New D&D Player’s Handbook has the most subclasses of any book – but there’s a catch

The new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook is going to have more subclasses than any other official book, but some classic ones didn’t make the cut.

The original D&D 5E Player’s Handbook from 2014 had subclass options heavily skewed in favor of the Cleric and Wizard. While all the other classes received 2 or 3 subclasses, the Cleric had 7, and the Wizard had 8.

The new D&D Player’s Handbook that’s being released on September 17 will give characters far more options, as it will include brand new subclasses, as well as revamped versions of established ones, like the psionic subclasses from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

Dexerto recently attended a press preview for the upcoming D&D core rulebooks, where Lead Rules Designer Jeremy Crawford revealed that the new Player’s Handbook will have 48 subclasses, more than any other book released so far.

There’s a catch, however, as some of the subclasses that appeared in the 2014 Player’s Handbook won’t be returning. These are the Knowledge, Nature, and Tempest Domains for the Cleric and the Conjuration, Enchantment, Necromancy, and Transmutation Schools for the Wizard.

Wizards of the Coast/Andrey Kuzinskiy

This change aligns all classes in terms of subclass options. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, as all of them now has exactly four options to choose from.

“In our effort to give all of our classes a nice selection of options and that meant giving every class four subclass options,” Crawford said, “Simply because of the limits of page space, it meant that the Wizard and Cleric who had way more subclass options in 2014 than the other classes had to give up a few of their subclasses at least in this book.”

Some of the most popular Cleric and Wizard subclasses are gone, but they should return in the future. The new iteration of the D&D rules will receive more sourcebooks in the future, so these cut subclasses will be reprinted with all new abilities.

It’s a shame that players who want to bring over established characters who already use those subclasses will have to wait for their updated versions. However, the new Player’s Handbook not only reworks those classes but adds and revamps over 200 spells, so there is plenty of fresh content for older spellcasting heroes.