D&D 5E Here's Tasha's Contents Page

IGN has posted the contents page from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, along with a slew of art.

They also spoke to WotC, who commented on some of the DM tools -- "The DM Tools chapter also includes rules and suggestions for what are being called "Supernatural Regions." These otherworldly locations include (among others) haunted realms where restless spirits wander freely, the Lovecraftian nightmare of a world beyond the known sphere of existence, or a delightfully horrifying colony of mimics." The Far Realm, which is outside the Great Wheel, is where beholders and illithids come from. They also note that there weren't many Unearthed Arcana subclasses which didn't make it into this book.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything comes out on November 17th in America, and December 1st in Europe, Asia, and Pacific countries.

 

[cbwjm]

Have we heard much about swapping subclasses?

From memory, when you reach a level where you gain an additional subclass feature, you can swap your subclass. Honestly feels like a rule for AL more than anything else.

 

[tetrasodium]

Again, the link I was pulling from was IN THE POST YOU QUOTED. Did you miss it? It sure sounds like you did.

No you don't get it. That is an article written by someone other than Mearls talking about something Mearls is not at any point explicitly quoted on. If you read the whole article it starts with the words " James kindly gave me permission to post a summary of the interview." On top of that, it does not support your claim as you are trying to use it The actual talk with mearls that the article is about is here
~10:01

" I think that we are in a similar space now with dungeons & dragons. I think that's very useful because there is a conversation & you think of it like with the starter set. You know what's great about it is that there's so much fan content generated around it that if I buy that starter set I can go on reddit & get tips from a dozen dungeon masters on how to run the adventure. I can go on youtube & I can watch people playing the actual adventure. You know I can watch videos giving tips on how to dm & now of course I'm blanking on everyone's namebecause I'm being interviewed. The idea that there's this nice convergence around it where you aren't playing the game alone anymore, especially as a new player & I think having the focus really helps that because when you turn to that resource there aren't like 50 different things your looking for. There's just a very small number of them right & especially stuff that's tiny that if you came into d&d let's say you gotyou got your starter set over the summer & then you wanted to start playing [skt] that' what everyone's talking about so it's much easier for you to step into the community & then take part in that community & feel like you are a part of it. where as before you think back youknow especially third edition it was much more scattered just every month there was a new thing. what was the focus andto be honest I never would have guessed I sell myself as a visionary & be like back in 2013 .. but what we did see was there were two things we saw in the surveys people said they didn't wat to buy that many products which is funny your building a business that people don't want to buy. I remember very clearly in 1999 going to gencon after anouncing the third edition & one of the things they said as a selling point was you don't need to bring this giant box full of books for the game to the table & everyone was like yea that's great wait I don't have to use all the books I bought. I was just why did you buy them? even back then I was the type of player that when i was in highschool if you asked my parents wat is mike what are his hobbies & they's say dungeons & dragons of course but looking back I owned very few books. You know I had the core books. I owned like the complete fighters handbook as a gift & I liked it I enjoyed it but I never really felt the urge to buy anything any other complete books. I bought some of the box sets & the settings & I bought like the dragon & dngeon magazine but I think looking back that was probably closer to the typical player when third editon came out & I had a full time job I started just buying cause why not I can I can afford everything. everyone else was there with barely anything I just started to question why are we treating d&d this way is it actually the best format , it just became engrained this sort of magaxine or comic book subscription model every month one to five products and we got really challenged by the former president of wizards he was one of the ones who just challenged why is this your business model cause are you sure this is what people want. and that sparked a lot of great conversations. That's where we ended up with like this three product a year model to start feeling like that was a reasonable pace where you could read it understand it & start using it & then by the time the next one came out you'd be excited for it. we didn't print it in the phb but in AL that's where we came up with the phb+1 because we don't want players to feel like they need to own every suppliment to make a character "

In short. He's talking about the rapid release scheduleof 3.5 & how breaking from that changes things not supporting your point that only works if you ignore the context of what he's talking about grew from.

