D&D 5E The New D&D Book: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything!

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The new D&D book has been revealed, and it is Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, "a magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game." The 192-page book is due out November 17th, with standard and alternate covers, and contains more subclasses, spells, character options, group patrons, and rules. Oh, and psionics!

Cover art is by Magali Villeneuve

WHAT WONDERFUL WITCHERY IS THIS?

A magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game.

The wizard Tasha, whose great works include the spell Tasha’s hideous laughter, has gathered bits and bobs of precious lore during her illustrious career as an adventurer. Her enemies wouldn’t want these treasured secrets scattered across the multiverse, so in defiance, she has collected and codified these tidbits for the enrichment of all.

• EXPANDED SUBCLASSES. Try out subclass options for every Dungeons & Dragons class, including the artificer, which appears in the book.
• MORE CHARACTER OPTIONS. Delve into a collection of new class features and new feats, and customize your character’s origin using straightforward rules for modifying a character’s racial traits.
• INTRODUCING GROUP PATRONS. Whether you're part of the same criminal syndicate or working for an ancient dragon, each group patron option comes with its own perks and types of assignments.
• SPELLS, ARTIFACTS & MAGIC TATTOOS. Discover more spells, as well as magic tattoos, artifacts, and other magic items for your campaign.
• EXPANDED RULES OPTIONS. Try out rules for sidekicks, supernatural environments, natural hazards, and parleying with monsters, and gain guidance on running a session zero.
• A PLETHORA OF PUZZLES. Ready to be dropped into any D&D adventure, puzzles of varied difficulty await your adventurers, complete with traps and guidance on using the puzzles in a campaign.

Full of expanded content for players and Dungeon Masters alike, this book is a great addition to the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Baked in you'll find more rule options for all the character classes in the Player's Handbook, including more subclass options. Thrown in for good measure is the artificer class, a master of magical invention. And this witch's brew wouldn't be complete without a dash of added artifacts, spellbook options, spells for both player characters and monsters, magical tattoos, group patrons, and other tasty goodies.

Here's the alternate cover:

UPDATE! An online event called D&D Celebration from September 18th-20th will be hosted by Elle Osili-Wood, which is "an epic live event with panels, gameplay, & previews of the book!" See the video in the Tweet below!

Gather your party and join the adventure at  D&D Celebration 2020, an online gaming event open to fans all over the world!

Celebrate the release of  Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden  with a weekend of Icewind Dale–themed virtual play sessions and help us create the biggest virtual tabletop roleplaying game event ever! Fans will also get the chance to preview some content from  Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the forthcoming book featuring massive rules options, subclasses, and more for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Watch featured play sessions with D&D luminaries and learn something new with a slate of panels led by the D&D design team and community.


UPDATE! Check out the Nerdarchy site for some previews.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Has, Well… Everything for 5E D&D

The follow up to 2017’s Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, on Nov. 17, 2020 fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons upcoming Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything must indeed possess powerful …

nerdarchy.com

UPDATE! Other news items around the web about this book:

With D&D's Next Rulebook, Character Creation Will Never Be the Same

Although Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition has added as many classes, races, and rules as it has since it first began, for the most part, the way players create characters has stayed the same. You pick a race, that race defines certain things about you, and so on. But the game’s next sourcebook...

io9.gizmodo.com

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything coming in November, brings new ways to personalize your characters

Wizards of the Coast has announced its next D&D book! Entitled Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, this rules expansion follows up Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and will be available on November 17th. Providing both players and DMs with the tools to level up their games, the 192 page tome will be...

gamingtrend.com

Dungeons & Dragons Announces New Book and Fall Event - IGN

The D&D team reveals an online community event in September and a new sourcebook soon to follow.

www.ign.com

D&D's next expansion, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, adds new subclasses and racial customization

Dungeons & Dragons is getting its biggest rules expansion in three years, courtesy of one powerful witch. In November, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will hit shelves, offering D&D players several new subclasses, some exciting new spells, and a new way to create characters that’s fully...

www.syfy.com

 

[Undrave]

Well, Tashe's Cookpot of Random naughty word doesn't sound nearly as appetizing.

