D&D 5E Mythic Odysseys of Theros on DNDBeyhond

[DEFCON 1]

THEROS = The + HEROeS. Oh snap!

THEROS = THe + EROS. Oh yeah! Oh yeah, right there! Don't stop!

 

[Xenonnonex]

THEROS = THe + EROS. Oh yeah! Oh yeah, right there! Don't stop!

Mythic Odysseys of the Eros does not have the same ring to it.
Now Mythic Odysseys of the Heroes. A worthy alternate book title.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Mucking around on Beyond, I have to say, I'm pretty unimpressed with Beyond themselves as regards this book. There are a ton of problems, and they don't have any timeline to fix any of them, and indeed are posting rather elaborate (and yet poorly-explained) workarounds whilst carefully avoiding promising that they'll fix the issues. Some of the issues aren't even acknowledged. A few of the issues:

1) Centaur, Minotaur and Triton races aren't listed with the Theros lore. With other races which area-specific variants, you get a new version with the right lore. Here, they haven't bothered. If your players look at Centaur or Minotaur, they'll hear all about how they're from Ravnica and loads of information about guilds and so on. Literally the only way to get the right information right now is to go into Sources, and then into the Theros book, then find the right entry. This is pretty ridiculous and seems really lazy compared to what they did for previous books.

2) Supernatural Gifts, which are a mechanics-heavy effect, are totally and completely unimplemented. They haven't even tried. All they've done is say "Well, you can fake them by making a homebrew Feat and then putting in all the stuff to make them work". This is pretty insulting. It requires you to know how the elaborate and almost totally undocumented homebrew system works, and to go in and do it all yourself.

But what about how you CAN share homebrew stuff, Ruin? They went out of their way to PREVENT that here. So they didn't take any time to do this for us - which they could have - instead, they took time, actual time and effort to stop people sharing the homebrew replicas of the Supernatural Gifts. So every single person who wants to do this needs to INDIVIDUALLY know how to do it, and INDIVIDUALLY spend all that time and effort on it.

They could very easily have created all the Supernatural Gifts as Feats, and made them available to people who purchased Theros. But they didn't. Instead they did the opposite, and prevented players even helping each other with this. For me it's the going the extra mile to really make sure people can't help others with this that is the icing on the cake. Genuinely adding insult to injury there.

Awful.

3) Piety - doesn't function at all, and they've made no effort whatsoever to make it work or even be possible to track. An extremely major feature - arguably the core mechanic of Theros, and they just couldn't be bothered.

4) Artifacts of the Gods - equally non-functional, as they're connected to Piety, which they haven't bothered to track.

They have said they want to implement Supernatural Gifts eventually, though I feel like they're being more vague re: Piety, but it's a pretty unimpressive showing. They still haven't fixed the issues with Eberron marks, I note, either.

 

[Weiley31]

Mucking around on Beyond, I have to say, I'm pretty unimpressed with Beyond themselves as regards this book. There are a ton of problems, and they don't have any timeline to fix any of them, and indeed are posting rather elaborate (and yet poorly-explained) workarounds whilst carefully avoiding promising that they'll fix the issues. Some of the issues aren't even acknowledged. A few of the issues:

1) Centaur, Minotaur and Triton races aren't listed with the Theros lore. With other races which area-specific variants, you get a new version with the right lore. Here, they haven't bothered. If your players look at Centaur or Minotaur, they'll hear all about how they're from Ravnica and loads of information about guilds and so on. Literally the only way to get the right information right now is to go into Sources, and then into the Theros book, then find the right entry. This is pretty ridiculous and seems really lazy compared to what they did for previous books.

2) Supernatural Gifts, which are a mechanics-heavy effect, are totally and completely unimplemented. They haven't even tried. All they've done is say "Well, you can fake them by making a homebrew Feat and then putting in all the stuff to make them work". This is pretty insulting. It requires you to know how the elaborate and almost totally undocumented homebrew system works, and to go in and do it all yourself.

But what about how you CAN share homebrew stuff, Ruin? They went out of their way to PREVENT that here. So they didn't take any time to do this for us - which they could have - instead, they took time, actual time and effort to stop people sharing the homebrew replicas of the Supernatural Gifts. So every single person who wants to do this needs to INDIVIDUALLY know how to do it, and INDIVIDUALLY spend all that time and effort on it.