 

[Mistwell]

No you don't get it. That is an article written by someone other than Mearls talking about something Mearls is not at any point explicitly quoted on. If you read the whole article it starts with the words " James kindly gave me permission to post a summary of the interview." On top of that, it does not support your claim as you are trying to use it The actual talk with mearls that the article is about is here
~10:01


In short. He's talking about the rapid release scheduleof 3.5 & how breaking from that changes things not supporting your point that only works if you ignore the context of what he's talking about grew from.

The link from Merric LINKS TO THE INTERVIEW.

I just transcribed the relevant portion for you (and you ignored it). You then skipped to AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT portion. But he makes it clear in the portion I transcribed that he's talking about all the editions that led up to this point.

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, WTF IS YOUR POINT? I asked that before and you got aggressive but never answered the question. Why is it relevant if he means 3.5 was that more than some other edition? How does this relate to the topic we're discussing? Why do you seem to think this is in any way important to what we are talking about?

 

[pogre]

This seems like a great pick-up for players. I am sure it will be amazingly popular. As a DM it will be a pass for me. Partially because I know there will be at least three copies at the table

 

[Azzy]

Your comment shows why it's so problematic how they tried to strip the lore to pretend it was lovecraftian rather than admit the setting lore it came from.
1: It's not based on those creatures you note, it's transparently based on this.

No. It is not transparently based on dolgraunts. I think that that's your personal bias showing. Moreover, unlike illithids, dolgaunts aren't psionic creatures. So Illithids are a much more likely source of inspiration.

Like beholder & mind flayer/illithid ithe dolgaunt, dolgrim, dolgrue,& others... they were all created by the daelkyr from xoriat, not the far realm. The far realm is a completely different place from xoriat. Although there are some similarities they are distinctly different places with lore of their own much like how the cities of waterdeep kalaman & greyhawk are not the same despite some similarities.

So? While you could certainly use in Eberron and connect it to Xoriat if you wanted to, nothing about this subclass necessitates or insinuates it to be connected to Eberron.

2. They got sued over that deities & demigods link you are citing & can read about it here

1. No, they didn't get sued. Chaosium sent C&D letters to TSR, not knowing that Jim Ward had sought out the rights for Cthulhu and Elric also. The both came to an arrangement that allowed TSR to continue using them with permission from Chaosium in subsequent printings (which TSR did for a while before deciding to pull both mythoi from the book—likely because TSR didn't want to plug for a competitor in the RPG business).

2. That's irrelevant.

3. in case you missed it, it's based heavily on the daelkyr creations with oddly fitting lovecraftian elements bolted on... because of that it has jarring incongruities just as an archtype of defilers & preservers centered around mystara's weave & Mystryl's desire to subvert it would be both confusing and rage inducing.

I've certainly missed it because I think that's a conclusion that you've drawn from your bias and isn't actually based on objective fact.

 

[see]

[CITATION NEEDED] and "Facts not in evidence, your honour!", is how I respond to this extreme claim.

You can shout "It's more complicated!" and "You can't prove it!" and "You need more evidence!" all you like; people always do that when they can't actually provide a remotely plausible counter-theory. Particularly on message boards, which are unsuited to long, detailed analyses.

And "having a cultural moment" isn't a theory, it's just a fact-free label for when D&D was successful without even trying to understand why.

The 3e "mini-moment", of course, perfectly reinforces my thesis, rather than giving you any help. Instead of somehow correlating with your badly-defined "accessibility" (any more than the first D&D "cultural moment" did), it correlates with the period of the 3e short bookshelf (exemplified where "supplements" meant 96-pages-for-two-classes works like Sword & Fist and Song & Silence, rather than 2e/3.5e style shelves of Complete Whatevers or 4e style Corebook II & IIIs). The "moment" was then choked to death under piles of official WotC product when new management that hadn't been part of forming the original 3e strategy mistakenly thought the 3pp d20 explosion meant there was, in fact, massive demand for official crunch.

