D&D 5E The New D&D Book: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything!

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The new D&D book has been revealed, and it is Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, "a magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game." The 192-page book is due out November 17th, with standard and alternate covers, and contains more subclasses, spells, character options, group patrons, and rules. Oh, and psionics!

Cover art is by Magali Villeneuve

WHAT WONDERFUL WITCHERY IS THIS?

A magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game.

The wizard Tasha, whose great works include the spell Tasha’s hideous laughter, has gathered bits and bobs of precious lore during her illustrious career as an adventurer. Her enemies wouldn’t want these treasured secrets scattered across the multiverse, so in defiance, she has collected and codified these tidbits for the enrichment of all.

• EXPANDED SUBCLASSES. Try out subclass options for every Dungeons & Dragons class, including the artificer, which appears in the book.
• MORE CHARACTER OPTIONS. Delve into a collection of new class features and new feats, and customize your character’s origin using straightforward rules for modifying a character’s racial traits.
• INTRODUCING GROUP PATRONS. Whether you're part of the same criminal syndicate or working for an ancient dragon, each group patron option comes with its own perks and types of assignments.
• SPELLS, ARTIFACTS & MAGIC TATTOOS. Discover more spells, as well as magic tattoos, artifacts, and other magic items for your campaign.
• EXPANDED RULES OPTIONS. Try out rules for sidekicks, supernatural environments, natural hazards, and parleying with monsters, and gain guidance on running a session zero.
• A PLETHORA OF PUZZLES. Ready to be dropped into any D&D adventure, puzzles of varied difficulty await your adventurers, complete with traps and guidance on using the puzzles in a campaign.

Full of expanded content for players and Dungeon Masters alike, this book is a great addition to the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Baked in you'll find more rule options for all the character classes in the Player's Handbook, including more subclass options. Thrown in for good measure is the artificer class, a master of magical invention. And this witch's brew wouldn't be complete without a dash of added artifacts, spellbook options, spells for both player characters and monsters, magical tattoos, group patrons, and other tasty goodies.

Here's the alternate cover:

UPDATE! An online event called D&D Celebration from September 18th-20th will be hosted by Elle Osili-Wood, which is "an epic live event with panels, gameplay, & previews of the book!" See the video in the Tweet below!

Gather your party and join the adventure at  D&D Celebration 2020, an online gaming event open to fans all over the world!

Celebrate the release of  Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden  with a weekend of Icewind Dale–themed virtual play sessions and help us create the biggest virtual tabletop roleplaying game event ever! Fans will also get the chance to preview some content from  Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the forthcoming book featuring massive rules options, subclasses, and more for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Watch featured play sessions with D&D luminaries and learn something new with a slate of panels led by the D&D design team and community.


UPDATE! Check out the Nerdarchy site for some previews.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Has, Well… Everything for 5E D&D

The follow up to 2017’s Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, on Nov. 17, 2020 fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons upcoming Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything must indeed possess powerful …

nerdarchy.com

UPDATE! Other news items around the web about this book:

With D&D's Next Rulebook, Character Creation Will Never Be the Same

Although Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition has added as many classes, races, and rules as it has since it first began, for the most part, the way players create characters has stayed the same. You pick a race, that race defines certain things about you, and so on. But the game’s next sourcebook...

io9.gizmodo.com

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything coming in November, brings new ways to personalize your characters

Wizards of the Coast has announced its next D&D book! Entitled Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, this rules expansion follows up Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and will be available on November 17th. Providing both players and DMs with the tools to level up their games, the 192 page tome will be...

gamingtrend.com

Dungeons & Dragons Announces New Book and Fall Event - IGN

The D&D team reveals an online community event in September and a new sourcebook soon to follow.

www.ign.com

D&D's next expansion, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, adds new subclasses and racial customization

Dungeons & Dragons is getting its biggest rules expansion in three years, courtesy of one powerful witch. In November, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will hit shelves, offering D&D players several new subclasses, some exciting new spells, and a new way to create characters that’s fully...

www.syfy.com

 

