So I wrapped up DM'ing my last campaign shortly after the release of the 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. While I mull over what I want to do for our next campaign, it's been a good opportunity for me to learn the new rules. The majority of them seemed good at first glance, and now I've finally had a change to try them out.
For our test run, I decided to run a short adventure specifically in the level 3-4 range: "The Forge of Fury" as written in Tales from the Yawning Portal. I think level 3-4 is a good sweet spot to try new features without getting overwhelmed by higher level play. We have three characters in the party: Warrior of the Elements Monk (pictured above), Thief Rogue, and Hunter Ranger. We've now run two sessions which is an extremely small sample size, but I've liked every new change we've come across. I'll elaborate on the ones that stood out to me.
Everyone gets a free feat in character creation now, and humans get two. This is not that big a deal since a lot of DM's did this anyway, but it's nice to make it official. More importantly though, feats have been divided into categories that help game balance and flexibility.
At level 1, you can only take "origin" feats which is a limited list of useful, but not overwhelmingly powerful options. There's still some bangers in here like reworked versions of Alert and Lucky, but gone are the days of picking variant human and taking Great Weapon Master to immediately curb stomp everything in your path. Some people might not like this, but as a DM I think it was necessary.
At level 4, you can start taking from a "general" feats list. This is where you'll find classics like the reworked Great Weapon Master (nerfed but I think still good), but what I really love is that almost every general feat gives you a +1 ability score. For our group, I planned on the party gaining one level during the adventure, so it made it OK to set an ability score to 17 knowing you would get the +1 and a feat at level 4. We were seeing more of these "half feats" in newer books, and I'm glad they've fully embraced them here.
Weapon Masteries are the most visible new addition to the 2024 rules. Masteries allow you to unlock a weapon's unique features or ability, like pushing enemies or giving yourself advantage on your next attack. It gives martial fighters something extra to think about in combat and actually makes weapon choice meaningful. For some reason I wasn't impressed when I first read through them, but I am sold now that I've seen them in action.
In my defense, there are some masteries that don't seem that useful, but I think I underestimated the fact that you can use them without spending any resources. I remember explaining to our Ranger that they can use their heavy crossbow to automatically push an enemy 10 feet with no saving throw and they were like "wait, I can just do this all the time?!?" Another stand out is the dagger with the nick property, which allows you to make an offhand attack as part of your attack action. In our party, this lets the Rogue make two attacks (meaning two chances at sneak attack) while leaving their bonus action free for cunning actions or steady aim. Maybe this doesn't close the gap between martials and spellcasters, but I think it's a big improvement.
Monks got a LOT of changes, mostly reducing or eliminating focus point (formerly ki point) costs. But from our small sample size, the biggest impact came from the change to deflect attack (formerly deflect missiles). Beyond just ranged attacks, you can now reduce ANY bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. At level 3, this was HUGE. Our Monk was able to fight off a horde of orcs while taking hardly any damage, while the Rogue and Ranger were running for their lives half the time.
As a side note, the Warrior of the Elements subclass is really cool. Technically this used to be the notoriously bad Way of the Four Elements, but it's a complete rework and basically a brand new subclass. The big thing at level 3 is spending a point to go into "Avatar" mode where you can change your unarmed strikes to elemental damage of your choice, attack from 15 feet away, and attempt to push or pull enemies. Man, monks are really cool now.
As things turned out, we happened to create a low magic party with the Ranger being the only one with spellcasting. There have been a lot of balance changes to spells in the 2024 rules, so I will need to see how those pan out in the future. We did have one instance where our Ranger used the new and improved Jump spell (which actually adds to your total movement now) to leap across a rickety suspension bridge and land behind some orcs, then use their heavy crossbow to push one off a ledge. That was pretty sick.
So yeah, I know it's only two sessions and there's a many, many changes I've yet to experience, but so far I've really like what I've seen. We'll see what happens when we dive into our next full campaign.