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

A lot of good stuff there.

Of course, on the DM side, a lot of stuff is not there, but I like what I see.

Actually, one of the most useful things will be the appendix of sample names.

 

[AriochQ]

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/184660/16000-Medieval-Names

Here are 16,000 medieval names, mostly European. I am awful at coming up with names on the spot. Now, I just pick a first letter and find one that sounds right.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I'm not a 5e GM, and so won't be buying this book. But based on my own experiences as a GM over the decades, I'm more likely to need a quick name list (that has happened from time to time in play) than to need rules for knots (I think it may have come up, but I can't actually recall any such occasion at the moment - actually, it came up as a player in a Burning Wheel game when my PC had to loose his horse's tether to try and escape some orcs; the GM set a difficulty without needing to look up a rulebook!).

For what it's worth.

 

[DEFCON 1]

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.

Heh... so instead of needing to know just how to spell a spell and flip to that page... you want it such that we need to remember every single spell's level *and* school *and* then how to spell it. And that's supposed to be the easier way to find it? Yeah, okay. Anyone know the level and school of Glibness off the top of their head?

 

[Parmandur]

Is this really true?

Because if AL players actually like the PHB+1 rule, why are they breaking (or create a shortcut to partially avoid some restrictions) it by reprinting stuff from one book to another?

The choice of reprinted subclasses makes little sense with respect to the PHB+1 rule. Crawford has confirmed to multiple people that they were chosen because they are the most popular, and I take it for granted that this is true. But there is no special synergy between those 4 subclasses and the new material in XGE that actually gives a strong reason why the players of those 4 subclasses should be treated more favorably than players of other subclasses.

Not to mention the possibility (although IMHO that's not the case) that something could be more popular exactly because it's better, which would make it the worst possible choice for bypassing the +1 limitation.

It could be after all a mere marketing ploy... to boost the chances of selling XGE to someone who didn't buy SCAG. But doesn't it also decrease the chances of buying SCAG from someone who is going to buy XGE? I know I didn't buy SCAG because IMHO it had too little to offer to my games, now that it has even less, I am even less likely to ever pick it up.

You hit on the answer in your last paragraph: the reprints for AL are not for experienced players, but for making the AL newbie friendly in marketing terms (a frequently states goal of the WotC team). You have your PHB, and if you want to be Errol Flynn, Sherlock Holmes or Elric...why, look here, kid, there's one single new book to help you in our weekly game.

Reduces "wall of books" syndrome while still growing the game. Might reduce some SCAG sales, but SCAG is primarily for folks who want that world information, so it does nothing to take from it's primary purpose.

 

[Mercule]

I hate that site. It makes the worst names. It's incredibly ugly, clunky and uses very simplistic algorithms that just mash some names taken from various sources together to form random blotches. How it's gained such popularity is beyond me. I always resented that it came up first in every search for a random name generator and actively avoided it.

I can't argue with the aesthetics. It is a bit jarring, visually.

Fortunately, for me, I seem to have a knack for mimicking phonetic patterns. Once I get a feel for a language, I can usually come up with BS words that sound good enough to non-speakers to maintain "immersion". I'm sure I'd drive an actual speaker of the languages nuts, but folks in my groups have treated me as a name generator on multiple occasions. I just need some seeds from which to work.

 

[Azzy]

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.

An alphabetical spell list is FAR more useful to reference during the games. I remember well stumbling through the PHB, and other books) in 2e and prior looking for spell entries. Nope, don't want to go back to that mess.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not a 5e GM, and so won't be buying this book. But based on my own experiences as a GM over the decades, I'm more likely to need a quick name list (that has happened from time to time in play) than to need rules for knots (I think it may have come up, but I can't actually recall any such occasion at the moment - actually, it came up as a player in a Burning Wheel game when my PC had to loose his horse's tether to try and escape some orcs; the GM set a difficulty without needing to look up a rulebook!).

For what it's worth.

Two possibilities come to mind:

Maybe it is a metaphor, and is not about actually tying knots.

Alternatively, maybe Crawford has fielded hundreds or thousands of questions about tying knots as the rule Sage, and felt a need to get something down in writing.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

It's not just about books to purchase, it's the optics for a new player: too many books can be very off-putting just getting started, causing analysis paralysis. This is a pretty common phenomenon, and one the WotC have talked about constantly for years: hardly surprising that they act on their stated goals and principles.

They also reprint monsters from Volo's Guide in APs, so you don't need VG to run ToA. The pattern is consistent.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Heh... so instead of needing to know just how to spell a spell and flip to that page... you want it such that we need to remember every single spell's level *and* school *and* then how to spell it. And that's supposed to be the easier way to find it? Yeah, okay. Anyone know the level and school of Glibness off the top of their head?

Agreed. The problem isn't that it's in alphabetical order and it should be in another order, it's that we might want to search for spells using different criteria, and it's a limit of a paper format that we have to pick just one order to print them in. It's the reason indices were invented.

If they were sorted by level then we'd also need a full alphabetical index.

 

[Wepwawet]

Oh no! Damn NO! That's it for me, no more 5E!

How dare they put in there Spanish names and not Portuguese names???

They're very different you know?? Juan/João, Antonio/António, Javier/Xavier, José/José...

At the very least they could have called them Iberian names.


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Apart from that I like it, lots of new interesting and useful content for players and DMs