What is One DnD?

One DnD is the early codename used for the updated set of Dungeons and Dragons rules, released across three books over 2024 and early 2025. With lots of rules tweaks and improvements like buffs to weaker classes and stronger monsters, it’s not quite a new edition – hence many fans labeling it ‘DnD 5.5e‘ rather than going the whole hog and saying DnD 6e – but it is the biggest change to the tabletop RPG in a decade.

Here we’ll explain the three DnD books that make up One DnD, and where they slot in on the DnD release schedule. You can also find out how the different DnD classes and DnD races have changed.

What is One DnD?

One DnD was the initial codename used to mean the new core DnD rulebooks released between September 2024 and February 2025. One DnD, as a concept, was also understood to mean Wizards of the Coast’s new ‘DnD Digital’ initiative, including its official virtual tabletop Project Sigil.

Confusingly, however, Wizards itself stopped using the One DnD moniker in late 2024, briefly referred to the new core rules as “DnD 2024”, and then dropped that title too, generally reverting to calling it simply “Dungeons and Dragons”. There’s still no distinct, official shortened term for this new phase in Dungeons and Dragons’ lifespan.

As a result, the majority of fans now refer to the new ruleset as DnD 2024 or DnD 5.5e – as distinct from DnD 5e, the version of the game supported by all books and materials released between 2014 and 2024. While we briefly referred to the new rules as DnD 6e when a “new version” of D&D was first announced, very few fans now think of the new rules as a sixth edition, as they’re too fundamentally similar to 5e. 

One DnD release dates

One DnD was not released in one lump – the three new edition core rulebooks released in staggered fashion over five months.

The three One DnD release dates were:

• Player’s Handbook – Tuesday, September 17, 2024.
• Dungeon Master’s Guide – Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
• Monster Manual – Tuesday, February 18, 2025.

What’s changed in the DnD 2024 rulebooks?

The core One DnD books are new, upgraded versions of Dungeons and Dragons’ primary rulebooks: the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual.

These new books 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 calls 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 (in our experience, it works, but requires tweaking some encounters, depending on your party’s builds and power level).

Taken as a whole, we think the new DnD 2024 rules – especially those for classes, character creation, and monsters, feel like a general tune-up in most areas of the game, with a lot of small improvements to various minor pain points, and mostly very welcome overhauls to classes. Read on, and we’ll break down what’s new in each of the three core books.

2024 Player’s Handbook

Here’s where you’ll find everything for your DnD character build. As we mentioned in our DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook review, the early chapters explain how to play Dungeons and Dragons in a more user-friendly way than they ever have before. Every aspect of character creation has been reworked, from individual spells to entire species.

The 12 core classes (sorry, Artificer 5e fans) have been remodeled, and some come with entirely new subclasses. Wizards of the Coast previously told Game Informer that 16 returning subclasses are also “so heavily redesigned that they are effectively new”.

Here’s an overview of the brand-new subclasses:

The DnD races have been re-named ‘species’, and the Goliath, Orc, and Aasimar are now core species, replacing the Half-Elf and the Half-Orc. The linked race guide can tell you how each of the core species has changed. The primary difference is that your character’s species no longer decides their ability score increases.

Ability score increases are instead tied to the 16 DnD 2024 backgrounds. Each suggests three DnD stats, and you can choose a +1 increase for each or a +2 and a +1 for two stats of your choice. Every background also comes with a starting DnD 2024 feat – see our guide for your options, as well as how the complete list of feats has changed.

DnD tools and crafting have seen an overhaul, and these have made some of the game’s most boring objects feel useful again. Additionally, the new DnD weapon mastery rules give martial classes a lot more diversity (though Nick seems particularly overpowered).

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

You can read our DnD 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide review for more details, but essentially this is a reorganized, streamlined version of the 2014 DMG.

It’s a far more practical book, especially for beginner DM’s, with worldbuilding content and adventure hooks you can actually use at the table, as well as our favorite new feature: more tracking sheets than you could possibly need.

Some of the more obscure optional rules have been lopped off in the 2024 DMG, but in their place are DnD Bastions. These optional base-building rules are sure to be a hoot with certain groups, though others will find them too much like busywork, and will prefer to handwave this area of gameplay.

To help newer players run DnD campaigns, the book also includes 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.

2025 Monster Manual

The 2025 Monster Manual includes a whopping 500 DnD monsters, 75 of which are brand-new to the game. Wizards proudly says that every single stat block in the book has been overhauled in one way or another, but it wasn’t without hiccups.

The company released its first Monster Manual errata before the book even fully released, fixing a lot of very funny accidents – including usually-weak Carrion Crawlers that had suddenly gained the ability to incurably paralyze a character for six rounds of combat.

The new Monster Manual has a particular focus on high-CR monsters, and designer Jeremy Crawford has told Wargamer before release that some biggies will absolutely beat the stuffing out of an unprepared party, including massive kaiju-sized beasts, and packs of well-equipped creatures.

After the 2024 Player’s Handbook gave classes a welcome boost, the 2025 Monster Manual aims to level the playing field with all sorts of upgrades for different devious dungeon denizens.

What is D&D Digital?

Alongside a new Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual, Wizards of the Coast is developing two virtual tabletops. The first of these is the confusingly-named D&D Maps, a simple 2D VTT that’s currently available in its Alpha version.

Despite the vague name, Maps actually has a lot to offer players who prefer a streamlined digital experience. We tested the VTT with Wizards of the Coast, and Maps quickly won us over. Since its announcement, Wizards has been steadily updating the VTT with maps from its first-party books.

‘Project Sigil’ is the codename for Wizards’ second virtual tabletop. In complete contrast with Maps, Project Sigil is a glossy 3D platform with Unreal Engine graphics to rival AAA videogames – shown off most recently at Gen Con in early August 2024. It seems Project Sigil will be available to all D&DBeyond users, but some miniatures and perks will be behind a paywall.

The publisher also acquired D&DBeyond in 2022, and it made a number of changes that impact how fans can buy their digital D&D books. All books now come in digital-physical bundles, and the price of Dungeons and Dragons books has also gone up. Third-party publishers’ books are now available to purchase on the marketplace, but Wizards has also axed one of D&DBeyond’s handiest features – you can no longer buy individual spells, subclasses, or features piecemeal, it’s whole books or nothing.

DnD virtual tabletop release date estimate

We expect Wizards of the Coast’s official DnD virtual tabletop to be released in late 2025 at the very earliest.

Wizards originally estimated it’d launch its shiny new VTT sometime in late 2023. However, with that time window now long closed, and – as of February 2025 – very little fresh news in this department, we’d be very surprised if it came out before the Fall.

While we’re all waiting, we can always recommend you the best DnD virtual tabletops to play on while you wait!

One DnD playtesting

The 2024 rulebooks were extensively playtested before their release, with several rounds of feedback provided by the D&D community. Here you’ll find a summary of the changes suggested during One DnD playtesting.

Overall, One DnD playtest satisfaction scores were 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 took this one step further.

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

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

Expert Classes

Like the first playtest, 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 said 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 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 managed to fix the worst Barbarian subclass, and gave Fighters 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 were written in the 2014 Player’s Handbook. This included bringing class spell lists back rather than using shared spell lists. 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. Sure enough, we would only get one more playtest for the PHB.

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 gave fans a final 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.

This was the final Unearthed Arcana playtest document for One DnD to be released.

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