Start off my morning with a mega-response...
I also know quite a few people who don't have SCAG who will be thrilled to have Xanathar's.
Count me in that camp. I don't own SCAG because it's mostly about a setting I don't like.
Huh? If my character had no name, then no NPC could address him/her! ("Hey, you there" doesn't really count.)
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.)
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's what online spell lists are for, imo. Google "Grimoire 5e".