I haven't read through it yet, so I won't answer til I do, but I feel the response was probably inevitable. It really sounds more like a reorganization book than any sort of new material and people never like those.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I rated it quite poorly because to me, [REDACTED] shows zero creativity and imagination. It comes off as a half-baked attempt to make anyone, everything and all of the things around them vanilla, open to whatever you want it to be. A better process would have been an entire series of books, introducing new worlds, where the different species had VASTLY different roles. Goblins are the caretakers of the lands, holding back the crush of the selfish, evil Elves, while Orcs and Ogres band together to fight off the encroaching Human invasion of their ancestral lands.
I'm hoping for better in future releases, but as it stands, I'm not as optimistic as I once was.
I'm all for publishing new D&D books and stuff. But not at the cost of selling it in a massively expensive bundle, getting rid of two good "lore books" forever, and also, having most of the content be modified versions of other things.
I like the stuff, but all this kinda ruined the book for me.
Honestly, Im just happy to have the majority of my non-PHB race options in one place. There are still some outliers in other books like the Tiefling subraces or the Gothic Lineages. I mostly use physical books instead of the tools on D&D beyond, so its nice to only have one extra book to pull out or bring to someone else's house for making characters rather than two or three or four. Not to mention it includes a handful of options I did not have access to because I did not own the module/setting they were originally printed in (namely the haregon and fairy from WBtW or the Satyr/Minotaur from Theros).
Raises a question, where does one find the Tiefling sublineages now if you didn't have MToF? They're gone outside of legacy access ... unless Planescapes on the Horizon and we're getting 5e's second forray into Hell in a planar product shortly on the horizon. Given 5e's already been to Hell, admittedly only literally scratching the top layer, I don't really see that happening, but the erasing of the Tiefling variety is disappointing.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
First of all I 100% support the changes made to races. I think there have been a lot of janky mechanics and power differences which needed addressing, and I welcome the freedom that the ability score changes have brought since Tashas. The goblinoid flavour is an interesting one, I do think I am more comfortable with it on goblins themselves than I am hobs and bugbears, but it's ok and I do really like the Fey goblin concept. I do feel like the mountain dwarf is now an unusually powerful pick with it's +2/+2 and armor proficiencies, wheras before it was one of many optimal choices. Overall, really like the direction it is going.
I also like the npc changes. I've felt 5e is heavily stacked on the players side so giving creatures different ways to hit their CR is great, and I'm happy to just add interesting spells / non-combat abilities on the fly so their absence does not bug me. At the end of the day a statblock is for combat & the rest I can handwave behind the screen with my players none the wiser. Casters are surprisingly damaging in their regular attacks but that just ensures they are high priority targets (and glass cannons!) so that's fine too.
I already planned to phase out magical BPS damage on the players side. Not necessarily from a simplifying perspective, but to replace it with greater emphasis on silver, cold iron & adamantine weaponry in line with old school D&D. These monsters getting more elemental damage or dealing force damage takes care of this on the monster side too (and helps different monsters do damage to each other. There were many combinations before who could beat on each other all day but were totally immune to each others attacks lol).
Also, for new DM getting all of these races & monsters in one book is a killer deal.
The bad: I agree as a Volos / Mordenkainen's owner the reprints mean I already have a version of all of this content, so the value is questionable. I'd have appreciated a discount on DDB because of this. At the end of the day it is a payed errata, though a welcome one, and I just wish this meant those who own the content could have been compensated. I don't like the purely alphabetical style. I really appreciate all of the books with specific sections for creature types and wish all books in future were structured in that way. Hell I'd rather ignore alphabetical entirely and order purely by creature type and CR, which is how I sort my monsters in roll 20. I also severely mourn the loss of the lore aspects of Volos & Mordenkainens. The fact these books are discontinued digitally is utterly nonsensical to me, and I hope in future they bundle all of that together as a lore supplement to this book for the new players.
Overall I don't think it is a particularly original or well executed book, but I think the changes are in the right direction and the value proposition for newcomers to the hobby is big. The value to a seasoned player with access to prior books is much less, and I miss the lore those books added.
