The 2024 rules give your turn twelve named actions. Seven are old friends: Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide and Ready. Five are new or renamed: Influence, Study, Search, Utilize and Magic. They cover the things players did all along (talk someone round, remember a fact, look for a trap, pull a lever, cast a spell), and now each one…
In 2014, Inspiration gave you Advantage. You had to say so before you rolled, and if the die came up 19 anyway, you had spent it for nothing. So players sat on it, waiting for a moment that deserved it. The 2024 rules rename it Heroic Inspiration and turn it into a reroll. You roll, you look at the die,…
The most famous sword in fantasy comes out of a lake, held up by a woman's arm. In Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Arthur has just broken his sword in a fight and spent three days healing his wounds. Merlin takes him to a lake, "and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in…
In the 2014 rules your species set your ability scores. A dwarf got +2 Constitution, an elf +2 Dexterity, and a halfling wizard started a point behind a gnome wizard forever. Your background handed you two skills, a feature and some gear. Feats were an optional rule you might see at level 4. The 2024 rules move all of that.…
A cloaked figure stands alone on still water under a full moon. Nobody is fighting yet. Everything is about to happen. Every table knows the scene that follows. The dragon lands, the party stands its ground, and one player picks up the d20 while everyone else stops breathing. We showed that picture, a green dragon over a party of four,…
In the 2014 rules, exhaustion was a ladder of six different punishments. Level 1 gave you Disadvantage on ability checks. Level 4 halved your Hit Point maximum. Level 5 set your Speed to 0. Nobody remembered which rung did what, so most tables looked it up every time, or quietly never used it. The 2024 rules replace the ladder with…
In the 2014 rules a greatsword and a maul were the same weapon with different paint: 2d6 damage, Heavy, Two-Handed. In the 2024 rules they play differently. The greatsword Grazes: it hurts even when it misses. The maul Topples: it knocks the target flat. That difference is weapon mastery, the biggest change the 2024 Player's Handbook made to martial characters,…
