So I got my book today, and did my usual quick skim....delving into a few things that interested me. My general quick and dirty thoughts:
1) Player Options: Most of these are "fine"...honestly its mostly fluff to my eyes. The ranger changes are at least interesting. The Monk ones....why does WOTC hate the monk so much, like that healing ability is a ridiculously weak use of ki.
2) Artificier: Compared to the UA, looks like they tightened up a few abilities and move some things into infusions. They also took out the weird extra attack with magic items thing. Don't have much more to say until I dig in.
3) My first read of the Fighter subclass "Rune Knight" gave me a bit of an eyebrow raise. It looks really cool, but man some of things abilities seem pretty darn strong. Its probably one of the favorite ones I looked over.
4) There's an interesting two pager that goes over ways to make a dozen different fighter archetypes using feats and battle master manuevers. Its clearly designed to inspire players and provide them ideas for archetypes. I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I respect that inspiring one character idea could create months of player enjoyment. On the other, while I respect WOTC's desire to tone down the crunch train....I admit to be thirty for crunch....so to see any page count spent for flavor when the page count is already pretty small does hurt me a bit.
5) Feats: All of the feats look solid enough. WOTC is clearly embracing the idea of "multiclassing through feats"...not as a requirement, but as another avenue to allow characters to "dip their toe in the water". That said...I WANT MORE FEATS!!! This is actually a common complaint about my table, that the players miss the plethora of 3.5 feats and really want to see feats in more places.
6) The Group Patron section is just all fluff to me....and fluff I wasn't really looking for. Its a cool idea that many dms already use, its a good idea, but doesn't need such a large amount of space dedicated to it.
7) Spells: My favorite thing in the book are the new summon spells. I really really like the new format. Effectively you summon a specific type of creature...but you get a few choices. Example, you summon an elemental and choose which type. You summon a fiend, and choose between a devil, demon, or yugoloth. Then it provides you a statblock. Your choice means you access certain parts of the stat block and not others. For example, the devil gets one type of attack, the demon gets another. Further, the level you summon the spell is a major factor in the statblock, so you can easily scale the summons up with level...instead of having to just summons hordes of things.
It feels like a good balance, provides players the statblock (no MM needed), gives them a solid base with some customization, and with some good spell level scaling. I like it.
The other spells seems all well and good, my only beef..... clerics have been shafted in the spell department in Xanathars and now Tasha's. Everyone else to enjoy a plethora of new spells, clerics get 2.
8) Some of the new magic items are pretty neat. There are several cool wizard books that act as limited spellbooks but also give other bonuses, those are pretty neat.
9) The sidekick rules remind me of the old npc classes. They are decently useful if the DM wants to throw in another character without overshadowing anyone.
10) There is a section called Parleying with Monsters I actually really like. Its short and simple, but it offers good ideas on how to diplomacy with monsters but not make it "pass or fail". Effectively it provides things the monster might be interested in, that if the party provides, the monster would be more cooperative.
11) I like the Environmental Hazards section a lot. It provides a lot of options to have whole landscapes altered by forces, such as a haunting or infestation. Then it provides random results as the party explores to help sell the weirdness of the new landscape...its solid.
12) Puzzles: Now personally I am not a puzzle guy, but some players are my table are, so having some new ones to use on them is handy. They also come with some pretty handouts in the back that you can copy to help make the puzzles pop. That said, the first puzzle in the book noted as "Easy".... damn that one was not Easy for me!!!
So all in all what did I think?
1) New subclasses will get some use.
2) New magic spells and magic items will see a lot of use. Probably the meatiest section
3) New feats are solid for certain classes. I know my players will be disappointed there were not more of them.
4) I will make solid use of the Environmental Hazards...and an occasional use of the puzzles....assuming I can prevent my players from looking at that section!
5) About 1/5 of the book is just stuff that I think is fluffy or uninteresting....overall a bit better than Xanathar's for me.
1) Player Options: Most of these are "fine"...honestly its mostly fluff to my eyes. The ranger changes are at least interesting. The Monk ones....why does WOTC hate the monk so much, like that healing ability is a ridiculously weak use of ki.
2) Artificier: Compared to the UA, looks like they tightened up a few abilities and move some things into infusions. They also took out the weird extra attack with magic items thing. Don't have much more to say until I dig in.
3) My first read of the Fighter subclass "Rune Knight" gave me a bit of an eyebrow raise. It looks really cool, but man some of things abilities seem pretty darn strong. Its probably one of the favorite ones I looked over.
4) There's an interesting two pager that goes over ways to make a dozen different fighter archetypes using feats and battle master manuevers. Its clearly designed to inspire players and provide them ideas for archetypes. I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I respect that inspiring one character idea could create months of player enjoyment. On the other, while I respect WOTC's desire to tone down the crunch train....I admit to be thirty for crunch....so to see any page count spent for flavor when the page count is already pretty small does hurt me a bit.
5) Feats: All of the feats look solid enough. WOTC is clearly embracing the idea of "multiclassing through feats"...not as a requirement, but as another avenue to allow characters to "dip their toe in the water". That said...I WANT MORE FEATS!!! This is actually a common complaint about my table, that the players miss the plethora of 3.5 feats and really want to see feats in more places.
6) The Group Patron section is just all fluff to me....and fluff I wasn't really looking for. Its a cool idea that many dms already use, its a good idea, but doesn't need such a large amount of space dedicated to it.
7) Spells: My favorite thing in the book are the new summon spells. I really really like the new format. Effectively you summon a specific type of creature...but you get a few choices. Example, you summon an elemental and choose which type. You summon a fiend, and choose between a devil, demon, or yugoloth. Then it provides you a statblock. Your choice means you access certain parts of the stat block and not others. For example, the devil gets one type of attack, the demon gets another. Further, the level you summon the spell is a major factor in the statblock, so you can easily scale the summons up with level...instead of having to just summons hordes of things.
It feels like a good balance, provides players the statblock (no MM needed), gives them a solid base with some customization, and with some good spell level scaling. I like it.
The other spells seems all well and good, my only beef..... clerics have been shafted in the spell department in Xanathars and now Tasha's. Everyone else to enjoy a plethora of new spells, clerics get 2.
8) Some of the new magic items are pretty neat. There are several cool wizard books that act as limited spellbooks but also give other bonuses, those are pretty neat.
9) The sidekick rules remind me of the old npc classes. They are decently useful if the DM wants to throw in another character without overshadowing anyone.
10) There is a section called Parleying with Monsters I actually really like. Its short and simple, but it offers good ideas on how to diplomacy with monsters but not make it "pass or fail". Effectively it provides things the monster might be interested in, that if the party provides, the monster would be more cooperative.
11) I like the Environmental Hazards section a lot. It provides a lot of options to have whole landscapes altered by forces, such as a haunting or infestation. Then it provides random results as the party explores to help sell the weirdness of the new landscape...its solid.
12) Puzzles: Now personally I am not a puzzle guy, but some players are my table are, so having some new ones to use on them is handy. They also come with some pretty handouts in the back that you can copy to help make the puzzles pop. That said, the first puzzle in the book noted as "Easy".... damn that one was not Easy for me!!!
So all in all what did I think?
1) New subclasses will get some use.
2) New magic spells and magic items will see a lot of use. Probably the meatiest section
3) New feats are solid for certain classes. I know my players will be disappointed there were not more of them.
4) I will make solid use of the Environmental Hazards...and an occasional use of the puzzles....assuming I can prevent my players from looking at that section!
5) About 1/5 of the book is just stuff that I think is fluffy or uninteresting....overall a bit better than Xanathar's for me.