They could very easily have created all the Supernatural Gifts as Feats, and made them available to people who purchased Theros. But they didn't. Instead they did the opposite, and prevented players even helping each other with this. For me it's the going the extra mile to really make sure people can't help others with this that is the icing on the cake. Genuinely adding insult to injury there.

Awful.

3) Piety - doesn't function at all, and they've made no effort whatsoever to make it work or even be possible to track. An extremely major feature - arguably the core mechanic of Theros, and they just couldn't be bothered.

4) Artifacts of the Gods - equally non-functional, as they're connected to Piety, which they haven't bothered to track.

They have said they want to implement Supernatural Gifts eventually, though I feel like they're being more vague re: Piety, but it's a pretty unimpressive showing. They still haven't fixed the issues with Eberron marks, I note, either.

Wow, and to think I was THIS close to buying it digitally as the wait for the physical copy was gonna be annoying with the delay.

I think I'll just wait and get the physical copy.

 

[NotAYakk]

I did start my comment with 'generally' for a reason.

My point is that, for the most part, this is just bringing back the bloodied concept with minor tweaks for a few creatures. I've been continuing to use bloodied as a meaningful distinction in my games during 5E, with some creatures that needed a bump gaining an advantage when not bloodied and others that were a little strong getting penalties when bloodied (and some creatures having their recharge ability go off when bloodied, etc...). It is one of the things from 4E that they should have continued into 5E. Maybe it could have been used less often than in 4E, but it was a solid mechanic.

Some of the tweaks are important.

1) Blow-over damage is ignored. You are reduced to 0 HP. Then you heal a pile.

So if you take 1 million damage, you just transition to the Mythic version, you don't blow past it.

2) The original monster is usable as-is, and is balanced as-is. Monsters with bloodied condition lack this.

3) Less math. You keep track of HP until it hits 0, like any other monster. Then you keep track of a new pile of HP. You aren't carefully watching for a certain threshold.

4) It hooks into the existing Legendary Action concept reasonably well.

5) Instead of "ok, you cut it" (bloodied), it is "ok, the creature transforms in X way". This is more cinematic and rewarding to players.

Thematically, bloodied in 4e was best used when you had a monster that, when wounded, went berzerk or something similar. Mythic in 5e can cover that and more better.

I'll admit it doesn't handle "J random zombie turning into a pile of undead creepy crawlies" as well as bloodied, as "mythic" sort of implies a boss type.

 

[Marandahir]

Mucking around on Beyond, I have to say, I'm pretty unimpressed with Beyond themselves as regards this book. There are a ton of problems, and they don't have any timeline to fix any of them, and indeed are posting rather elaborate (and yet poorly-explained) workarounds whilst carefully avoiding promising that they'll fix the issues. Some of the issues aren't even acknowledged. A few of the issues:

1) Centaur, Minotaur and Triton races aren't listed with the Theros lore. With other races which area-specific variants, you get a new version with the right lore. Here, they haven't bothered. If your players look at Centaur or Minotaur, they'll hear all about how they're from Ravnica and loads of information about guilds and so on. Literally the only way to get the right information right now is to go into Sources, and then into the Theros book, then find the right entry. This is pretty ridiculous and seems really lazy compared to what they did for previous books.

2) Supernatural Gifts, which are a mechanics-heavy effect, are totally and completely unimplemented. They haven't even tried. All they've done is say "Well, you can fake them by making a homebrew Feat and then putting in all the stuff to make them work". This is pretty insulting. It requires you to know how the elaborate and almost totally undocumented homebrew system works, and to go in and do it all yourself.

But what about how you CAN share homebrew stuff, Ruin? They went out of their way to PREVENT that here. So they didn't take any time to do this for us - which they could have - instead, they took time, actual time and effort to stop people sharing the homebrew replicas of the Supernatural Gifts. So every single person who wants to do this needs to INDIVIDUALLY know how to do it, and INDIVIDUALLY spend all that time and effort on it.

They could very easily have created all the Supernatural Gifts as Feats, and made them available to people who purchased Theros. But they didn't. Instead they did the opposite, and prevented players even helping each other with this. For me it's the going the extra mile to really make sure people can't help others with this that is the icing on the cake. Genuinely adding insult to injury there.

