The original Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition ruleset stated that to drink a potion yourself required your full action. That meant that, in the middle of combat, players had to choose healing themselves over taking an attack, casting a spell, or supporting their party members. It’s never a good combat situation when you find yourself debating whether you can risk staying alive one more round and providing vital support, or needing to simply heal yourself and hope it wasn’t in vain until it’s your turn once again. Perhaps that is why this rule is rarely enforced in games. And this is likely why that is all changing in the new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks.
It’s a common homebrew rule that drinking a potion yourself is a bonus action. Game tables that have this homebrew typically have feeding a potion to another player as a full action given that it’s more complicated. This rule is used in the popular TTRPG livestream Critical Role, where dungeon master Matthew Mercer allowed the players to drink potions as a bonus action. It also was a bonus action in the award-winning video game Baldur’s Gate 3, which used a modified Dungeons & Dragons rule system.
In the updated 2024 D&D books, drinking a potion yourself will be a bonus action.
There are a handful of changes coming to the core rules with the new D&D sourcebooks. There aren’t enough major changes for Wizards of the Coast to consider this a 6th edition. However, many of the revisions tweak rules that were often complained about, and incorporate things fans have already been doing since the 5th edition’s release in 2014.
In a YouTube video from game designers Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, they discussed multiple 2024 rule changes fans can expect, including this new rule.
All the new sourcebooks including the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual are available for pre-order for $49.99 a piece. They will be released across the end of 2024 into the start of 2025.
