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

 

[Minigiant]

The problem with Greyhawk is that its primary selling point is that it's not the Forgotten Realms. Beyond that, it doesn't really have a hook. But look at the settings they have released:

Ravnica: Planet-spanning city governed by guilds.
Eberron: Pulp fantasy with steam-punk elements.
Wildemount: Critical Role.
Theros: Greek-inspired fantasy with strong mythological elements.

Compared to those, what does Greyhawk bring to the table? And for old fans, you already have the previous books. Greyhawk doesn't have any distinct mechanical elements the way those settings do, so why do you need Wizards to produce a setting book for you?

The main gimmick of Greyhawk is that it's swords and sorcery.

And that doesn't fly much without a secondary gimmick unless you grew up with S&S (aka you old).

 

[NiClerigo]

What's the one with chivalry and faeries that people were talking about here a few months ago? Again, not a MTG fan, but that sounded like a lot of fun and a fantasy focus that D&D hasn't had since the TSR days. My daughter would flip for faerie tales plus knights.

As others have said, that world is 'Throne of Eldraine'. Coincidentally, it is the MTG world I would LOVE to have as a D&D setting -and hope to see it in such a form next year. I play both MTG and D&D, by the way, but have played D&D for a (much) longer time, and enjoy it more as well

 

[Marandahir]

I'm a little confused by your scheduling here, because these aren't named. I think you probably counted the Acq Inc. book, or Rick & Morty, as a campaign setting which seems... like a weird choice. They aren't really.

Personally, I'm thrown as I was expecting a place for Gem Dragons in the Q4 book (Nathan Stewart said there would be a book with them in 2020) and it doesn't seem like Tasha's book includes new monsters.

So the next book I think either is a new Monster book (Volo's/Mordenkainen's style) or even possibly Planescape. If it's not Planescape next, it's Dark Sun. Haven't made up my mind on which.

Sorry for the confusion, I was trying to highlight the repetitions of types of book.

Acquisitions, Inc. is considered a Campaign Setting Guide officially by WotC. As it's a bit different from the other ones, I've seen it as one of the "minor" Campaign Setting books - that is to say, not much required out of WotC to produce and issue (Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron & Explorer's Guide to Wildemount fall into this same grouping). This is separate from the MAJOR Campaign setting books issued each year the last three years, of which it's been MtG/Classic/MtG, so I'd expect Classic next year and then MtG in 2022.

It's possible, however, that something like Planescape could come as a "Minor" Campaign Setting or even as a non-AL combo adventure path like Ghosts of Saltmarsh did (with special rules for the setting). I would expect a book of Monsters next year, certainly akin to VGtM and MToF, and probably would have come this year in Tasha's had they not had to fast-track the Player Origin/Ancestries rules for 2020 given the zeitgeist of the times.

The main gimmick of Greyhawk is that it's swords and sorcery.

And that doesn't fly much without a secondary gimmick unless you grew up with S&S (aka you old).

Dark Sun is Sword & Sorcerer too, but it's also Sword & Sandal, and Apocalyptic World, and Old School Survivalist gameplay, and urban evil empire gameplay, and psionics. Greyhawk is fun, but it doesn't provide nearly as much as other settings do to a game that already has FR (which I know, is much more "high" fantasy than Greyhawk is. But they're both Fantasy Kitchen Soup settings rich in the lore of game's cosmic DNA).

 

[briggart]

Yeah it could be... it is cool how they gave these guys some personality beyond "I'm a bird-person!"



Sigh. I suppose if all you really want is the statblocks and nothing else, you can go to DND Beyond and buy those exclusively if you can't handle that extra fluff.

And to be clear, the MM has 159 statblocks of monsters. Volo's has 139 statblocks, and Mordenkainen's has 120. They're a little bit less, but is 20 fewer monsters really what separates them from being Monster Manuals?

The MM has 153 entries of monsters, but several of them have multiple stablocks, like angels, devils, demons, dragons, giants, ... This is not including all the animals, beast and NPC in the appendixes. In total there are 440-450 (I counted 444, but I didn't want to double check ) individual statblocks in the MM, significantly more than Volo's and Mordenkainen's combined.

 

[TwoSix]

The main gimmick of Greyhawk is that it's swords and sorcery.

And that doesn't fly much without a secondary gimmick unless you grew up with S&S (aka you old).

I think there's room for a soft reboot of Greyhawk as a container for a lot of the ideas from modern fantasy featuring rare-but-powerful magic; especially where human magic is used by somewhat corrupt organizations of ancient schemers.

The Witcher, Joe Abercrombie's First Law, Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard, any of Mark Lawrence's stuff (the post-apocalyptic fantasy vibe of Broken Empire fits in well with Greyhawk, especially), even Michael Sullivan's Riyria would fit well into a grim-n-gritty Greyhawk (Grimhawk?)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The main gimmick of Greyhawk is that it's swords and sorcery.