Awful.

3) Piety - doesn't function at all, and they've made no effort whatsoever to make it work or even be possible to track. An extremely major feature - arguably the core mechanic of Theros, and they just couldn't be bothered.

4) Artifacts of the Gods - equally non-functional, as they're connected to Piety, which they haven't bothered to track.

They have said they want to implement Supernatural Gifts eventually, though I feel like they're being more vague re: Piety, but it's a pretty unimpressive showing. They still haven't fixed the issues with Eberron marks, I note, either.

Wow, and to think I was THIS close to buying it digitally as the wait for the physical copy was gonna be annoying with the delay.

I think I'll just wait and get the physical copy.

To both of yah, I hear ya. I bought it digitally and will get the alt-cover physically when my FLGS reopens, but I'm also not looking at the races and whatnot individually. I went to Sources and picked up the book and leafed through it. The Centaur and Triton and Minotaur sections are, in fact, Therosian within the context of the book. I feel bad for anyone who went ahead wanting to buy Centaur/Triton/Minotaur as partial purchases just to have the flavor text from Theros, only to find other worlds' flavor text there, instead.

The worst of it seems to be Tritons, who were mechanically changed between Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mythic Odysseys of Theros: they now have Darkvision and no longer ignore all of the negative effects of deep underwater environments. D&D Beyond either needs to implement an alternate Triton race (like they have with Feral Tieflings, Orcs of Exandria, and Orcs of Eberron), or else they need to errata the Triton. Honestly, I would just do away with the variant Orcs race blocks and errata Orc and Triton with their updated features; Orc of Exandria and Orc of Eberron are identical in features if not in flavor text; it's a clear soft-errata on VGM.

D&D Beyond tends to update VERY slowly. They said they'd get the book online by June 2nd, which they did. You can read through the book and use its text in your games. It's not nearly as useful if you just want to isolate the text of a specific race on its own of course.

Supernatural Gifts have been a feature of D&D since the Dungeon Master's Guide, but this is a new class of Supernatural Gift that only emerged this year with Explorer's Guide to Wildemount's Hollow One and now with this book's Supernatural Gifts. From a quick search, the DMG Supernatural Gifts don't exist as a separate rule category in the "Game Rules" section. While Blessings replicate the properties of a Wondrous Item without an attunement slot, and Charms replicate the properties of a potion or spell (with a definite limit of usages), these example Supernatural Gifts ONLY show up within the context of Chapter 7 in the DMG on D&D Beyond, because there's not real way to model them without creating a full new category of game rules for misc bonus features (Supernatural Gifts: Blessings, Supernatural Gifts: Charms, Supernatural Gifts: Unnamed Theme-likes in Wildemount & Theros, Marks of Prestige, and Epic Boons). This is a weird catch all but they all are kinda like feats and kinda not like feats. I would love to see such a Game Rules feature, but it's something they'd have to actively add to the D&D Beyond pipeline, and they're extremely slow with any changes like that.

I think it's a reasonable assumption to believe they'd have their doo-doo together and add such features, especially when they knew Supernatural Gifts were a big thing coming and saw a model of such in Wildemount. But I also have low expectations of D&D Beyond's SPEED of implementing features, while admiring it for what it does have (a very versatile compendium feature). If I buy all the books, I can search "Supernatural Gifts" and get links to D&D Beyond's inclusion of all the relevant possible SGs - in the DMG, in the EGW, and in the MOT. That's fine with me, but I see how it can be very frustrating for you, especially when folks are either paying double or treating this as their buy INSTEAD of a book.

 

[Weiley31]

To both of yah, I hear ya. I bought it digitally and will get the alt-cover physically when my FLGS reopens, but I'm also not looking at the races and whatnot individually. I went to Sources and picked up the book and leafed through it. The Centaur and Triton and Minotaur sections are, in fact, Therosian within the context of the book. I feel bad for anyone who went ahead wanting to buy Centaur/Triton/Minotaur as partial purchases just to have the flavor text from Theros, only to find other worlds' flavor text there, instead.

D&D Beyond tends to update VERY slowly. They said they'd get the book online by June 2nd, which they did. You can read through the book and use its text in your games. It's not nearly as useful if you just want to isolate the text of a specific race on its own of course.

