Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I wasn’t really sure where would be a reasonable place to post about this and I am hoping someone from WotC and Hasbro(it’s most likely a Hasbro call) sees this. Firstly I would like to say kudos on many of the changes since the OGL debacle, credit where credit is due there but I personally think it is bad taste to lock some of the subclass updates into the universes beyond releases. I can understand wanting to get the content out there and I can understand following the thematics, but it just comes off as a blatant way to try to forcibly keep your core audience buying a book while also trying to hook extra fandoms in. That sounds perfectly reasonable in a board room, but in practice it will alienate your existing base if you overdo it. If you still had the microtransactions where you could buy just a single subclass or a single feat out of a book on dndbeyond the issue would be mitigated somewhat, or even an end of year mini book anthology of the player facing options like (and I’m probably going to show my age here) “NOW that’s what I call subclasses 2026” ect. I personally will not be buying the WOW book as I have no interest in running a game in that setting and I do not want to reward what I view as a business decision impacting the way the game operates. If anyone out there feels similarly make sure to chime in, but please keep it respectful and not just a “WotC bad ugh ugh”
Splatbooks have apparently have been off the menu since Dan Ayoub took over WotC.
Think of that what you will.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I don't see updates in the Warcraft book as any different than updates in a Forgotten Realms book -- they're both books that people who don't run the setting are less interested in buying. Swashbuckler is no different to Bladesinger for me.
Now, I expect that we're eventually going to see a new book like Tasha's at some point, which gathers up many of the setting-locked player options into a general-purpose book. That has been the way of things for the 5e era. If I need the options right now, I can buy the book. If I'm content to wait, I can wait. (I wait, but I also have the advantage of somebody who buys most of the books in my play-group constellation.)
Things getting printed in a setting book first before being made more generally available is nothing new, it's been happening since the very first setting book in 5e (SCAG), which introduced subclasses like the Swashbuckler and the Bladesinger before they later got reprinted in Xanathar's and Tasha's respectively, and it happened other times throughout the edition such as the Circle of Spores Druid debuting in Ravnica and the College of Eloquence Bard debuting in Theros, before again showing up in Tasha's. If your aversion to Warcraft is that strong, I'd counsel patience until they do another setting-agnostic compilation.
EDIT:
Given that he was promoted to the top spot last week, I'm curious which and how many splatbooks you think should have been published in that time.
It’s less there being subclasses in a setting book, but more specifically updated subclasses that were previously in the PHB or xanathars being locked in universes beyond. There is a difference there.
There is not really a difference because it is fundamentally the same as their being printed in a universes within product.
The recent Ravenloft book contained a number of 5.5 versions of existing content. I do not play in Ravenloft. Frankly, I have very little interest in playing Ravenloft, as I think everything it brings to the table can be done better in other settings. But I still need to buy that book if I want the updated content.
Same exact thing is true of WoW. I do not play in WoW, nor do I have interest in playing in WoW. But if I want the content, I have to buy something where the setting does not appeal to me.
Honestly, I'd rather see something locked behind the WoW tie-in than, say, yet another forgotten realms book that reprints a bunch of background information they've already published a half dozen times. At least there's a chance the WoW book contains something new.
I feel differently about this for WoW or another high fantasy setting vs Star Wars. I find the whole 'Azeroth isn't right for DnD and I want nothing to do with it' argument odd personally, but people feel how they feel. It's a world that clearly had a tremendous amount of DnD influence when it was created and really isn't any different than any other campaign setting in my mind.
I find the WoW world tone and lore much more my thing than Dark Sun, for example. I would never run or play in a Dark Sun campaign. But if Dark Sun has interesting content that I can borrow I will still buy it, as I would with a Runeterra (League of Legends), Wheel of Time, etc... etc... Universes Beyond product that hits the traditional DnD high fantasy feel.
Star Wars to me is tonally different enough from standard DnD that I do really hope they provide content that is intended to be much more setting-specific.