Dungeons & Dragons has gone mainstream. Nearly 50 years after its invention, more people than ever before are rolling dice with their friends. Meanwhile, major media crossovers such as Weird things And Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves They make sure that even the long-held stigmas associated with the game recede. But, in many ways, the game development team at Wizards of the Coast is a little behind, and now it’s time for a review. A new set of core grammar books is on the way…just be careful not to call it Sixth Edition.
After releasing the game’s fifth edition in 2014, Wizards has spent the better part of a decade fiddling and iterating on its winning formula. This process will culminate in early 2022 with Base Expansion Gift Set: three volumes entitled Xanathar guide to everythingAnd Tasha’s cauldron for everythingAnd Mordenkäinen offers: Monsters of the Multiverse. Now, the developers say, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and officially incorporate what worked in these three new books into a complete D&D Fifth Edition update. That means new versions of the original three core rulebooks, a trilogy known to fans as The Player’s Handbook (PHB), the Dungeons Master’s Guide (dmg), and the Monster guide (millimeter). Along the way, Wizards said it will also strive to make these books richer and more usable than ever before—all while maintaining continuity and compatibility with every Fifth Edition product that has come out before.
“For a lot of people, these books represent their introductory experience to the game,” game design engineer Chris Perkins said in a group interview with The Press earlier this month. “These books are much more intense than some of our later books, the monsters aren’t as easy or fun to play as some of our recent books, and finding things isn’t quite as easy. […] So make sure that our portal to the game is strong and beautiful, [and] As accessible as possible I think is very important for the longevity of the game – and just for people to enjoy.”
Here’s what you can expect inside the updated 2024 editions of the Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks.
Player’s Handbook
Photo: Wizards of the Coast
Player’s Handbook (2024) will contain significantly more pages than the original, which is among the largest D&D books, clocking in at 320 pages. But the updated version may not have the same number of words.
the new PHB The designers said they’ve been working hard to simplify its language throughout and to bring more art to players than ever before. There will be new images for each of the book’s 12 base classes—Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Priest, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Mage, Wizard, and Wizard—as well as for each of the 48 subclasses included within ( Four total for each base category). Most importantly, this art will highlight the full spectrum of human diversity in the real world.
While it is important that potential players can see themselves on the pages Player’s Handbook (2024), it is also important for newcomers to have the best they can to learn to play the game. Because of this, character creation is traced back beyond the basic rules of the game. This new expression for the fifth edition PHB I’ll actually teach you how To play the game before he invites you to roll up your first character.
and when Do You decide to make that first character, you’ll have more options than ever before, thanks to over 144 options for your character’s background. Whether they start life as a soldier or a researcher will also be more important than in 2014. This is because of the new Player’s Handbook (2024) You’ll lose important features like ability point improvements, level-one feats, and more of your character’s biological roots back to their cultural, social, and economic roots — similar to what was proposed as a new optional rule in Tasha’s cauldron for everything.
The “Character Origins” chapter will also include guidance on alignment [and] said game design engineer Jeremy Crawford. But the focus is on the species [formerly called race] and backgrounds. How we frame it — that really depends on the work we’ve done Tasha’s cauldron for everything Take these two components of personality [and] And bring them together to get a glimpse of their personality before they become adventurers.”
Player’s Handbook (2024) will also include rules for creating your own backgrounds. “We’re basically giving people more tools than they ever have,” Crawford said.
Ability scores such as Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom will also be capped later in the character creation process. Players will of course be able to use existing methods to generate those results, such as the “standard matrix” and the old “point purchase system”. But from now on, the classes themselves will recommend which ability points to take. These and other changes in PHBall designed to make people play faster.
“Let’s start playing,” Crawford said, “while still giving people the customization options they’re used to. Now I’ve decided, as a player or DM: Am I going to take the time to build this myself? Or am I going to use one of those quick options the book provides now?”
Dungeons Master’s Guide
Photo: Wizards of the Coast
While the wizards repeatedly telegraph their movements with changes coming to Player’s Handbook (2024), perhaps the most fundamental changes to the core rulebooks come with Dungeons Master’s Guide (2024). This is because, according to Perkins, it was a mess from the start.
