Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

• 1. A Demonic Valentine

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  Tasha's Cauldron of Everything arrived on the 17th of November 2020 with a secret inside its alternate cover. Wylie Beckert painted that edition, sold exclusively through local game stores. Her brief called for a scroll bearing the name of the spell Tasha's Hideous Laughter. Beckert took a subtler approach. She rendered it as a scroll crawling with laughing imps and skulls, letting the image carry the joke without text. The brief also instructed that the demon lord Graz'zt should look flirtatious. Beckert concluded that "the flirtiest he could get would be offering Tasha a uniquely demonic valentine."

  This sourcebook carried in-character commentary from the archmage Tasha throughout its pages. It was built to expand the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons beyond its founding rulebooks. Before it shipped, Corey Plante, writing for Inverse, called it "a must-buy as the most important D&D book of 2020." Whether that verdict held would depend on which chapter a player turned to first.

• 2. Inside the Cauldron

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  The twelve existing character classes received a collective 26 new subclasses in chapter one, each class gaining two or three options. The Artificer, previously confined to the Eberron: Rising from the Last War campaign sourcebook, was integrated here as a full character class. It arrived with three of its existing subclasses and gained one new subclass. Several other subclasses were reprinted from earlier published sourcebooks. These included the Order Domain Cleric and Circle of Spores Druid from Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica. The College of Eloquence Bard and Oath of Glory Paladin came from Mythic Odysseys of Theros. The Bladesinging Wizard arrived from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

  Chapter two introduced the Group Patron mechanic, giving adventuring parties either a shared backstory or an ongoing narrative reason to keep working together. The designers offered a "de-Eberroned" adaptation, stripped of the campaign-specific elements that had tied the original to the Eberron setting.

  Chapter three assembled 21 spells and 36 magic items. Three of those spells were new and attributed directly to Tasha. Magic tattoos appeared here for the first time, established as a new type of wondrous item with 11 entries.

  Chapter four gathered expanded tools for Dungeon Masters. Session zero guidance was among the additions, alongside advice on negotiating with monsters, rules for sidekicks, rules for natural hazards, and a section on puzzles. One optional feature in chapter one, however, would attract more public debate than everything else in the book combined.

• 3. The Race Question

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  In June 2020, Wizards of the Coast announced it would make substantive changes to how Dungeons and Dragons handled character creation. Under the 2014 Player's Handbook, a character's race came with fixed ability score bonuses. Tasha's Cauldron introduced an optional system that made those bonuses movable. Jeremy Crawford explained the original design philosophy in November 2020. He said the racial ability score increases "are not there for game balance purposes." They were there, he said, "strictly to reinforce the different archetypes that have been in D&D going all the way back to the '70s." Because balance was never the rationale, Crawford argued, removing them caused no mechanical harm. He described the new options as designed to "better reflect the story you have in mind for the characters."

  James Whitbrook, writing for Io9, framed the new rules as offering the highest levels of character customization seen in 5th edition. He reported Crawford's aim as extending beyond addressing bias in the game's racial depictions. It extended to "giving players the freedom to pick whatever race they want." The goal, Whitbrook reported, was a character that "doesn't feel like a specific exemplar of that race."

  Liam Nolan, writing for CBR, acknowledged that "one of the biggest controversies surrounding Dungeons and Dragons has been the game's prescriptivist approach to race." He concluded that the new options "do not undo any of the damage that's been done." They did, however, "provide a path forward for making Dungeons and Dragons more accessible and less problematic." Charlie Hall, writing for Polygon, was sharper in his criticism. He called the race-related guidance "extremely weak" and wrote that it amounted to advice to ignore the rules and simply do what feels right. Hall wrote that this "falls well short of establishing a progressive new precedent."

  Much of the book's content had, in fact, been tested by players through Unearthed Arcana before the final version went to press.

• 4. Built in Public

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  Unearthed Arcana is a program through which Wizards of the Coast releases draft rules for public testing before they become final. Much of the content in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything had traveled through this process. Crawford said that of the subclasses that passed through Unearthed Arcana, "almost every single one made it into the game."

  Jon Ryan, writing for IGN, described much of the book as appearing to be "a direct result of that type of player feedback." Ryan identified player discussions in forums and on social media as key channels for that feedback. Responses to earlier Unearthed Arcana installments had also contributed, he noted.

  Scott Baird, writing for Screen Rant, had noted 5th edition's slow release schedule before the book arrived. He wrote that it "might offer some of the biggest additions to the game since it was first launched."

• 5. Bestseller and Beyond

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  Publishers Weekly ranked Tasha's Cauldron of Everything at number two in Hardcover Nonfiction for the week ending the 21st of November 2020. The book sold 105,022 copies in November 2020. In USA Today's list for the week of the 26th of November 2020, it reached number five out of 150 titles.

  Charlie Hall, writing for Polygon, called the book "a great resource for everyone at the table." He found it "not as dense and full-featured as the supplements that have come before" and flagged "a decent bit of material that's been reprinted." Christian Hoffer, writing for ComicBook, predicted that dedicated players might not find it as exciting as other recent releases. For players less familiar with the game's expanding library, however, it would deliver "a lot of freshness to their next campaign." Corey Plante, for Inverse, wrote that rather than reinforcing rigid traditions, the book "shatters boundaries, expanding the game in profound, progressive ways."

  On the 25th of January 2022, the book entered the Dungeons and Dragons Rules Expansion Gift Set. The set paired it with Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse and a new printing of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, first published in 2017. An exclusive local game store edition of the set featured white foil alternate art covers by Joy Ang. The book had, in just over two years, acquired its third distinct cover artist.