I escaped this particular fate myself, but saw and heard of many others who didn’t manage to escape the dreaded clutches of “the little sibling.” But I vaguely remember being the young kid seeing people play the game and wanting to join them, despite being only six. Amusingly, it was decades later and only years after I was regularly playing D&D myself that I thought back to that night, recalled the minis in the homemade cardboard dungeon, and realized this would have been my first “experience” with D&D.
It tends to come up because the younger sibling is curious about the game, but is seen by the older sibling as a distraction. An impediment to the fun of everyone else. Too young to play (like I was) but annoyed at being told we couldn’t join in. Which leads to the parental mandate to include them in the activity, often to the chagrin of everyone.
Designs are available as T-shirts but some work as masks. I now only have a single income, making finances are tight and gaming books a luxury. Any purchases are greatly appreciated.
A surprising three years after the last D&D rules expansion, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, and Wizards of the Coast has finally released the next player-facing book for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. As the similar name implies, the contents are much the same, with new subclasses and spells along with several pages of… other.
Image Copyright WotC
Like past books with new player options, the content in this book was previewed in Unearthed Arcana over the past year, with classes revealed & reviewed, tested and tweaked. Some of the ideas made it in and some of the classes were rejected for one reason or another. This means the player content in this book has been reviewed and playtested, which is something that can’t be said for much of the player content in past versions of D&D (other roleplaying games).
What It Is
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is a relatively svelte book. Only 192-pages. The same length as Xanathar’s but two-thirds the size of the Player’s Handbook while being comparable in cover price. Unsurprising, it is a full colour hardover book, with an alternate cover that can be found in local game stores. (Or non-local game stores that have an online presence.)
(Like all modern D&D books, this is not saddle stitched, and the book may need to be gently broken in to ensure its longevity.)
The book has new and newish subclasses for every class in the game, including the artificer, which has been entirely reprinted. There are four artificer subclasses (one new), two subclasses for the barbarian, two for the bard (one reprinted), three clerical domains (one reprint), three druid circles (one reprinted), two fighter archetypes with some new manuevers and fighting styles, two monk subclasses, two paladin oaths (one reprinted), two ranger conclaves, two rogue subclasses, a couple sorcerer bloodlines, two warlock pacts, and two wizard specializations (one new). Phew.
Also in the book are group patrons (semi-reprinted from Eberron: Rising from the Last War); a handful of spells; 45-plus magical items, with many being potent artifacts; sidekick rules for the Dungeon Master, semi-reprinted from the Essentials Kit; supernatural terrain and hazards; and ending with 20 pages of puzzles.
The class section of the book also includes some alternate features, granting players the ability to swap out cantrips or slightly customize their class by swapping in an alternate feature. In a few places, these are designed as subtle balance tweaks to “correct” issues (such as the ranger) without entirely redesigning the class.
The Good
Image Copyright WotC
As mentioned, the classes and content here is well balanced and well thought out. Because the D&D team has been relatively stable and one of the creators of the edition is still working on the game, the people who wrote this book are very well versed in the subtleties of the design and why things are written the way they are.
As mentioned, the book contains a stealth rebalancing for some classes and new small powers. Some seem less necessary–like the barbarian gaining more skills and a movement power or the rogue feature to grant themselves advantage—but others do fill in gaps that have emerged, such as the 2nd-level bard inspiration variant that works with a caster-heavy party or the druid ability to finally get a pet. The ranger alternate rules have been especially requested, giving first level rangers an actual combat feature while providing a fairly substantial alternative for the beastmaster ranger’s pets. There’s even an attempt to give something for the monk’s Way of the Four Elements, but this isn’t as successful.
The book begins with common rule reminders. Handy clear and simple clarifications for oft forgotten or subtle rules. It’s nice to have these, even if this page was also in Guide to Everything—you don’t know what rules expansion will be someone’s first.