Overall it makes me very optimistic about the direction of D&D overall. Yes, it is, as advertised, very much a compilation of previously released material, some of which has been updated and some of which hasn't. That said, I think most of the changes are for the better. As a DM, I find long spell lists more trouble than they're worth, so the simplification definitely will make for quicker (and for me, more exciting) combat encounters. On the other hand, for monsters with spells that weren't about combat, there is some loss. When I read the original ki-rin stat block and saw that it could cast any level of cleric spell, that was, in a way, inspiring. It gives you ideas for quests to find a ki-rin and convince it to raise your dead companion. The full spell list may have been a waste of space and overly complex, but even adding something like "If adventurers petition a ki-rin for a miracle, it may choose to grant that by casting any spell on the cleric list at the DM's discretion" to the flavor text could have done something to bridge that gap. (On the other hand, it's clear from the description that ki-rin are powerful, so I have no problem deciding as a DM that ki-rin can do that!)
Looking at a third-party compendium, I think they just ruined the races. I liked how each race had more or less set stat bonuses, and that gave them more personality. I fell like MPMM just makes them all less unique.
Honestly, Im just happy to have the majority of my non-PHB race options in one place. There are still some outliers in other books like the Tiefling subraces or the Gothic Lineages. I mostly use physical books instead of the tools on D&D beyond, so its nice to only have one extra book to pull out or bring to someone else's house for making characters rather than two or three or four. Not to mention it includes a handful of options I did not have access to because I did not own the module/setting they were originally printed in (namely the haregon and fairy from WBtW or the Satyr/Minotaur from Theros).
Raises a question, where does one find the Tiefling sublineages now if you didn't have MToF? They're gone outside of legacy access ... unless Planescapes on the Horizon and we're getting 5e's second forray into Hell in a planar product shortly on the horizon. Given 5e's already been to Hell, admittedly only literally scratching the top layer, I don't really see that happening, but the erasing of the Tiefling variety is disappointing.
It is disappointing, but to be fair most of the variety offered in those Tiefling variants came in the form of changing where your ASIs went (which is now covered using Tasha's optional rules) and changing the three spells are associated with your "legacy" which is easy enough to homebrew to fit whatever hellish creature you decide your tiefling draws lineage from. There wasnt alot of mechanical "meat" to those variants.
I do wish they would not have discontinued the books though for the sake of the lore.
Edit: Thankfully there are still other Teifling variants available in SCAG for players who want to reflect their devilish nature in a different way, even some that change your spellcasting in a similar way to MToF
Honestly, Im just happy to have the majority of my non-PHB race options in one place. There are still some outliers in other books like the Tiefling subraces or the Gothic Lineages. I mostly use physical books instead of the tools on D&D beyond, so its nice to only have one extra book to pull out or bring to someone else's house for making characters rather than two or three or four. Not to mention it includes a handful of options I did not have access to because I did not own the module/setting they were originally printed in (namely the haregon and fairy from WBtW or the Satyr/Minotaur from Theros).
Raises a question, where does one find the Tiefling sublineages now if you didn't have MToF? They're gone outside of legacy access ... unless Planescapes on the Horizon and we're getting 5e's second forray into Hell in a planar product shortly on the horizon. Given 5e's already been to Hell, admittedly only literally scratching the top layer, I don't really see that happening, but the erasing of the Tiefling variety is disappointing.
It is disappointing, but to be fair most of the variety offered in those Tiefling variants came in the form of changing where your ASIs went (which is now covered using Tasha's optional rules) and changing the three spells are associated with your "legacy" which is easy enough to homebrew to fit whatever hellish creature you decide your tiefling draws lineage from. There wasnt alot of mechanical "meat" to those variants.
I do wish they would not have discontinued the books though for the sake of the lore.
Edit: Thankfully there are still other Teifling variants available in SCAG for players who want to reflect their devilish nature in a different way, even some that change your spellcasting in a similar way to MToF
Yeah, I suppose you're right about the Tiefling variants, but you could say the same thing for all the elves I think. I do like the idea of taking the minor magic's associated with the Tieflings and treat them as sort of Infernal feats. I think they're OP'd for PCs as written, and clearly designed as monster buffers, but I could see the Demonic Boons being reworked too as a set of feats for "lower planetouched" characters and monsters. But that's more me trying to will a return of Planescape and a guide to the Lower planes revisting Tieflings and the like.