'Tasha's Crockpot of Leftover Miscellenia' either.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Acquisitions, Inc. is considered a Campaign Setting Guide officially by WotC. As it's a bit different from the other ones, I've seen it as one of the "minor" Campaign Setting books - that is to say, not much required out of WotC to produce and issue (Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron & Explorer's Guide to Wildemount fall into this same grouping). This is separate from the MAJOR Campaign setting books issued each year the last three years, of which it's been MtG/Classic/MtG, so I'd expect Classic next year and then MtG in 2022.

I get why you included Acq. Inc. but I hesitate to include it in WotC scheduling (I add Wildemount to this hesitation) as most of the material is actually produced by a 3rd-party, and only the art layout and final editing (and printing) is done by WotC. Because of the lack of resources used by core WotC staff, they don't really take up a slot on the schedule and are really "bonus books."

So I hesitate to include them, additionally because eventually WotC is going to run out of third-parties that can competently make material on their own like this. It's not the same as making a Legend of Zelda book, as WotC would actually have to make the rules themselves there; but the Acq. Inc. books rules were made by the folks at Penny Arcade. So there may be future books like these, but I don't think they take up a release slot from other potential books.

 

[Minigiant]

People say that, but it's not true for a lot of the setting. Neither the Shield Lands nor the Great Kingdom nor Furyondy nor Lendore nor Ulek nor Geoff nor the Lordship of the Isles is sword and sorcery.

Yes, we've got the Rain of Colorless Fire and the jungles to the south, but they're hardly central to the setting.

"Lower magic than the Forgotten Realms" doesn't equate to sword and sorcery. You wouldn't see Bigby, Tenser and all the rest hanging out with Conan -- or, if you did, one of them would be dead really fast.

I never spoke about the magic level. That's part of it but other parts is that Greyhawk is a bit dark and gritty where golden ages have passed and major NPCs are strickly background and rarely meet each other anymore.

Dark Sun is Sword & Sorcerer too, but it's also Sword & Sandal, and Apocalyptic World, and Old School Survivalist gameplay, and urban evil empire gameplay, and psionics. Greyhawk is fun, but it doesn't provide nearly as much as other settings do to a game that already has FR (which I know, is much more "high" fantasy than Greyhawk is. But they're both Fantasy Kitchen Soup settings rich in the lore of game's cosmic DNA).

And that's the point

Dark Sun is Sword and Sorcery plus other genres/flavors.
Greyhawk is just S&S on a generic fantasy. It competes with DawnWar/POL with theme.

 

[Marandahir]

If I were WotC, I'd just open Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Mystara, and Dragonlance to the DMs Guild and take the cut from each of the sales while the fanbase does the hard work making the books that support them for 5e.

That way WotC could focus on settings that would actually sell to a mass market and be distinctive from one another.

I get why you included Acq. Inc. but I hesitate to include it in WotC scheduling (I add Wildemount to this hesitation) as most of the material is actually produced by a 3rd-party, and only the art layout and final editing (and printing) is done by WotC. Because of the lack of resources used by core WotC staff, they don't really take up a slot on the schedule and are really "bonus books."

So I hesitate to include them, additionally because eventually WotC is going to run out of third-parties that can competently make material on their own like this. It's not the same as making a Legend of Zelda book, as WotC would actually have to make the rules themselves there; but the Acq. Inc. books rules were made by the folks at Penny Arcade. So there may be future books like these, but I don't think they take up a release slot from other potential books.

That was the point of including them in the list, though. Wayfinder's Guide was ZERO effort to release in 2018 by WotC because Keith and Ruty were working on it and it was Playtest, anyway.

Acq, Inc. was near zero effort by WotC because Penny Arcade was doing it.