[Urriak Uruk]

1. Greyhawk is the second-most popular setting of the legacy settings. Not Dark Sun. Not Planescape. Not Dragonlance.

It's difficult to prove this definitively, but this official D&D survey did not lead to this conclusion; D&D Monthly Survey | Dungeons & Dragons

The popularity of settings in the survey fell into three distinct clusters. Not surprisingly, our most popular settings from prior editions landed at the top of the rankings, with Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the Forgotten Realms all proving equally popular. Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Spelljammer all shared a similar level of second-tier popularity, followed by a fairly steep drop-off to the rest of the settings. My sense is that Spelljammer has often lagged behind the broad popularity of other settings, falling into love-it-or-hate-it status depending on personal tastes. Greyhawk and Dragonlance hew fairly close to the assumptions we used in creating the fifth edition rulebooks, making them much easier to run with material from past editions. Of the top five settings, four require significant new material to function and the fifth is by far our most popular world.

Of the "top-tier popularity" settings, Greyhawk didn't make it, and if settings are getting released by popularity, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape may getting books before it.

Still, I would love a Greyhawk setting book myself so "what is more popular" mostly doesn't matter to me. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is one of my favorite books!

 

[Li Shenron]

Well I already knew it, since I've been reading UA articles regularly, that there was going to be very little for me in this book.

I hated psionics. I hated the artificer. I hated the "enhancement" rules. I hated all the subclasses since Xanathar except maybe 2-3. I hated sidekicks.

I don't need "rules" for patrons, parleying with monsters or discussing session zero.

The only things I liked was maybe half of the feats and the alternate class features. I could also always use new spells and hazards, but it looks like they will be extremely few. And I am at least intrigued by what puzzles they came up with.

But it's really way too little for me to buy this book, and this has been a downward trend since Xanathar, every new book captures my interest less and less... It cannot be that my game is already so good that it doesn't need any addition of new material (although we certainly don't need any stinkin' "fix" to anything!), it doesn't make sense, but none of these ideas capture my interest. I want to put some hope in LevelUp, but the requests I've seen popping up in various threads aren't encouraging either...

 

[Marandahir]

I would guess that the next Magic: The Gathering setting book would be 2022. They seem to be coming on even years.

See my breakdown below (I've collated Tyranny of Dragons and Waterdeep into a single release Adventure Path as they're each made of 2 books but also each part of just 1 Adventure season respectively):

2014:

• Basic Rules
• Starter Set
• PHB
• Adventure Path
• MM
• DMG

2015:

• PDF-only Player Option Book remnants
• Adventure Path
• Adventure Path
• Classic Campaign Setting

2016:

• Adventure Path
• Adventure Path
• PHB/MM Expansion

2017:

• Adventure Path
• Adventure Path
• PHB/DMG Expansion

2018:

• PHB/MM Expansion
• Adventure Path
• Minor Classic Campaign Setting Pay-Playtest
• MtG Campaign Setting
• Core Rules reprint

2019:

• Non-AL Adventure Path/DMG Expansion
• Starter Set
• Minor Modern Campaign Setting
• Starter Set
• Starter Set
• Adventure Path
• Classic Campaign Setting
• Adventure Path reprint

2020:

• Minor Modern Campaign Setting
• MtG Campaign Setting
• Adventure Path Reprint
• Adventure Path
• PHB/DMG Expansion

Notably, there's been a move toward 2 official Campaign Settings per year (one each year with less riding on it) for the last 3 years, and also in the last 3 years, there's been a single early-5e reprint product. There's also been fewer Adventurer's League Adventure Path Seasons - Ghosts of Saltmarsh didn't have its own season, so we had Tomb of Annihilation -> Waterdeep -> Baldur's Gate -> Icewind Dale. I would assume going forward that WotC are doing just ONE big new adventure path per year and might reprint an adventure or issue a separate adventure like Ghosts of Saltmarsh that isn't part of the AL (maybe even issue non-FR setting adventure books).

