The new 2024 Player’s Handbook for Dungeons and Dragons adds some useful new items, and gives defined rules effects for a bunch of regular, non-magical items that have often languished, misunderstood and forgotten, at the bottoms of inventories. Here are a few we’re definitely trying out on our next adventure.
Common-or garden tools and adventuring gear – like books, rope, oil, or shovels (oh, don’t worry, we’ll get to those shovels) – faded into the background of many 5th edition DnD games, as their lack of defined mechanical effects left it up to the Dungeon Master to invent uses and rules for them.
Not so in Wizards of the Coast’s 2024 Player’s Handbook, which – for good or ill – gives more specific mechanical uses for a lot of stuff, from specialised DnD tools through to literal cologne, and adds some new items we never had before.
What follows is a small collection of our favorite minor gear items in the 2024 rules, from quirky new additions to previously boring doodads that you can now take on a DnD campaign and actually do stuff with.
Perfume
Let’s start with the most essential of all equipment for adventurers who spend their days tramping through wilderness getting covered in slime and Ogre blood – a nice, 5 GP bottle of perfume to get you smelling your best again.
A new entry in the 2024 rules, this is a four-ounce vial of sweet-smelling liquid that, once you apply it, grants you Advantage on Persuasion checks made to influence an indifferent humanoid within five feet of yourself. Just like in High School.
Net
For the princely sum of one gold piece, you can now pick up a net, which you can throw during combat to tangle up an enemy and get an advantage.
You can throw it at any creature you can see within 15 feet of you, and – unless they pass a Dexterity saving throw (DC8 + your Dex modifier + your proficiency bonus), they’re Restrained until they can escape.
To wriggle out, your netted enemy will need to use their action to pass a DC10 Strength check (or have their ally destroy it with attacks; it has AC10 and 5HP). It doesn’t work against baddies at DnD sizes Huge or larger – which is fair.
Pole
The cheapest of our new 2024 items, at just five measly Copper pieces, this 10-foot wooden pole is actually one of those we’re keenest to try.
If you’re having to make an Athletics check to do a High or Long jump, using the pole to vault the gap gives you Advantage on the roll. Simple, but narratively satisfying – and could save you an embarrassing fall.
Shovel
We told you we’d get to this tricky little S.O.B. – thanks to intrepid Reddit mathematician u/drunkengeebee, we’re all now aware that the new DnD 2024 shovel, rules as written, is ridiculously overpowered (in the specific area of digging holes in soil).
The 2024 Player’s Handbook description says that “working for one hour, you can use a shovel to dig a hole that is five feet on each side in soil or similar material”. Sounds reasonable to us, we thought.
But u/drunkengeebee did the math and proved us wrong: those numbers imply that your trusty DnD shovel can dig 4.6 cubic yards of soil per hour – approximately 5.5 times faster than the average shovel-armed human can dig in real life.
Commenters quickly remarked that a magic user with the DnD cantrip Mold Earth could do the same in six seconds – but that’s magic. If you want your character to be able to dig a big hole, by hand, real fast – grab a shovel.
Costume
Everybody knows what the most important thing in any tabletop roleplaying game is – that your character looks fly. But packing a 5 GP Costume will let you look like whomever you want – with potentially massive in-game benefits.
While you’re wearing it, you get Advantage on any ability check you make “to impersonate the person or type of person it represents”. Compared to the locked-down wording of some items in the new rules, that’s pretty flexible.
Wearing a clown costume would definitely give you Advantage when you introduce yourself to the carnival manager as Bonko Bibbles – but it might also give you Advantage on Acrobatics when impersonating Bonko’s famous triple backflip. After all, they’ll probably see that costume and assume it’s all part of the act, right?
Book
Ah, the humble Book. Repository of knowledge, signal of intelligence, excellent paperweight – it’s always had lots of uses. In 5e, though, its rules description essentially said ‘it might contain all sorts of information’.
The new-and-improved DnD 2024 book, meanwhile, has rules. The 2024 PHB stipulates that reading a book about something gives you a +5 bonus to Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion checks about that thing – as long as it’s an “accurate nonfiction book about this topic”.
No word on how long you can keep applying that bonus to further relevant checks, though – we suppose that depends on how forgetful your character is…
Rope and Chain
Anyone who’s played more than a little Dungeons and Dragons has, at one time or another, had to tie a character up. Previously, 5e rules as written, neither Rope nor Chain (both common items) could technically do this – but now they can, and there are rules to follow.
In DnD 2024, you can use either item to bind an unwilling creature that’s either Grappled, Incapacitated, or Restrained. As long as you bind its legs, that creature remains Restrained until it can escape – which it can do on a DC15 Dexterity check if it’s rope, or a tough DC18 if it’s a chain. Binding something using the heavier metal chain requires you to pass a DC13 Athletics check first, however. And, whether it’s Rope or Chain, the creature can burst out if they pass a DC20 Strength check.
Not looking to tie anyone up this time? You can also now formally use rope to tie a knot round something – that’s just a simple old DC10 Sleight of Hand check.
Airship
OK, this final one doesn’t quite fit into your backpack, and it’s hardly boring – but we simply couldn’t leave it out: the mighty Airship has joined DnD 2024’s core list of vehicles, changing the book heading from “waterborne vehicles” to “airborne and waterborne vehicles”.
It won’t fit into every DnD setting, and it’s rather pricey at 40,000 gold – but why should the sky be your limit, eh? With a top speed of 8 miles per hour, it’s twice as fast as the Galley, has a crew of ten, can carry 20 passengers and one ton of cargo.
We’re already dreaming of running a sky pirate campaign – who needs to dig holes really fast or vault over crevasses when you’re soaring 1000 feet up?
Those are our top choices, but they’re just a few of the changes we’ve picked up on in the 2024 rulebook. Some smaller rules tweaks we just find funny include:
- The 5e Fishing Tackle item has been removed from the 2024 rules – and the new PHB contains no references to fishing at all
- It now officially takes exactly ten minutes to recover all your Ball Bearings after you spread them on the ground.
- The rules for Manacles now explicitly state you can use them to restrain an unwilling creature (we dread to imagine the edge cases that caused this clarification).
Of course, it’s not like players weren’t already using these items in-game, with the DM just deciding how things work, like the old days. It’s not like we’ve gone through 50 years of DnD with nobody ever tying rope into a knot, or pole-vaulting over a gorge.
Some groups will prefer ambiguity to the sorts of explicit rules effects included in the 2024 book, relishing the chance to dream up creative uses for items, and negotiate them with their DMs – and we can still do all that.
But we’re glad to see Wizards of the Coast’s 2024 Player’s Handbook give some of these adventurer’s bits and bobs concrete functions that even casual players can use, right off the page.
Sure, the new rules make bigger, louder changes – like overhauling all the DnD classes, sweeping away some of its problematic past by detaching stats from the DnD races, and giving martial characters more options with the DnD Weapon Mastery system – but sometimes the small changes are the ones that bring the most joy.
Source: Wargamer
