D&D 5E And just like that, no one cares about Frostmaiden any longer

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I am still looking forward to Cold Weather Exposure rules. And gear (both mundane and magical) to ameliorate the conditions.

In part, because you can invert the charts to get Hot Weather Exposure, and give your players reason to not go wandering around deserts (or Athas) lightly. And/or inform them of the gear they need more than all the combat luggage that adventurers usually carry.

I would be willing to bet money on us seeing the Desert of Desolation or Dark Sun, or both, before the end of 2022, although that's too late if your group is adventuring in a desert now.

 

[RogueRonin]

Yeah, but then there's a 50-50 chance that the thread will devolve into one man's quixotic campaign to convince the world that Kaius I and Kaius III are not the same person.

They aren't!

 

[Marandahir]

Well, Icewind Dale is considered by some to be part of the Sword Coast (albeit at the very edge). But you're right, at least it's getting away from the core Sword Coast region for once.

No, you missed my point. I'm excited for it DESPITE the fact that we're still in the Remembered Realms.

Icewind Dale has never been that interesting to me (I'm not that fascinated with Skyrim/North of the Wall/etc type settings in particular). And it's been visited quite a bit before in video games. But the details they've shown here though have me REALLY pumped.

 

[Undrave]

I would be willing to bet money on us seeing the Desert of Desolation or Dark Sun, or both, before the end of 2022, although that's too late if your group is adventuring in a desert now.

Not if you get them into a TPK.

Or send them wandering in the underdark for the next two years

 

[Gradine]

They aren't!

Well, obviously there's a real Kaius III out there, probably in the Dreadhold, but Kaius I is currently impersonating him because he's an evil immortal vampire who only wants world peace. Everyone knows that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd put Dark Sun in the lead there. They've said as much that they wanted to get Psionics down right, and with them appearing in Tasha's, it sounds like they've done so.

I wouldn't rule out Desert of Desolation, or even just Pharaoh, appearing in Goodman Games' OAR line, though.

I would be willing to bet money on us seeing the Desert of Desolation or Dark Sun, or both, before the end of 2022, although that's too late if your group is adventuring in a desert now.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Desert of Desolation would be newer (relatively speaking) than anything else republished in the OAR line and comes after the shift to more polished, less weird, more narrative (in comparison) D&D adventures, compared to the OD&D/BD&D/pre-1983 AD&D Goodman has a strong predilection for.

Desert of Desolation is really well liked (it's not one of my favorites, personally, but every EN World survey shows I'm in the strong minority here) and seems like a natural to be surrounded by other desert adventures like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, along with a small desert gazetteer and some new rules about desert survival, since we're unlikely to see a deserts-only sourcebook like we got in 3E with Sandstorm.

But I'm not in charge at WotC -- there would be so much more gnome content if I were -- so we'll see.

 

[Nod_Hero]

As an aside, how does everyone feel about reprinting subclasses in this book that appear elsewhere (like bladesinger, eloquence bard, etc)?

Helps out those PHB+1 folks in Adventurer's League campaigns.

 

[RogueRonin]

Well, obviously there's a real Kaius III out there, probably in the Dreadhold, but Kaius I is currently impersonating him because he's an evil immortal vampire who only wants world peace. Everyone knows that.

My eberron campaign uses Keith's circumvention of that metagame, since you're right, everyone knows it.

Adapted from this blog post: Dragonmark 3/19/14: Orcs, Mean Streets and More

Since he came up, are there any people that you have in mind for Prisoner Deep Fourteen besides the real Kaius?

Spoilers here, so if you don’t know Kaius’ story skip this question. I don’t have anyone in mind for D14, but I could brainstorm a few possibilities, given a moment. He’s someone Kaius wants alive, but not allowed to speak or write. The idea that he’s a relative is one possibility. Another is that he’s a Karrnathi warmage who committed war crimes so vile he couldn’t be left at liberty (in part because other nations would demand justice) but Kaius wants to be able to retrieve him if there’s another war. A third even zanier possibility is that HE is Kaius I, and that the biggest secret of Karrnath is that Kaius III IS Kaius III, presenting himself to Kaius’ inner circle as his grandfather. If you want to get really deep into conspiracies, try this. Erandis arranged to have Kaius transformed. Because of the nature of this process, the vampire that transformed Kaius has direct influence over him, if s/he chooses to exert it. Unwilling to live with this threat hanging over him, Kaius I turned Kaius III into a vampire. In this theory, I’m asserting that a vampire can assert control over his direct progeny, but not over THEIR progeny. So K1 sires K3, and then arranges for K3 to send him under deep cover into Dreadhold. K3 poses as K1 posing as K3. His mission: to find and eliminate K1’s sire, so no one can dominate K1; once that’s done, he’ll free K1 from Dreadhold. In the meantime, Erandis is baffled by the fact that she can’t exert control over Kaius.

Personally, I like the idea of K3 posing as K1 posing as K3… but perhaps I’ve been watching too much Orphan Black.

Now, I just came up with this idea on the spur of the moment. But running with it a little further, you can get even farther out there and say Kaius III isn’t a vampire. Here’s the sequence of events. Kaius is turned into a vampire by Erandis. After being undercover for a time, Erandis sends him to replace K3 and take over Karrnath; she likes the idea of having a puppet on the throne. But K1 is no one’s puppet, and he has his own scheme. K3’s lover Etrigani is a deep-cover Deathguard agent, and knows rituals that can allow a living person to appear undead, a variant of the half-life techniques common among the Jhaelian clan. Together, Etrigani, K1, and K3 arrange to make it SEEM as though K3 is actually vampire K1. This “coup” – the idea that K1 has replaced K3 – is revealed to Morana and the other inner circle of Karrnath, and of course all of Vol’s spies. “K3” – actually K1 – is sent to Dreadhold, and made incommunicado, so there is no way for Vol to manipulate him; he can’t get out even if he wanted to. Etrigani and K3-posing-as-K1 want to destroy the vampire that sired K1 and to get as much information as they can about Erandis’ inner circle and her reach in Karrnath. Again, in this scenario Etrigani is an agent of the Deathguard, who have been trying to eliminate Erandis for centuries. But K1 is under close scrutiny by Vol. She doesn’t understand why she can’t control him, but he’s doing his best NOT to reveal his true identity. He’s too closely watched. He needs agents she doesn’t know… agents like the PCs.

The main thing I like about this is that most people who know Eberron know that Kaius III is a vampire and Kaius I. To negate both of these – not only is he actually Kaius III, he’s not even a real vampire – is a great way to catch people who think they know everything about the world offguard. And it helps solidify K3 and Etrigani’s relationship; it’s not that she loves him in spite of his being a vampire, something that’s an anathema to her people; rather, she loves him because they are working together to bring down Erandis, and it’s her skills that allow him to maintain his masquerade

 

[Zaukrie]

For the first time in some time, I'm excited about two WotC books........these both look great. An icebox campaign sounds great. New options and the other stuff in Tasha sounds great.

I don't usually care about covers.....but this is the FIRST TIME I prefer the alternate cover.....that art is amazingly well done.