D&D 5E Xanathar's Guide is excellent... and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Schmoe · Dec 10, 2017

ad_hoc said:
There is a lot of reprint in it. A lot. There are also a lot of subclasses I would either never use (or recommend) or completely disallow.

For someone who doesn't follow the game online, what is the reprinted material? Are they republishing SCAG material, or stuff from the adventure books?

Parmandur · Dec 10, 2017

Schmoe said:
For someone who doesn't follow the game online, what is the reprinted material? Are they republishing SCAG material, or stuff from the adventure books?

A handful of subclasses from SCAG, and a fair number of the spells from the Elemental Evil/Princes of the Apocalypse. Fairly in line with Volo reprinting monsters from the APs, or ToA reprinting some monsters from Volo's.

ccooke · Dec 10, 2017

Parmandur said:
A handful of subclasses from SCAG, and a fair number of the spells from the Elemental Evil/Princes of the Apocalypse. Fairly in line with Volo reprinting monsters from the APs, or ToA reprinting some monsters from Volo's.

A number of the Elemental Evil spells were updated, too - there has been a whole set of errata for them. Printing them in XgtE also helps a little with the PHB+1 ruling that AL uses and that's recommended for a lot of DMs. I think that makes it a bit less of a reprint and more an update (which fits the whole 5.1e thing ;-)

I just wish they had published the revised ranger officially by now. I'm glad it's not in XgtE (They're previously said they wouldn't charge for it), but it would be nice to see it made properly available soon.

Iry · Dec 11, 2017

I don’t think there is much power creep in the book, with the notable exception of Ranger Archetypes and the Shadow Sorcerer. But in both cases I think the existing archetypes for the R and S are a little underwhelming, and this helps nudge the power level up to a more acceptable level. A new standard. I think we will see future R and S archetypes meeting this new standard.

Gadget · Dec 11, 2017

Personally, I’ve found the book to be more course correction than power creep, though admittedly anytime you add more mechanical options to a game there is at least a small amount of power creep.

I would have preferred if they had updated the blade’lock through errata, but that is not how WOTC rolls these days. But it seems clear that Hexblade is meant for a revised blade’lock, and that the Ranger sub-classes (and shadow sorcerer) are the designers getting a better handle on those classes that have generated a lot of heat about being a little on the constrained side.

As a side note, I’m kind of amused that the “Gish” Warlock now has people referring to it as paladin-like. Shows what WOTC has accomplished with their paladin design.

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Enevhar Aldarion · Dec 11, 2017

I like the format of this book and of Volo's and of SCAG. And I will like them even more once the D&D Beyond mobile app is live and functional, so that I can buy all or part of each book, avoiding any duplicate material if buying by the piece ends up cheaper, and have it to use offline long after whenever D&D Beyond ceases operations.

Li Shenron · Dec 11, 2017

ccooke said:
It seems that WotC have worked out how to update 5e, though, and they're doing it in the most sensible way they can. I can't imagine things would have gone well for them if they released a new version of the PHB with the new material included, for instance. It's also not exactly fair to expect them to release new player non-character mechanics¹ without charging something for the time they took to develop it. It would be nice if, after it's been out for a while, the new player non-chargen options were added to Basic and the SRD. But that's quite possibly too much to expect

I am a lot more positive about "expanding" the game rather than "updating" it as it was done by 3.5.

I don't think this is truly a major expansion, but it isn't minor either. I am ok with this rate of character material release, and I only wish they would use the playtesting/feedback mechanism even more (I don't think the new Identifying Spells rule would have easily passed the feedback test).

As for the XGE material itself, I can't comment on the details because I'm waiting for the first print with errata before buying the book. But from what I know, most of it is material that I am interested in using in my games. The archetypes obviously, since I've always felt that 2 per classes were a bit too few, so I am glad they have increased the minimum sets significantly (I like all the XGE archetypes except the War Mage, I'm even starting to like the dreaded Sun Soul). The spells are very welcome, and thankfully they didn't unleash a ton of clerical spells this time, as well as the new tools uses. Rules clarifications and additions, I'll cherrypick them only. For feats I was hoping for something more, but apparently they aren't ready, the racial feats are ok conceptually but for my tastes they rely too much on that boring +1 ASI. The only think that I really find irritating is the names, especially because they are printed in such a ridiculous format that takes up tons of space, I would have rather had a lighter book at the same price honestly.

Stalker0 · Dec 11, 2017

Having just gone through the new spells with a comb, I feel thst in gneernal the vast majority or balanced, maybe even conservative. There are only a few that raise an eyebrow to me