This is useful for DMing on Roll20 and giving my players a good variety of racial options. I can understand it not being particularly useful for older veterans but for those of us who haven't bought a ton of content yet, this is vital alongside the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook for me.
It's not very good. I can understand that if you don't have any of the original books it could be better, but overall it's very meh.
It significantly dumbs things down to the point where there is no real incentive to play different races, as the mechanics and whatnot have become virtually identical. They lost what makes them interesting so that they would be more, well, I don't even know.
The spellcasting also makes things more empty and hollow. It works okay with innate spellcasting because those creatures aren't, y'know, actual spellcasters, and races with innate spellcasting work the same way. But it makes these spellcasters seem more like pre-programmed (for lack of a better term) creatures that are just things to fight and not actual people/monsters in the world. It works in some cases but when using for certain creatures (i.e., vecna) just makes it dull and different than the goal.
What's the worst though is taking down the legacy books. This seems slightly "scummy", I guess. It just seems like this would be so easily abusable. Overall, my enthusiasm for the direction wizards is going is slowly decreasing.
The spellcasting also makes things more empty and hollow. It works okay with innate spellcasting because those creatures aren't, y'know, actual spellcasters, and races with innate spellcasting work the same way. But it makes these spellcasters seem more like pre-programmed (for lack of a better term) creatures that are just things to fight and not actual people/monsters in the world. It works in some cases but when using for certain creatures (i.e., vecna) just makes it dull and different than the goal.
What's the worst though is taking down the legacy books. This seems slightly "scummy", I guess. It just seems like this would be so easily abusable. Overall, my enthusiasm for the direction wizards is going is slowly decreasing.
I've browsed the book, and it definitely takes away spells not just from random NPCs but also from demon lords and archdevils. The monsters that are supposed to be cool to fight b/c they are literally boss monsters got more boring to fight.
Not to mention that, despite having the word "multiverse" in its name, not a single Dragonborn from Fizban's, no Thri-kreen, no Plasmoids, no Dhamphirs. What are they going to call their next book of playable species?? Elminster's Guide to Monsters of the Expanded Multiverse?
I hate this book deeply, it was almost nothing but a series of nerfs. As someone that already felt many of the monsters didn't earn their CR, this book just made it worse. I'm more ambivalent about the races, though I still wish Humans were just a little better. People always talk about it being such a powerful Race but it's very rarely I see someone want to play one and that says a lot to me.
As stands, this book just managed to label a lot of Races and Monsters as Legacy, and replace them with hot garbage. I really need to search Wizards for a review and rating system of this book, or just send an e-mail I suppose.
I rated it a 2 solely because it's a reprint of material that most people (including me) already have... at full price. Its balance changes and tweaks- that should be free or at least at a discount! If they gave me a discount because i already had the previous books, then I'd probably get it and give it a 4. Looks like an easy money grab for them- tweak some things and re-release at full price.
Purely for compilation value it’s good, and frankly I think the Tasha’s species ASI is a plus. Disappointed the descriptions are basic and that they took down two of the books with more in depth descriptions. Also not a fan of the spellcasting changes for units that are ostensibly proper casters, since they’re now significantly harder to customize.
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132 votes and the book is still lingering at an average of 2.5 stars.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I haven't read through it yet, so I won't answer til I do, but I feel the response was probably inevitable. It really sounds more like a reorganization book than any sort of new material and people never like those.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I rated it quite poorly because to me, [REDACTED] shows zero creativity and imagination. It comes off as a half-baked attempt to make anyone, everything and all of the things around them vanilla, open to whatever you want it to be. A better process would have been an entire series of books, introducing new worlds, where the different species had VASTLY different roles. Goblins are the caretakers of the lands, holding back the crush of the selfish, evil Elves, while Orcs and Ogres band together to fight off the encroaching Human invasion of their ancestral lands.
