D&D 5E Mythic Odysseys of Theros on DNDBeyhond

[Zaukrie]

To be clear, it's probably "easy" for monsters, but harder for PCs, to differentiate between creatures/races/ancestries.

 

[darjr]

That's because the Basic Rules (and SRD 5.0) are free, and the Player's Handbook is a relatively easy dip, and marketing further books this way (toward the DM) results in putting the power back in the hands of the DM to forbid or allow additional character options.

D&D Beyond further supports this model by allowing a DM to get a subscription where they can share certain content with the player group.

D&D books are churned out slow and steady to support whole D&D groups, rather than trying to sell as many books as fast as they can to as many customers as they can (like with the proliferation of 3.5e and 4e splatbooks).

I meant the focus on creating new DMs. Not the dm focus of the book. I know about that.

but those are good points, and are also helpful towards that goal.

 

[Undrave]

The entire 5E product line seems to be premised on DM's being the target audience, or converting anyone who buys the books into a DM.

It's a fine philosophy, but they could throw players a bone every once in a while... I'm not asking for 4e style gravy train of new powers every other months, but a Xanathar's worth of content every 3-4 years would be fine... even Xanathar isn't player only.

 

[Shroomy]

It's a fine philosophy, but they could throw players a bone every once in a while... I'm not asking for 4e style gravy train of new powers every other months, but a Xanathar's worth of content every 3-4 years would be fine... even Xanathar isn't player only.

Given the proliferation of UAs over the past few months, we'll be seeing a Xanathar's type book in the near future. I would venture to say it's likely the 2020 Q4 release.

 

[Undrave]

Given the proliferation of UAs over the past few months, we'll be seeing a Xanathar's type book in the near future. I would venture to say it's likely the 2020 Q4 release.

I sure hope so... It's not like every class out there interests me, and not every subclass for the classes that do interest me so I'd like some more options in a single package.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We're in the middle of a pandemic. Nothing is getting done right, or quickly, ANYWHERE. Might be worth keeping in mind.

Thanks for this information which I surely didn't know or account for whatsoever.

Also whilst I agree re: quickly (we're operating maybe 5-30% slower in my department, depending on the task), I disagree re: right. Nothing in my business is being done "wrong" because of this (law firm), unless we count using Zoom for business purposes at all, which I might. That said, doing this "wrong" would be okay, but they didn't even do that.

They've been "working on" the features to allow them to do stuff like Supernatural Gifts properly for over nine months, according to them. Over a month ago, they said it was all in place, and they'd be able to do Character Feature Variants, Dragonmarks, and the stuff in Theros properly.

None of that has happened, and there's been no explanation as to why, or any timelines given. Indeed with a lot of this stuff they've just said they "want" to do it, not even that they definitely will.

Re: the two potential solutions, for Supernatural Gifts, I got an answer out of the devs, but it was entirely unsatisfactory. Likewise for races.

Specifically they said that they considered doing the Gifts as Feats for now, but decided not to in case someone thought that they were real Feats, which seems like a total cop-out to me (you could easily put wording saying "NOT A FEAT" at the top of them), and is, to my mind, obviously prioritizing keeping things neat and corporate over making things actually work.

With races, it was worse - he said that with mechanically identical races, they don't ever do separate entries, which is just not true, as it appears Eberron and Exandria Orcs are identical, mechanically (if not, they're so similar I can't spot the difference at a glance), yet have entirely separate entries. So apparently Centaurs/Minotaurs will be from Ravnica for the foreseeable future, like it or not. Which is obviously ludicrous when they could just copy the race, fix the text, and rename it to say "Centaur of Theros" (the format they used with the Orcs - Orc of Exandria, Orc of Eberron). I mean, I can do that, it just doesn't work as well or display to players the same way.

That's what I was speaking to.

That said, I don't know what happens when you want to buy, say, just the Triton from MOT. Would it give you just the Triton in the game rules > races? And if so, what race features would it give? I would assume if it's giving you a portion of the MOT chapter, you'd be able to see that it has Darkvision and can't ignore all the deep underwater effects, but if it's just giving you access to the Triton as integrated into the game rules > races section of DDB, then I would assume it would have the older Volo's rules for the race (no Darkvision, does ignore deep underwater environmental effects).

Interesting question. Pretty sure the way it works is, if you buy just the race, you get just the race in the character generator and "races". Which would mean the non-specific Triton from Volos. I don't think you'll get any text from the MOT chapter.

Specifically with the Triton they modified it so the Volo's one has Darkvision too. They claim WotC said this was the right thing to do, and an "errata". So the stats will be the same, the lore will be from Volos. Same if you purchased the Centaur from MOT - you will get the Centaur from Ravnica, and so on.

It's er... not a great decision.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Thanks for this information which I surely didn't know or account for whatsoever.