And I'm quite clearly not attributing anything to "whether they put out X sourcebooks or X+1", and I very certainly didn't say anything like "THIS BOOK MAY BE A BOOK TOO FAR!!!!" Rather, I made an entirely explicit statement of exactly what my concerns with TCoE were -- "A new class and a bunch of change-every-existing-class 'optional' features is a lot further beyond the core envelope than 5e's been pushed before." The second part is the bigger issue, because if a campaign uses those bits from TCoE, it risks requiring a player to go beyond the PHB to play a from-the-PHB character. That's the true "accessibility" issue.

 

[Maxperson]

The only proper wat to treat it is to throw out, so they have been doing fine so far in my book.

PS I don't want to take things away from other people - I just hate psionics

Since you can opt not to use them if they are in the game, if you don't want them in the game because you hate them, then you are in effect wanting to take things away from other people.

Here's the difference between you and me. I hate the Warlord and will never touch the class/subclass should they make it.. I want the Warlord in the game, because a lot of other people will get enjoyment from it.

 

[Maxperson]

Mike Mearls said repeatedly in numerous interviews that the slow release schedule is a big part of the success of 5e, and that the reduced number of player options is also a big part of the success of 5e. See for example here, where our own @MerricB summarizes the relevant portion of that interview as, "Mike believes that the slow release schedule has been a big part of the success of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D can be big and intimidating, and in earlier editions, the breadth of options allowed for many broken (over-powered) combinations, as well as characters that were (mechanically) quite difficult to understand. Similarly, with settings, the amount of detail published for (say) the Forgotten Realms, would intimidate Dungeon Masters, as they didn’t feel that they could get enough of a handle on them to properly run and design adventures in the setting. The wall of information presented by previous editions so daunted potential players and Dungeon Masters that they wouldn’t even try the game."

Mearls also said at the time, "We really want to take it easy with adding new mechanics to the game. Each new option increases the chance that something broken or confusing will enter the game. Our plan is to add things only if the game really needs them, like an option that makes sense for a setting or that fits a role within a specific campaign. The playtest showed us that most players and DMs don’t want hundreds of pages of new content each month, but instead a much more deliberate, careful release schedule."

It might be wiser to acknowledge the poster you were responding to, @see , is coming from a perspective which does have some foundational support. Probably better to do that before diving in to disagree with Mearls and questioning his data and introducing other factors which may not have been considered (all of which is a fair perspective to look at). Saying the poster is coming from baseless superstition, given the context of the words of the guy who helped design 5e and who has the insider data at his fingertips talking directly about what he thinks are the key points which contributed to the success of this edition, probably isn't the look you're going for here. It looks like you're being dismissive without good grounds for that approach.

So "Mike believes that the slow release has been a big part of the success...". A belief isn't true just because it is believed. Add into that the fact that people who work for corporations are pretty much obligated to toe the company line, and what he said isn't very convincing. Especially given that he couldn't even say that it was a big part of the success, only that he believes that it is.

 

[Maxperson]

From memory, when you reach a level where you gain an additional subclass feature, you can swap your subclass. Honestly feels like a rule for AL more than anything else.

I hate mechanics like that. "Yesterday I knew how to perform these several abilities and had been able to do them for months. Today I am completely unable to do any of them, but I suddenly know how to do these other several abilities that I've never even attempted before."

Ugh! No thanks.

 

[Mistwell]

So "Mike believes that the slow release has been a big part of the success...". A belief isn't true just because it is believed. Add into that the fact that people who work for corporations are pretty much obligated to toe the company line, and what he said isn't very convincing. Especially given that he couldn't even say that it was a big part of the success, only that he believes that it is.

Yes, Mike Mearls, the guy with access to all the insider data, believes X.

It's fair to question that belief like you're doing. It's not fair however to dismiss someone's statement based on that belief as "baseless superstition."

See the difference? It's not baseless (we have a basis now) and it's not superstition (Mike Mearls really did repeatedly make those claims in his official capacity).