There’s also rules for customizing races, letting you swap around some proficiencies, such as replacing proficiency with medium armour or battle axes with longbow and rapier proficiency. This allows you to play a character like a high elf that wasn’t raised among elves and doesn’t know how to use a bow, but was adopted by orcs and knows how to swing a greataxe like a champ. I’m not the biggest fan of the absolute freedom offered by these pages (for reasons I’ll get to in the next section) but I am aware not everyone feels comfortable with the idea of physical and cultural bonuses being baked into races. And because some people are uncomfortable with it, I applaud WotC for listening and including this section. And for people like me who have issues, I’m thankful the preceding spread that reminds DMs that everything in the book is optional and I can just ignore that.
The fifteen feats here are decent enough. Many are a way to build a hybrid character without multiclassing. They’re very workable. And Skill Expert will be very useful for a lot of character concepts.
I enjoyed the idea of sidekicks in the Essentials Kit, which allowed me to play some one-on-one games with my 10-year-old son. I was happy these were being reprinted here and it’s great that they were expanded out to full 20-level classes. Sadly, they didn’t reprint the generic statblocks, but the concept was expanded to include any monster that is CR 1/2 or lower. Which is simply brilliant, as it not only allows humanoid creatures like the scout, thug, or cultist to be used but also a war horse or mastiff. Or even a blink dog. I expect whole books to flood the Dungeon Master’s Guild with CR 1/2 pets, like young faerie dragons, juvenile owl bears, and hatchling couatls.
With nineteen pages of new magic items, this is the biggest loot drop of 5th Edition to date. Some time ago I had predicted the next rules expansion would expand the gear in the game, as new magic items have been rare and treasure is a pretty vital reward. When Cauldron of Everything was announced, I just didn’t expect the magic expansion to be this book. And I certainly didn’t expect a half-dozen new artifacts.
The patron rules are… fine. They’re fine. They offer some decent advice and quite a few roleplaying hooks. This section is largely common sense and advice rather than concrete rules. If you were already thinking about what it would be like having the PCs working for the king or thieves’ guild, this probably won’t give you many new ideas. I rather expected more, especially after hearing about the perk system and seeing what was done with reputation in Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. I anticipated perks to have more heft than just “you are protected from the law” and “your patron covers your expenses). This would have been a neat way of adding some minor new options and benefits for characters, because it doesn’t imbalance the party as every member would have the same perk.
I quite like several of the subclasses in this book. The armourer is a nice, simple addition to the artificer, and an idea I’m surprised I didn’t consider. (And I worked hard to think of new artificer ideas when working on my DMsGuild artificer book). The Path of the Beast for the Barbarian is just cool. Multiclassing dips aside, I haven’t played a barbarian before, but this moves the class to the top of my “to play” list. And I’m very pleased with how the Phantom rogue subclass evolved. The Soulknife is also a nice update to this classic concept, first being seen in 3rd Edition. And it could be easily house-ruled into something non-psionic by swapping the psychic damage for necrotic and naming it the “shadowblade”. (Shadeblade? Gloomblade?) And I adore the take on the Genie patron for the warlock. I’ve done my own take on this in the past, but this is really interesting and I love how it makes use of the genie’s vessel.
The Bad
While not my biggest complaint, let’s get to the pet peeve I teased earlier. Customizing ability scores. Glad they did it. Not entirely happy that it’s so unrestricted and not swapping a physical ability score boost for another physical, or choosing to swap one, or mandating +2/ +1. Mostly because of elements like the mountain dwarf who gets a +2/+2, because their second boost is to Strength—which benefits martial classes—but they also get medium armour proficiency, which is redundant for paladins and fighters. The double twos keep them desirable for that trope. But if you can freely swap the Strength bonus to +2 Cha or +2 Int then the mountain dwarf becomes a fantastic spellcaster. The ability score bonuses were designed to encourage tropes and playing to type but making them unbounded encourages min-maxing and actually limits the potential choices of races to the few origins deemed “most optimal.”
