One DnD release date and news

‘One DnD’ is the codename we’ve been using to refer to the next generation of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a broad term that covers everything from the next D&D books to digital tools Wizards of the Coast will use to expand the way we play. The One DnD release date is almost upon us, so if you’re looking to learn more about the future of D&D, you’ve come to the right place. Here you’ll find everything we know so far.

We’ll start by explaining what new DnD books are coming out and when, with key dates lifted from the DnD release schedule. Our playtest breakdown will tell you what the latest DnD classes and DnD races will look like, and we’ll cover every scrap of One DnD news we can find.

Ready to face the future? Let’s talk One DnD: 

One DnD release date

At long last, we have a confirmed One DnD release date! The One DnD Player’s Handbook releases on September 17, 2024, with the Dungeon Master’s Guide following on November 12. The One DnD Monster Manual won’t release until February 18, 2025.

While these release dates are set in stone, there are multiple ways to get early access to the new rulebooks. Certain local game stores will be allowed to sell copies early, and we know that these brick-and-mortar stores will have the new Player’s Handbook available from September 3.

Additionally, D&D Beyond subscribers can read the new books early if they pre-order a digital copy. Here’s those early access dates:

To complement these new titles, Wizards has packed the DnD release schedule full of adventures (see our dedicated guide for more details). These include a high-level Vecna-themed campaign, another adventure anthology, and even a history book about the making of Dungeons and Dragons. You won’t need the new rules to enjoy that last one, of course. 

One DnD books

The core One DnD books are new, upgraded versions of Dungeons and Dragons’ primary rulebooks. We’ll get a new Player’s Handbook in September, an updated Dungeon Master’s Guide in November, and a shiny new Monster Manual at the start of 2025.

These new books will replace the fifth edition versions from 2014, but they are not the start of a new edition of D&D. Instead. Wizards of the Coast has been calling the books ‘cross-compatible’ with existing fifth edition products. In theory, you can buy these new rulebooks and run your old 5e campaigns with them. We’re assuming anyone who still owns the old 5e rulebooks will still be welcome at the table, too.

Here’s what we know about each book so far:

2024 Player’s Handbook

Here’s where you’ll find everything for your DnD character build. The 12 core classes are returning (sorry, Artificer fans), with four DnD subclasses for each. According to a Game Informer article from May, the 2024 Player’s Handbook will include three entirely new subclasses. Plus, 16 of the returning subclasses are “so heavily redesigned that they are effectively new”.

Wizards of the Coast confirmed exactly what subclasses the book will include in June 2024. These are:

Barbarian

• Path of the Berserker
• Path of the Wild Heart
• Path of the World Tree*
• Path of the Zealot

Bard

• College of Dance*
• College of Glamour
• College of Lore
• College of Valor

Cleric

• Life Domain
• Light Domain
• Trickery Domain
• War Domain

Druid

• Circle of the Land
• Circle of the Moon
• Circle of the Sea*
• Circle of Stars

Fighter

• Battle Master
• Champion
• Eldritch Knight
• Psi Warrior

Monk

• Warrior of Mercy
• Warrior of Shadow
• Warrior of the Elements
• Warrior of the Open Hand

Paladin

• Oath of Devotion
• Oath of Glory
• Oath of the Ancients
• Oath of Vengeance

Ranger

• Beast Master
• Fey Wanderer
• Gloom Stalker
• Hunter

Rogue

• Arcane Trickster
• Assassin
• Soulknife
• Thief

Sorcerer

• Aberrant Sorcery
• Clockwork Sorcery
• Draconic Sorcery
• Wild Magic

Warlock

• Archfey Patron
• Celestial Patron
• Fiend Patron
• Great Old One Patron

Wizard

• Abjurer
• Diviner
• Evoker
• Illusionist

* New subclass for 2024

DnD races will be known as ‘species’ going forward, and we can expect to see the usual favorites here. As well as your DnD Elf and DnD Dwarf, the Player’s Handbook will apparently include a few rarer character options. Game Informer tells us we’ll see the Aasimar, Goliaths, and Orcs featured.

16 DnD backgrounds will be in the new Player’s Handbook, and each comes with a starting DnD feat of its own. These ‘origin feats’ will stand apart from your regular Dungeons and Dragons feats so as not to overwhelm new players. Plus, some backgrounds share the same starting feat – so power builders aren’t locked into one single background. For more information on how character origins have changed, see Wizards of the Coast’s video above.

