D&D 2024 Thoughts

When the new Player's Handbook for D&D 5e was released in 2024, my wife and I began incorporating it into our games almost immediately, and moved fully over to the 2024 ruleset as soon as we could.  I find the 2024 core books to be, overall, a big improvement. They don't 'fix' 5e: I have my own personal frustrations with the system, but it wasn't broken. The biggest improvement, in my opinion, is in layout, presentation and organisation. These books provide a better onboarding experience for new players to the game, they are easier to use at the table, and they inspire me to play and run the game.

A beautiful book

Having had over a year with the system now, I wanted to use this post to talk about a couple of changes from the most recent edition vs the old: Something that's been lost and something has almost worked for me but not quite.

What's Been Lost?

Traits, Ideals, Bonds & Flaws were, to me, one of the best features of Character Creation in 2014. They helped guide towards a simple set of statements hinting towards a 'vibe' for your Character. As a player, I'd often look to these if I was unsure how my Character would react to a given situation. They made sure that your Character was not a blank slate, that you had something to hold on to for role-playing inspiration. They were more important to me than backstory. As a player, I was surprised and disappointed these were gone.

On the other hand, as a DM, I'm not sorry they got cut. Since they were tied to the inspiration system - DMs were supposed to reward players for inspiration for taking action that leant into these traits - I was constantly forgetting about it. Now that I think about it, I'm not surprised, DMs have enough to think about without keeping 4 things in their head for each Character at all times in case a player triggers one of them. For a standard table that's 16 things. No way, haha.

If I were to bring these back, I'd either put it totally on the players to make 'bids' for inspiration based on their traits. For example, if a Character with the Flaw "I can't keep a secret to save my life, or anyone else's" overshares during a tavern conversation with a new friend, their Player might ask if they could inspiration for saying something they shouldn't.

Alternatively but still keeping the onus on the player, I'd be tempted to treat them more like purviews from Break!!. In this case, players would get advantage or disadvantage on Skill Checks where their traits were applicable. So if a Character has the Personality Trait "Nobody stays angry at me or around me for long, since I can defuse any amount of tension.", the Player could point to this and ask for advantage on the Persuasion roll to calm down that hot-headed City Watch Sergeant.

Almost But Not Quite

One of the things that really bugged me about the 2014 PHB was that the Ability Score Increase you got at Character Creation was tied to Race. I'm all aboard with the move to Species for the 2024 books and was glad to see the Ability Score Increase was gone. If I choose to play a Dragonborn it shouldn't be for that +2 Strength and +1 Charisma (or whatever it was), it should be because I want to play a Character that looks a bit like a dragon and can breathe fire! I feel a lot more free to focus on the fiction now when choosing a Species for my D&D Character.

But the problem is not gone, it's just been shifted. The Ability Score Increase is now tied to Background instead, and I don't like this much. The Backgrounds already come with the Gear, Skills, and a Feat to represent your Character's pre-adventuring career, does the Ability Score Increase need to be here as well? I don't think so. In my experience it has mostly just led to a lot of annoying cross referencing to make sure that I'm not messing up my Character's stats by choosing to play a Paladin who is a reformed Criminal.

I sometimes stop and ask myself if the numbers matter that much. But, when it comes to D&D 5e, when the Character I build is more than likely going to be with me for the entirety of whatever adventure or campaign I built them for, I'd say 100% yes. I know I am going to be making so many Saves and Skill Checks with this Character, so a +1 on any of the 6 Ability Score modifiers is a really big deal.

My fix for this would be to lose the Ability Score Increase altogether and alter the standard array to 17, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8, since that's where most of my Characters end up anyway.

Till next time!