I would expect 2021 and 2022 to look something like this, assuming that they follow the pattern:

Hypothetical 2021:

• Minor Modern Campaign Setting (no idea, but maybe this could also be Planescape, given the heavy lifting of Tasha's?)
• Reprint of Some Old Book (Volo's?)
• Adventure Path
• Classic Campaign Setting (Dark Sun? Planescape? Greyhawk?)

Hypothetical 2022:

• Non-AL Adventure Path/MM Expansion
• Minor Modern Campaign Setting (Tal'Dorei re-write? Some other continent in Exandria?)
• Reprint of Some Old Book (maybe combine with the above for a SCAG reprint/expansion?)
• MtG Camapaign Setting (Whichever set is coming out in '21, '22, or '23 for cross-pollination)

 

[Parmandur]

If they're reprinting the Bladesinger then that pretty much confirms the SCAG melee Cantrips are in! The class wouldn't work otherwise.

Source:

"It’s not just the newly updated Artificer that’s officially coming to Cauldron of Everything, however. Taken from the last year of playtesting by the D&D community since their debuts in Unearthed Arcana articles, 22 additional subclasses for each other class in the game will make their “proper” 5th Edition debuts in the book (as well as reprints of five subclasses added in Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, and Mythic Odysseys of Theros)."

With D&D's Next Rulebook, Character Creation Will Never Be the Same

Although Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition has added as many classes, races, and rules as it has since it first began, for the most part, the way players create characters has stayed the same. You pick a race, that race defines certain things about you, and so on. But the game’s next sourcebook...

io9.gizmodo.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For the love of God, no.

A lot of people bought Theros, and the book is stuffed full of quality content. I am not a MtG fan, so that's all I care about, ultimately: Is this a good book to use to run a campaign? More quality books are always welcome.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I'm a little surprised that they're using the word "Everything" in the title. Since it was already used in Xanathar's Guide, I'd have thought they'd want to make the title of this one more distinctive.

Well, Tashe's Cookpot of Random naughty word doesn't sound nearly as appetizing.

 

[Cadence]

I'm very glad to hear that, like I said, I don't have a problem with Magic's lore. But it is still a CCG played primarily in a tournament setting (large or small) and designed and marketed as such. The lore is always a secondary consideration, one which players can freely ignore at no cost to their enjoyment of the game. It's much harder to do that in D&D.

I'm guessing most D&D players play with friends using cobbled together custom made worlds still, don't they? (Similar to how WotC always says that informal kitchen-table magic is the most common way that's played.) Unlike MtG, D&D needs some story, but it certainly doesn't need one from a book.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Volo's Guide to Monsters" versus "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" in my mind was a creative play on words and a prompt to spark imaginations.

"Foes" vs. "Monsters" seems like you're setting a pretty low bar for them to clear, creativity wise.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's difficult to prove this definitively, but this official D&D survey did not lead to this conclusion; D&D Monthly Survey | Dungeons & Dragons

Enworld, 2015-

Which D&D Settings Do You Play In?

Over on the right of the news page is a new poll which asks which D&D setting you currently play in. Obviously WotC has its own survey data, and we know from that that 55% of people use home-brew settings, 35% play in the Realms, 5% in Greyhawk, and the remaining 5% is divided between the rest...

www.enworld.org

Of the setting people were playing, it was homebrew, Realms, GH, everything else.

That's why I said it was second (based on WoTC data).

 

[Pixelllance]

I bet Greyhawk wouldn't. Or, at least, it probably wouldn't make enough to be worth the expense of putting it together. Not only do modern, new fans not have any connection to it, older fans might be miffed to have to cram Dragonborn and Warlocks into it. Eberron works because it is explicitly the "Everything D&D fits in here" setting, and the Realms is the Flagship so everything has to fit even if it doesn't make any sense.

I know people like Dark Sun (I don't know why, though) and it seems it is likely that a Planescape book would have lots of juice. Dragonlance is probably better served by an adventure. But Greyhawk?

Well Greyhawk would or is example of a good sandbox approach. (As they did with Dragonlance in 2e with the Tales of the Lance boxed set)