This is mostly a complaint for my table and likely Adventurer’s League. Where the optional rule won’t be used to tell creative stories and make interesting characters with fascinating backstories but instead be used to see how many bonuses can be accrued.
Image Copyright WotC and stolen from IGN
The fighter section has a page-and-a-half of Battlemaster Builds. Suggested designs for characters using that subclass. I’m not sure who this is designed for, as making an archer or duelist with the fighter wasn’t particularly hard already.
The book has almost twenty-pages of puzzles including handouts. It’s nice to have some quick puzzles handy, but it’s unfortunate they’re in a book that is generally player facing and will be referenced by the players at the table. I wouldn’t use these puzzles for anything but inspiration. The difficulty listed in the puzzles also feels exceptionally arbitrary; the very first puzzle is listed as “easy” despite being functionally equivalent to the last puzzle, which is “hard.” And this is despite the latter puzzle being more overt in its solution.
Testing the options with Unearthed Arcana is inarguably a good thing for the quality of the book. The best ideas (read: the most popular ideas) get published and the stuff that is problematic is left out. However, as class content is “previewed” everyone has favourite classes that didn’t make the cut. I was excited for the College of Spirits bard as a tarokka bard sounded awesome and Ravenloft A.F. And I’m sure someone was excited for the wizard arcane tradition of onomancy/ truenaming.
The clerical Love domain didn’t make it in either. Neither the original version or the revised “Unity Domain.” For anyone unfamiliar with the internet drama regarding this subclass, people became upset on Twitter over the presentation of the Love domain (because people are alway getting upset on Twitter; it’s basically a platform design to enrage you or let you rage), with the complaint being how the subclass focused on enchantment, and forcing someone to like you isn’t love. Not an unfair criticism but, Twitter being Twitter, people came down HARD on the authors, quickly becoming abusively critical. The document was quickly pulled, reworked, and re-released with the aforementioned Unity domain. But the damage was done and unlike other rejected subclasses, the document isn’t available online. Because of moral outrage, a D&D subclass was effectively censored. Which is a big trigger for me as I value the freedom of information. And, y’know, like options for D&D games, and the concept of an enchantment focused clerical domain (a lust domain if you will) is a nice narrative gap and fits many gods in classical mythology (like Aphrodite, Freyr, Ishtar) and D&D deities like Sune.
This book introduces a few psionic classes. The fighter has the psi warrior, the rogue has the soulknife, and the sorcerer has the aberrant mind bloodline. I’ve been a longtime fan of psonics since 2nd Edition, so I’m a little sad they didn’t manage to get a full psionicst class done for this book. Including one later will unfortunately mean having psionic options spread out over multiple books.
There are always some less impressive subclasses. There’s always got to be a last pick. The Rune Knight is so-so. Because of the design, by the time you hit the subclass’ cap you’ve chosen five of the possible six runes. For 10th and 15th level you’re just picking between the options you already chose not to take last time, which is somewhat unsatisfying. Neither ranger subclass really seems great compared to the interesting ones in Guide to Everything.
The Ugly
I hate the name.
This book was always going to be “Proper Noun’s Noun of Pronoun”. Elminster’s Volume of Stuff. Warduke’s Collection of Trophies. Because that’s how they’re naming things this time round. But “Cauldron” is a weird choice and repeating “of Everything” makes it easy to confuse with Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, which I often shortened to “Guide to Everything” so I don’t have to remember how to spell “Xanathar.” I’m going to continually see people confused while referencing “Guide to Everything” and “Cauldron of Everything.” And I expect some kid over Christmas is going to ask his parents for “the new D&D book… the Everything one” and get the wrong book.
