Xanathar's Guide Shows Up In The Wild!

Xanathar's Guide to Everything comes out this week (November 10th) for some stores (and a couple of weeks later, on November 21st, elsewhere - check with your local game store!) The book has been showing up in the wild - several bloggers and live streamers have received copies and are posting initial thoughts and reviews, and it has shown up at GameHole Con. Photos courtesy of Dave Rosser.

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You can also pre-order it at Fantasy Grounds for it's November 10th release. They've posted some awesome previews/screenshots. Here's one, but click through for the rest! Also, FG is offering a free copy to a lucky winner in this giveaway.

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Mike Adkins on Twitter has his copy, signed by some of WotC's employees.

Mike Adkins
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As has the similarly named Michael Atkins!

Michael Atkins
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It looks like Melvin Smif has the first review up. He says that "this is the first book I would claim as a “must have” for everyone who enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition".

Melvin Smif
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And NewbieDM on Twitter has a review copy and his sharing his general thoughts, although not answering specific questions about the contents.

Purple Pawn has a couple of copies and is giving one away for free. Leave a comment on his blog post, and you might get picked at random.

 

[gyor]

I would be quite surprised if it wasn't the same.

Looking at the stats for the mounts, the Sabre Tooth Tiger rocks stealth and combat if it can attack, the Rhino is the strongest, the Peryton is likely most powerful, it has resistance to none magic weapons and flight, but it's only medium so its of no use to medium characters as a mount, the Griffon has flight and Darkvision, the Dire Wolf has pack tactics, and the best armour but at the end of the day if you don't plan on having it attack often, the Pegasus is the best, it's the fastest on the ground and the fastest in the air (crazy fast), it has the best mental stats so it's the wisest, charismatic, and smartest mount, it's got good strength, dexerity, and constitution too, and it's the cunning linguist, it knows Elven, Celestial, Sylvan, and Common, it's weaknesses, weak attack, no special senses, no skills, except perception.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

In the page flip video, I noticed that the books rules for identifying spells use a reaction to do so- which means if you want to counterspell something, you either need to cast it blind, or you would need to have someone else spot it for you first with their own reaction. Part of me is horrified, but part of me really likes it- it allows for more depth in the counterspell mindgames, it also has rules for how noticeable spells are and calls out means of hiding them- which I think is an important part of making sure sorcerers are unique for subtle spell and such.

 

[gyor]

I too watched the video and noticed some more details on the Temple of the Gods spell.

The temple is 120' and the spell has a range of 120'. It's made out of opaque force and is immune to divination & it's sensors, which means it and those in it are immune to most spying, it's always a comfortable temperature, it comes with an alter and as many windows as you want, only the caster and those the caster gives permission to can open the door, boost any healing spell of 1st + by Wisdom Mod not spellcaster stat which should be errata'd, (minium 1), its 120 feet, it takes the form of a temple dedicated to your God, Philosohy, or Pantheon.

Its immune to dispel and antimagic field, but because it's made of force, even very special force, Disintegrate spell simply destroys it.

And best of all this temple made out of pure divine magic becomes permanent if you cast in the same spot every day for a year in the same spot.

It's material component is a holy symbol worth at least 5 gp, not consumed, so with subtle spell, a you hypothetically cast it from hiding if your a Divine Soul.

I think the temple walls are immune to damage.

There is more, but I couldn't make it out yet.

The way the temple works reminds me Star Trek holograms, with the Omicron Field Device most of all (instead of being made out of protomatter, light, and magnetic fields, and requiring an enclosing holodeck/suite, or a mobile emitter, it used a centralized device that created an omicron field around it, that could be shaped into almost anything, buildings, people, objects, etc..., it created an entire town of holopeople, which I think were sentient (you can tell the sentient holograms, from the none sentient holograms in star trek by their ability to know or learn they are holograms) I see the Temple of the Gods spell like the omicron holoprojector device, with the Temple being made up of the Omicron Particles (Force).

 

[SharnDM]

Deeper take on the book is now available for those who called me out on it

https://melsmifgames.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/xanathars-guide-to-everything-a-deeper-delve/

 

[gyor]

Took a closer look at the video, Temple of the Gods isn't dedicated to your God, the deity, philosophy, or Pantheon that the holy symbol you use decides what the Temple is dedicated to. So if you collect holy symbols, say one of Sune, one of Lovitar, one of Bhaal, and one dedicated to Celestial Buracracy, and one dedicated the Loregiver, Sigil Factions, you can use any of them to create a Temple dedicated to what it symbolizes.

You can control its external and internal appearance.

You can chose something that invovles a Charisma check to be applied to Fey, Celestial, Fiends, and maybe undead?

The reason why enemies can't spy on the Temple via the Ethereal Plane is that the Temple exists in the Ethereal Plane as well as the location you cast it in.

This leaves the question what happens if you cast the spell IN the Ethereal Plane or a plane that doesn't boarder the Ethereal Plane.

 

[smiteworks]

The order link for Xanathar's Guide on Fantasy Grounds is now live. It's $29.99. A subscription or license is required.

 

[wilcoxon]

Don't see how it could have made the cut since it required that the Warlock take the Fiend patron, which was the only patron that provided the Warlock access to the fireball spell. I recall that feedback on the UA Warlock invocations were against patron-specific requirements.

Yep. General feedback was against patron-specific invocations which I found too bad. I liked the patron-specific better than when they changed most of them to pact-specific (ex maximized healing was a LOT more flavorful to me as an Archfey invocation as opposed to a Pact of the Chain invocation (and it gave a reason other than Greater Invisibility to actually take Archfey as a patron)).

 

[wilcoxon]

Overall, I liked most of XGE but there were a few things I did not like.
* Contrary to what had been said on Facebook, the Arcane Archer was very similar to the UA version (I did not like either UA version but liked the concept so was really hoping for changes).
* The Redemption Paladin had Armor of Peace feature removed (but the artwork still shows an armor-less, shield-less Paladin) - it probably needed to be toned down from what was in UA but it would have made Redemption much more interesting than the final version with no unarmored ability.
* And one that really only affects AL - Hexblade was included but there are no melee attack cantrips in XGE (they are all in Sword Coast) so the only viable AL Hexblade build is Pact of the Blade with most invocations spent on Pact of the Blade specific ones (as opposed to having the option to play a spell-slinging melee Hexblade with a different Pact).

 

[Connorsrpg]

Thanks [MENTION=6785442]SharnDM[/MENTION] for the more fully expanded review.... well thanks to your friend actually . A good read.

 

[Mephista]

The thing that boggles my mind, being unchanged? Elven accuracy. This effectively gives you THREE dice whenever you attack with advantage. Sure, its just rerolling one of the dice once, but when is there a reason to ever not reroll the lower of the two dice with advantage? If you're a rogue, advantage fishing is the name of the game already. There's a few ways to get advantage as a ranger. Monks routinely get advantage from all the prones and stuns they inflict. Warlocks and sorcerers get added advantage on their attack rolls as well when messing with darkness spells.

We're talking about increasing critical chance of 15% (well, 14.3%) as well as extra accuracy with dex-based weapons, like a longbow with SS. And that's before you boost Dex, Int, Wis or Cha by one as well. Sure, we're talking diminishing returns, but going from roughly 50% to roll 15 or higher to 66% to roll the same? That's enough to bump up a very difficult roll from missing every other to missing every third. If you only need to roll 11 or higher? We're talking a 90% hit rate. You're critting more than missing!

How is this not a huge, huge thing?