2 out of 5 rating for Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Xanathar's guide to Everything is the first major rules expansion of 5th edition, and like the books that came before it aims to split the content of the book so it is aimed at DMs and PC's alike. As such, I'll be breaking down each section individually.
Subclasses: Most of these are quite serviceable, and there are a couple real standouts like the Zealot barbarian (It's a berserker, but actually good), and the Ranger subclasses are all pretty great. Likewise though, there are a couple sour options as well, such as the incredibly lazy and multiclass-prone hexblade, the poorly thought out redemption paladin,and the Sun Soul monk, which is both terrible AND a reprint. Which brings me to my next point; as with many other elements of Xanathar's the subclass section is likewise marred by the presence of rehashed content that has long been available in other WotC products.
Tool section: incredibly hit or miss.Some of the already better tool kits are even more fleshed out and become highly valuable, like disguise and herbalism. Niche tools remain horrendously bad though, on top of having redundant features,such as calligrapher's supplies affecting forgery, when a forgery kit already has that covered. Overall, there's a lot more misses than hits here, and this section does very little to incentivize players to pick more niche tools rather than the more common adventuring ones or simply another skill.
Encounter building options are generally good, if prone to the same pitfalls as before with regards to variable monster quality. That said, the charts detailing personalities and relationships are great, and the copious random monster tables are really welcome for those doing a rotating campaign or who prefer classic, RNG heavy approaches.
Many of the miscellaneous ruling are quite good too, such as the falling long distances, flying monsters being knocked prone, and sleeping, both in armor and for perception thresholds to wake up.
The traps section is fantastic. For new DMs it offers solid advice one the philosophy behind effective trap placement and design, and for seasoned DMs is offers useful examples and damage benchmarks to work off of. None of this is strictlynecessary, but it's well done in my opinion and I expect to get good use from it.
Downtime Revisited: Most of these are great, and the addition of rivals who are not straight antagonists is welcome. That said, it's worth noting that Wizards still can't seem to grasp the fact that they can't do basic math, as scribing a scroll of wish costs 250,000 and forging a Luckblade costs 100,000. This is peculiar since consumables like scrolls are mentioned under the item creation rules, but Wizards still felt it needed to be expanded on elsewhere (poorly). It also mentions in the item creation rules that you need a formula to make a magic item, but doesn't describe how to create one or acquire one. Ultimately it still boils down to a vague“go do a CR appropriate sidequest and spend some money” that I assume many were already doing. Despite these complaints, I want to reiterate that the rest of the downtime section as a whole is pretty good.
The section on awarding magic items is mediocre, since it probably describes what most DMs were doing anyway if they weren't using a roll method, but it is nice to have some hard numbers to compare to. The common magic item section is garbage and a huge waste of space though, a few of them have some usefulness but most are wastes of ink designed to fill cliches like the Billowing Cloak or Dread Helm.
The new spells list overall has its share of stinkers (snilloc's snowball swarm) and high points (crown of stars), but overall this section is also marred by similar issues elsewhere in the book; there are a huge number of reprints from the Elemental Evil supplements. Worse, while some did get a decent balance pass that might justify their inclusion, others like Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting were reprinted and kept in an awful, borderline unusable state. On a personal level, I also hate the'stronghold' spells, such as Temple of the Gods or Mighty Fortress,since they both mess with world building and also conveniently stop Wizards from having to put forth stronghold rules of substance.
Names: The ultimate black mark on this book, and the single largest reason why, even without other flaws, I would likely never rate this book above 3/5. It is inconceivable that in a world with smartphones, tablets, and laptops, with more online name generators and repositories than you could shake a stick at,that Wizards thought it was acceptable to dedicate almost 10% of their first major rules expansion to NAMES. Maybe there's someone out there who has every player and NPC completely generated through dicerolls, right down to the name, and is simply dancing for joy. For everyone else, this is indefensible page count padding in a book that should have anything but.
Conclusion: There are elements here that are useful and welcome additions for the game, but there's so much filler, reprints, and conservative rule design that you'd think we were still in the 3.5 edition bloat days and this was yet another monthly release shoved off the presses. Instead, this is a sorry excuse for the first major rules update of 5th edition and I can't recommend it to anyone unless severely discounted.
