The D&D 2024 Player's Handbook just dissed the Witcher by completely deleting silvered weapons

Sorry, monster hunters, but silvered weapons are gone in the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook.

It’s not like the highlight of my Descent into Avernus campaign was when the players stopped in Little Calimshan to have their weapons silvered, or in my Curse of Strahd campaign when the players preemptively silvered their weapons in Daggerford.

But at least it made sense for them to do so. In Avernus, they were fighting devils. In Barovia, they were dealing with shapechangers. Both of these groups include monsters that are "resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren't silvered." It’s the "that aren't silvered" part that's crucial here.

In Descent into Avernus, low-level players encounter Imps and Bearded Devils, both of which are resistant to nonmagical, non-silvered weapons. If your players don’t have +1 magical weapons in the opening chapter (mine didn’t), visiting the silversmiths (which I created) outside of Baldur’s Gate was essential. Similarly, Curse of Strahd features Wights and Wraiths that are also resistant to nonmagical and/or non-silvered weapons.

And what about silver weapons versus Werewolves, Wererats, Werebears, and Wereboars? Anything with "were-" at the start of the name is immune—straight-up immune—to non-silvered weapons. Werewolves even appear in the random encounter tables in Curse of Strahd, so your players could run into them anywhere.

Hopefully, your players make that stop in Daggerford. I wouldn’t let them leave without getting their weapons silvered first. Silvering a weapon or 10 pieces of ammunition costs 100 gold pieces—an admittedly steep price for low-level characters. According to the 5e Player’s Handbook:

"This cost represents not only the price of the silver but also the time and expertise needed to add silver to the weapon without making it less effective."

But guess what? You could already get a common +1 magical weapon in the range of 50 to 100 gold pieces. So just head to your local Magic Walmart and snag those instead—folklore be damned. And for anyone wanting to make a Witcher-like character packing steel for humans and silver for monsters—well, you’re out of luck. You can no longer follow in Geralt of Rivia’s footsteps.

It seems the designers of D&D 2024 wanted to simplify things. The pricing discrepancy between silvered and magical weapons never made sense—both cost nearly the same. Magical weapons might even be cheaper and offer a +1 to attack and damage rolls. So why settle for silver? I just hope they address the resistance or immunity to silvered weapons that many monsters have before the D&D 2024 Monster Manual comes out next year.

And you, Dungeon Master, will have to ensure they all have a magical weapon already in the bag, otherwise they have no other option but to turn and run from that were-creature. And running gets old fast.