The 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook puts a big emphasis on overhauling the process of character creation, a defining aspect of the roleplaying experience that can make or break any campaign. Although the essentials of the process and rules should still be largely familiar to DnD veterans, especially those who have a lot of experience with the fifth edition ruleset, there are definitely some changes that are worthy of attention.

As always, character creation focuses on defining characters through various attributes, spread out across classes, subclasses, species, backgrounds, and more. None of these elements have made it through the revision process without significant changes, and a character built on the same essential concepts in the 2014 Player's Handbook could end up being significantly different when emerging from the process laid out in the 2024 version.

10 Tools Now Have Specific Uses In D&D

It's common for adventurers in DnD to start their journeys with various sets of tools, which can be useful for anything from calligraphy to woodcarving. Proficiency with a set of tools can make it easier to perform a related activity or skill check, giving characters a leg up thanks to their unique specialties. In the 2014 Player's Handbook, tools didn't have any specific uses, with their application being left to the creativity of players and the discretion of dungeon masters.

The 2024 Player's Handbook shakes things up by giving each tool a designated ability, adding a DC to determine the odds of success at a task, as well as a list of items that can be crafted with them. For players who have never made much use of their tools, this could be a helpful way to find specific purposes for them. Treating the new options as boundaries for what tools can do would be a mistake, however, as creative use should still be encouraged.

9 Weapon Mastery Properties Add Flair

Weapon mastery properties expand the options in combat for martial classes, and they're available from the get-go in character creation. Rogues, Rangers, and Paladins each get two weapon mastery properties. Barbarians start with two and gain more later, and Fighters start with three and gain more.

In battle, weapon mastery properties allow characters to use specific abilities with weapons they've mastered, whether that results in increasing consistency, damage, applying an attack to multiple targets, or a number of other options. Chosen weapons can be swapped out at long rests, so choices made in character creation aren't something a character will have to live with forever.

8 More Classes With Spells At Level One

While no class needs to deal with subclasses at level one in the 2024 Player's Handbook, more classes now have to choose Dungeons & Dragons spells at the start. Dedicated spellcasters like Wizards and Sorcerers always had a couple of spell slots from the start, but the hybrid nature of Paladins and Rangers held off the availability of spells until level two. Paladins and Rangers are now spellcasters at level one, and Warlocks also get an Eldritch Invocation at level one instead of level two.

This isn't a significant balance change, but it does make the very beginning of a campaign a bit more interesting as a Paladin or Ranger. Moving subclasses to level three does remove some early access to magic for specific subclasses, however, like Eldritch Knight Fighters who now have to hold off from spellcasting for a bit longer.

7 Streamlined Species In 2024

Species — previously called races in the 2014 Player's Handbook and earlier iterations of DnD — no longer play quite as large of a role in the character creation process. Picking a species still has an impact on a character's abilities, and there are even some new features thrown into the mix. Ability score bonuses are no longer tied to species, however, and the entries for each species in the 2024 Player's Handbook are largely streamlined.

The 2024 Player's Handbook also removes half-elves and half-orcs from the picture, sticking to options without any hyphenations. Full orcs make it in, as do aasimar, with both of these species having been excluded from the 2014 book but making it into fifth edition DnD through later tomes.

6 Subclasses At Level Three

Subclasses are a big part of specialization in DnD, but they're no longer something that anyone will have to deal with immediately during the level one character creation process. While the 2014 Player's Handbook had no consistent ruling for the level at which subclasses were acquired, giving them out at level one, two, or three depending on the class, the new book standardizes things by sticking to level three subclasses across the board.

There are various arguments to make for this approach in of flavor and mechanics (Clerics, for example, are generally defined by their subclass in a way that now makes the first couple of levels a bit awkward), but it does somewhat complicate the character creation process. The 2024 Player's Handbook's approach should certainly be less confusing for newcomers, and it makes level three an exciting moment for every class.

5 New Subclasses In The 2024 Player's Handbook

The 2024 Player's Handbook also shakes up subclasses with the addition of some new options. With four subclasses per class, the book offers more options for every class but Wizards and Clerics, who both featured long lists in the last book. Most of these appeared in prior fifth edition material like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but a few are entirely new additions.

The three subclasses making their debut are the Path of the World Tree for Barbarians, the College of Dance for Bards, and the Circle of the Sea for Druids. Path of the World Tree gives Barbarians some additional healing and resilience options, College of Dance makes Bards into a different type of performer, and Circle of the Sea lets Druids call on the power of the sea and spray.

4 2024 Brings Reordered Character Creation

One change that's easy to immediately notice in the 2024 Player's Handbook is that the order of character creation isn't the same this time around. The 2014 process led with choosing a race, followed by class, ability scores, alignment, backgrounds, and equipment. In 2024, classes are chosen first, followed by backgrounds, equipment, species, ability scores, and alignment.

Either approach can have its merits, but starting with classes does make a lot of sense, especially now that species don't play quite as central of a role. It's still possible to choose things in a different order, of course, but following the book's guidelines is generally the easiest approach for newcomers especially. Starting off with ability scores is another reasonable alternative that served as the standard for much of DnD's history, and for anyone who rolls them rather than picking from a standard array, it can help guide the whole process.

3 Core Info During Character Creation

Although opinions on the order can vary, one change to the process of character creation that's undeniably helpful is the inclusion of more core info along the way. While the details of building a character will always require some amount of flipping around the book, the 2014 approach required players to do so constantly, as the section guiding the character creation process didn't include many details about most of the selections.

In the 2024 Player's Handbook, new tables and more detailed sections lay out more of what players need to know in the "Creating a Character" chapter. From a brief class overview to a description of what characters with low and high scores in each ability might be like, it's easy to get a good idea of the basics without needing to dive into the nitty-gritty.

2 Backgrounds Have Ability Score Bonuses

The reduction of species signifiance in the 2024 Player's Handbook doesn't mean that characters end up with fewer benefits, with backgrounds now doing the heavy lifting. Each background offers three different ability scores that players can distribute points among for a boost, allocating one point to each or two points to one ability and one point to another. A farmer can select from strength, constitution, and wisdom, for example, while a scribe picks from dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom.

Tying ability scores to backgrounds makes sense as a reflection of skills that a character has picked up prior to adventuring, but those who like backgrounds to be purely roleplay flavor while building optimized classes might have some resistance to the change. Like before, backgrounds also bestow skill proficiencies, along with the addition of Origin Feats that further specialize characters.

1 Origin Feats Are Now Mandatory

Feats were previously an optional concept in DnD 5e, showing up as an option for variant humans, custom lineages, and a replacement for ability score improvements. The 2024 Player's Handbook makes feats something that every player participates in from the start, packing them in with the expanded take on backgrounds to make every character feel more unique from the start.

Some Origin Feats could be highly useful for any character, like Skilled, which provides proficiency in three skills or tools of the player's choice. Others, like Tavern Brawler, lean more heavily into a specific character concept. While some feats in prior rules could feel underwhelming, feats tend to be powerful across the board in the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook.