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

 

[Cadence]

Hopefully it's kosher to link to another site here; io9 has an interview with Jeremy Crawford promoting the book that drops some tidbits: With D&D's Next Rulebook, Character Creation Will Never Be the Same

That and a few others are at the bottom of the original post already.

 

[Reynard]

You're fun at parties, aren't you?

Well, I certainly hope you never try and advocate for anything- at least, not to me.

I was too harsh. I mean as a commercially successful property for WotC. There's certainly life there in its fans and I think WotC should just open it up on the DMsGuild and let the people that love it shepherd it into the 5E era. I think the same thing for Gamma World, to be honest.

WotC reminds me of the comics companies in this way. There are lots of fans of, say, Black Condor, but DC is not going to make a Black Condor comic even if it would break even in cost. They will only make it if it is a "guaranteed" hit. WotC isn't going to make Greyhawk or probably The Known World/Mystara for the same reason.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

They kind of explained it in the preface of the last UA on psionics. Psionics was an add-on system in 1E, and only a separate class in 2E and 3E (don't know about 4E).

Psionics was a "power source" in 4E, which means it had several related classes:

• The Ardent was a leader who managed the mental states of allies.
• The Battlemind could use psionics to transform their body.
• The Monk used psionics to increase their speed and power with various stances.
• The Psion was pretty much a spellcaster...but psionic!

All but the Monk used a Power Point system to augment their abilities.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I was too harsh. I mean as a commercially successful property for WotC. There's certainly life there in its fans and I think WotC should just open it up on the DMsGuild and let the people that love it shepherd it into the 5E era. I think the same thing for Gamma World, to be honest.

WotC reminds me of the comics companies in this way. There are lots of fans of, say, Black Condor, but DC is not going to make a Black Condor comic even if it would break even in cost. They will only make it if it is a "guaranteed" hit. WotC isn't going to make Greyhawk or probably The Known World/Mystara for the same reason.

Fair enough; I disagree (I think it would do better than you think), but if they're not going to do something with it, at a minimum they should open it up on DM's Guild.

Right now, it is both prohibited (on DM's Guild) and not supported (outside of Saltmarsh). It's the worst of all worlds in terms of trying to bring GH to the 5e masses.

 

[Marandahir]

View attachment 125040

This book in particular has an absurd amount of detail regarding Hyrule as depicted before Breath of the Wild, both before and 100 years after Ganon appears. It goes so far as to include maps of the evacuation routes people took during Ganon's initial attack, maps and overviews of battles fought at two separate fortresses, the size of the Kingdom of Hyrule before Ganon's appearance and what many of the remaining ruins once where, etc. It's pretty much the closest thing to a comprehensive setting guide ever put out for the Zelda franchise.

I love that book (I have the special edition one that is Champion Blue and has a small model glass Spirit Orb included). It's the 4th of the 3 successor books I mentioned above. They have different names in different regions, so I didn't want to get too much into the details on them, but between them, yes, they have much of the flavour details a Hyrule setting needs (save the fact that BotW is intentionally vague in its timeline placement in relation to all the other titles, beyond being >10k years later to at least one of them).

Still, a D&D source book for Zelda would require a lot more than cobbling together info from the 4 Goddess-colored source books. It would require new prose writing, and that would mean getting Nintendo on board if WotC wanted to issue such a book. Never say never, and NoA and WotC aren't based too far away from each other, and there's DEFINITELY overlapping fandoms, but I'd be FAR less surprised to hear that they worked out a deal with Bethesda to print an "Escaped Prisoner's Guide to Tamriel" sourcebook (at the cost of delaying TES VI ANOTHER hypothetical year). Between the translation efforts, and regional market issues, probably just a bit too much effort for Nintendo to take on, versus someone actively playing D&D like the crews behind Penny Arcade or Critical Role.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm fine with the possible 3 psionic subclasses they came up with. They're good for introducing a small bit of psionics. I still think there should be a full class for psionics, but that would require a lot of playtesting and a couple rounds of feedback with the concept. And there's still room for other psionic subclasses like a College of Ardor Bard (aka Ardent).

 

[Marandahir]

I'm fine with the possible 3 psionic subclasses they came up with. They're good for introducing a small bit of psionics. I still think there should be a full class for psionics, but that would require a lot of playtesting and a couple rounds of feedback with the concept. And there's still room for other psionic subclasses like a College of Ardor Bard (aka Ardent).

Definitely agree.

Also, I'm not opposed to other Fightery archetypes that fit into Battlemind. There were some really cool ideas in 4e Battlemind that are NOT replicated by this Psychic Warrior/Psi Knight/Vaderesque subclass. For example, the Battlemind that could make ghostly nightmares scream and shatter the minds of their enemies as they attack! Very different sort of psychic warrior than the telekineticist we've got here.

 

[Birmy]

That and a few others are at the bottom of the original post already.

D'oh! That'll learn me not to re-check the OP before posting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Long response since we gained 7 pages since I last checked

But they're not though.

Does the Monster Manual have five chapters (144 pages) of straight fluff? They're supplements that have some monsters in them but aren't nearly as dense a resource of monsters the way the MM is.

Sure, but the lore and information in those two books is more the type of stuff I'd like to see than just more and more and more monsters. Depth is better than breadth in a lot of ways.

It isn't just about what they are it's also about what they aren't. The Monster Manual has to devote a fair amount of space to guidelines on encounter building etc, which makes sense since it's the first monster book. A real second and third monster manual wouldn't have to do this and instead of having say, 40 less or 20 less monsters they'd probably have equal or double that number more. That's my problem.

By trying to appeal to players they make it a worse table resource for DMs. It also makes them notably different in execution and intent from a Monster Manual.

Not really my expeirence. Also, the "encounter building" stuff is only like 5 pages in the MM, most of the encounter building rules are in the DMG.

Some current info from Reddit:

Ooh, I like seeing the Spore Druid reprinted )and maybe rebalanced a little) and the Order Cleric is popular.

Yes, so let the barely founded speculation, begin!

From UA in the past year:

Artificer:

- Armorer - Confirmed

Bard:

- Creation - Confirmed

Barbarian:

• Wild Soul
• Rage

Cleric:

• Twilight
• Unity

Druid:

• Wildfire
• Stars

Fighter:

• Rune Knight
• Psychic/Psionic Warrior/Knight

Monk:

• Astral Self
• Way of Mercy

Paladin:

- Watcher

Ranger:

• Swarmkeeper
• Fey Wanderer

Rogue:

• Revived/Phantom
• Soul Knife

Sorcerer:

• Aberrant Soul - Confirmed
• Clockwork Soul

Warlock:

• Genie - Confirmed
• Lurker in the Deep

Wizard:

• Onomancer -deconfirmed
• Psion - -Deconfirmed
• Order of Scribes

Which, not including the two Wizard Subclasses they said we're DOA, call new to 22. I think it's all in!

I remember hearing that the Stars Druid is one of the most popular things to hit the community. So that is really likely.

Here is my important contribution to this important discussion:

I hope they include that thing from that one UA where paladins and rangers could opt to pick up 2 cantrips instead of a fighting style.

Yes, that was such a good design decision

 

[Maxperson]

That is such a better title

Or Tasha's Last Hurrah.