Dungeons & Dragons is launching its all-new core sourcebooks across the end of this year and early next year. The new Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual are already available for pre-order for $49.99 a piece. As players wait for these new books to be released, the team at Dungeons & Dragons is slowly revealing changes that can be expected in these books.
One rule that will affect player strategy and combat are changes to being “surprised”. In D&D 5E, there was an advantage to players surprising enemies prior to combat. This involved players sneaking up on enemies to catch them unaware before the first attack. With the 5th edition ruleset, this meant the enemies couldn’t take actions, reactions, or move for the entire first round of combat. This could be a critical advantage, especially if a very large party of players (as opposed to a single player) all surprised an enemy at the same time. Every player could take an attack against the enemy, potentially defeating them before they even got a chance to defend themselves.
That has now changed.
In the new 2024 books, being “surprised” simply means the surprised character has disadvantage on their initiative roll.
It’s easy to see the logic behind this. For highly stealthy parties, taking out all their enemies in one round before there is even a chance at a retaliation can be anticlimactic, especially if this is done every time the chance for combat comes up. It also makes a great deal more sense for trained enemy combatants, since being surprised and just taking a bunch of hits for one round seems out-of-character. This also can be an advantage for players, as they no longer will have to suffer through an entire first round of pummeling if they are the ones surprised.
Of course, this doesn’t affect key class and subclass features that may already impact initiative or taking foes by surprise. Those rules still stand on their own.
Dungeons & Dragons isn’t calling the new 2024 books a 6th Edition since they claim there aren’t enough major rule changes to warrant such a shift. But there are still a handful of revisions with a focus on making the game better.
The new books are available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers that sell D&D books.
