320 pages
Published Aug. 19, 2014 by Wizards of the Coast.
Create heroic characters for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
The Player’s Handbook is the essential reference for every Dungeons & Dragons roleplayer. It contains rules for character creation and advancement, backgrounds and skills, exploration and combat, equipment, spells, and much more. Use this book to create characters from among the most iconic D&D races and classes.
The book that builds stories. Creating worlds and characters, crafting maps and props and outfits, and telling stories with--at this point--at least 200 people and probably more has been one of the central creative outlets of my life.
I still need to play this edition to form a complete opinion, but so far I'm impressed. A lot of the unnecessary complexity of the last two editions has been stripped out, with the clever bits left in, resulting in a sort of "Good Bits Edition" of D&D.
Note to Wizards of the Coast on an otherwise excellent production of the new D&D Player's Handbook: nowhere in an index should the word "see" appear when followed by another entry in said index instead of a page number.
This goes double if the entry you are directed to also includes the word "see" followed by yet another entry in said index instead of a page number.
Seriously, other than to annoy people, what's the point? It takes up more space to print the name of the other entry than it does to simply put the page numbers that entry refers to!
I've even run across one time where I found an entry that referred me to a second entry, that in turn referred me to a third entry that didn't, in fact, appear to exist!
Disclaimer: I have not read this book cover-to-cover, but I have read all the …
Note to Wizards of the Coast on an otherwise excellent production of the new D&D Player's Handbook: nowhere in an index should the word "see" appear when followed by another entry in said index instead of a page number.
This goes double if the entry you are directed to also includes the word "see" followed by yet another entry in said index instead of a page number.
Seriously, other than to annoy people, what's the point? It takes up more space to print the name of the other entry than it does to simply put the page numbers that entry refers to!
I've even run across one time where I found an entry that referred me to a second entry, that in turn referred me to a third entry that didn't, in fact, appear to exist!
Disclaimer: I have not read this book cover-to-cover, but I have read all the core rules sections (Chapters 7 to 10), as well as large chunks of the rest of the book, and have used it in play.
It may not be fair to put the only real complaint I have with the game at the front of the review, but it's such a glaring problem that I face nearly every time I pick up the book, that I felt it deserved the prominent attention.
Otherwise, this is an excellent book. Great production values, good layout, easy to read, easy to understand, easy to use in play (index aside). After three sessions, the rules appear solid. Since I spent so much time criticizing the index, I think it's fair to point out some of the real highlights of the game.
The advantage/disadvantage mechanic is brilliant. Getting rid of 99% of the modifiers from previous editions and replacing them with "roll two dice and take the highest or roll two dice and take the lowest" is an amazing way to simplify things that works great in play.
The inspiration mechanic combined with personality traits is another brilliantly simple solution, this time to the problem of encouraging roleplaying without getting too distracted with minutiae. Do something in character, get a check. Spend the check to get advantage on a roll.
I also appreciate how spellcasting has been reworked to be more fun at lower levels, while still keeping the vancian feel of earlier editions, even though I'm not really a fan of the vancian system.
Overall, a game that feels much more like an evolution of 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D to me than 3rd or 4th edition did.
