The Actual Table of Contents for Xanathar's Guide to Everything

We afe speaking about maybe 2 pages for 4 extra subclasses. 3 at most.
I am pretty sure name lists had been shorter if the playtest would have gone better for some classes.
I wish wotc would just drop the price to 45 dollars or even 40 to show that since the content is smaller than probably planned, they are willing to drop the price a bit.
Of course only for FLGS. I think wotc is in a pretty good spot to show some good will.

I don’t know why, but I’ve read this entire thread. Man, what a glorious rabbit hole! Anyway, I’m rather unduly excited for this book (because I’m a neeeeerd), but I am a little sad that it’s under 200 pages. It’s a good size for a book, don’t get me wrong, but I had hoped for something a little more. The list of stuff looks good – some solid discussion of how to run certain parts of the game, some fun new player options, and some stuff to make character creation easier and more involving. I think that this might see more table time than Volo’s does in practice, just because of that clarifying material in the central chapter, plus the expanded downtime stuff which – if done well and made accessible – might become a favourite page for players. My players were really happy with the idea of (limited) magic item shopping when we tested out the UA, not to mention the other stuff like pit fighting, so I’m hopeful that Wizards iterated it well and can present some material that really helps games out.

The PHB+1 rule seems like it has totemic importance here right now, like the Warlord class often does. I don’t think it’s that important, to be honest, but I can see why Wizards would use such a rule. I also think that Wizards are going to be reprinting stuff with some regularity this edition – any monster in a non-MM source which appears in an adventure path (such as Volo’s monsters found in ToA) for starters. We should probably remember that this is not done for our benefit – it’s for the benefit of new players, who pick up the game for the first time, and don’t want to have to buy an entire shelf of stuff to get the content that they ‘need’. The monsters are very easy to understand on this front – the way that old adventures would list stuff from three separate monster manuals was really unfriendly, if you think about it – but reprinting four subclasses also makes sense on this front as well. Not so good for me, who owns SCAG (and quite likes it, for the record); very good for Bob and Matilda, who want to buy enough books to start their own imagination-trek, and want to create their own world to do so.

That said, I don’t disagree with those who feel that they’d prefer those two pages to be new cool stuff. It’s just a series of compromises, and this is one that I don’t mind that much.

Charles Rampant said:

We should probably remember that this is not done for our benefit – it’s for the benefit of new players, who pick up the game for the first time, and don’t want to have to buy an entire shelf of stuff to get the content that they ‘need’.

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I don't believe this.

New players are the reason why we have had Basic since the start, so that people can actually play the game with ZERO books to buy.

If that's not enough, they can buy the PHB.

A "new" player that finds that the PHB with 12 classes, 9 races, 13 backgrounds, and 30+ subclasses are still not enough is a petty pretentious new player... or is not a "new" player at all. In either case, they can buy two books instead of one. So what are the reprints really for? For that really petty pretentious new player who has PHB+SCAG but wants something also from XGE, or has PHB+XGE but wants something also from SCAG? So pratically someone who wants to use 3 books but only buy 2? And to make him save 50$, we are paying a tax? :/

Well, as I said I don't want to believe this, but thinking back at what happened in 3.5 where everybody was asking to be sold again hundreds of prestige classes with little to no changes because they wanted "official updates", maybe I should believe that D&D gamers really like paying taxes.

We have actual evidence from WotC that PHB+1 is bad for AL and limits characters. The evidence is right there in Guide to Everything. They can claim such a rule is growing the game but we didn't have two non-PHB options until SCAG and one of them was a slight, free PDF.

Seems to me that the game was growing quite strongly before AND after the release of the above publications. Now that we have our fourth book after the PHB, what has WotC done? They've eliminated large chunks of two of player options in the the first two books by reprinting the stuff (even free stuff!!!) in Guide to Everything. It's an implicit acknowledgement that WotC believes eliminating and reducing options is bad for the game.

guachi said:

We have actual evidence from WotC that PHB+1 is bad for AL and limits characters. The evidence is right there in Guide to Everything.

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Aliens are real because ketchup!

Mercule said:

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

Not knocking anyone who wants it in print. Just providing a bookmark-able link to put it all in one spot . I've found that site to be reasonably good. I don't like any singular list of names, as there's some aesthetic sense to it (I've found that the gender of Japanese names sounds backwards to my group and I, so we don't use them appropriately). But, this is where I say that a list of names in a book is a casualty of the Internet age. It's really the sort of tool that I'd kind of expect DDB to add to their suite independent of anything WotC publishes.