People say that, but it's not true for a lot of the setting. Neither the Shield Lands nor the Great Kingdom nor Furyondy nor Lendore nor Ulek nor Geoff nor the Lordship of the Isles is sword and sorcery.

Yes, we've got the Rain of Colorless Fire and the jungles to the south, but they're hardly central to the setting.

"Lower magic than the Forgotten Realms" doesn't equate to sword and sorcery. You wouldn't see Bigby, Tenser and all the rest hanging out with Conan -- or, if you did, one of them would be dead really fast.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think there's room for a soft reboot of Greyhawk as a container for a lot of the ideas from modern fantasy featuring rare-but-powerful magic; especially where human magic is used by somewhat corrupt organizations of ancient schemers.

I think that would be a tough pitch for WotC to people who didn't already know (and likely own) the setting.

"So, it's like Forgotten Realms, but less so, but also like the Witcher, except this isn't that RPG, since that license is held by someone else."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh, another setting for you to open up on DMs Guild, WotC: Thunder Rift. You could even explicitly say it's a Tier 1-2 setting and content should be designed for beginning players and/or DMs. Other than the boxed sets, that's not an area the company is targeting. (Obviously, Mystara covers some of that territory, too, but is much more sprawling in comparison.)

 

[Urriak Uruk]

The MM has 153 entries of monsters, but several of them have multiple stablocks, like angels, devils, demons, dragons, giants, ... This is not including all the animals, beast and NPC in the appendixes. In total there are 440-450 (I counted 444, but I didn't want to double check ) individual statblocks in the MM, significantly more than Volo's and Mordenkainen's combined.

True, but I believe other than 159 of these statblocks, the rest are all available for free under the basic rules. Meaning, if you use a platform like D&D Beyond or Roll20, most of the animals/NPCs are available for free usage.

I'm not sure about that 100%, but you can only purchase 159 statblocks through D&D Beyond, the rest you just get. So the free ones are practically "reprints" of statblocks included in the free basic rules.

 

[Staffan]

The main gimmick of Greyhawk is that it's swords and sorcery.

And that doesn't fly much without a secondary gimmick unless you grew up with S&S (aka you old).

Yeah, but how is that functionally different from Forgotten Realms? Particularly the sparsely-described FR of 5e?

I mean, look at Eberron, which is near and dear to my heart. Eberron has:

• Dragonmarked houses – magic-based megacorps that have a monopoly on large parts of the economy due to leveraging innate magical powers.
• The aftermath of the Last War – the setting just experienced a war that lasted for a century and broke up the kingdom that spanned the primary continent and utterly destroyed one of its constituent nations, and which ended in a non-conclusive fashion.
• A different approach to religion. Eberron doesn't have personified gods that can directly interact with their worshipers. There's a pantheon of gods (or two, depending on your perspective), but they do not dwell in person on other planes, and they do not directly communicate. The primary pantheon is generally worshiped as a whole, not as individuals. You also have a number of other forces and philosophies that can provide divine power: the Silver Flame, the Blood of Vol, the Undying Court, the Path of Light, and various cults of the Dragon Below.
• The Draconic Prophecy permeating the setting.
• A well-defined place for psionics, for those who like that sort of thing, which is enough out of the way that you can easily ignore it, for those who don't. This includes the new Kalashtar race, who were once formed out of humans bonding with extraplanar dream-beings fleeing persecution on their home plane.
• Magic permeating the setting without the setting being filled with super-powerful spellcasters. The magic is mostly utilitarian and low-level in nature, and mostly a logical extension of the way magic works in D&D (e.g. washing basins enchanted with prestidigation to make clothes-cleaning easy). One of the expressions of this is the artificer class, which uses magic by way of gadgets and which has an easier time creating magic items.
• Fast travel by way of the Lightning Train and extra-fast ships.
• Warforged, living constructs built to fight in the Last War and now given their freedom and seeking their way in the world, and all the problems that come with that background.
• Shifters, people with mild bestial traits that can call upon those for short times.
• Changelings, people with doppleganger like abilities to take other forms and living other people's lives, and the rich cultures that form from that.
• Dinosaur-riding halflings.
• Shades of grey regarding alignments. With the exception of immortal beings like celestials and fiends, beings in Eberron are not limited in their alignments. Two of the main "defenders of the world" organizations, centered in different harsh regions, are primarily made up of orcs, for example.

These are all things that make Eberron strongly distinct from the Forgotten Realms. They're not just things I could do in FR by squinting a little. Many of them are also things that require heavy mechanical support, such as the new races, the dragon-marked houses, and artificers. What are the Greyhawk equivalents?