At this yr’s PAX Unplugged—a particular version of PAX devoted to tabletop video games—Wizards of the Coast’s designers offered a panel celebrating the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. On the finish of that panel they regarded forward to 2024 and the upcoming Revised editions of the core rulebooks, beforehand codenamed OneD&D.
The main target was on the primary of the three, the Participant’s Handbook. “This Participant’s Handbook would be the largest Participant’s Handbook that D&D has ever had,” stated sport design architect Jeremy Crawford. “Not solely is it the largest by way of variety of pages, it’s going to have extra subclasses than Participant’s Handbooks have ever had. It has new spells, new feats, new weapon guidelines—together with the weapon mastery choices that a lot of you will have playtested in Unearthed Arcana. And likewise mountains of brand name new artwork.”
The Revised Participant’s Handbook can have 48 subclasses, with 4 for every of the 12 courses. Every will get their very own illustration this time, as will every of the backgrounds gamers can select from. The artwork for these is a collection of literal backgrounds representing locations you may need come from, with the mock-up web page proven depicting a carnival for the charlatan, a temple topped with an enormous solar disc for the acolyte, a peaceable valley for the hermit, and a workshop for the artisan.
These 4 backgrounds exhibit some extra of the foundations modifications. “It is now your background that impacts your character’s beginning skill scores,” Crawford stated, “and likewise your background provides you a particular feat at first stage that offers you a mechanical profit that can remind you of the place you got here from as a personality all through your adventuring profession. So if in case you have felt up to now, ‘My background is cool from a backstory perspective, but it surely type of seems like once I get to increased stage it is not making a lot of an impression on my character any extra,’ now we have addressed that.”
These substitute the earlier skills backgrounds gave, which whereas flavorsome solely hardly ever noticed any use on the desk. Like all of the additions within the Revised rulebooks, they’re designed to be backwards-compatible too. “You’re going to get a bunch of latest choices on this guide, all of which you should utilize with the fifth version materials you have already got,” Crawford stated. “We’re fastidiously designing the fabric on this Participant’s Handbook as a way to construct a personality with it and play by means of your copy of Curse of Strahd, play by means of your copy of Shattered Obelisk, or some other journey product you will have for fifth version. We’re additionally making it so {that a} character constructed with the Revised Participant’s Handbook can coexist on the desk with a personality constructed with the 2014 Participant’s Handbook, so if individuals nonetheless love the character they have been enjoying for years, you may hold enjoying that character.”
The opposite two core rulebooks will even obtain Revised editions in 2024, although we discovered much less about what they’re going to comprise. The Revised Dungeon Grasp’s Information will apparently have “a whole marketing campaign setting in addition to a number of adventures” in response to senior designer James Wyatt, and the Revised Monster Handbook can have greater than 500 monsters.
Amongst these are new creatures with increased Problem Scores just like the Blob of Annihilation. “In case you have ever questioned what a CR 20 or increased ooze appears like, the brand new Monster Handbook has you coated,” Crawford stated. “However you do not need to be coated by this Blob.” There are additionally returning monsters, albeit tweaked variations of them. “This has additionally been an opportunity for us to revisit each monster in that guide and provides it a tuneup,” Crawford stated, “so you are going to see acquainted pals and foes that work the best way you anticipate in some methods, but additionally work in methods which might be totally new. We’re going by means of to guarantee that every creature has one thing distinctive about it in order that the DM actually seems like when that monster exhibits up one thing distinctive goes to happen on the desk.”
The panel included a have a look at a number of the different D&D books popping out in 2024 too. A number of basic dungeon crawls are being up to date and remixed into one-shots, starting with Misplaced Caverns of Tsojcanth, whereas different basic adventures shall be collected in an anthology known as Quests from the Infinite Staircase. In the meantime, Vecna: Eve of Wreck is all-new, whereas bringing again the well-known old skool villain. “That is an journey marketing campaign that goes as much as Twentieth-level and includes an exhilarating face-off in opposition to Vecna,” stated senior designer Amanda Hamon. “We have additionally received a tour of the multiverse and an opportunity to satisfy some very well-known individuals from D&D’s historical past on this one.”
All these books are anticipated in 2024, which is each the fiftieth anniversary of D&D’s publication and the Yr of the Dragon.