I'm hoping for better in future releases, but as it stands, I'm not as optimistic as I once was.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I'm all for publishing new D&D books and stuff. But not at the cost of selling it in a massively expensive bundle, getting rid of two good "lore books" forever, and also, having most of the content be modified versions of other things.
I like the stuff, but all this kinda ruined the book for me.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.Raises a question, where does one find the Tiefling sublineages now if you didn't have MToF? They're gone outside of legacy access ... unless Planescapes on the Horizon and we're getting 5e's second forray into Hell in a planar product shortly on the horizon. Given 5e's already been to Hell, admittedly only literally scratching the top layer, I don't really see that happening, but the erasing of the Tiefling variety is disappointing.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Motm is not my kind of book, nerf after nerf after nerf. Also where is the new stuff? Make it bland too.
I give it a 3 and I have very mixed views on it.
First of all I 100% support the changes made to races. I think there have been a lot of janky mechanics and power differences which needed addressing, and I welcome the freedom that the ability score changes have brought since Tashas. The goblinoid flavour is an interesting one, I do think I am more comfortable with it on goblins themselves than I am hobs and bugbears, but it's ok and I do really like the Fey goblin concept. I do feel like the mountain dwarf is now an unusually powerful pick with it's +2/+2 and armor proficiencies, wheras before it was one of many optimal choices. Overall, really like the direction it is going.
I also like the npc changes. I've felt 5e is heavily stacked on the players side so giving creatures different ways to hit their CR is great, and I'm happy to just add interesting spells / non-combat abilities on the fly so their absence does not bug me. At the end of the day a statblock is for combat & the rest I can handwave behind the screen with my players none the wiser. Casters are surprisingly damaging in their regular attacks but that just ensures they are high priority targets (and glass cannons!) so that's fine too.
I already planned to phase out magical BPS damage on the players side. Not necessarily from a simplifying perspective, but to replace it with greater emphasis on silver, cold iron & adamantine weaponry in line with old school D&D. These monsters getting more elemental damage or dealing force damage takes care of this on the monster side too (and helps different monsters do damage to each other. There were many combinations before who could beat on each other all day but were totally immune to each others attacks lol).
Also, for new DM getting all of these races & monsters in one book is a killer deal.
The bad: I agree as a Volos / Mordenkainen's owner the reprints mean I already have a version of all of this content, so the value is questionable. I'd have appreciated a discount on DDB because of this. At the end of the day it is a payed errata, though a welcome one, and I just wish this meant those who own the content could have been compensated. I don't like the purely alphabetical style. I really appreciate all of the books with specific sections for creature types and wish all books in future were structured in that way. Hell I'd rather ignore alphabetical entirely and order purely by creature type and CR, which is how I sort my monsters in roll 20. I also severely mourn the loss of the lore aspects of Volos & Mordenkainens. The fact these books are discontinued digitally is utterly nonsensical to me, and I hope in future they bundle all of that together as a lore supplement to this book for the new players.
Overall I don't think it is a particularly original or well executed book, but I think the changes are in the right direction and the value proposition for newcomers to the hobby is big. The value to a seasoned player with access to prior books is much less, and I miss the lore those books added.
158 votes with an average rating of 2.5 stars at the end of the day. I don't think we are likely to see a lot more votes, but I could be wrong.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Plus, the single biggest block was 1 - I Hated It, and over half the voters ranked it at 2/5 or lower.
Relevant XKCD
Overall it makes me very optimistic about the direction of D&D overall. Yes, it is, as advertised, very much a compilation of previously released material, some of which has been updated and some of which hasn't. That said, I think most of the changes are for the better. As a DM, I find long spell lists more trouble than they're worth, so the simplification definitely will make for quicker (and for me, more exciting) combat encounters. On the other hand, for monsters with spells that weren't about combat, there is some loss. When I read the original ki-rin stat block and saw that it could cast any level of cleric spell, that was, in a way, inspiring. It gives you ideas for quests to find a ki-rin and convince it to raise your dead companion. The full spell list may have been a waste of space and overly complex, but even adding something like "If adventurers petition a ki-rin for a miracle, it may choose to grant that by casting any spell on the cleric list at the DM's discretion" to the flavor text could have done something to bridge that gap. (On the other hand, it's clear from the description that ki-rin are powerful, so I have no problem deciding as a DM that ki-rin can do that!)
