table that prefers the old options will comfortably be able to stick to the 2014 edition, but there's a lot to appreciate among the revisions.

Class Revisions In The New D&D Player's Handbook

Rangers Are Getting The Most Significant Changes

Although every DnD class will receive its share of changes in the new Player's Handbook, two in particular are being the most extensively reworked. Rangers and monks have been a consistent sore point in DnD 5e, especially when sticking to the options available in the 2014 Player's Handbook. Redesigns for both have been going through public testing through DnD's Unearthed Arcana playtests, and according to lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford, the ranger and monk iterations at the end of the playtests ranked among the highest satisfaction scores in surveys.

Crawford stresses the ranger as a nearly complete rework, promising that "pretty much everything is new." The Beast Master and Hunter subclasses carry over names from the 2014 Player's Handbook, while Fey Wanderer and Gloom Stalker come from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The ranger underwent both major buffs and nerfs during the Unearthed Arcana period, so although it's likely to be more impressive than the 2014 version, just how strong the new version will be remains to be seen.

How Subclasses Work In The 2024 Player's Handbook

Every Class Gets Four Subclasses This Time

The 2024 Player's Handbook includes 48 subclasses, a moderate increase from the 40 featured in the 2014 book. The changes are bigger than the numbers might show, however. While a total of 15 subclasses were previously taken by clerics and wizards alone, each class has exactly four subclasses this time around, meaning that clerics and wizards are losing some Player's Handbook options while every other class is gaining some. Subclasses that didn't make the cut will still be compatible alongside the new ones, and they might end up returning in future books.

Among these 48 subclasses, three are entirely new to DnD — the Path of the World Tree barbarian, College of Dance bard, and Circle of the Sea druid. 15 others are imported and revised from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Xanathar's Guide to Everything. With regard to the returning classes from the 2014 Player's Handbook, Crawford states that 16 are heavily overhauled to a degree that makes them essentially new experiences. Each subclass will have its own artwork, a luxury previously only afforded to a minority.

Player's Handbook Changes To D&D Weapons & Spells

New Weapon Properties & Spellcasting Options

See Also

Complete Warlock Class Guide for DnD 5E - Tabletop Builds

One big change for martial classes in DnD is the application of a weapon mastery system, which adds a relevant property to a weapon type that a character has mastered. To take some examples from Unearthed Arcana, glaives and greataxes might feature a Cleave property to deal damage to multiple targets, while clubs and some ranged weapons could Slow targets to reduce their movement speed. Fighters can apply mastery to more weapons than other classes, retaining their advantage as the most versatile weapon specialists.

The Player's Handbook is getting a nice new feature in a layout spread showcasing each basic DnD weapon and its price, designed to function like a catalog page for players to browse. Considering the importance of picking weapon mastery options, this seems like a nice way to streamline the presentation, and referencing it while shopping within a campaign could also be useful. Other additions like new pieces of gear and delineated tool proficiency features will fill out the chapter on equipment, and a crafting system could be interesting for parties that like to make their own supplies.

Spellcasters will also receive some attention in the new Player's Handbook, and the chapter on spells is getting a similarly extensive rework to the one on equipment. Of the nearly 400 included spells, over half have been altered or newly added. When it comes to class-specific highlights, one standout is the new Innate Sorcery feature, which gives sorcerers a boost in a manner comparable to a barbarian's rage.

Character Origins In The 2024 Player's Handbook

Backgrounds Matter More Than Ever Before

The most radically transformed part of DnD character creation in the 2024 Player's Handbook might be the approach to character origins. Backgrounds now offer feats at first level that are intended to be helpful throughout the entire course of an adventure, giving a stronger mechanical presence to something that could often just feel like a roleplaying tool. Backgrounds also provide some ability score boosts, which have been revised to be more flexible than in Unearthed Arcana. Three points can be distributed evenly or unevenly among an appropriate selection of three ability scores to make backgrounds click with any class.

Although big changes will inevitably come with their own controversies, many aspects of the new Player's Handbook seem genuinely promising, and the ideas that emerged out of Unearthed Arcana tend to feel much stronger than some of the earlier proposals. The focus on backward compatibility also means that official material won't be fundamentally incompatible with older rules anytime soon, so there's no concept of forced obsolescence driving the new release. More details should keep emerging ahead of the book's release, giving Dungeons & Dragons fans something to keep an eye on throughout the summer.

Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is a popular tabletop game originally invented in 1974 byErnest 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.

Franchise

Original Release Date

1974-00-00

Publisher

TSR Inc. , Wizards of the Coast

Designer

E. Gary Gygax , Dave Arneson