Like Guide to Everything, the titular character—the witch Tasha—makes comments throughout the book. This worked well in Guide to Monsters and Tomb of Foes but Xanathar was more annoying than insightful and frequently anachronistic. Tasha is somehow worse. Her little 1-3 sentence blurbs feel less like commentary (“insights, guidance, threats and critiques” like her introduction suggests) and more forced meta-jokes. It reads far less like an ancient witch offering thoughts on a subclass or option and more like someone trying to compose witty PR tweets or make amusing captions for a brochure. And unlike the small sidebars in past products, which seemed designed to fill negative space and flesh out pages, Tasha’s Tweets came before every subclass and section, leaving more gaps at the bottom of pages, while also making the little comments more forced. Mandated distillations of humour. When reading some I could just picture the D&D team brainstorming them at a meeting.
The book features a LOT of reprinted content, including subclasses published earlier this year! Eight of the thirty new subclasses—a full quarter of the class options—are reprints. This also includes the entire artificer class and all three subclasses published in Eberron: Rising From the Last War.
This unfortunately makes the Magic the Gathering D&D books (Ravnica and Theros) trap purchases for people who just want the new crunchy rules options. And anyone who bought those books for the rules options to add to their game rather than the setting material (raises hand) completely wasted their money. It’s definitely going to make me reconsider purchasing future MtG settings when I know I can just wait and get that content elsewhere.
Now, in fairness, this does mean those class options are now easier to make available in Adventurer’s League. Which will be nice for the small minority of players running in organized play games.But that’s probably a very small minority of players.
Ditto the artificer. While I appreciate having the full class here (even if it means I’ve purchased it three times, including Wayfarer’s Guide to Eberron) they could have chosen to only reprint one or two artificer subclasses, so people who owned the Eberron book would have something exclusive to that tome.
The Awesome
The picture of Tasha on page 82. That is just amazing. And while discussing art, I know it’s just a throw-away Easter Egg, but I loved seeing Azalin Rex in the Patrons chapter. And there’s a Planescape reference as well.
Image Copyright WotC
There’s a table listing all the new spells on page 105, and it very concisely says what school they are, their level, and if they require concentration. This is pretty handy. (Curiously, there’s also a column saying if they can be cast as a ritual and for all of them it’s “no”, so that feels somewhat redundant.)
Included in the new spells are a handful of new monster conjuring spells that make it much simpler to be a summoner. While I like being able to summon specific creatures as an option, these are much more useful in play and don’t require the player to slowly flip through the Monster Manual to find an appropriate fey or elemental (especially when the creature by type table is in the DMG).
Baba Yaga’s mortar & pestle!
They removed the attunement requirement from the prosthetic limb magical item (and this is also the case for the next print run of Eberron, already being in its errata). This was a complaint of many as it made receiving a prosthetic detrimental as you could use fewer magic items. (As I mentioned this in my review of the book.) Nice to see that WotC agrees.
Similarly, the armourer artificer lets you have magical armour that functions like a lost limb. Contrary to a recent webcomic, I do like the idea of enabling people to play adventurers with disabilities. The armourer artificer is awesome (even if it is a tad too Iron Man, if that’s possible).
I like that you can take the psi warrior fighter subclass, beg your DM for a flame tongue, and play a Jedi in D&D.
The collection of supernatural terrains is nicely done. And I quite like how they handled the activation, offering suggestions rather than hard rules but situations that are likely to happen but not be too regular. There are some good ideas in here, and it’s easy to read through this section for inspiration or a neat magical feature to place in a location.
Included in the terrain section is a funky page on mimic colonies. This isn’t just noteworthy for the juvenile mimic statblock (conveniently <CR 1/2, so… sidekick!) or the lair actions, but the absolutely bonkers art at the top of page 167. I’m just sad we didn’t also get a stat block for a Large or even a Huge mimic.
While I’m not wowed by the puzzles I think it is worth noting how this book really focused on aspects of the game other than combat. There’s patrons, which drive the actual story and offer great roleplaying hooks. There’s the encounter terrain that feeds into the exploration pillar and makes overland travel or just being in a strange place more interesting. And there are the puzzles, which encourage the players to be challenged with something other than tactics and strategy. This is great to see and probably should be encouraged. Because it’s too easy to make a book like this and only focus on combat encounters or have “puzzles” reduced to the characters making a quick Intelligence check.
