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

 

[Mecheon]

So while I could dig into a few of those points (Y'know Amazon back then showed 4E books as always out-selling Pathfinder ones?), I gotta stick on the one point I have any actual knowledge on and not 'I vaguely remember a thing from years ago'

• Then they rejected a sequel to one of their most popular video games by the guy who lead the original (Planescape) when they weren't doing anything with Planescape, had no intention of doing anything with it, and could've just basically received free money.

I'd be interested to see the full story on this, because remembering from history the D&D video game licence was.... Complicated back then.

Like, I don't think "They rejected it out of hand" was the reason so much as "They've been trying to pry the licence back away from Atari for years and they couldn't actually give the licence to do so due to the mess it was with Atari"

 

[cbwjm]

I had no idea that Tasha and Iggwillv were the same person. Tasha I only know from her laughter spell (recently finding out it was named after an irl Tasha). Iggwillv is some big time sorceress who has an unparalleled knowledge of demons. Where is it mentioned that they are one and the same because I have never come across this (not too surprising, there is so much random dnd lore out there).

 

[cbwjm]

So while I could dig into a few of those points (Y'know Amazon back then showed 4E books as always out-selling Pathfinder ones?), I gotta stick on the one point I have any actual knowledge on and not 'I vaguely remember a thing from years ago'


I'd be interested to see the full story on this, because remembering from history the D&D video game licence was.... Complicated back then.

Like, I don't think "They rejected it out of hand" was the reason so much as "They've been trying to pry the licence back away from Atari for years and they couldn't actually give the licence to do so due to the mess it was with Atari"

I always felt that 4e not having a decent video game was disappointing. The way that edition was built would have meant that a baldur's gate or icewind dale rpg would have been perfect for the system.

 

[Parmandur]

I had no idea that Tasha and Iggwillv were the same person. Tasha I only know from her laughter spell (recently finding out it was named after an irl Tasha). Iggwillv is some big time sorceress who has an unparalleled knowledge of demons. Where is it mentioned that they are one and the same because I have never come across this (not too surprising, there is so much random dnd lore out there).

Your question isn't funny in and of itself, but there was a knockdown, drag out fight over this in the pre-reveal thread.

TL;DR this was established in the final print issue of Dragon (with her on the cover, I think) and Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, both at the end of 3.5 and Eric Mona's involvement with Greyhawk.

 

[Guest 6801328]

That is a fair question, and under any other circumstances, I'd agree, but from what I've seen the leadership team on the D&D RPG side is fantastically incompetent.

• First there's 4th edition itself, any business that makes that big of a mistake, doubles down on the mistake, then encourages and supports vigilante groups of fans to attack the fans of their previous products on their own forums isn't a business cursed with an abundance of skill.
• Then they hinged their product line's entire future on digital product lines, and couldn't recover from losing two engineers. I can't think of any other business with WOTC/Hasbro's market value that isn't able to execute on a business plan because they lost two employees.
• Then they tripled down on 4th edition after another company took their customer base, and released essentials, which anyone could've told them wasn't going to bring back all of the customers.
• Then they launched 5th edition and still can't figure out they could be making huge amounts of money by releasing frequent periodic content like they did with Dungeon magazine. Instead relying on random people to sell things on a website that the average customer has probably never heard of.
• Then they tied themselves to phones/tablets as a poorly supported content delivery platform...failing to notice that "Ebooks" plateaued years earlier at a 20% market penetration. So basically, they decided they weren't going to bother with 4 out of 5 customers.
• Then they rejected a sequel to one of their most popular video games by the guy who lead the original (Planescape) when they weren't doing anything with Planescape, had no intention of doing anything with it, and could've just basically received free money.
• Then they made a huge amount of noise about player demographics...except they have no way of knowing player demographics since you're not required to self identify when you purchase a D&D book or identify all of the friends you share it with. So how they expected anyone would believe those numbers is mind boggling, anyone with any business sense would say "Guys, wait, no one's going to believe this. It's obvious it's impossible for us to have this data".
• I'll also throw in - They still keep repeating the old bit about "TSR failed because campaigns fragmented the market" without any evidence of that. The premise hinges upon every D&D player being required to buy product even if they don't like it, and by removing product lines those players would've bought others. To put it another way, it's saying that every person who bought Birthright would've bought Forgotten Realms if Birthright didn't exist, and no person who bought Birthright also bought Forgotten Realms. It's another example of how they don't have anyone who understands metrics.
• Even the Magic the Gathering side demonstrates the same flawed business sense. They decided they needed an intro product for MTG, so they made portal...and it didn't sell. So they made portal 2...and it didn't sell. So they turned the core set into a beginner set...and it stopped selling. So they turned it into an even more beginner set...and it sold even less. Then they cancelled it.