Supernatural Gifts have been a feature of D&D since the Dungeon Master's Guide, but this is a new class of Supernatural Gift that only emerged this year with Explorer's Guide to Wildemount's Hollow One and now with this book's Supernatural Gifts. From a quick search, the DMG Supernatural Gifts don't exist as a separate rule category in the "Game Rules" section. While Blessings replicate the properties of a Wondrous Item without an attunement slot, and Charms replicate the properties of a potion or spell (with a definite limit of usages), these example Supernatural Gifts ONLY show up within the context of Chapter 7 in the DMG on D&D Beyond, because there's not real way to model them without creating a full new category of game rules for misc bonus features (Supernatural Gifts: Blessings, Supernatural Gifts: Charms, Supernatural Gifts: Unnamed Theme-likes in Wildemount & Theros, Marks of Prestige, and Epic Boons). This is a weird catch all but they all are kinda like feats and kinda not like feats. I would love to see such a Game Rules feature, but it's something they'd have to actively add to the D&D Beyond pipeline, and they're extremely slow with any changes like that.

I think it's a reasonable assumption to believe they'd have their doo-doo together and add such features, especially when they knew Supernatural Gifts were a big thing coming and saw a model of such in Wildemount. But I also have low expectations of D&D Beyond's SPEED of implementing features, while admiring it for what it does have (a very versatile compendium feature). If I buy all the books, I can search "Supernatural Gifts" and get links to D&D Beyond's inclusion of all the relevant possible SGs - in the DMG, in the EGW, and in the MOT. That's fine with me, but I see how it can be very frustrating for you, especially when folks are either paying double or treating this as their buy INSTEAD of a book.

Luckily I have the Odyssey of the Dragonlords Players Guide so I use it's Centaur and Minotaur instead. I have no probs with using both Satyr or adding the Theros Satyr traits that the Dragonlord Satyr doesn't have.

 

[dave2008]

Wow, and to think I was THIS close to buying it digitally as the wait for the physical copy was gonna be annoying with the delay.

I think I'll just wait and get the physical copy.

To be clear you can read all of the content, just like the books. Ruin is talking about further integration with DnD Beyond's features.

 

[Marandahir]

To be clear you can read all of the content, just like the books. Ruin is talking about further integration with DnD Beyond's features.

That's what I was speaking to.

That said, I don't know what happens when you want to buy, say, just the Triton from MOT. Would it give you just the Triton in the game rules > races? And if so, what race features would it give? I would assume if it's giving you a portion of the MOT chapter, you'd be able to see that it has Darkvision and can't ignore all the deep underwater effects, but if it's just giving you access to the Triton as integrated into the game rules > races section of DDB, then I would assume it would have the older Volo's rules for the race (no Darkvision, does ignore deep underwater environmental effects).

 

[dave2008]

Some of the tweaks are important.

1) Blow-over damage is ignored. You are reduced to 0 HP. Then you heal a pile.

Yep, however I did clarify that all conditions are wiped in my Mythic version of Tiamat.

2) The original monster is usable as-is, and is balanced as-is. Monsters with bloodied condition lack this.

Yes, I think that is a great feature.

3) Less math. You keep track of HP until it hits 0, like any other monster. Then you keep track of a new pile of HP. You aren't carefully watching for a certain threshold.

Good point.

4) It hooks into the existing Legendary Action concept reasonably well.

Yep

5) Instead of "ok, you cut it" (bloodied), it is "ok, the creature transforms in X way". This is more cinematic and rewarding to players.

This is nice for epic and "mythic" mosters, but I don't know that I want to create a dramatic change for every monster I could apply this to. But maybe that is the point, reserve this for the truly solo / epic / legendary encounters.

Thematically, bloodied in 4e was best used when you had a monster that, when wounded, went berzerk or something similar. Mythic in 5e can cover that and more better.

I agree completely. The difference is that all 4e monsters had the bloodied condition, and this is just for "Mythic" ones.

I'll admit it doesn't handle "J random zombie turning into a pile of undead creepy crawlies" as well as bloodied, as "mythic" sort of implies a boss type.

Yep, but you can use the same basic ideas to create "mini-mythic" monsters.