Contrary to the impressions of many fans, I’ve had a miserable time reading through the new 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, and the new rules for character Backgrounds are emblematic of the revision’s colossal missteps. Six years into 5e DnD, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything was released, which provided exciting new class features and a better way to handle racial ability score bonuses. The 2024 PHB seems to have somehow unlearned all of Tasha’s lessons. The new Background rules are stifling towards interesting character concepts, and somehow more offensive than the 2014 rules on racial ability bonuses that Tasha’s corrected.

Many early reviews seem to like the 2024 DnD Background ability score changes, but I can’t fathom why the designers would go this route, having already found a better way back in 2020 when Tasha’s Cauldron was released. For some history, when the 5e DnD rules launched back in 2014, they followed the legacy system wherein each playable fantasy species received set ability score bonuses based on race. Half orcs always received a bonus to Strength, and elves had a bonus to Dexterity. Some races offered more flexible options, like human, and others chose a “subrace” that increased a score.

Tasha's Cauldron Was 5e D&D's Perfect Balance

Flexible Guidelines From 2020 Allowed For Varied Characters And Avoided Bigotry

One of Tasha’s biggest changes to DnD’s rules was a universal shift in racial ability scores. A fantasy species now provided the “numbers” the players would use, like +2 to one score and +1 to another score, but the players instead selected which specific abilities those bonuses would go towards. This solution worked on multiple levels. Players were no longer penalized for picking unconventional pairings of race and class, since they could customize their scores to fit their concept for the character. Also, the game’s baggage of “fantasy racism” was largely offloaded by not attributing inherent aptitudes to a species.

Whether it’s in a TTRPG or a video game like Astria Ascending, fantasy racism is lazy, a tired trope that certainly harkens back to elves and dwarves bickering in Tolkien novels from the 1950s. There are a lot of perspectives on the issue among hobbyists, but it’s undeniable to me that the tone of older edition descriptions of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of fictional races reads uncomfortably close to the writings of real-world bigots discussing their contemptible worldviews. Tasha’s removal of fixed racial ability scores was a good call, but four years later, DnD found another way to offend people.

If you peer at the free 2024 D&D rules available online, under Character Origins you’ll notice Background Descriptions. When Backgrounds were introduced as a mandatory part of character creation in the 2014 rules, I thought it was among the best changes 5e introduced to the game. Considering one’s character as more than a dwarf cleric was now hard coded into the game. Backgrounds encouraged players to think about their character as more than a stereotype of their class or their species, but who they were as individuals, and the formative influences that shaped them. Now, Backgrounds are the new straitjacket.

The 2024 D&D Players Handbook Has Failed Fans

Restrictive Character Creation Options Now Pair With Problematic Classism

When Hasbro uses AI for DnD content, it shows the company is wildly out of touch with DnD fans, but the rules on Backgrounds suggest the designers are out of touch with humanity altogether. Backgrounds, not species, now dictate specific ability scores a player can increase. This baffles me. Back in 2020, DnD designers read the room with Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and realized mandating that no half orc can begin with an Intelligence or Charisma above the norm for an adventurer was a bad look. With the 2024 rules, that statement now applies to Backgrounds like Farmer and Sailor.

The 2024 DnD Player's Handbook provides guidelines for using 2014 5e DnD species and backgrounds, but requires using the new rules wherein backgrounds determine where ability bonuses go at level one, making the stifling character generation and classist bigotry unavoidable.

I don’t know how DnD pivoted from a trend towards more flexible character creation and distancing itself from “fantasy racism” to less flexible character creation and openly embracing real-world classism. In the 2024 rules, a Noble is inherently stronger, smarter, or more charming, than a Guide. These rules give three ability options instead of two, and players still allocate their rolled stats or their Point Buy as they did with the 2014 rules. This is a terrible statement to codify in the DnD rule system. To say that Nobles are trained in History and Persuasion is completely fine.

Going to that next step, to say that Nobles tend to be inherently more likable or intelligent than many other backgrounds is classism, in the real-world sense: a prejudice based on social class. A character from a Farmer background can’t begin the game inherently more charming and intelligent than other adventuring heroes, based on these rules, despite the reality that social standing has no bearing on someone’s innate aptitudes and abilities. Giving a Background specific skills is appropriate since that reflects training. Giving them limited choices for ability score increases addresses an individual’s personal qualities, and that is problematic.

D&D Limits Ideal Background & Class Pairings

Players Are Funneled Into A Few Mechanically Optimal Backgrounds Per Class

Players should be encouraged to go beyond cliché Dungeons & Dragons character concepts, not just to create different kinds of clichés. Instead of a propensity towards half-orc barbarians, 2024 DnD silos players into making Farmer and Soldier Background barbarians, since those are the Backgrounds that grant both Strength and Constitution as eligible choices for ability score bonuses at level one. I loved that the 2014 Backgrounds gave players the ability to play against type. If players choose the Barbarian class, but selected a Background like Acolyte or Sage, they could emphasize their background in characterization, making the character truly unique.

I’m disappointed as a DnD fan at the narrowing of valid options created by the new Background rules, but I’m offended, as a person, at the addition of classist bigotry to the game.

A player can still go against the grain and choose an unconventional pairing of Background and Class, but now they pay a price for it. The Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything rule changes opened the door to gnome barbarians and dwarf bards as more viable build choices, since players did not lose out on effectiveness by picking a species not normally associated with a class. With a 2020 book already providing a fix that allows for maximum versatility while minimizing problematic elements, I can’t fathom why the 2024 revision would bring that back, now made offensive towards real-world walks of life.

I’m disappointed as a DnD fan at the narrowing of valid options created by the new Background rules, but I’m offended, as a person, at the addition of classist bigotry to the game. The game has had plenty of implicit prejudice over the years, as Ravenloft’s Vistani race shows DnD’s age, and Forgotten Realms’ Chult region is generally avoided for similar reasons. These are cases where fictitious races and cultures are obviously thinly veiled, bigoted analogues to real-world cultures, but they are still fictitious. The 1e ADnD Player’s Handbook from the 1970s had lower maximum ability scores for female characters.

D&D 2024 Brings Back 1970s Era Bigotry

The Game Has Not Overtly Espoused Real-World Prejudice In Decades

While DnD has had decades worth of dog whistle prejudice, with its dated campaign settings and their ignorant cultural parallels, the game had at least avoided overt bigotry towards any real-world group since the 1970s, but the 2024 revised Player’s Handbook broke that streak. In the 70s DnD capped the physical abilities of female characters, and now the game dictates that those who are Noble by birth really are smarter than other adventurers, unlike Farmers or Soldiers. Backgrounds went from being my favorite addition to the 2014 5e DnD system, to an unmitigated disaster for the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons rules.

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