Why there won't be a "Player's Handbook II"

Players Handbook: The Grouptesting Strikes Back!

 

[Luchador]

A Player's Guide to Westworld

 

[Demetrios1453]

How about "Players Options"

What if it had DM options in it as well?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

What if it had DM options in it as well?

DMs are players too... but there could be a title that is similar and even more clear, such as "Adventurer Options" if the book includes options for PCs, or "Monstrous Options" if the book contains ways to tweak monsters or use them differently (like as PCs).

 

[Cyanobacterium]

My favorite 3rd edition book is "Stormwrack" (part of a series that also includes "Frostburn" and "Sandstorm"), which has a little of everything related to ocean/coastline adventuring (classes, vehicles, gear, monsters, NPCs, adventure ideas, etc.). That would be an example as an alternative model to numbered PHBs.

 

[AverageCitizen]

Yep. Unfortunately, they were so focused on avoiding one particular mistake, they dove straight into making another - specifically, trying to sell two books with largely duplicated content, each containing only half of the classes people 'needed'.

I didn't hate this, because we needed 2 phbs for experienced groups anyway.

 

[Henry]

6th Edition Player's Handbook!

 

[Sunseeker]

My favorite 3rd edition book is "Stormwrack" (part of a series that also includes "Frostburn" and "Sandstorm"), which has a little of everything related to ocean/coastline adventuring (classes, vehicles, gear, monsters, NPCs, adventure ideas, etc.). That would be an example as an alternative model to numbered PHBs.

I really wouldn't mind more Campaign books that include say, one or two new classes, one or two new races, a few more options and spells, all themed for that Campaign....but also general enough to fit in with the rest of the game. Like, Tyranny of Dragons would have been a great place to include Dragonborn (if they weren't in core books) but they could have added some Dragonborn racial options. Princes of the Apocalypse would have made for some great Sorcerer subclasses (I think that was the idea with Storm Sorcerer, but it got dumped in the tras...I mean SCAG). OotA would have been great for more Tiefling subclasses or maybe an expansion on the minor insert that is Drow and Siviberfivninastuhsdnf (know, deep gnomes) and maybe even room for Deep Dwarves. Storm King's Thunger would make some great material for Eldritch Knight variants and maybe storm-themed barbarians.

Then they'd always be making some new crunch and they'd have have some flavor baked right in. They'd give more incentive for the people less interested in splat to buy splat and the people less interested in adventures to buy adventures.

I dunno, I just don't find the approach to completely seperate crunch from fluff very appealing from a marketing perspective. You're basically forced to make two products and appeal to two different markets, instead of just making one product and appealing to both at the same time.

 

[Cyanobacterium]

Good point. I really liked the extra spells in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure book and had hoped that the subsequent adventure books would have at least as much auxiliary material. WotC is publishing adventure books (they're more like campaigns than adventures) faster than my D&D group can play them (we just finished PotA two weeks ago and my group ignored all side-quests), but I still buy some of the adventures for the non-adventure content.

Volo's Guide to Monsters really hit the spot in terms of the kind of material I was hoping to collect from the adventure books (I could build a whole campaign around just the goblin lore in VGtM). Certainly, an adventure book about Mind Flayer's awakening the Kraken or some-such would be a good place to put a self-contained "psionics handbook" as an appendix.

 

[zaratan]

Good point. I really liked the extra spells in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure book and had hoped that the subsequent adventure books would have at least as much auxiliary material. WotC is publishing adventure books (they're more like campaigns than adventures) faster than my D&D group can play them (we just finished PotA two weeks ago and my group ignored all side-quests), but I still buy some of the adventures for the non-adventure content.

Volo's Guide to Monsters really hit the spot in terms of the kind of material I was hoping to collect from the adventure books (I could build a whole campaign around just the goblin lore in VGtM). Certainly, an adventure book about Mind Flayer's awakening the Kraken or some-such would be a good place to put a self-contained "psionics handbook" as an appendix.

Yeah this is the mind flayer was perfect to me. I'm DMing Oota and want to finish the campaing at lvl 20. So the mind flayer in Volo's combined with Mystic class in UA and demonic influences will provide a good material for that.
That rich content really helps DM criativity (at least for that started DMing D&D in the end of 4e).

 

[MacConnell]

I agree with Shintashi's ideology. I would simply call this a Monster Manual Addendum.