Final Thoughts
For a book people have been expecting for three years, it feels like I should have more to say about Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. That my review should be somehow even longer. But it just doesn’t feel like there’s much here. Yes, there’s a newish class and thirty subclasses but there’s only 22 options we haven’t seen—fewer both in total and number of new options than Guide to Everything (and a matching number of feats). That’s a book I described by saying “with so little official content released this small smattering of appetisers feels like a feast.” A statement that also applies to Cauldron of Everything.
What’s here is generally good. There’s not any outright bad options or weak pages. And it certainly doesn’t have the endless tables of Guide to Everything. But I also didn’t finish reading and have five or six new characters I was burning to play. I had one. And I still wish we’d see a lot more optional and variant rules for Dungeon Masters. Advice on Session Zeroes are all well and good, but that’s information you could find on a dozen blogs or YouTube advice channels and all over Reddit. Rules on mass combat, other methods of gaining experience, variant crit & fumbling rules and the like will have a much larger audience in an official book.
But if everyone who gets this book ends up with one beloved character and plays that character for six or even eighteen months, then that’s pretty good for a gaming book. And unlike past editions, every subclass here will probably see play at a few tables. There’s no options that will never see use and only exist to fill pages.
Shameless Plugs
If you liked this article, you can support me and encourage future reviews. My disposable income, which is necessary to buy RPG products, is entirely dependent on my sales. Seriously. After returning to work after being unemployed for 4 months (in part due to Covid-19) I’ve found myself quarantined after a potential exposure and unable to work for another fortnight. My finances and ability to pay for books to review is dependant on sales.
I have a number of PDF products on the DMs Guild website, including Who’s Doomed, a book of 5e stat blocks of darklords for the Ravenloft campaign setting, which is a huge passion product. And if it sells well, I’ll add additional darklords to the product. And it’s newly released companion Allies Against the Night, which takes classic Ravenloft heroes and makes them into sidekicks.
Additionally, the revision of my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding is on DriveThurRPG, available for purchase as a PDF or Print on Demand! (And now in colour!) The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
Plus, I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic! The art of which can also be put on cloth masks.
The second hardcover campaign setting adapting a plane from Magic the Gathering to the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Mythical Adventures of Theros was released in July 2020. The physical release was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the digital release on DnDBeyond.com came a few weeks earlier, maintaining the original street date. Which was a nice way to satisfy anyone eagerly awaiting the book or had preordered the product.
Theros follows the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica as a physical 5e D&D book, although there were a number of other PDF releases prior that can still be found for free on the DMsGuild under the “Plane Shift” label, which adapt other MtG planes. Mixing the D&D chocolate with the MtG peanut butter. (The reverse will also happen in the summer of 2021 when the MtG Core Set is being replaced by a Forgotten Realms themed set. Which might be the first MtG cards I buy since 1997.)
Image Copyright WotC
What It Is
Mythical Adventures of Theros is a 256-page hardcover product with an alternate cover limited to game stores. (Or game stores with online stores like Miniature Market) Mythical Adventures of Theros describes the Ancient Greece-themed land of Theros. Like all 5th Edition D&D products, it’s full colour, although the trade dress of this product is fairly different and the whole product has a slightly different feel. Wizards is going to greater effort to make each of their products look distinct while still instantly being identifiable as 5e books. Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica it uses a heavy amount of art recycled from Magic cards; however, if you’re not a Magic player, you’d never know.
The new mechanic—because every new D&D hardcover has to have a brand new mechanical hook—is the supernatural gifts. There are nine gifts, each of which is kinda-sorta equivalent to a feat, as you can choose to have a feat in place of one. There is also the new Piety subsystem, which is a variant of the faction mechanic from Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Dragon Heist, which measures how much a god favours a particular hero. Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, this book assumes a specific tone for your campaigns: the adventuring party are the champions of a god—or number of gods—doing great tasks in their name(s).