Looking at a third-party compendium, I think they just ruined the races. I liked how each race had more or less set stat bonuses, and that gave them more personality. I fell like MPMM just makes them all less unique.
It pronounced Den Sake. It is not Japanese.
Website character sheet not working fix (Hopefully)
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It is disappointing, but to be fair most of the variety offered in those Tiefling variants came in the form of changing where your ASIs went (which is now covered using Tasha's optional rules) and changing the three spells are associated with your "legacy" which is easy enough to homebrew to fit whatever hellish creature you decide your tiefling draws lineage from. There wasnt alot of mechanical "meat" to those variants.
I do wish they would not have discontinued the books though for the sake of the lore.
Edit: Thankfully there are still other Teifling variants available in SCAG for players who want to reflect their devilish nature in a different way, even some that change your spellcasting in a similar way to MToF
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Yeah, I suppose you're right about the Tiefling variants, but you could say the same thing for all the elves I think. I do like the idea of taking the minor magic's associated with the Tieflings and treat them as sort of Infernal feats. I think they're OP'd for PCs as written, and clearly designed as monster buffers, but I could see the Demonic Boons being reworked too as a set of feats for "lower planetouched" characters and monsters. But that's more me trying to will a return of Planescape and a guide to the Lower planes revisting Tieflings and the like.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
2.59 average after 189 votes. Voting has slowed quite a bit and the average hasn't really changed. I think it is safe to call this done.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
This is useful for DMing on Roll20 and giving my players a good variety of racial options. I can understand it not being particularly useful for older veterans but for those of us who haven't bought a ton of content yet, this is vital alongside the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook for me.
It's not very good. I can understand that if you don't have any of the original books it could be better, but overall it's very meh.
It significantly dumbs things down to the point where there is no real incentive to play different races, as the mechanics and whatnot have become virtually identical. They lost what makes them interesting so that they would be more, well, I don't even know.
The spellcasting also makes things more empty and hollow. It works okay with innate spellcasting because those creatures aren't, y'know, actual spellcasters, and races with innate spellcasting work the same way. But it makes these spellcasters seem more like pre-programmed (for lack of a better term) creatures that are just things to fight and not actual people/monsters in the world. It works in some cases but when using for certain creatures (i.e., vecna) just makes it dull and different than the goal.
What's the worst though is taking down the legacy books. This seems slightly "scummy", I guess. It just seems like this would be so easily abusable. Overall, my enthusiasm for the direction wizards is going is slowly decreasing.
SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've browsed the book, and it definitely takes away spells not just from random NPCs but also from demon lords and archdevils. The monsters that are supposed to be cool to fight b/c they are literally boss monsters got more boring to fight.
Not to mention that, despite having the word "multiverse" in its name, not a single Dragonborn from Fizban's, no Thri-kreen, no Plasmoids, no Dhamphirs. What are they going to call their next book of playable species?? Elminster's Guide to Monsters of the Expanded Multiverse?
I hate this book deeply, it was almost nothing but a series of nerfs. As someone that already felt many of the monsters didn't earn their CR, this book just made it worse. I'm more ambivalent about the races, though I still wish Humans were just a little better. People always talk about it being such a powerful Race but it's very rarely I see someone want to play one and that says a lot to me.
As stands, this book just managed to label a lot of Races and Monsters as Legacy, and replace them with hot garbage. I really need to search Wizards for a review and rating system of this book, or just send an e-mail I suppose.
I rated it a 2 solely because it's a reprint of material that most people (including me) already have... at full price. Its balance changes and tweaks- that should be free or at least at a discount! If they gave me a discount because i already had the previous books, then I'd probably get it and give it a 4. Looks like an easy money grab for them- tweak some things and re-release at full price.
Purely for compilation value it’s good, and frankly I think the Tasha’s species ASI is a plus. Disappointed the descriptions are basic and that they took down two of the books with more in depth descriptions. Also not a fan of the spellcasting changes for units that are ostensibly proper casters, since they’re now significantly harder to customize.