I will answer 10 questions about Mordenkainen's Tome

What comprises the list of all new player options (races, archetypes, feats, spells, etc.) in the book?

 

[Coroc]

People pls do not attack others for their preferences. Just houserule a bit if you do not like fluff. I see no problem by custom creating soem elf who gets +2cha and +1 int or vice versa and call that grey elf or what not.

I surely also want official rules which do not Support such nonsense like dwarf wizards, quarterstaffs being versatile and doing as much damage as a spear, halfling barbarians, leather armor used for something else than bdsm or motorcycle riding etc.

But i still enjoy 5e more than any other edition for several reasons. If i would play AL i might complain a bit more about how my expectations are not perfectly met by RAW but i as Long as the DMG officially encourages houseruling i just modify my game and talk to the DMs when i Play and the table is Content with it.

Everyone has his own taste and you cannot do it right fore everyone. The decision is often Marketing instead of idealism, thats for many products, just look at the looking cars of today and how the Kids are more enthusiastic about the Bluetooth properties of their ride than about ist engine Performance.

 

[gyor]

The +2 is necessary.

The issue is the flavor that the mechanics defacto establishes. The problem is 5e transmogrified the diverse elf traditions into a mundane creature that excels *physically* (+2 Dexterity) but is only average mentally and magically (+1 Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom). In 5e, recall, average humans get +1. The flavor of +1 is average.

The elf who is innately excellent at magic (+2 Charisma, +2 Intelligence) is officially dead. This elf that goes back to 1e grey elf, that exhibits extraordinary *mental* affinity for magic, the 5e designers murdered this tradition. (In 1e, +1 Intelligence was a big deal, often considered broken, because of the resulting benefits to spellcasting.) This elf archetype that is all about magic remains valuable to me.

I think they use innate magic instead of higher stating mental stats to display highly magical elves.

 

[gyor]

WotC, retcon lore. Noooooooo, say it ain't so.

Its not even the worst recon in the book, they mutiliate Elven souls, not even 4e did that.

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding the 5e elf lore.

First, the designers heighten the transgendered nature and origins of the elf.
Then, they say, the androgynous parent is a terrible, unfit, parent.
Then they damn their souls.

The book, Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes, is kinda homophobic.

 

[Umbran]

Honestly the posts you have been making kind of make me feel you are currently unwell. As if you were off some medication or something.

Let us be clear: this is RUDE. Don't do it again. Thanks.

 

[SkidAce]

Regarding the 5e elf lore.

First, the designers heighten the transgendered nature and origins of the elf.
Then, they say, the androgynous parent is a terrible, unfit, parent.
Then they damn their souls.

The book, Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes, is kinda homophobic.

That's a house of cards.

There's no causation stating that the parent is unfit and terrible because of being androgynous.

There's no link between the two things.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Enworld is a place where we the gamers can review products.

There are products that I like. There are products that I dislike.

5e just published a product, Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes.

That product deeply disappoints me.

I am unsatisfied with the direction that the designers are heading.

The designers destroyed an important part of the D&D tradition that I like.

The designers fail to write rules-as-written that assist me in customizing options to build settings and characters to recover from the damage that the designers did.

́

Turning disagreements into and ‘us’ versus ‘them’ groupthink, is part of why 4e failed.

I'm not trying to turn this into groupthink.

I've seen at least two times in this week where you have posted about how the direction of 5e is ruining your fun and play experience.

I don't use EnWorld to review products, I use it to have discussions about products. What discussion can be had with "The heavy-handed conformism is suffocating my enjoyment of D&D."? Sorry about your loss? It isn't my experience?

And let me look at some of your other points here:

"The designers destroyed an important part of the D&D tradition that I like"

What am I supposed to say? Better luck next time? It isn't as destroyed as you think it is? Sorry that the thing they decided to do 4 years ago is still a thing they are doing? There is nothing useful to say here, the game is ruined for you, well, then you either have to fix it or give up the game. I used to love the Assassin's Creed videogame series, when they made stupid decisions that ruined the story for me, I stopped playing.


"The designers fail to write rules-as-written that assist me in customizing options"

-And this one... I guess I start with you're wrong? That's going to lead to a fruitful discussion. Pointing out that DMG 273-289 is all rules for changing just about any aspect of the game you want, including specifically, monsters, PC races, classes, magic items and probably more I skimmed over. You'll probably follow that by telling me how those rules are crap, but even if that is true they explicitly exist for the purpose of "assisting [you] in customizing options" so... great discussion. I'm sure you've never heard any of this before and it was useful to you.


If you want to have discussions or seek advice, then that is wonderful and that is what I feel like this community is for, but that is never what I've seen you go for on this site. If you want to make a race that has +2 charisma and +2 Intelligence so that elves can be the most powerful of spellcasters, DO IT. Seriously, it won't even be unbalanced to a noticeable degree. I could write up something right now and hand you a bunch of mechanics that would make elves super-magical.

But, you'll tell me that what you really really want is for it to be officially published in a book. Well, that boat sailed. All elves start with the stats listed out in the PHB back in 2014. That is not going to change. Heck, I can flip open my 3.5 PHB and Elves primary ability is listed as "+2 Dex" and that is from 2003. If it has been their policy for 15 years, I think it is going to remain their policy.

The rules and permissions to create your own content exist. WoTC really can't give you much more in that arena, especially as some of the UAs also included discussions on balancing feats and new races. Homebrewing lore for your own settings has been the norm since the game first came out. They don't even need a blurb to tell us that anymore, it is expected of the game. The only thing you are not going to get are specific mechanics published in a book to your exact specifications. And if that is what you want, you are just going to be bitter and angry about it for the entire run of 5e. And personally, if that is the future you are looking towards in this game, then I'd say you are better off quitting now while you can still say there are aspects of it that you like. At least that way you have the memories.