This video below is about a brand-new feature coming to the 2024 Player’s Handbook: Weapon Mastery.

Weapon mastery seems to be enhancing DnD weapon proficiencies. Any class can now pick up a simple or martial weapon and wield it, but you need a particular weapon mastery feature to unlock your weapon’s full potential. If you’re a master of a particular weapon, its property will give you some extra mechanical bonuses.

2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide

In an August 2022 Wizards Presents event, D&D game designer Chris Perkins said he plans to make major “structural changes” to the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. This is apparently “to make it more friendly for new DMs”. Considering how rarely we open our fifth edition DM’s Guide, we’re all here for this change.

The Bastion rules we saw in playtesting will appear in this book, along with plenty of glossaries and tutorials. To help newer players run DnD campaigns, the book will also include a detailed deep dive into the Greyhawk setting. Inside the new DM’s guide, you’ll find several example adventures that showcase what a great campaign can look like.

2024 Monster Manual

The 2024 Monster Manual will include a whopping 500 DnD monsters, 75 of which are brand-new to the game. In May, Game Informer told us that every stat block in the book was new or revised. However, the challenge rating of existing monsters has been kept the same to ensure the new Monster Manual remains backwards-compatible with old adventures. 

D&D Digital

‘D&D Digital’ is yet another codename that came under the One D&D umbrella. It originally came about in September 2021, when a D&D livestream hinted that the next generation of the game would feature “some cool new things we’re doing in the digital arena”. The phrase ‘D&D Digital’ was then coined in another livestream in August 2022.

The major feature of D&D Digital is a first-party virtual tabletop (check it out in the video above). This Roll20 rival uses the Unreal Engine and has a high-end look that makes it feel like you’re playing with DnD miniatures.

Wizards of the Coast is also working on a 2D VTT called (a little confusingly) DnD maps. Considering our thoughts on the triple-A graphics of D&D Digital, we saw this as a welcome update. A beta is available to play with now on D&DBeyond. Since it was announced, Wizards has been steadily uploading maps for existing fifth edition adventures.

Speaking of D&DBeyond, the digital marketplace is going to play a big role in the digital future of Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast acquired D&DBeyond in 2022, and it’s made several tweaks to the website since then. All books now come in digital-physical bundles, for example. The price of Dungeons and Dragons books has also gone up, and the option to buy character options piecemeal was removed in 2024.

DnD virtual tabletop release date estimate

Wizards’ DnD virtual tabletop was estimated to release sometime in late 2023. However, with that time window now long closed, we’re expecting the new official DnD virtual tabletop to appear in late 2024 at the earliest. 

One DnD playtesting

Wizards has been sharing playtest material for One D&D basically since the revision was announced. We’ve seen that – as expected – a deeper DnD backgrounds system will play a bigger role in dictating your character’s particulars than which DnD race they’re from. In fact, in December 2022 Wizards shared it’d had the term race removed from the game entirely, switching to ‘species’ for future playtest material.

Wizards has also tested the water with some potential rules changes (see more detail below), including tweaking how D20 critical successes and failures work. Overall, One DnD playtest satisfaction scores have been particularly positive – with only a few outliers like the One DnD playtest Dragonborn needing further workshopping. Wizards has also been addressing potentially controversial content, acknowledging Monk stereotypes and removing half-elves and orcs from the new core rules.

As of writing, Wizards has released nine One D&D playtest documents:

Character Origins

The first was ‘Character Origins’, and this showcased revised rules for DnD races, 5e feats, and character backgrounds. Wizards had already made attempts to divorce race from DnD stats in 5e supplements, and (as predicted), the new edition takes this one step further.

The biggest tweak in this department is that ability scores and proficiencies are now linked to backgrounds instead. Additionally, there are new rules for characters who have parents of two different races.

The playtest introduced a brand new character race – the Ardlings, who are supernatural beings from the Upper DnD Planes. However, we saw the DnD Ardling axed in February 2022.

Expert Classes

The first playtest – as well as the second, ‘Expert Classes’, showed an increased emphasis on feats. Level-one feats were heavily featured, and the One D&D playtest feats featured tweaked versions of many old 5e favorites.

