New D&D Player’s Handbook flips character creation on its head
Jun. 19, 2024Backstory is more important than ever, says lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford
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But the new Player’s Handbook, which got its own series of deep-dive video reveals this week on the official Dungeons & DragonsYouTubechannel, goes one giant step further, flipping character creation in one of thebest tabletop RPGson its head. At the heart of that change is the Character Origin: what casual players might refer to as backstory.
First, some background…
Those ability score bonuses are quite different from what we saw in Tasha’s – or even the playtests last year, where backgrounds came with set ability score bonuses, something that Crawford says “hard-locked the backgrounds to specific classes [when] we wanted people to feel free to mix and match.”
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Now, each background comes with a set of three scores you can share those bonuses between: whether you want to put 1 point in each score, or split 2/1 across two options. An Acolyte, for instance, can place points freely between Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
It’s also a big change from the ‘racial modifiers’ seen in the game previously – shifting the focus away from what elves might generally be good at, and towards what you’ve learned in the process of growing up and entering the world: “Not only what you did prior to becoming an adventurer, but where you did it. Were you a sailor, were you a criminal, were you an acolyte in a temple, were you a sage?”
As teased by the Unearthed Arcana playtest last year, these 16 backgrounds offer what’s called an ‘origin feat’, which Crawford calls a good way for players to “sample” the feat system with a curated list of entry-level options. A level one feat is a semi-common ‘house rule’ for many D&D groups, helping to make low-level play feel more varied, and it’s encouraging to see designers make it an official part of the game – as with the option to use healing potions as a bonus action, which is a house rule enjoyed in the D&D actual play Critical Role (and my own campaign).
But while this is still broadly the D&D 5E we know and love, designers seem to have realized how important the character creation process really is, and found a way of putting a neglected system at the forefront of who you are, and how you’ll play the game.
Looking for something to play before the Player’s Handbook arrives? You can always try a 5e adventure, and we’ve listed our favorites in this roundup of thebest D&D books. Alternatively, you can take a break with thebest board games.
Henry St Leger is a freelance technology and entertainment reporter with bylines for The Times, GamesRadar, IGN, Edge, and Nintendo Life. He’s a former staffer at our sister site TechRadar, where he worked as the News & Features Editor, and he writes regularly about streaming, games, D&D, and a host of home technologies including smart speakers and TVs. He lives in London with his Nintendo Switch (OLED) and spouse (not OLED).
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