D&D 5E’s next sourcebook Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything finally allows players to make characters without racial traits
A follow-up to Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
Dungeons & Dragons 5E's next sourcebook Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything includes options to alter racial traits and create character origins without them, Wizards of the Coast has revealed.
Tasha, otherwise known as Iggwilv, is a renowned wizard from the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, who made her first appearance in the Castle Greyhawk adventure released for the tabletop RPG in 1988. Daughter of the legendary spellcaster Baba Yaga, Tasha is the creator of the Demonomicon, a dangerous tome capable of summoning and controlling various demons. The character is maybe best known for fan-favourite spell Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, which causes the target to break down in chuckles so intense that they cannot do anything else but guffaw.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything seeks to embody the philosophies of the infamous wizard by providing players with knowledge, mainly related to magical subjects. A follow-up of sorts to Xanathar’s Guide to Everything - the 2017 sourcebook containing new rules and options for characters classes, spells and other aspects - Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything doesn’t provide a new setting, like many other D&D 5E sourcebooks. Instead, it’s designed to offer players and dungeon masters various options to help augment their campaigns and characters.
Crucially, these options include new rules surrounding character origins and the aspects of assigning racial traits. Ordinarily, a player character’s ability scores are affected by their race - for example, elves get a +1 bonus to their dexterity score - but the rules introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will enable players to ignore this. Using these new rules, players will be able to alter the racial traits of their character themselves or create characters entirely devoid of them.
According to Jeremy Crawford, principal rules designer for Dungeons & Dragons, this addition is part of D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast’s efforts to address the problematic elements of the RPG in order to make it more accessible.
Crawford confirmed to Dicebreaker that the new rules will appear in "multiple locations" outside of Cauldron of Everything, including D&D's organised play programme Adventurers League: "It’s important to us that these new options for customising your character’s origin be made accessible to as many Dungeons & Dragons fans as possible."
Alongside the new rules for character origins, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will feature subclasses for every single major D&D 5E class and several alternative classes. Curated in response to feedback from fans, the classes and subclasses in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything have been either collected from other D&D 5E sourcebooks - such as the artificer class from Eberron: Rising from the Last War - or were introduced in Unearthed Arcana, the playtest section of the Dungeons & Dragons website.
In addition to the above, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will include a chapter specifically for dungeon masters, rules for creating sidekicks, fresh magical items and artefacts, entirely new spells crafted by Tasha herself, and more besides.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is set to release on November 17th, with an alternative cover edition releasing exclusively in select retailers on the same day.