Rounding out the book are five new (or reprinted) PC races, the centaur, leonid (lion-person), minotaur, satyr and triton; two new subclasses, the bard college of eloquence and the paladin oath of glory; and the athlete background. It ends with forty-odd new monsters plus three “Mythic” monsters that make use of the also brand new Mythic rules.
As mentioned, Theros is a setting based on Ancient Greece, or rather the Greece of the surviving myths and legends. As the gods play a significant role in the setting, Theros is less “ancient Greece” and more akin to the Disney take on Hercules. Or, dating myself, like the cheesy ’90s TV Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. Theros isn’t a true world. The land on the accompanying map is pretty much the entire world, as beyond the known region is a small unexplored wilderness that ends with a void. (Is this typical of Magic planes? Was Ravnica like that as well and it just not mentioned?)
The fifteen described deities most map nicely to the known Greek gods, or related mythological figures (such as Athreos, god of passage, being an analogue of the Charon, boatman of the river Styx). Presumably they also have some tie to the Magic the Gathering mana colours as well, but that’s not clear in this book and my MtG lore is too limited to make a decent guess—especially as how my guess on how the guilds of Ravnica mapped to the colours of mana was completely off. Possibly five high gods, each related to one colour and then ten blended gods? I’d have loved a “behind the curtain” sidebar on how that aspect of the lore.
The Good
Image Copyright WotC
The flavour of the book is excellent. Everyone knows Greek mythology to some degree. It’s familiar but a type of era that hasn’t been explored much in D&D prior. Mythical Adventures of Theros draws from the same archetypes, but presents a more fantastic and slightly sanitized version of Greek Mythology, while retaining some of the grey morality as any god could be either a patron or an antagonist. Because it is similar to but not literally magical Ancient Greece, this also allows it to surprise people who are deeply familiar with Greek mythology while also allows Dungeon Masters to tell their own adaptations of classic myths, perhaps with a twist. And it allows people to fudge historical details, and handwave those discrepancies away as being how Theros differs from actual Greece. Like how the statues and buildings are all clean white and not garishly painted; Theros is how we imagine Ancient Greece and not how Ancient Greece actually was.
The hook of playing larger-than-life heroic figures is appealing. D&D often has a power fantasy element, and being mythical heroes like Hercules, Achilles, Perseus, or Theseus is a very attractive idea. And the Grecian era works with this idea of mythical heroes more than many other settings and worlds. That said, the base mechanics of playing the champion of a god or a hero that is beyond mortal could easily be adapted to other settings. You could easily port it over to the Realms and use it for playing a Chosen of a god (as seen in the Sundering event). This means even if you don’t want the setting, the Piety rules and heroic boons can be borrowed.
The divine gifts are also easy to customize, as they’re basically feats. This was an excellent bar to set the power level of the boons, especially as many DMs let players start with a free feat, and because its a known quantity, it’s easy to homebrew. It also means you could just let someone boost one of ability scores, such as letting the Hercules wannabe double down on Strength.
Each of the racial entries includes how to calculate their height and weight in the racial traits, rather than a seperate section later in the book (which is occasionally forgotten with new races). This is minor but I like it enough to call it out.
Unsurprisingly, there’s lots of new monsters. With 50 pages of new critters, this doubles as a big book of monsters. This makes sense, as Magic the Gathering is known for having ample numbers of summoned foes, meaning there’s plenty of art for monsters that can be appropriated for this product. And given classic Greek mythology was used to inspire so much of the D&D bestiary there’s lots of neat variants for existing foes. This is very useful, as DMs often pick monsters for adventures or encounters based on their lore or how they fit into the narrative, and more variants means they can work at different level bands or have powers that surprise experienced players. It’s pretty handy to have a CR 12 hydra (in addition to the CR 8 in the Monster Manual) to give tough adventurers a familiar foe.
