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

 

[Parmandur]

Somehow I suspect the Group Patrons are going to be either really generic examples or mixtures of FR and GH factions like the Harpers and Circle of Eight.

I wonder if the Lineage System allows for the cliched "Chosen One" concept, in addition to customizing races.

The latest from Reddit:

• Group Patrons, first introduced in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Each group patron option comes with its own perks and types of assignments. Group patrons are powerful NPCs.

Examples include:

• Esteemed Adventuring Academy
• Ancient Being/Undead Lich
• Eberron's Dark Lanterns spy agency
• Merfolk sovereign
• a dragon

 

[ccs]

Interestingly, Crawford told Nerdarchy for their article today that the Aberrant Mind was the single best received UA playtest ever. That's surprising.

If that was the best received.... Makes you wonder what the reaction to all the other stuff was.

 

[Parmandur]

I think going from races and classes as separate things to class-as-race is pretty huge. Most OSR folks separate which Basic D&D they prefer along precisely those lines, in fact.

Actually, I thought BD&D always had Race as Class: never seen anything beyond the Modules I got second hand.

A good case could be made for breaking Basic into at least 4 Editions, as with breaking 4E into two.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Somehow I suspect the Group Patrons are going to be either really generic examples or mixtures of FR and GH factions like the Harpers and Circle of Eight.

I hope so, honestly. I play in a game where the player characters are police agents hired to handle adventurer-level threats (including adventurers) and a group patron model is probably worth looking at. I don't imagine the book will come with the City Watch of Ptolus as a premade group patron, though.

Likewise, in one of the games I'm running (doing a lot of D&D via Google Meet/Zoom during the pandemic), the group's patron is one of the PC's grandmothers, who's a former knight who can't physically solve all these problems herself any more. I am skeptical that Granny is going to be a default patron.

 

[Parmandur]

If that was the best received.... Makes you wonder what the reaction to all the other stuff was.

Some of the material they tested early on passed the 90% standard they started with.

 

[Dausuul]

Not to edition war, just some dates:

• OD&D: 1974-1978 = 4 years
• AD&D 1E: 1977-1989 = 12 years
• AD&D 2E: 1989-2000 = 11 years
• BD&D (with no gigantic shake up, just some minor changes in format): 1977-1995 = about 18 years
• 3.0: 2000-2003 = 3 years
• 3.5 (bigger leap than any Basic change) : 2003-2008 = 5 years
• 4E: 2008-2012 = 4 years (including the original release and Essentials, though a case could be made for two years apiece for both iterations, no new products after 2012, all WotC energy was on playtesting 5E)
• 5E: 2014- = 6 years and ongoing

This timeline treats the period from 2012 to 2014 as if D&D ceased to exist entirely, which makes no sense. You could argue that those 2 years should be credited to 4E as the then-current edition, or to 5E since the Next playtest was in progress. You could even split the difference and give one year to each. But D&D was certainly still a going concern during that time.

Personally, I would count editions as follows:

• A "minor edition" of D&D starts when its Player's Handbook or equivalent is published, and continues until the start of the next minor edition.
• A "major edition" comprises one or more minor editions which are mechanically compatible, such that material from one can be used in another with little or no conversion required.
• In the special case of BD&D and AD&D, where we had two parallel product lines, each is considered a separate major edition, with 3E as the successor to both.

Thus, the major editions of D&D would include:

OD&D (1974-1977)
BD&D (1977-2000): Minor editions Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, Rules Cyclopedia
AD&D (1977-2000): Minor editions 1E, 2E
3rd Edition (2000-2008): Minor editions 3E, 3.5E
4th Edition (2008-2014): Minor editions 4E, Essentials
5th Edition (2014-present)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Actually, I thought BD&D always had Race as Class: never seen anything beyond the Modules I got second hand.

A good case could be made for breaking Basic into at least 4 Editions, as with breaking 4E into two.

Holmes' 1977 set has races and classes separate. Moldvay in 1981 made non-human races into their own classes. (The D&D gazetteers walked this back somewhat, with other race-specific classes, sometimes for NPCs only, for halfings and dwarves and maybe others.)

 

[ccooke]

Crossing my fingers for Oath of Heroism

(Yeah, I'm a day in the past. So sue me). I just got out of a long meeting looking at tiny text on videoconference slides, and with my blurry vision I misread this as "Oath of Hedonism". That would be a ... different... sort of Paladin.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

(Yeah, I'm a day in the past. So sue me). I just got out of a long meeting looking at tiny text on videoconference slides, and with my blurry vision I misread this as "Oath of Hedonism". That would be a ... different... sort of Paladin.

"How you doin'?"

 

[Guest 6801328]

It was the best designed version of D&D and the only one that had to complete with its own former edition. It still sold well (even by late 2e and all of 3e standards) but was hamstrung by piazo doing the whole 3.5 continued... if piazo has not done that we would still be moving forwards instead of this half forward half back 5e (still second best edition of game only 4e was better).
I hope by 6e we can return to some of the 4e greatness

Yeah! Power to the people!

And I'm holding out for VHS making a comeback, too.