“In 2013, our team was a lot smaller,” Perkins said. “We were pushing through all the core rulebooks at the same time, plus Starter groupand to say that Jeremy and I were exhausted and had too much on our plate was an understatement at the time.
“Now that we can go back in time, after eight years of talks,” Perkins continued, “we have a number of things we want to do.” dmg Which we have hoped to do for many years.”
in the core Dungeons Master’s Guide (2024) will have a newly revised section on creating your own beer campaign, which will include a campaign setup template. Then the book will show junior DMs how to build it with the needs and wants of their players in mind.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘stripped,’ but let’s just say it’s very intense,” Perkins said. “But it’s a complete setup, and you can take the skeleton of this campaign and add some flesh to it. Decide where you want to place your campaign in this setting, then make it your own. [We] gives you a poster map you can use to set up this campaign, gives you links in campaign setup to help inform your decision about which parts of the campaign to use, [so that you can decide] What conflicts do you think will be important in this game.”
While arranging and coordinating information inside Dungeons Master’s Guide (2024) is still a work in progress, Perkins said, and will include a lot of important information that was overlooked in 2014. What is the purpose of the Dungeon Master’s screen, for example, and how do you use it? What do you do with a player jamming the table? How do you plan your gaming sessions about other people’s lives? And how much do you really need to know about the rules before you start playing as a DM?
“Where do I start? How do I get up to speed? How do I become like [Matt Mercer and other now-famous DMs]? Perkins asked. “How do I make sure my game really lives up to players’ expectations? […] We can load all of this information up front so that by the time we get close to the middle of the book, the DMs are ready to talk about some other conversation, not about dealing with issues starting the game and handling things at the game table, but now we can talk about the creative part of DMing.”
Monster guide
Photo: Wizards of the Coast
Finally, the Monster guideThe book, which is rarely seen by the average D&D player, will likely contain the most new content of the three books. that’s why Monster guide (2024) will feature more than 500 monsters in total, and for the first time in franchise history, each of them will have their own unique piece of art.
But perhaps the biggest surprise is the number of high-level monsters that will be included, each one quite capable of giving a group of Level 20 heroes a run for their money.
“When we looked at filling out the monster roster in this book, we wanted to make sure we had more high-challenging monsters,” said Crawford. “So you’ll see a whole bunch of new, big bad things in this book, focusing on creature types that didn’t already have a cast. High CR score.”
For example, Crawford notes that the Monster guide (2014) shipped with a large group of high-ranking dragons and demons. Monster guide (2024) It will include some as well, but it will also include high fae, combinations, primers, and splashes.
“Imagine a moss that can wipe out an entire city just by rolling it,” Crawford said. It is also important to point out that none of the existing monsters will have their challenge ratings changed. Because we are keeping the current version stable, and because many existing adventures assume that monsters have a certain CR, we are ensuring that monsters from 2014 will continue. Monster guide They have the same commercial registry they had when they were written.”
End of Edition Wars
Throughout the multi-day press event, the developers from Wizards of the Coast have repeatedly returned to the fact that D&D 5th Edition is not going away. The fourth D&D remake, they said, was a kind of slow-rolling disaster that almost spelled the end of the franchise as we know it. The current 5th Edition rule set was crafted with input from hundreds of thousands of players during a multi-year test run pre-launched in 2014. There’s no reason to abandon that work in favor of a “new edition” of the game, and the 2024 updates to the 3 core rulebooks were created with the in mind That in mind.
“We also acknowledge that what we do is special,” Crawford said. “This has never been done before for Dungeons & Dragons. This is the first time a game has done such a major overhaul of an edition, and then you’ve continued that release — and done it so that you can continue to use the products you already have.”
According to Wizards, you won’t need to stop doing what you’re doing at the table at the moment or change anything about your home game to make room for these new and updated rules in your deck. Everything written inside the books of the original 5th Edition is still valid, and is still legal to play. They’re just hoping that these new, updated versions can better set the table for the continued growth of D&D in the future – making more player characters and channeling more Dungeon Masters than ever before.
We’ll know for sure if they’ve made it when the three books finish hitting press sometime next year.
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