4 out of 5 rating for Xanathar's Guide to Everything
The two biggest problems with
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is the limited amount of content and unexplanatory name.
For a book that costs as much as the
Player’s Handbook but has 128 fewer pages, limiting its usable content is a big drawback. The book features slightly tweaked subclasses we’ve already seen, misses some pretty iconic options, and devotes over a quarter of the book to random tables offering services that existing websites already provide (like random names) or that could have been free PDFs (like WotC has already done, as apparently with the
list of spells, the
monster by rarity chart, or the
magic item rarity index). Or even left for
DMsGuild products.
But it’s the first non-adventure product WotC has released in a year, and will likely be the only accessory for players released for many months, if not another year or two. There’s been plenty of time to save money, and with so little official content released this small smattering of appetisers feels like a feast.
All this makes the book difficult to judge.
The actual content in the book is both well-balanced and well-received, being the best-of-the-best previewed in Unearthed Arcana. And I do very much like that they’re only adding a restrained number of new player options to the game. Those 50-odd pages will be great for my group eventually, as new campaigns start and/or replacement characters are brought into the game. The spells are also good, plus some of the DM variant rules will be useful: I can see using a few of the downtime options. But there’s so many more rules modules they could have added, so many more types of content. Looking back to my
review of the DMG, rules modules missing from that book included encounter-based PC resources, alternate methods of gaining experience, fantastic firearms (i.e. non-historical), managing strongholds, kingdom building, mass combat, variant critical hit rules, critical fumbles, hit locations, armour as DR, and vehicular (especially naval) combat. All of those topics could have easily been at home here.
Many players will be happy to roll randomly for a background, either to save themselves some time or brainpower, or simply to challenge themselves to work with the random results and reconcile any irregularities. But just as many might happily ignore those sections, preferring to devise their own backstory. And while some Dungeon Masters will be happy with random encounter tables, I suspect just as many prefer not to leave their encounters to chance. And for groups who primarily run one of the storyline adventures, these tables are also less useful, first because most of the encounters are scripted, but also because those books also feature random encounter tables (as such, I technically already own many, many pages of random encounters). While theoretically useful if an encounter goes off the rails, I have yet to pull of
Storm King’s Thunder for a random encounter, and don’t think it likely I will do so with this book.
After a few days with the book I’m reminded very much of the
Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, in that it’s a book with a smattering of crunchy content and a lot of "other". Only in this case, instead of being a campaign setting-ette and a guide to the Sword Coast, it’s just page after page of tables. Which, clearly, did not wow me.
But, if you are a table junkie who makes regular use of random encounters while also favouring some random chance in your character’s backstories, this third of the book might make you incredibly happy.
Read my full review
here.