D&D (2024) New D&D Edition's Player’s Handbook Cover Reveal

Game Informer has revealed the cover to the 2024 Player’s Handbook.

The cover features a gold dragon behind the old-school D&D characters Strongheart the paladin, Mercion the cleric, Elkhorn the dwarf fighter, and Molliver the thief. Ringlerun the wizard is absent (then again he got his showcase on one of the 1E AD&D Player's Handbooks), but a drow mage appears to have joined the party!

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'd really like them to try out some new dragon designs. We've have the 3e Lockwood dragons for 25 years now and even if I was a fan of the tropical fish finned metallics, it'd be nice to see some new takes. I do like most of the chromatics (aside from blue's giant horn) and I'd love to see new takes on them too.

Honestly... I really do kind of dig the "Piscine" vibe from the Bronze dragon. It immediately makes me think "this dragon lives in the ocean", which I know is simplistic, but it just looks so different from what I'm used to.

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly... I really do kind of dig the "Piscine" vibe from the Bronze dragon. It immediately makes me think "this dragon lives in the ocean", which I know is simplistic, but it just looks so different from what I'm used to.

The Copper alloy Dragons need all the help establishing a brand they can get: I have e the darkest time remembering how Copper, Brass and Bronze Dragons differ.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Looking through all those old dragons is kind of fun, but... man... sort of easy to see how they copied so much from Dinosaur books

Still utterly fine, but that one of the dragons fighting really had me looking back at it three or four times thinking "dinosaur?"

 

[Chaosmancer]

The Copper alloy Dragons need all the help establishing a brand they can get: I have e the darkest time remembering how Copper, Brass and Bronze Dragons differ.

100% agreed.

Frankly, I'm not really a fine of the dragons being sorted by scale color. When I homebrew, I much more lean into elemental and primal typing, ie "Fire, Lava, Ice, Storm, Plant," but the doubling up of fire between copper and gold, and the sheer difficulty in telling the visual difference between copper, bronze and brass... ugh.

Had a friend who desperately wanted to swap in Iron or Steel dragons for Copper, just to give more metals and break up the similarities. (Because aren't both Copper and Brass sort of bard-y gossip mongers and jokesters? I know Bronze are more soldier-y because I remember it being odd with the sea and sailor location)

That might be another good lean in for them. Reds are Tyrants, Greens are Tricksters, Blacks are I'm not sure, but then Metallics could lean more into things like Golds are Scholars, Coppers are bards, Bronze are soldiers, Silvers are knights, just so they don't blend as much as they tend to do.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I assumed she was a rogue, but I can see ranger too.

It would be cool to see them breaking some moulds. Make the Dwarf a Warlock or something. Make the Paladin a Halfling. Throw in a Half-Orc Cleric.

Yeah it's weird to me that they have quasi-ethnic diversity (of a slightly forced kind*) but don't really seem, in the art we've seen, to have much in the way of the unexpected class/species-wise. Now, with an art piece for EVERY single class AND every single subclass, so 60 pieces (in theory), I would hope that doesn't remain true, but given the nostalgia focus I don't think we can rule it out.

* = To be clear I think there should be far more facial feature and skin colour diversity in D&D, but I think the whole "We have elves that look like RL white people, elves that look like RL black people, elves that look like RL asian people" rather than "elves that have their own ethnic subgroups" (which people could then read in to as relating to their RL ethnicity) approach to diversity is... a larval stage, as it were. Something that will look very dorky/clunky in 20 years. It's a definite upgrade on all species looking like RL white humans (typically with a particularly leaning towards Northern Europe/Scandinavia), but I feel like they need to develop the idea further. Especially as videogames have already shown this definitely isn't a real solution to representation issues (particularly as there are a lot more than three human ethnic groups in the world!), nor something players of colour tend to be hugely enthused or validated by (in my limited experience, as a very white person - that's not to say that no-one is, of course).

