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...

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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...

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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...

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[DnD Warlord]

the Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster Rogue and the two Swordy Bards do sorcery with one hand and swordery with the other.

A proper Mageknight/Gish/Swordmage should be able to do both at the same time.

I love that we have cantrips that have you make a melee attack, but imagine if we got 20ishspells between 1st and 9th that also have you make attacks and get effects

Example: a 2nd level spell that says : make 2 melee attacks against 2 different targets within range. In between the attacks you can teleports up to 20ft. If you hit with the attacks you deal extra force damage of 1d6.

mat higher level for every 2 levels above 2 you can make an extra attack (3 at 4th 4 at 6th 5 at 8th)

 

[Azzy]

Not to edition war, just some dates:

• OD&D: 1974-1978 = 4 years
• AD&D 1E: 1977-1989 = 12 years
• AD&D 2E: 1989-2000 = 11 years
• BD&D (with no gigantic shake up, just some minor changes in format): 1977-1995 = about 18 years
• 3.0: 2000-2003 = 3 years
• 3.5 (bigger leap than any Basic change) : 2003-2008 = 5 years
• 4E: 2008-2012 = 4 years (including the original release and Essentials, though a case could be made for two years apiece for both iterations, no new products after 2012, all WotC energy was on playtesting 5E)
• 5E: 2014- = 6 years and ongoing

As a minor quibble, BD&D properly begins with the Moldvay set in 81. Aside from the name, the 1977 Holmes Basic set much closer to OD&D (which it should be included with) than to B/X and its descendents, and was originally intended as an off-ramp to AD&D (which hadn't been finalized yet—the Monster Manual would come later that year, and the PHB and DMG in later years).

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, I liked Proficiency Dice a lot. IIRC, they did survive as an optional rule in the DMG, didn’t they?

Yes, and they don't upset the balance of anything, since the Proficiency bonus washes out as mathematically identical in the long run.

 

[Azzy]

Just because a beast has a swim speed, doesn't mean it can't have a land speed. There's alligators, hippopotamus, otters, capybara, beavers, seals, turtles, giant frogs, etc...

Great. Now I want to play a beast master ranger with a dire capybara as an animal companion.

 

[Parmandur]

As a minor quibble, BD&D properly begins with the Moldvay set in 81. Aside from the name, the 1977 Holmes Basic set much closer to OD&D (which it should be included with) than to B/X and its descendents, and was originally intended as an off-ramp to AD&D (which hadn't been finalized yet—the Monster Manual would come later that year, and the PHB and DMG in later years).

Adopting the Major/Minor Edition model, I'm actually inclined to fold OD&D in with all of BD&D now as one "Edition", actually. This has the elegance of making 3rd edition the 3rd major edition, and also with 4th & 5th.

 

[Kurotowa]

Great. Now I want to play a beast master ranger with a dire capybara as an animal companion.

A dire capybara is just a Rodent of Unusual Size with a cute and cuddly appearance instead of a hideously ugly one. It shouldn't be hard to narrate one lunging forward and biting open a femoral artery.

 

[see]

Adopting the Major/Minor Edition model, I'm actually inclined to fold OD&D in with all of BD&D now as one "Edition", actually.

That makes no sense at all. The B/X-BECMI-RC D&D line, while plausibly one type in itself, was a major departure from OD&D, starting with the complete reworking of the class list and a unification of race and class.

OD&D, for example, supported dwarf, elf, half-elf, and hobbit thieves simultaneously with the introduction of the thief class, while B/X did not. AD&D 1st's PHB, on the other hand, included every single class that had been published by TSR for OD&D, whether in the "Supplement" series or in The Strategic Review, adding none and subtracting none (even if the bard was radically changed).

 

[Marandahir]

Just because a beast has a swim speed, doesn't mean it can't have a land speed. There's alligators, hippopotamus, otters, capybara, beavers, seals, turtles, giant frogs, etc...

Here's hoping that there are 3 distinct categories: Beast of Land/Air/Water, but that all three can have a land speed, just that Beast of Water and Beast of Air have much slower land speeds. And I'd hope maybe Beast of Land could be up to one size larger than the character, allowing for "A Horse and Her Ranger" type story.

I'm a fan of neither Gish nor Artificer, but even so I can see why somebody who wants a Gish wouldn't be satisfied...in terms of flavor...with the Artificer.

So does the Eldritch Knight Fighter, and the Bladesinger Wizard, and the Hexblade Warlock, and the Valor Bard. Heck, if we're being generous you might even throw in the Arcane Trickster Rogue. "Person who combines melee weapons with magic" is a pretty broad concept that's got room for a multitude of takes.

Yeah, that was my point, though. Artificer works as the half-caster class with room for an abundant variance of archetypes that are still united in its Arcane spellcasting story about magic item creation and use, whilst avoiding the toe-stepping nature of a class essentially being Wizard+Rogue or Wizard+Fighter.

At the same time, there are people who WANT a more simple Wizard+Fighter, and for them we have Arcane Archer, Eldritch Knight, Bladesinger, etc. That's great. But Eldritch Knight doesn't stand on its own as the foundations of a class with an abundance of unique archetypes. The way I've seen people take it, they've put Hexblade inside of an Eldritch Knight chassis and made it so that you're Str/Dex + Int/Cha (your choice on either side), and the attempts as distinguishing narratives for subclasses just don't look different enough or are distinguished by the factor that they're really pointing at the idea that they should be subclasses of other classes.

It's wonderful that we have so many different Arcane Gish concepts, and that we can fit them around the table in different classes and it works. They're united by the idea of "Weapon & Spell" but they're so different from each other, and are allowed to be because they're in different classes.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I always felt that 4e not having a decent video game was disappointing. The way that edition was built would have meant that a baldur's gate or icewind dale rpg would have been perfect for the system.

Neverwinter is a pretty close fit with a 4E MMO.

That is an interesting take on the battlemaster. So you could build a warlord class that starts using superiority dice from level 1 on and probably can use them at will or has a few more uses than the fighter. That would be the first warlord concept I would really like. It does not use a new subsystem but retcons the battlemaster as fighter with warlord abilities. Actually there is already a multiclass light feet in the PHB that resembles the UA style feats.

That is pretty much the exact route I took with my warlord class. - Start with the understanding that a level 20 BM fighter is as good at maneuvers as a 7th level Warlord. Then work on variations and scaling them.

I think that a sword mage class or a subclass would help

The Stone Sorceror from UA is a pretty good swordmage.

I'm a fan of neither Gish nor Artificer, but even so I can see why somebody who wants a Gish wouldn't be satisfied...in terms of flavor...with the Artificer.

In terms of "combines magic and mundane attacks together" the Forge adept is a pretty good gish.

 

[cbwjm]

Neverwinter is a pretty close fit with a 4E MMO.

Kind of, it takes some liberties with the system though. They could have done an excellent Baldur's Gate style game using 4e, the edition was perfect for a tactical turn based game.

I think there was also the sword coast legends which I believe was based on 4e but apparently didn't quite pull of the game as well as it could have.