D&D 5E Who is excited for Xanathar's Guide to Everything?

[Raith5]

Not sure how I feel about this. I always like options but I am not sure how much of this my DM will allow. I also still find the name of the book really weird, such a marginal, niche name in the lore of D&D.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I'm sort of backwards from many here, I think; I seriously wasn't much interested in the book and bought it only for the collectibility of the FLGS cover, but having read through it I actually love a huge chunk of its contents. I like the additions of new non-spellcasting subclasses for the martials, and I love the ancillary bits around the classes. A lot of the DM section looks really cool too, though I'm not sure how much of it will actually see use at my table.

 

[Krachek]

The book is nice.
But no surprise! A feeling of déjà vu!

Sub classes are fine to me. Each new build have a kind of personality.
A lot of material to add background around characters.
It is in line with all actual rules and materials.

 

[JonnyP71]

I spent most of the run up to it being released hoping that it was all a big joke, and that a new 'big book of crunch' was not about to be foisted upon us. I was dreading my players buying it and wanting to use all manner of daft new rules at the table.

Having read the reviews I am pleasantly surprised. It's more flavourful than I expected, and the extra info on backgrounds and low-powered magical items has piqued my interest somewhat.

Plus I just *love* the limited edition cover!

 

[Dualazi]

I was hoping for something better myself. If I were to institute a sleeping in armor rule (and I haven't yet because it just hasn't been an issue in any of the games I run), I'd put a Con check in there first. Pass the check, and you're fine. Fail, and then you've got the consequences.

Better yet, you could just make it something simple like: if you're proficient in the armor you're sleeping in, you're fine. If you're not, then you don't gain the benefits of a long rest.

I doubt this would change much of anything really, the first one is still a hit against the more strength-prone heavy armor users, and the latter fix I can't see the point of because in all my years of playing D&D, I can't remember a single time when a player wore armor they weren't proficient in.

Indeed. Many of them just don't seem at all interesting. Others are quite cool conceptually but don't live up to their potential.

I blame pointlessly conservative design for this, honestly. There are so many subclasses that do barely anything to modify how the main class plays, and that to me is the biggest area of interest. From what people have reported I already know I'll have to revise the Arcane Archer or make my own, because it just doesn't fundamentally feel like an arcane imbued ranged damage dealer, and that's largely in part because of the small number of magical arrows they get to use.

As time goes on, I'm becoming more disillusioned with the playtest process. I feel like often times our feedback just doesn't make a difference. The monstrous races in Volo's, for instance: they are virtually unchanged from their draft form. Despite all the talk about the slower release schedule meaning better quality, I'm really not seeing that. It's like they can't even be bothered sometimes. I'm all for "rulings not rules", but I feel like lately they've been using it as a bit of a cop-out. "We'll just chuck these half-baked ideas out there and let the DMs polish them up properly."

Again I find myself agreeing. Very little appears to have changed on most of the options we've seen previously, and the Arcane Archer was even put through two playtests and still people (and myself among them) have big problems with it.


At the end of the day I might pick it up severely discounted, or maybe luck into it as a gift or something, but there are a lot of aspects that have dimmed my initial enthusiasm for the product. Reprinting spells and classes wholesale is incredibly lame no matter if you purchased prior products or not, filler junk like common items eat up space for no reason (yeah everyone gushes about the billowing cape, I'm sitting here wondering how many rules could have fit in that section), and the painfully egregious 17 pages of names have left me very sour on this release. At this point I'm honestly just waiting for a 3rd party supplement to pick up the slack and give me some actual rules or classes worth using because it doesn't seem like Wizards wants to do so anytime soon.

 

[alienux]

"Who is excited for Xanathar's Guide to Everything? "

 

[Arilyn]

I picked it up on DDB. It's a nice collection of new toys. Some of the DM content is much better than I anticipated (I had pretty low hopes, so YMMV).

Funny thing about the whole "new toy" part: I've been listing to Savage Worlds podcasts and digging into Fate (including running a one-shot a while back), lately. While I have no interest in doing Fantasy Hero style universal systems, I'm finding the lighter weight systems really calling to me. Dropping $30 on more crunch when there's still one PC in the group that can't be done on DDB (UA Ranger) was a bit of a trick.

I really like some of the concepts inspired by the toys in XGtE, but I couldn't help but think I could do it easier and better in Fate. Maybe not. Just odd how some things are double-edged.

If you like FATE, be prepared for the thought, "I could do it easier and better in FATE" to come up constantly. FATE is super stretchy, and if the philosophy of the game matches your style, it'll take over.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I am. For the classes I like to play, I think it has some great options. I truly think I like all the Barbarian options at least as much as the PHB options, and certainly more than the Scag ones. Likewise I find the Ranger options very interesting as well.

 

[pukunui]

I doubt this would change much of anything really, the first one is still a hit against the more strength-prone heavy armor users, and the latter fix I can't see the point of because in all my years of playing D&D, I can't remember a single time when a player wore armor they weren't proficient in.

True. Those ideas were just off the top of my head.

I blame pointlessly conservative design for this, honestly.

Yes, they certainly are playing it extremely safe this edition, aren't they?

... and that's largely in part because of the small number of magical arrows they get to use.

While I agree that it feels like the arcane archer doesn't get to use the magic arrow options often enough, there is precedent for it: The druid's Wildshape feature is arbitrarily limited to 2/rest as well, and I have to admit that I can't recall ever seeing anyone complain about that.

Very little appears to have changed on most of the options we've seen previously, and the Arcane Archer was even put through two playtests and still people (and myself among them) have big problems with it.

In my feedback, I advocated against giving the AA +1 arrows right from 3rd level. I was happy with them merely getting magic arrows. I can't really understand why they pushed it back to 7th level. To be honest, I think one way to improve it would be to move the 7th level feature back to 3rd, and then improve it at 7th by making all the magic arrows be +1. I might make that a house rule (but I'll probably wait until someone actually wants to play an arcane archer first).

[I also don't get why they got rid of the archer's +1 when they let the Forge cleric keep the +1 they get right from 1st level!]

 

[Mercule]

If you like FATE, be prepared for the thought, "I could do it easier and better in FATE" to come up constantly. FATE is super stretchy, and if the philosophy of the game matches your style, it'll take over.

Yeah. I've gathered that. I've got one player who's actually in a Fate game, but says, "I like Fate, just not for fantasy." So, that's a road block. I'm assuming it's because he's looking for the dungeon crawl, murder-hobo thing, which is not how I typically run D&D. We just stopped doing modules (thankfully), so we'll see.

My big hurdle, personally, is getting some for of D&D level magic working in Core. I explicitly do not want to recreate D&D magic -- Vancian magic is something I've always hated -- just something that feels like wizards have the level of tricks one would expect, coming from D&D, but without getting too crazy/complex. That could be a whole thread, in itself, though.