D&D (2024) Player's Handbook 2024 Table of Contents

Ted from Nerd immersion has shared the Table of Contents for the new Player's Handbook:

@Morrus @darjr

 

[Maxperson]

Your character presumably has a home town/city/nation too, but you don't need those details in the PHB to "complete" your character. That's setting information that changes from table to table and campaign to campaign, not core mechanical rules that can be reasonably assumed to apply pretty much anywhere.

False Equivalences are false. None of those things are like an actual deity for a cleric or paladin.

The gods are the same. When you decide to play a cleric, you decide "I'm going to play a character who draws on divine magical power through their faith", then in whichever order you prefer, you choose how that power manifests for you (your domain) and look to the divine powers relevant to the setting you're playing in to determine which god (or other force) would be most appropriate to provide that power.

No. When you decide to play a cleric you decide, "I'm going to be a cleric of Pelor and take the life domain as my subclass."

It's piss poor design to make the class about worshipping a god, pantheon or other immortal and not provide any of those in the PHB.

Leaving it at "a cleric draws power from their faith" for the core rules and letting the setting material take it from there seems a sensible way to go to me.

That's not what they do in the rules. In the rules they get the ability to draw that power from their god, pantheon or other immortal. A class is more than the mechanics that make it up.

 

[Maxperson]

Do we know that the 2024 PHB won't do exactly what the 2014 PHB did, which is provide a list of possible deities from various settings for each domain, in the domain's description? If not, maybe we can wait before getting so upset about deities going unmentioned in the PHB.

If they do that, then my issue evaporates. What @Parmandur said, though, was that it was confirmed that no gods are in the PHB, which would include in the domain section as that's in the PHB.

 

[Maxperson]

The 1e AD&D PHB does not name a single deity and yet clerics in that edition, by the book, don't even have the option of worshiping abstract entities.

Is that a reason to backtrack more than 20 years to the last time we had an incomplete PHB? The 1e PHB(and DMG) was not a shining example of game design and organization.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, but you need to know what Setting and what Campaign the character is going to be in to be able to do that, information that doesn't need to be in the PHB - it'll be in the Adventures and Setting Guides and DMG and the DM's homebrew world, and that sort of thing.

It would take a page or two to put in the 4 most commonly played settings. FR, Greyhawk, Eberron and Dragonlance. If the game isn't homebrew, it's going to be one of those 4 the vast majority of the time.

 

[Echohawk]

No. When you decide to play a cleric you decide, "I'm going to be a cleric of Pelor and take the life domain as my subclass."

Perhaps for your table, but your experience isn't everyone's experience. In forty-something years of gaming, not once have I ever had a player care which particular god they worshiped until after they'd figured out the mechanical bits of their cleric. Even when there were lists of deities provided, my players used those in an "okay, so if I want access to the life or light domains I need to pick Lathander" sort of way.

I do understand your frustration with the lack of gods in the PHB, but your point would come across better if you weren't trying to insist that this must be a problem for everyone. I can get behind "gods are important enough for some players that they should be mentioned in the PHB". I can't get behind "nobody can possibly make a cleric if the PHB is missing a list of gods".

 

[Maxperson]

Perhaps for your table, but your experience isn't everyone's experience. In forty-something years of gaming, not once have I ever had a player care which particular god they worshiped until after they'd figured out the mechanical bits of their cleric. Even when there were lists of deities provided, my players used those in an "okay, so if I want access to the life or light domains I need to pick Lathander" sort of way.

I've seen it done that way as well. The key there is that they did pick a god and if it was from 3e-5e, they picked it from the PHB unless it was a homebrew game.

I do understand your frustration with the lack of gods in the PHB, but your point would come across better if you weren't trying to insist that this must be a problem for everyone. I can get behind "gods are important enough for some players that they should be mentioned in the PHB". I can't get behind "nobody can possibly make a cleric if the PHB is missing a list of gods".

I've never said nobody can do it. I said multiple times that I should not be forced to make one absent a god and that I should be able to make a complete cleric which includes a god using only the PHB. I've also said that absent gods in the PHB that the PHB is incomplete and the cleric class is incomplete. This is also true.

 

[Milieu]

"Material Planes", plural. Positive Fey and Negative Shadow might be "Material"?

Not quite: it's the "Material Realms". These are the Material Plane (singular), Feywild, and Shadowfell.

"Transitive Planes", plural. Presumably Astral and Ethereal?

Correct.

By the way, the Inner Planes do include the para-elemental planes. It also says the DMG will have more info on these and "other planes, like the Far Realm, Negative Plane, and Positive Plane".

 

[Yaarel]

Not quite: it's the "Material Realms". These are the Material Plane (singular), Feywild, and Shadowfell.

Heh, so you are saying Fey and Shadowfell are "Material" and are "Planes", but arent "Material Planes"?

I agree they can and should be materially-oriented planes.


With regard to characterizing the Fey and Shadow, I would prefer they be the Positive Ethereal and Negative Ethereal, respectively. The Ether too is oriented toward matter and the Material Plane.

Meanwhile, the Positive Material and the Negative Material are Fey Crossings and Shadow Crossings, respectively.

In any case, I look forward to reading the descriptions in the new Players Handbook and elsewhere.

 

[Yaarel]

"Blessed by a deity, a pantheon, or another immortal entity, a Cleric can reach out to the divine magic of the Outer Planes..."

I assume an "immortal entity" can include an "Astral paradigm", hence equivalent to a Xanathars "cosmic force".

Does anyone have the precise description from the Cleric class of the 2024 Players Handbook?

 

[Maxperson]

I assume an "immortal entity" can include an "Astral paradigm", hence equivalent to a Xanathars "cosmic force".

Does anyone have the precise description from the Cleric class of the 2024 Players Handbook?

Why would you assume that a force which isn't an entity is an entity? A force is like gravity, a force of nature(earthquakes, storms, etc.) or some other natural power that you can tap into, but isn't a being.