Will the D&D 2024 DMG fix the broken stuff?

Written by Luke Hart

The D&D 2024 Players Handbook is out in the wild, and even though I don’t have an advanced copy, I’ve been watching videos, reading articles, and talking to folks about it. At this point, I’m pretty optimistic about the changes.

It sounds like some of the high-level game breaking abilities have been scaled back. Druids no longer get unlimited wild shapes at level 20; the cleric’s divine intervention is now much more reasonable. Spells are perhaps a mixed bag. Some spells that were too powerful got reigned in, even though others that were too powerful became MORE powerful. Martials appear to have gotten a bit of a buff to help them compete with the power of spellcasters.

So, it seems like there is some good, some neutral, and perhaps some bad that came with the changes. However, and of supreme comfort to me and probably many others, is that D&D 2024 certainly appears to be compatible with D&D 2014—with certain caveats, of course.

However, the Player’s Handbook, isn’t really what I care about the most. Because I’m mostly a dungeon master, and rarely a player. So, today we’re talking about what I desperately hope the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide will give us.

Watch or listen to this article by clicking the video below.

First and foremost: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE THAT IS ALL THAT IS HOLY, give us an encounter building system that actually works. If I punch the numbers and it says HARD, let it be hard, not a cakewalk. If it says EASY, let it be easy, not a near TPK. Dungeon master after dungeon master has screamed to the heavens that this is one of their number one wishes. They’d dropped to their knees and begged. They’ve sacrificed sacred miniatures to murderous felines intent on knocking every last one off their shelves. And, please, let it work for ALL LEVELS OF PLAY. I’m sick of the game only being playable between levels 3 and 10. If encounter building worked, high level play would be much more viable.

I realize that this is a tall order considering the disparity between character power, and builds, and all the broken combos that will inevitably emerge. However, I know other game systems such as Pathfinder 2 have done a really good job at this; so, I know it’s not impossible.

Of course, a solid encounter building system requires balance and tight math in a couple places. First, characters. If a paladin is way more powerful than a ranger—who some people claim to have gotten the shaft AGAIN in D&D 2024. Why all the hate for rangers? Why? Did they hurt you? Was it an arrow in the knee? Do we need to get out the doll? But if one class is way more powerful than another—that is, classes are not balanced relative to one another—then encounter building math will always be hit and miss. So, the ball may have already been dropped on that.

But the other place where we need balance and tight math for encounter building to work is the monsters. One thing I’ve noticed is that a CR 3 monster over here may be more or less powerful than a CR 3 monster from over there. If there is a rhyme or reason, I’m not sure what it is. MORE ON THAT LATER… And high-level monsters are almost always lackluster. I’ve run several high-level D&D 5e campaigns—we’re talking the level 17 to 20 range—and high-level monsters suck. Characters just tear through them. I’m not dumb, either. I know better than to stick just ONE boss monster in the room, even if it has legendary actions; they always have minions, and environmental effects, and terrain, and other factors in their favor. However, unless I buff them—usually by at least doubling their damage output—high-level monsters are laughably easy to beat. So, when the 2024 Monster Manuel is finally released—in 2025, ironically enough—we’ll see if monsters got any love, or if they’re just getting a coat of whitewash but are largely left unchanged, similar to what Monsters of the Multiverse did with existing monsters.

Now, all this this talk of monsters and challenge ratings brings me to my next point: will the 2024 Dungeon Master’s guide give us better TOOLS & SYSTEMS? It’s widely known that the rules in the 2014 DMG for creating monsters are NOT exactly what the developers themselves use. They may be close, but the secret sauce—or several large vats of it, along with the seasoning, and the choice cuts of meat—have been left out. If I look at Pathfinder 2’s rules for building monsters, they are VERY robust and are exactly what the developers themselves use. I know, I’ve literally spoken with Mark Seifter about it. And let’s look at the 2014 DMG’s system for building magic items. Very sparce; not much to go on. We’re really left to playing a comparison game between existing magic items in order to approximate relative power. But even then we have outliers like the Winged Boots and Broom of Flying that are nowhere close to only being Uncommon in power. Many Dungeon Masters love homebrewing our own monsters and magic items: will we get access to the secret sauce this time? Or will be left with half-baked systems in the 2024 DMG?

And speaking of magic items, will they be rebalanced? Will we be able to trust their rarity? Or will we still need to depend on 3^rd-party sources that evaluate and categorize magic items by relative power, usually assigning gold piece values to them? As a dungeon master, I would expect to find this in the core rules. And, frankly, with the annual revenue that WotC and Hasbro have, I’d expect them to provide it.

And would it kill you to give us faster combat? Another big complaint of folks is the slog that D&D combat often is. I mean, look at all these videos that scores of YouTubers have made on the subject. Now, I know that most of the core rules are locked in at this point—so, hoping for something like having critical hits when the attack roll exceeds the armor class by 10 or more is out of the question, and probably not reasonable in a system that uses bounded accuracy—so just forget I mentioned it. But, hey, do you know what you COULD do? Cut the hit points of monsters BY HALF, or more, and increase their damage output appropriately to hit the correct challenge rating. That would make combat not only faster—because monsters die more quickly—but also more exciting and tense because monsters are dishing out more damage to characters. The overall challenge is unaffected, but you get faster and better combats. It sure seems like a win-win from where I’m sitting.

I know that the ship has already sailed on many things that were on my wish list—such as removing spells and abilities from the game that essentially make it so that some players don’t get to play the game. I’m looking at things like counterspell and banishment and polymorph and walls of force. I get that PLAYERS love using them; but when the dungeon master uses them on you—not quite so much fun to not get to play the game, huh? Yeah, that’s how we often feel. I mean, who shows up to a D&D game and says, “yeah, I’m cool not playing today. I’ll just sit over here and do stuff on my phone.” Oh wait, lots of people do that already. Hey, maybe it’s a wash then!

However, point is, I’m still holding out hope that the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manuel will give us some much-needed quality of life improvements. And shoot, it’s quite possible that folks who are privy to advanced copies already know if this is true or not. I’m still the kid who never gets picked at gym class.

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