So yes, superficially it might sound like a conspiracy theory, but all available evidence indicates that they really are that clueless and as such, it becomes very plausible that they really don't have any idea why the 4th edition books didn't sell.

Editorial recommendation: this would all sound more convincing if you capitalized every instance of They. It would emphasize the monolithic, unchanging nature of the hive mind.

 

[Nilbog]

Not sure if this has been answered, it's a bit of a trivial question, but are the spines of the collector's edition books different from standard?

For previous books I've not preferred one over the other so have gone with the cheapest, however I love the alt cover for this.

 

[Aldarc]

I think it helped greatly weaken the OSR movement, which was much bigger then. Bringing a bunch of those folks back into the tent was good in the short term but it's also provided a lot of creativity in the third party ecosystem, especially since OSR folks, by definition, have a longer frame of reference than just one or two editions' worth.

Over on Kickstarter especially, a ton of the third party projects you see have OSR folks involved.

(Google+ dying and a bunch of toxic OSR folks being outed probably did more damage to the movement overall, though.)

I don't think that 5e greatly weakened the OSR movement, if much at all. There have probably been a lot more OSR games winning ENnies now than pre-5e D&D. As you say, the thing that has probably hurt the OSR movement more than anything has been a virulent strain of toxicity among its fan community and creators that has led to a spiral of self-implosion as well as Google+ dying, which hurt more than just OSR game communities.

 

[Flamestrike]

I had no idea that Tasha and Iggwillv were the same person. Tasha I only know from her laughter spell (recently finding out it was named after an irl Tasha). Iggwillv is some big time sorceress who has an unparalleled knowledge of demons. Where is it mentioned that they are one and the same because I have never come across this (not too surprising, there is so much random dnd lore out there).

Tasha was a DMNPC Magic User run by GEG from memory in his home campaign with Myrlund, Robilar, Melf, Ottiluke and so forth. In reality she was a front for the Garys Evil BBEG Iggwilv.

She summoned Grazzt and then wound up in a romantic liaison with him for some time, fathering the Cambion Iuz (of Greyhawk fame).

(And my own Tiefling Fiend Blade Warlock with black skin, six fingers on each hand and a wavy bladed greatsword, but that's just my own backstory and not offical lore. Nice to see Mum has her own book now!)

 

[Hatmatter]

Not sure if this has been answered, it's a bit of a trivial question, but are the spines of the collector's edition books different from standard?

For previous books I've not preferred one over the other so have gone with the cheapest, however I love the alt cover for this.

Yes, each one that I have seen has a spine that is different from the standard edition covers. The standard edition covers have a black background and similar type font and iconography, but each of the alternate cover editions use different type fonts, various background colors (closely connected to the cover painting) and do not deploy a standardized iconography.

 

[cbwjm]

Tasha was a DMNPC Magic User run by GEG from memory in his home campaign with Myrlund, Robilar, Melf, Ottiluke and so forth. In reality she was a front for the Garys Evil BBEG Iggwilv.

She summoned Grazzt and then wound up in a romantic liaison with him for some time, fathering the Cambion Iuz (of Greyhawk fame).

(And my own Tiefling Fiend Blade Warlock with black skin, six fingers on each hand and a wavy bladed greatsword, but that's just my own backstory and not offical lore. Nice to see Mum has her own book now!)

I thought Tasha was a fan who had sent in a spell or something which led to the creation of it as a DnD spell.