And, of course, ‘Expert Classes‘ gave our first glimpse of how One D&D planned to handle DnD classes. The 12 classes would be split into four groups: expert, warrior, mage, and priest (this was later scrapped).

Cleric and Revised Species

The ‘Cleric and Revised Species’ playtest did exactly what it says on the tin, amending a few existing races based on player feedback and pioneering the new DnD Cleric rules. The Unearthed Arcana provided a list of recommended starting spells, and players could now choose their subclass at a later level – all changes designed to make this an easier class for new players to pick up.

Druid and Paladin

The fourth playtest explored the DnD Druid and DnD Paladin classes, as well as their subclasses, the Circle of the Moon Druid and Oath of Devotion Paladin. The ‘Druid and Paladin‘ playtest also showed off further feats and spells getting tweaked for One D&D.

Wizards has since collected survey feedback on this one, and the Druid playtest was particularly divisive. Players were torn on the changes to Wild Shape, which aimed to simplify the feature by allowing Druids to choose categories of beasts to turn into rather than individual creatures with unique stat blocks. More people disliked it than liked it, in the end.

Player’s Handbook Playtest 5

This playtest document was a whopping 50 pages long, and it revamped five D&D classes: the DnD Barbarian, the DnD Fighter, the DnD Sorcerer, the DnD Warlock, and the DnD Wizard.

The Wizard was been given the ability to modify and create new spells – a potentially broken power that Jeremy Crawford said was even more broken in initial internal playtests. The document looks like it will fix the worst Barbarian subclass, and Fighters will have more combat options to consider thanks to the added crunch of Weapon Masteries.

The most divisive changes were made to the Warlock, having been transformed into a hybrid spellcaster. Jeremy Crawford explained the change aimed to give Warlocks more power, not just potential. Despite this explainer, the Warlock playtest changes were walked back in August 2023.

Player’s Handbook Playtest 6

Oh, you thought the last playtest was long? That’s hilarious – anyway, here’s an Unearthed Arcana that’s 77 pages long. It was an in-depth revision of the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk 5e, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue.

Some of the key things to note include the fact the Bard and Druid got two new subclasses (the College of Dance and Circle of the Sea). Additionally, the Monk 5e playtest material featured some seriously buffed unarmed strikes and new names for class traits like Ki.

Player’s Handbook Playtest 7

Playtest seven returned to the Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard classes. Spells, weapons, and the ability score improvement rules also saw some tweaks (including a controversial Counterspell nerf).

A lot of features were changed back to how they’re written in the current 2014 Player’s Handbook. This included bringing class spell lists back rather than using shared spell lists, and the Wizard ability to create spells was removed after being suggested in a previous playtest.

It wasn’t all walk-backs, though. New Barbarian and Fighter subclasses were introduced (though the Brawler Fighter was, in fact, later scrapped). Playtest fans seemed to want more from the Barbarian, while the Eldritch Knight playtest and Blade Warlock playtest were deemed particularly powerful.

In November 2023, Wizards of the Coast hinted that DnD classes playtesting was almost complete. This means we’re almost done with these Unearthed Arcanas, and playtesting will soon be done internally.

Bastions and Cantrips

Wizards of the Coast dropped a surprise playtest on October 5, introducing base-building ‘bastion’ rules and several tweaks to the RPG’s worst cantrips. Previous playtests have focused on content for the revised Player’s Handbook, but the bastion rules give us a glimpse of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The survey results for this one aren’t in yet, but fans online seem pleased with the proposed changes in playtest 8. One player has even used the Bastion rules to figure out why Wizards love towers so much.

Player’s Handbook Playtest 8

Wizards had another crack at its DnD classes in late November 2023. While the D&D Druid and Barbarian saw a handful of tweaks, the DnD Monk playtest update was the most significant – and seemed to do a great job fixing the class’ core issues.

The other core element of this playtest was spells. Three new spells were introduced for Bards and Druids, and all the major healing spells were buffed with higher healing dice. Plus, a bunch of ‘conjure’ spells were rewritten – with some hilariously broken upcasting added to spells like Conjure Minor Elementals.

For more Dungeons and Dragons, here are the best DnD miniatures to the best Dungeons and Dragons movies.