Regarding the 5e elf lore.

First, the designers heighten the transgendered nature and origins of the elf.
Then, they say, the androgynous parent is a terrible, unfit, parent.
Then they damn their souls.

The book, Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes, is kinda homophobic.

Where the heck are you getting all that? Is there some new Corellon Lore that I missed?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Where the heck are you getting all that? Is there some new Corellon Lore that I missed?

It seems (its still hearsay at this point), that Corellon and the elfiest of the elves are now able to switch gender.
It also seem that Corellon somehow kicked the elves from his place for some reasons.
There's also a discussion on this forum about the ''fact'' that now the souls of elves are reincarnated after each death and that a Drow's soul is destroyed on death.

Mostly just fluff for the race, but I suspect some grumpier players will try to take this discussion somewhere nobody wants to prove that ''WotC force them into unsavory fluff''.

 

[bleezy]

I like all this new lore. Gnolls are demons, elves are reincarnated, whatever. Sounds good to me. I don't have to use any of it that I don't want to, and it provides a way for races to actually differ from one another. We don't need books and books full of frog people, smaller frog people, hyena people, hippo people, pointy-eared people, and on and on if the only thing that sets them apart is the hyena people using flails, the hippos using guns, and the pointy-ears use bows.

Some changes are for the worse IMO, a lot of the 'new takes' on classic races like elves, dwarves and halflings are these races breaking free of stereotypes, halfling barbarians, orcish paladins, 'special snowflake' characters, etc. Dwarves who don't live underground, aren't greedy, don't have Scottish accents, etc. I am generally opposed to these changes because they make all races human under the skin, when dwarves become self-actualized and are capable of fully expressing themselves free of their cultural/mythological baggage, they become just humans with +2 Constitution. A lot of the 'clever' race/class combinations shown in the art in the PHB and XGTE annoy me for this reason. Likewise, when I see characters like these in official modules I often change them to human. It's not a big deal for me, it's just something I generally dislike.

But I will gladly slurp up lore that makes these classic races weirder and more alien. If dwarves can smell gold, that's great. If dwarves are all male, and they reproduce by carving their successor from stone on their 444th birthday, wow!, even better. So if MTOF has a bunch of new lore about elven reincarnation or gender-bending, I'm excited to read it. It's definitely better than a chapter on elven lore that just regurgitates 'Not all elves are haughty and aloof. In fact many elves are blah blah blah'.

Edit: I very stronger prefer that when WOTC/TSR changes lore, they do it through a retcon instead of some kind of in-lore transition. The number of Forgotten Realms cataclysms that occur to support changes to the way elves or spell slots work is ridiculous. Trying to understand the nonsensical FR history they've come up with feels like reading a Legends article on Wookiepedia. I just want to pick up a module and run it without having to figure out what all this spellplague crap is. They've been doing this much better in 5th edition. The lore transitions moving to 3e and 4e were terrible.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I'm not trying to turn this into groupthink.

I've seen at least two times in this week where you have posted about how the direction of 5e is ruining your fun and play experience.

I don't use EnWorld to review products, I use it to have discussions about products. What discussion can be had with "The heavy-handed conformism is suffocating my enjoyment of D&D."? Sorry about your loss? It isn't my experience?

And let me look at some of your other points here:

"The designers destroyed an important part of the D&D tradition that I like"

What am I supposed to say? Better luck next time? It isn't as destroyed as you think it is? Sorry that the thing they decided to do 4 years ago is still a thing they are doing? There is nothing useful to say here, the game is ruined for you, well, then you either have to fix it or give up the game. I used to love the Assassin's Creed videogame series, when they made stupid decisions that ruined the story for me, I stopped playing.


"The designers fail to write rules-as-written that assist me in customizing options"

-And this one... I guess I start with you're wrong? That's going to lead to a fruitful discussion. Pointing out that DMG 273-289 is all rules for changing just about any aspect of the game you want, including specifically, monsters, PC races, classes, magic items and probably more I skimmed over. You'll probably follow that by telling me how those rules are crap, but even if that is true they explicitly exist for the purpose of "assisting [you] in customizing options" so... great discussion. I'm sure you've never heard any of this before and it was useful to you.


If you want to have discussions or seek advice, then that is wonderful and that is what I feel like this community is for, but that is never what I've seen you go for on this site. If you want to make a race that has +2 charisma and +2 Intelligence so that elves can be the most powerful of spellcasters, DO IT. Seriously, it won't even be unbalanced to a noticeable degree. I could write up something right now and hand you a bunch of mechanics that would make elves super-magical.

But, you'll tell me that what you really really want is for it to be officially published in a book. Well, that boat sailed. All elves start with the stats listed out in the PHB back in 2014. That is not going to change. Heck, I can flip open my 3.5 PHB and Elves primary ability is listed as "+2 Dex" and that is from 2003. If it has been their policy for 15 years, I think it is going to remain their policy.

The rules and permissions to create your own content exist. WoTC really can't give you much more in that arena, especially as some of the UAs also included discussions on balancing feats and new races. Homebrewing lore for your own settings has been the norm since the game first came out. They don't even need a blurb to tell us that anymore, it is expected of the game. The only thing you are not going to get are specific mechanics published in a book to your exact specifications. And if that is what you want, you are just going to be bitter and angry about it for the entire run of 5e. And personally, if that is the future you are looking towards in this game, then I'd say you are better off quitting now while you can still say there are aspects of it that you like. At least that way you have the memories.






Where the heck are you getting all that? Is there some new Corellon Lore that I missed?

No, there is some new lore that Mordenkeinen believes some stuff, which may or may not be true, but if Planescape taught us anything, it is that anything said by some random guy must be 1000000% true.