 

[Reynard]

Yeah it's weird to me that they have quasi-ethnic diversity (of a slightly forced kind*) but don't really seem, in the art we've seen, to have much in the way of the unexpected class/species-wise. Now, with an art piece for EVERY single class AND every single subclass, so 60 pieces (in theory), I would hope that doesn't remain true, but given the nostalgia focus I don't think we can rule it out.

I just want some non-sterotypical non humans. Show me a halfling barbarian and a tiefling monk and an assimar warlock and a dragonborn bard.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The Copper alloy Dragons need all the help establishing a brand they can get: I have e the darkest time remembering how Copper, Brass and Bronze Dragons differ.

I'm good with copper and bronze - it's always brass that gives me pause on exactly what their powers and distinctions are. They should have gone with something more distinctive, like iron, but that ship sailed long, long ago.

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah it's weird to me that they have quasi-ethnic diversity (of a slightly forced kind*) but don't really seem, in the art we've seen, to have much in the way of the unexpected class/species-wise. Now, with an art piece for EVERY single class AND every single subclass, so 60 pieces (in theory), I would hope that doesn't remain true, but given the nostalgia focus I don't think we can rule it out.

* = To be clear I think there should be far more facial feature and skin colour diversity in D&D, but I think the whole "We have elves that look like RL white people, elves that look like RL black people, elves that look like RL asian people" rather than "elves that have their own ethnic subgroups" (which people could then read in to as relating to their RL ethnicity) approach to diversity is... a larval stage, as it were. Something that will look very dorky/clunky in 20 years. It's a definite upgrade on all species looking like RL white humans (typically with a particularly leaning towards Northern Europe/Scandinavia), but I feel like they need to develop the idea further. Especially as videogames have already shown this definitely isn't a real solution to representation issues (particularly as there are a lot more than three human ethnic groups in the world!), nor something players of colour tend to be hugely enthused or validated by (in my limited experience, as a very white person - that's not to say that no-one is, of course).

I just got so hype realizing we're getting 12 new full illustrations 48 subclass illustrations. Omg.

 

[Parmandur]

100% agreed.

Frankly, I'm not really a fine of the dragons being sorted by scale color. When I homebrew, I much more lean into elemental and primal typing, ie "Fire, Lava, Ice, Storm, Plant," but the doubling up of fire between copper and gold, and the sheer difficulty in telling the visual difference between copper, bronze and brass... ugh.

Had a friend who desperately wanted to swap in Iron or Steel dragons for Copper, just to give more metals and break up the similarities. (Because aren't both Copper and Brass sort of bard-y gossip mongers and jokesters? I know Bronze are more soldier-y because I remember it being odd with the sea and sailor location)

That might be another good lean in for them. Reds are Tyrants, Greens are Tricksters, Blacks are I'm not sure, but then Metallics could lean more into things like Golds are Scholars, Coppers are bards, Bronze are soldiers, Silvers are knights, just so they don't blend as much as they tend to do.

The Chromatics are clear and good for me: they each have a distinct villain niche and lair possibility. The lower metalics are just confusing.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah it's weird to me that they have quasi-ethnic diversity (of a slightly forced kind*) but don't really seem, in the art we've seen, to have much in the way of the unexpected class/species-wise. Now, with an art piece for EVERY single class AND every single subclass, so 60 pieces (in theory), I would hope that doesn't remain true, but given the nostalgia focus I don't think we can rule it out.

Well, the neat thing about having 60 distinct bug illustrations...they have plenty of room to provide both traditional trope-y characters (Like the Dwarf Fighter for the main, and the Tiefling in the recent Infernal Warlock Subclass image from Game Infomer) and more quirky combos (like the Halfling Wild Mage Sorcerer image).

At 60 images, that's 6 per Species (assuming Aasimar is the only surprise ), so we may well see some wild combos like Goliath Rogues or Gnome Barbarian.