Having a published list has the implication that anything Curse does either needs to be limited to just these lists or segregated from them, somehow. Come to think of it, the same could be said for the random wilderness encounter tables, though I think that's something that Curse should turn into a "create your own list" tool, using the XGtE lists as formal samples. If someone isn't planning on using DDB, then it's a non-issue because lists like what I linked exist and are easy enough to add to your toolbox.

Maybe I'm working from a false assumption, though, that all GMs have a folder of bookmarks (or equivalent) to a variety of resources to help them during play and/or prep.

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ACtually that's fair enough - I have a bunch of links bookmarked for quick NPCs etc. What I find though is often the name lists or NPCs etc are too generic - they are suited to my particular world. The thing about these lists - I presume - is that the authors have curated the lists to reflect various Forgotten Realms cultures.

I assume the random encounter tables will be high magic, on par with FR and 5e in general. Which is fine although not my preference. That's also what you tend to get with online random encounter generators (high magic I mean).

one thing I would kill for is a better damn list of spells. The current spell list in the players handbook is a freaking nightmare to read. Who the heck organizes spells by alphabetical order? It would be much easier to organize them by level, then school, THEN alphabetically. So instead of having to dig through five pages to find cure wounds, I can flip to level one, look for evocation and be done with it.

dropbear8mybaby said:

Aliens are real because ketchup!

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Don't joke about that, it's when you joke about the Ketch Up Aliens that they kidnap you in the darkest hour of night to eat their space fries.

dropbear8mybaby said:

Aliens are real because ketchup!

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I'm sorry that you're incapable of following an argument and have to respond with pointless inanities. If you can't follow a simple argument, don't bother posting in this thread.

Start off my morning with a mega-response...

FitzTheRuke said:

I also know quite a few people who don't have SCAG who will be thrilled to have Xanathar's.

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Count me in that camp. I don't own SCAG because it's mostly about a setting I don't like.

pemerton said:

Huh? If my character had no name, then no NPC could address him/her! ("Hey, you there" doesn't really count.)

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The name lists are also useful for DMs improvising NPCs. Or, heck, creating NPCs in between sessions.

To my eye, the most outrageous thing on that table of contents is a separate rules entry for tying knots! Seriously? Now we need rules for whistling, and maybe for getting dressed. (Oh, wait, we already have a chart for that.)

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I pondered that, too. Maybe it's not about the knots themselves, but about their uses. I.e., what skills and what DCs you use to either tie somebody up, or to escape from being tied up? But, yeah, it seems odd.

martinlochsen said:

The question I want to ask is if Wizards, despite doing surveys and asking peoples opinions, might still be loosing touch with their fans (or at least a portion of them), because they are asking the wrong questions?

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It is absolutely unavoidable that some fans will be disappointed by whatever decision they make. Me? I'd be disappointed if they added too many sub-classes overall, and a few specific ones (a couple of which did get through). I'll be disappointed if Mystic becomes an official class.

The question is: how do we express our disappointment? Do we say on the forums, "Gee, I really don't like this decision, and here's why.." Or do we ramp it up and try to offer incontrovertible proof that WotC sucks and we have a right to be apoplectic? Or do we leave the game entirely? (Honestly, it should be a or c but never b.)

Charles Rampant said:

Anyway, I’m rather unduly excited for this book (because I’m a neeeeerd), but I am a little sad that it’s under 200 pages.

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Yeah, me too. By definition there has never been a supplement with enough pages. Right? Every time a supplement comes out the forums light up with complaints about what's missing and what pages were wasted. Especially when it comes to player options, which are like crack for gamers. And yet every single time there are posters who are convinced it is because of incompetence, or the rejection of a sub-group of players, or allegiance to Orcus.

guachi said:

They've eliminated large chunks of two of player options in the the first two books by reprinting the stuff (even free stuff!!!) in Guide to Everything. It's an implicit acknowledgement that WotC believes eliminating and reducing options is bad for the game.

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You lost me....how is reprinting the same as "eliminating" stuff. Unless you mean that they didn't reprint everything, and so the stuff that wasn't reprinted has been eliminated?

And your conclusion is...strange. Maybe they are just acknowledging that some of those options are popular, and you shouldn't have to own a source book to a particular setting in order to have access to them?

But, hey, tinfoil on.

tuxedoraptor said:

one thing I would kill for is a better damn list of spells. The current spell list in the players handbook is a freaking nightmare to read. Who the heck organizes spells by alphabetical order? It would be much easier to organize them by level, then school, THEN alphabetically. So instead of having to dig through five pages to find cure wounds, I can flip to level one, look for evocation and be done with it.

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That's what online spell lists are for, imo. Google "Grimoire 5e".