D&D 5E Mythic Odysseys of Theros on DNDBeyhond

[THEMNGMNT]

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.

We're in the middle of a pandemic. Nothing is getting done right, or quickly, ANYWHERE. Might be worth keeping in mind.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

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.

If you're in the position financially to afford to buy both versions, consider it. Could be a nice way of supporting a great service during a difficult time.

 

[Undrave]

How's the Athlete background?

In terms of races and subclasses, Odyssey of the Dragonlords is straight-up better, I would note. Not only does Dragonlords have subclasses for all the classes, but they're straight-up better-designed, something I never thought I'd say comparing a 5E WotC book and a 5E 3PP book. The same is true of the races. Dragonlords has more new races - Sirens, Medusas and Dryads as well as Centaurs, Minotaurs and Satyrs, but their designs for those races are both more interesting, and better-balanced. I don't think we can get away with "well different approaches" either - two subclasses and one of them stinks? Two new races and one is dull-but-powerful and the other is just kind "eh". That's not great work WotC.

Damn... I might buy that book then...

Goddamnit. This is why heroes cannot have nice things. This was supposed to be good.

Book looks too DM centric.

Yeah, as a player I'm getting really tired of all these DM books with pitiful leftovers thrown to players. The player section was already pathetic, but it sounds awful now.

BUT if I'm gonna DM I'll probably buy this book and DM in Theros.

 

[Demetrios1453]

We're in the middle of a pandemic. Nothing is getting done right, or quickly, ANYWHERE. Might be worth keeping in mind.

I ordered some PoD books from DMs Guild at the beginning of May. Normal printing time is usually a week or two. It's 24 business days now, so I still haven't received what I purchased. But I understand the circumstances and know that delays are inevitable. Those criticizing D&D Beyond for not having everything fully updated barely 24 hours after the book was released in the current circumstances are being a bit disingenuous...

 

[Weiley31]

W

Damn... I might buy that book then..

Everybody is probably gonna tell me to shut up as I repeat it constantly, but combining the options from the Theros book and Dragonlords is the way to go!

 

[darjr]

W

Everybody is probably gonna tell me to shut up as I repeat it constantly, but combining options from the Theros book and Dragonlords is the way to go!

No way. That’s cool.

 

[Parmandur]

How's the Athlete background?



Damn... I might buy that book then...



Yeah, as a player I'm getting really tired of all these DM books with pitiful leftovers thrown to players. The player section was already pathetic, but it sounds awful now.

BUT if I'm gonna DM I'll probably buy this book and DM in Theros.

The entire 5E product line seems to be premised on DM's being the target audience, or converting anyone who buys the books into a DM.

 

[darjr]

The entire 5E product line seems to be premised on DM's being the target audience, or converting anyone who buys the books into a DM.

Huh? Now that you say that I think you’re right.

In fact now I recall several things that to my mind confirms that this is a primary goal.

 

[Marandahir]

Huh? Now that you say that I think you’re right.

In fact now I recall several things that to my mind confirms that this is a primary goal.

That's because the Basic Rules (and SRD 5.0) are free, and the Player's Handbook is a relatively easy dip, and marketing further books this way (toward the DM) results in putting the power back in the hands of the DM to forbid or allow additional character options.

D&D Beyond further supports this model by allowing a DM to get a subscription where they can share certain content with the player group.

D&D books are churned out slow and steady to support whole D&D groups, rather than trying to sell as many books as fast as they can to as many customers as they can (like with the proliferation of 3.5e and 4e splatbooks).

 

[Zaukrie]

Huh, I never thought about the different versions of the different creatures, and how they should be implemented on DnDBeyond......interesting. Also, they really do need to implement character sheets specific to different worlds, or where games have implemented different sub-systems (like piety). Here's hoping they do that eventually.