Wildemount same thing, but Mercer.

They're the same amount of work, effort, and we've gotten a pattern now across the years, and we can probably expect them going forward in the same way that we can expect an errata'd reprint each year, a single big adventure path each year, and a major setting each year.

I'd expect a similar type 3rd-party setting book published 1st party by WotC with minimal WotC effort every year going forward.

 

[Inchoroi]

Ugh. Psionic Soul Sorcerer. I am not pleased. Why psionics, but not an actual psion class? I'll never understand it.

 

[Wishbone]

So I hesitate to include them, additionally because eventually WotC is going to run out of third-parties that can competently make material on their own like this. It's not the same as making a Legend of Zelda book, as WotC would actually have to make the rules themselves there; but the Acq. Inc. books rules were made by the folks at Penny Arcade. So there may be future books like these, but I don't think they take up a release slot from other potential books.

Probably besides the point here, but a LoZ book seems trivially easy given how generically heroic fantasy Hyrule is across different games.

 

[Marandahir]

Ugh. Psionic Soul Sorcerer. I am not pleased. Why psionics, but not an actual psion class? I'll never understand it.

What archetypes would you include in the class? WotC weren't able to figure that out by now. But they did figure out that Aberrant Mind was hugely popular, just with optional goo. So why NOT include the option that was popular? It doesn't preclude an Int-based psionic caster from being released in the future, just as the Great Old One Warlock didn't.

It just means we're not getting something like the Mystic, where the class was basically a shell for archetypes united only by their use of Psionics (would be like making the Barbarian, Ranger, and Druid all a single class…). We're getting some Psionic options as subclasses because that's what a Psionic Fighter is - a Psionic subclass of a Fighter. But nothing says we couldn't get a full-on Psion class in a Dark Sun Campaign Setting book - they just need to playtest that concept a lot more.

Assuming that people even want that in the grand scheme of things - those who do want it may be a small but vocal minority.

Probably besides the point here, but a LoZ book seems trivially easy given how generically heroic fantasy Hyrule is across different games.

Honestly, the difficult part would be getting the licensing agreement with Nintendo, if anything. I agree that that would be a HUGE seller and a very easy sales, and they've already got large swathes of the setting write up from the Hyrule Historia and its 3 Nintendo Dream successor volumes. Aonuma probably doesn't want to take time off to write and get his ideas translated for a game system that isn't on a Nintendo platform, and getting the license for the title and hiring a 3rd-party English-speaking writer would be a hard sell for Nintendo, I'd bet.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Ugh. Psionic Soul Sorcerer. I am not pleased. Why psionics, but not an actual psion class? I'll never understand it.

They kind of explained it in the preface of the last UA on psionics. Psionics was an add-on system in 1E, and only a separate class in 2E and 3E (don't know about 4E).

And it's not like they didn't try. But I think the Mystic pretty clearly illustrated, there's too many concepts/facets regarding what a "psionic" is to cram into a single class. Making them into sub-classes (I think there's going to be more than just the Soul Sorcerer in TCoE) lets them address the variety of psionic archetypes that have presented in media of all kinds.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Probably besides the point here, but a LoZ book seems trivially easy given how generically heroic fantasy Hyrule is across different games.

This book in particular has an absurd amount of detail regarding Hyrule as depicted before Breath of the Wild, both before and 100 years after Ganon appears. It goes so far as to include maps of the evacuation routes people took during Ganon's initial attack, maps and overviews of battles fought at two separate fortresses, the size of the Kingdom of Hyrule before Ganon's appearance and what many of the remaining ruins once where, etc. It's pretty much the closest thing to a comprehensive setting guide ever put out for the Zelda franchise.

 

[Birmy]

Hopefully it's kosher to link to another site here; io9 has an interview with Jeremy Crawford promoting the book that drops some tidbits: With D&D's Next Rulebook, Character Creation Will Never Be the Same