They've been "working on" the features to allow them to do stuff like Supernatural Gifts properly for over nine months, according to them. Over a month ago, they said it was all in place, and they'd be able to do Character Feature Variants, Dragonmarks, and the stuff in Theros properly.

None of that has happened, and there's been no explanation as to why, or any timelines given. Indeed with a lot of this stuff they've just said they "want" to do it, not even that they definitely will.

I'm sure the pandemic and economic depression has no impact on their ability to commit to features or timing.

 

[Zaukrie]

Thanks for this information which I surely didn't know or account for whatsoever.

Also whilst I agree re: quickly (we're operating maybe 5-30% slower in my department, depending on the task), I disagree re: right. Nothing in my business .........................

It's er... not a great decision.

doing it as feats is lazy, and will result in problems long term. Do it as a separate thing, and do it right........I speak as someone that has spent most of his career working to undo things like this at great cost to IT shops......

 

[Parmandur]

Huh? Now that you say that I think you’re right.

In fact now I recall several things that to my mind confirms that this is a primary goal.

It really only occurred to me recently, bit seemed fairly obvious when it clicked.

 

[Marandahir]

Thanks for this information which I surely didn't know or account for whatsoever.

Also whilst I agree re: quickly (we're operating maybe 5-30% slower in my department, depending on the task), I disagree re: right. Nothing in my business is being done "wrong" because of this (law firm), unless we count using Zoom for business purposes at all, which I might. That said, doing this "wrong" would be okay, but they didn't even do that.

They've been "working on" the features to allow them to do stuff like Supernatural Gifts properly for over nine months, according to them. Over a month ago, they said it was all in place, and they'd be able to do Character Feature Variants, Dragonmarks, and the stuff in Theros properly.

None of that has happened, and there's been no explanation as to why, or any timelines given. Indeed with a lot of this stuff they've just said they "want" to do it, not even that they definitely will.

Re: the two potential solutions, for Supernatural Gifts, I got an answer out of the devs, but it was entirely unsatisfactory. Likewise for races.

Specifically they said that they considered doing the Gifts as Feats for now, but decided not to in case someone thought that they were real Feats, which seems like a total cop-out to me (you could easily put wording saying "NOT A FEAT" at the top of them), and is, to my mind, obviously prioritizing keeping things neat and corporate over making things actually work.

I'd love to know where "he" said all these things; I certainly missed them. But I'm also used to D&D Beyond promising new features and failing to deliver. The features they have tend to be good, and it's worlds better than the D&D Insider tools from 4e, but I'm paying double and/or an expensive monthly billing for the same material I'd have in the books, just integrated (rather than material+magazines dlc), so I should be getting more for my money, yeah?

With races, it was worse - he said that with mechanically identical races, they don't ever do separate entries, which is just not true, as it appears Eberron and Exandria Orcs are identical, mechanically (if not, they're so similar I can't spot the difference at a glance), yet have entirely separate entries. So apparently Centaurs/Minotaurs will be from Ravnica for the foreseeable future, like it or not. Which is obviously ludicrous when they could just copy the race, fix the text, and rename it to say "Centaur of Theros" (the format they used with the Orcs - Orc of Exandria, Orc of Eberron). I mean, I can do that, it just doesn't work as well or display to players the same way.

Interesting question. Pretty sure the way it works is, if you buy just the race, you get just the race in the character generator and "races". Which would mean the non-specific Triton from Volos. I don't think you'll get any text from the MOT chapter.

Specifically with the Triton they modified it so the Volo's one has Darkvision too. They claim WotC said this was the right thing to do, and an "errata". So the stats will be the same, the lore will be from Volos. Same if you purchased the Centaur from MOT - you will get the Centaur from Ravnica, and so on.

It's er... not a great decision.

Ah, I now see that they treated the Triton race as having the MOT stats but the VGM flavor text. I also see that if I go to Sourcebooks > VGM > Chapter 2 > Triton, it has the MOT stats. This is therefore separate from the Orc issue where VGM hasn't been errata'd everywhere to match the E:RLW & EGW stats/features, and instead they just lazily added "Orc of Eberron" and "Orc of Exandria" as separate races in the tools, as you said above (I'm NOT happy with the result; just choose a tact and stick with it. I understand Feral Tieflings are difficult because they have completely different ability scores from Asmodeans, but Orcs? They should be formatted like Tritons as you've so graciously corrected me).

At least buying Triton alone doesn't gimp you out of Darkvision, but it is a problem of not being reconciled with official eratta. The most recent VGM errata, per the April 2020 Sage Advice Compendium, is from 2017. So WotC told Wikia/Fandom/Cursed/DDB to go ahead and errata the Triton but didn't give us book owners the errata on the Triton. Ugh.

I would hope it's because they're preparing a larger errata for VGM that fixes the Triton, the Orc, and maybe, hopefully, gosh darn I really hope, the Kobold.

But I'm guessing it's just an oversight.