D&D 5E Xanathar's Guide to Everything -- new mechanical expansion/UA book! -- November 10 with a limited-edition cover by Hydro74

[Demetrios1453]

Updated. Mearls definitely said 3 on-stream, but apparently that figure was incorrect.

Personally, I'm a little surprised that this book includes both player options and DMing tools like traps and downtime tables. Volo's Guide was strange enough, combining player races with monster stat blocks as it did, but this seems even stranger to me. I've never really cared if players were familiar with monster stat blocks, because they'll figure those things out after playing long enough anyways. But traps and downtime are definitely behind-the-screen stuff that I'd want to keep out of the hands of players.

I imagine Mearls meant to say "up to three" and just had a misstep while speaking (we've all done something similar). And I'm fine with 25+ subclasses, which is, if you think about it, quite a lot, and should cover most if not all of the most egregious holes left after the PHB.

As for the book format, apparently that's the way it's going to be done from here forward, with both player and DM stuff in each book, presumably to make have something for everyone and thus increase sales. I'm not too worried about it - when my players page through my VGtM, they mainly focus on the player races and give a cursory page through of the bestiary section, but they don't sit down and read the DM stuff either in the first section or in the bestiary itself. I doubt most players will be doing any in-depth reading of the trap stuff and so on, unless they are interested in such things, which means they are likely potential DMs anyway...

 

[DEFCON 1]

Personally, I'm a little surprised that this book includes both player options and DMing tools like traps and downtime tables. Volo's Guide was strange enough, combining player races with monster stat blocks as it did, but this seems even stranger to me. I've never really cared if players were familiar with monster stat blocks, because they'll figure those things out after playing long enough anyways. But traps and downtime are definitely behind-the-screen stuff that I'd want to keep out of the hands of players.

This has been their M.O. all along though. The days of an exclusive "player splatbook" or "DM's splatbook" or "new monster book" are over. I'm sure in part to generate more sales (but also to make things more interesting for everyone to read) they've been mixing and matching different things for all players in their books. So SCAG had setting info and player character info... VGtM had monsters and player race info... and now XGtE has DM info and player character info.

Although I do have to say... if this new book doesn't include the Mystic or the Artificer... I'd be very curious how they'd expect to reach the 320(?)ish page count this product I thought was talked about having. I mean unless they have a whole heapton of spells that they haven't given the public to playtest (which is of course a possibility)... they'd need to have a LOT more DM material to reach that size without having these two new classes (and the amount of material they both would have.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

double post

 

[CapnZapp]

Personally, I'm a little surprised that this book includes both player options and DMing tools like traps and downtime tables.

Don't be. Expect WotC to bend over backwards to help sell every book to every gamer.

They really don't want only players (or God forbid, only DMs) to purchase a given product.



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[CapnZapp]

The news post stated that it was going to be released to the DMs Guild for further playtesting. Unless I missed it, it didn't mention that doing so would exclude it from the November release, although there was some speculation here that it might (which is fairly reasonable speculation, hence my question on potential publishing turnaround times). That's why I was wondering if that had been confirmed in the feed.

Mearls compares to the PHB playtest which ran for 2 years.

He also mentions the two classes are about 9 months into feedback by now.

This leads us to them being ready in 15 months.

Which neatly lines up to the 2018 book of crunch; but not this year's.

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[CapnZapp]

Although I do have to say... if this new book doesn't include the Mystic or the Artificer... I'd be very curious how they'd expect to reach the 320(?)ish page count this product I thought was talked about having.

By waffling...?

I mean, it's not as if WotC is shy about releasing as little crunch for your dollar as they think they get away with... Neither SCAG not Volo was exactly a good deal for the DM that doesn't need another truckload of just words (as opposed to cold hard game crunch)


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[Mouseferatu]

Combined player/DM books were par for the course for a good long while, as far back as the 1E Unearthed Arcana, if not earlier. I don't think the tendency to a hard divide between player books and DM books really came into its own until 3E, and even in that edition there were plenty of exceptions.

 

[JRedmond]

I'm excited for this. I wonder if Mearls new initiative system will make it into it. Why is this not on the front page for news?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Combined player/DM books were par for the course for a good long while, as far back as the 1E Unearthed Arcana, if not earlier. I don't think the tendency to a hard divide between player books and DM books really came into its own until 3E, and even in that edition there were plenty of exceptions.

Yup. And I think it was mainly just due to the speed at which new books were released (for both 3E and 4E) that allowed for them to be split up amongst Player, DM, Monster, and Setting without much overlap. If you're releasing one or two books a month, you can afford to keep everything separate because a new book for a different subset of the playerbase will keep being released in a couple weeks ad infinitum.

 

[CapnZapp]

Why is this not on the front page for news?

Morrus got a life...?



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