D&D 5E Best and worst of 5E

[Shardstone]

Best: Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is the perfect format for a 5E book. It introduces a setting to play in (complete with factions, roll tables, and maps), 7 adventures that can be used as one-shots or to make a campaign (with guidelines to do both), new character options, new magic items, new monsters, and best of all, thematic rule supplements to the core game. Overall a very well designed book.

Worst: PHB. Honestly, the book has sold well off of name alone. Why I put it worst, though, is because the organization of the PHB is honestly freaking horrendous. It isn't clear in what it communicates, is confusing to navigate, has a horrendous index, and overall needs a lot of time with to fully grok. Not very friendly to newbies at all.

Actual Worst: Monster Manual. For the reasons above + the fact that more interesting monsters are contained in other books. The basics coulda' all been put in something else IMO.

 

[pukunui]

Best: Volo's Guide to Monsters. Lots of rich lore on some core monsters. The bestiary is good too. (The playable races section is arguably the worst part of the book, in my opinion, simply because it's obvious WotC couldn't be bothered balancing some of the races.)

Runner-up: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Love the "in-game" presentation of the lore. Has some pretty cool character options, too. I consider it essential if you're running a game set on the Sword Coast. Not so useful if you're not. Would win out over Volo's if it wasn't such a thin book. (They could easily have included more spells, some magic items, more subclasses, more lore! It's unfortunate they were being so conservative.)


Worst: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. A hot mess with some of the worst examples of railroading I've seen (even worse than Hoard of the Dragon Queen's, and I actually enjoyed running that adventure.). It's trying too hard to be too many different things and fails miserably at all of them. Only really redeeming parts are the Waterdeep gazetteer (which, even then, is a bit light on content) and the easily cut-and-pastable encounter locations. Some of the NPCs are pretty good too.

Runners-up: Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Both because they are disappointingly random grab-bags of good, bad, meh, and ugly. XGE could have been so much better than what we actually got, and MTF doesn't do what it says on the tin. The bestiary is OK but the lore isn't particularly useful.

 

[Maxperson]

For me the best would be Xanthar's, because I like the options it presents to the players and DM alike. My least favorite would probably be the DM's guide(It's still a good book), because it's mostly advice that after 30+ years of running D&D, I just don't need.

 

[ad_hoc]

Runner up - Horde of the Dragon Queen. I don't know what Kobold Press was thinking. I don't know what Wizards was thinking. There is no way anyone was happy with how this turned out in the end. A disservice to both houses from normally reliable authors.

Our table liked HotDQ a lot.

 

[Charlaquin]

Disclaimer: I haven’t gotten the essentials kit yet.

Best: I’m gonna cheat a bit and say the best for me is the Starter Set. Not technically a book, but the best 5e product by far. Everything you need to run the game, including the basic rules for players and DM, an excellent starter adventure (best 5e adventuring I’be read so far, Murder in Baldur’s Gate notwithstanding), and a set of dice. Absolutely fantastic product.

Honorable Mention: DMG. The 5e DMG is a treasure trove of solid DM advice, adventure building resources, and interesting optional rules. Would probably have been my pick for best if it hadn’t been so horribly organized.

Worst: Horde of the Dragon Queen. No surprise here, it’s been a lot of people’s choice for worst already. Horrible railroady adventure with serious balancing issues, and an absolutely awful first adventure path for the edition. Thank goodness for the amazing starter kit and DMG, because this would have been an abysmal introduction to the edition otherwise.

Dishonorable mention: Out of the Abyss. As an adventure, it might actually be worse than HotDQ. The balancing issues aren’t as bad, but the whole first half of the adventure is painfully unfocused and meandering, while paradoxically being every bit as railroady. Literal weeks of wandering through the underdark with nothing but the odd random encounter to hold the players’ interest, only to be captured by hostile creatures AGAIN and be “conveniently” saved by an unavoidable disaster as a Demon Lord shows up. Rinse, repeat. The second half was ok, but not nearly good enough to redeem the first half. The only reason this didn’t beat out HotDQ for worst is that it low-key makes for a pretty decent Underdark campaign guide if you ignore all the actual adventure.

 

[JeffB]

Another best vote for Starter Set/LMoP. Fun sandbox,with some side encounters/plots that have given me alot more mileage out of the box than the page count and cost would indicate.

I haven't picked up hardly anything besides the core books and the starter set because the adventure paths books are pretty worthless to me (ToA and CoS excluded), so my worst vote goes to the PHB. I get by fine with the Basic Rules, MM, and the occasional use of the DMG- Petty complaint- Barring the cover, the art in the PHB is also the weakest of the core books.

 

[Parmandur]

Best: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Fantastically useful.

Worst: Acquisitions Incorporated. I've been pretty satisfied with every book I've bought, but I was so uninterested in this that I got it through the library to read, and won't be buying. Not terrible, but not worth my money. Every other book has been worth the cost.

 

[robus]

I’m voting for Xanathar’s for the best. An approachable guide to a bunch of useful stuff.

Runner up: I dunno, I have issues with pretty much everything. I guess I’ll say PHB but only because it is full of useful stuff, just horribly presented for newcomers (though not as bad as the DMG, which is utterly backwards).

Sword Coast Adventurers Guide has to be the worst. Absolutely useless!

Dragon Heist is a close runner up. No excuse for that hot mess as pukunui so aptly put it.

 

[pogre]

Best: Starter/LMoP just a wonderfully complete and fun adventure. I have run it numerous times and it is always a hit.

Worst: DMG. I rarely use it except to look up magic items. I do not think it serves newbie or veteran D.M.s well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Best: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Fantastically useful.

Worst: Acquisitions Incorporated. I've been pretty satisfied with every book I've bought, but I was so uninterested in this that I got it through the library to read, and won't be buying. Not terrible, but not worth my money. Every other book has been worth the cost.

I change my worst to this. So uninteresting I totally forgot it existed lol