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.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

No really surprising. Did you see the page count on that thing?! It was worth multiple class and could do EVERYTHING.

It was OP, but WotC could have fixed it instead of just giving up on a class based psionic system. And, of course it was super long. If you were to take the Wizard class and all of the pages describing spellcasting, and every spell that Wizards get access to, I can assure you that in comparison to the Mystic, the class would not be outrageously long.

 

[cbwjm]

It was OP, but WotC could have fixed it instead of just giving up on a class based psionic system. And, of course it was super long. If you were to take the Wizard class and all of the pages describing spellcasting, and every spell that Wizards get access to, I can assure you that in comparison to the Mystic, the class would not be outrageously long.

But then people would have to learn another system which is hard! /sarcasm

It might not have happened, but if they hadn't tried to fit every archetype into the mystic, maybe it would have stuck around.

 

[Inchoroi]

Honestly, at this point, I could just take the base sorcerer class, change the main spellcasting ability to Intelligence, drop the spell components, throw in some psionic flavor, and then call it a day.

This is what I expect, and I won't really be too mad about it, really, as long as it scratches that itch.

Might not even have spell slots: I wonder if they will go with the proficiency bonus number of psionic talent dice, and you can reduce them to cast a psionic spell? Add in a "psionic talent" subsystem, a la Sorcerer's Metamagic, and boom. Psion (or Mystic or whatever). I personally think keeping it Mystic rather than Psion would be better; easier to assign your own meaning to the words rather than go with people's preconcieved notion of what those words mean.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't like the idea of the aberrant mind because I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan. I don't like the icky aspect to it. I get that the psionic soul may feel a bit too generic, but I could shape it a lot more.

My big gripe with it is that they made an archetype based on a daelkyr creation & at every point they could do so they chose to dial that back to make room for less setting specific & very different generic lovecraft lore resulting in something that just feels like an odd attempt at forking in lovecraftian horror that fits no setting. It's like if they made a defiler/preserver & replaced all of the darksun specific lore related to those.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

But then people would have to learn another system which is hard! /sarcasm

This is what I tend to argue what is a big flaw to 5e in comparison to others. The lack of game diversity. I understand "power creep" and "bloat" and all those other fear-inducing game terms that DMs unnecessarily panic over.

To me, however, that ultimately really mean "I'm the DM yet can't control what enters my games" on one side; and on the company side means "It's niche and we just want to only produce adventures and sprinkle a dose of new stuff to the core game material over and over again"

Except the analogy to that is like eating potatoes every single day, except they just cook it differently now and then..." Problem is, it's still potatoes and eating the same thing everyday well...tends to suck and lose flavor over time and very quickly.

Introducing a new class system of play would be nice and generate a bigger interest and yield to the customer base for several reasons. Yeah, they did release the Artificer not too long ago, but it didn't need its own system of play. Everything about it is just class features while using the spell slot system.

They could be scared it's not received very well, but wasn't that the point of Unearthed Arcana? To playtest a Psionic system that's both unique and fun without too much complexity, to bring to people's D&D games? It just seems to me after the last playtest with Mystic, they just gave up. Have they considered anyone's suggestions on how to tinker with the system to make it playable and acceptable, or did they only listen to the naysayers? Paizo doesn't ever have issues with it for Pathfinder

Clearly I'm a massive Psionics fan, so for people like myself, it's tragic what we're missing out on.

Were this any other edition prior to 4th, D&D would be more of a "all you can eat banquet and you pick and choose your dish" as opposed to "Here's mashed potatoes...here's potato skins...here's baked potato....". Even 3rd edition had The Mind's Eye and Complete Psionics to enhance the system now and then and that was highly appreciated.

 

[Azzy]

My big gripe with it is that they made an archetype based on a daelkyr creation & at every point they could do so they chose to dial that back to make room for less setting specific & very different generic lovecraft lore resulting in something that just feels like an odd attempt at forking in lovecraftian horror that fits no setting.

The Far Realm has been a thing for a while (since late 2e/3e?). Illithids, beholders, and other abberations (that have been attributed to the Far Realm since was introduced) have been around since the beginning. Greyhawk has its own Lovecraftian-esque diety, Tharizdun. The Cthulhu mythos was in the 1e Dieties & Demigods. There's already a Great Old One pact for Warlocks in the PHB. The Aberrant Mind being a "psionic" Sorcerer with its Far Realm connection (sounds really illithid-y) is really just touching on a motif that's well established in D&D. So, I have no idea why you find that it fits no setting.

 

[tetrasodium]

The Far Realm has been a thing for a while (since late 2e/3e?). Illithids, beholders, and other abberations (that have been attributed to the Far Realm since was introduced) have been around since the beginning. Greyhawk has its own Lovecraftian-esque diety, Tharizdun. The Cthulhu mythos was in the 1e Dieties & Demigods. There's already a Great Old One pact for Warlocks in the PHB. The Aberrant Mind being a "psionic" Sorcerer with its Far Realm connection (sounds really illithid-y) is really just touching on a motif that's well established in D&D. So, I have no idea why you find that it fits no setting.

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

 

[see]

Introducing a new class system of play would be nice and generate a bigger interest and yield to the customer base for several reasons

No, it wouldn't. We've got decades of D&D sales history to look back on here for modeling. Adding a wide variety of rules material to an edition consistently kills new player uptake and overall sales, while keeping it strictly limited results in continuous new player uptake and accompanying sales.

The real question is whether Tasha's is going to be the "too much" for this edition, where catering to the hard-core want-more fans ends the long and profitable ride 5th's been on and forces another edition reset. 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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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

How do you justify it being "transparently" based on the Dolgaunt, when Mindflayers exist in most settings, and they are (in)famous for experimenting on and altering other races and beings to suite their ends?

Just because Eberron involves a good example of this, does not mean that no other setting involves them doing very similar things. The Duergar for example developed psychic powers from Mindflayer experiments.

 

[LizardWizard00]

Can’t you buy it?

DM will on use stuff he owns. I could but it for him, but that is not my MO. I guess the holiday's are on the horizon.