D&D 5E Sell Me On Tasha's

[tetrasodium]

Thanks @Charlaquin and @tetrasodium for your frank explanations.

I have been looking through my old Pathfinder GM facing books for subsystems like Haunts and Afflictions and Hexcrawling and I was curious if there was that kid of material in tasha's that helps build out challenges and conflicts aside from combat.

That puzzle section is a lot of pages! Is that basically more "random name tables" or something more?

a little more but kind of like some of the complex traps & similar xge sections. There's a page on puzzles in general then 15ish one page example puzzles that sometimes have a handout. Like he similar xge sections you might find it useful, especially for newer less experienced gms, but imo puzzles aren't really something d&d does well

 

[Bacon Bits]

Thanks @Charlaquin and @tetrasodium for your frank explanations.

I have been looking through my old Pathfinder GM facing books for subsystems like Haunts and Afflictions and Hexcrawling and I was curious if there was that kid of material in tasha's that helps build out challenges and conflicts aside from combat.

I doubt we'll ever get something like that. I'd love a Dungeon and Wilderness Exploration Guide that expands exploration, or an encounter guide that spends time on how to do social encounters. Honestly, though, I feel like I'm usually stealing scene rules from other games most of the time.

That puzzle section is a lot of pages! Is that basically more "random name tables" or something more?

The puzzles section is basically a dozen or so example puzzle encounters. I remember the first one being labelled "easy" and I thought it was the hardest one of the bunch. My group isn't really into the kind of puzzles they present. They're the kind where you'll have a word puzzle on the wall or a chess board on a pedestal. Those don't work well at my table. They're fine, but 3.5e's Book of Challenges is much better, IMO.

 

[Remathilis]

Thanks @Charlaquin and @tetrasodium for your frank explanations.

I have been looking through my old Pathfinder GM facing books for subsystems like Haunts and Afflictions and Hexcrawling and I was curious if there was that kid of material in tasha's that helps build out challenges and conflicts aside from combat.

That puzzle section is a lot of pages! Is that basically more "random name tables" or something more?

The DM Wilderness Screen (of all things) has some good exploration rules, mostly distilled from other sources, but put into a handy one-shot stop.

 

[Reynard]

The DM Wilderness Screen (of all things) has some good exploration rules, mostly distilled from other sources, but put into a handy one-shot stop.

I forgot that think existed. Huh.

 

[Reynard]

I doubt we'll ever get something like that. I'd love a Dungeon and Wilderness Exploration Guide that expands exploration, or an encounter guide that spends time on how to do social encounters. Honestly, though, I feel like I'm usually stealing scene rules from other games most of the time.



The puzzles section is basically a dozen or so example puzzle encounters. I remember the first one being labelled "easy" and I thought it was the hardest one of the bunch. My group isn't really into the kind of puzzles they present. They're the kind where you'll have a word puzzle on the wall or a chess board on a pedestal. Those don't work well at my table. They're fine, but 3.5e's Book of Challenges is much better, IMO.

It's almost weird the degree to which they avoid specialized DM tools in 5E. I know they sell less than Player facing materials but every game needs a DM and DMs are only "new" for so long.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Of the player-facing stuff, there was one class I had to tweak to change the power level.
The Patrons are a useful way of encouraging social interaction into your campaign, but you may well be doing that already.

Of the DM-only stuff, most is useful, but I found the Puzzle section to be not very well done at all.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Sadly, Tasha's the book that convinced me to go back to my PHB only rule. I quickly bought the book when it came out, but found that the tone was off to me. The alternate features are nice, but I already have my own house rules for those. The rest? I find that there's too much going on. I compared the class features write-up from the PHB and the ones from Tasha's; the difference in length and wordiness is pretty remarkable. Not to say that they are OP or anything, there's just... a lot.

As another poster said in a previous thread, it seems all new PC options shoots beams of light and glows in the dark! The super-hero feel of D&D 5e is pretty strong in this book . I personally find tiring that there's so much ''out there'' new PC options, but some pretty (IMHO) basic tropes are left out of the books.

 

[Mistwell]

I a going to disagree with the consensus here and say it's an excellent book for DMs. Pretty much everything from page 116 on is for the DM, and pretty darn useful. I suspect a lot of responses here are from people who have been focused on the player side of the book and who have not really gone too in depth with the DM side of the book.

Frankly a lot of the player side of the book is ultimately a DM tool as well. It's a lot of options and guidance for a DM to help them with a player basically saying, "I am not happy with choices I made for this PC that I made before because circumstances have changed in the game or I didn't realize the direction I wanted to go with this PC." Plus a fair amount of the subclasses, spells and feats can come in handy for an NPC. In some cases even more than for a PC.

I would rank Tasha's pretty high on my "DM Toolkit Utility" chart.

 

[Charlaquin]

I a going to disagree with the consensus here and say it's an excellent book for DMs. Pretty much everything from page 116 on is for the DM, and pretty darn useful. I suspect a lot of responses here are from people who have been focused on the player side of the book and who have not really gone too in depth with the DM side of the book.

I don't think it's a bad book for DMs, I just don't think it has what @Reynard is looking for.

 

[Reynard]

Is there anyone producing the kind of book I am talking about? It is easy to find monster books and player options books and adventures among 3rd party publishers but I don't see tools in the vein of the 3.x environment books or similar. Even "Strongholds and Followers" turned out to be very player facing and monster book-y.