The monster section also gives information on incorporating some classic D&D monsters into the setting. These are mostly explaining the lore of Grecian monsters that don’t receive a new entry and stat block, like the basilisk or cyclops. But this is still good, as one of my complaints of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica was not knowing how many D&D monsters named in the world actually fit in or how they looked. Also in the book are eight new magic items. This includes the flying chariot and a helm of the gods. Classic, iconic stuff. Or molten bronze that covers your body like a second skin but functions as a breastplate. (Very timely, given I just finished reading Jim Butcher’s novel Battle Ground). Also in this section are five new artifacts. I love this! Artifacts are too often a forgotten element of the game, and godly magic items feel like a big part of the setting and idea of mythic adventures. These are pretty cool and have extra powers tied to a character’s piety score, so the more closely connected you are with your god the more badass your unique magic hammer becomes.
Image Copyright WotC
The Bad
This book just contains the framework of a setting. The big nations/ Poleis (read: city-states) each get around 3 pages. Other locations get less. Entire cities, like Neolantin, get one or two sentences. The entire gazetteer is just 25-pages. Like Ravnica, more effort and pages are put into how to tell adventures and story hooks—with each god getting a four-section complete with an adventure/ encounter location. The book gives you ample ideas for adventures and adventure hooks and then requires you to create a setting and locations for said hooks. Which is problematic for DMs who might be bursting with story ideas but have few ideas for interesting locations.
Image Copyright WotC
Like Ravnica the forced campaign tone grates on me. It’s not letting you make the setting your own, but instead it’s telling you how to use the setting, which I instinctively chafe at; I like to go through a list of different campaign ideas and find the one that excites me the most. The hook of playing mythical champions is a good campaign idea… once. But there’s so many other ideas for Ancient Greece. Hercules is all well and good, but what about the rest of the Argonauts who aren’t blessed? What about Odysseus who isn’t blessed by the gods but cursed? Or a Xena: Warrior Princess who flouts the gods and is a mortal champion.
The setting itself also feels small, as it is basically just Greece. There’s no nearby Italy or Egypt. No Troy to besiege or invading Persia allowing you to replicate the battle of Thermopylae. This applies both as locations for adventure as well as playing anyone from a non-Greek culture or ethnicity. You can’t play a Celt or Viking that travelled from far away, or even a nearby Egyptian from just across the sea. You can cram a lot of adventure into Greece, but people should know ahead of time this is a bubble setting.
While the idea of mythic monsters—unique monsters of legend that are a step beyond legendary creatures—are neat, the book only has three mythic creatures. There’s not a lot of examples to draw on or use to make your own mythic foes. I was quite excited to see what made these monsters special and it was a big draw of the book for me. But mythic monsters just have a single trait that basically lets them regain all their hp, and unlock a few new legendary actions. It’s basically just a two-stage video game boss fight. Inarguably useful, but not particularly innovative or requiring a new keyword or tag. (In Rime of the Frostmaiden, the goddess there is basically a three-stage boss fight and requires no new “mythic” keyword or sidebar.)
Like Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, which completely stole the thunder for a possible Planescape/ Sigil product, this book makes it slightly harder to design a Dragonlance product. The Tyranny of Dragons adventure already took some of Dragonlance’s thunder, but it still had the idea of mortal champions of the gods as a campaign through-line. Immortal conflict by proxy on the mortal world. But now that box has been checked.
The Ugly
Let’s get to what will undoubtedly be a controversial complaint: this book is pure cultural appropriation: people from outside a culture using or exploiting said culture to sell a product. Yes, there’s a “Cultural Consultant” listed but there’s no other Greek names in the credits.
There’s no good definition of when cultural appropriation applies. Informally this is when “whites people” borrow elements of “non-white” culture, but I’ve also seen it described as when colonial cultures use or benefit from colonized cultures. Both definitions would apply, as Greeks weren’t considered “white” or “Caucasian” until well into the middle decades of 20th century, and targeted by systemic discrimination by North America for much of the same period. And the Greeks spent much of modern history being the oppressed vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and subject to severe ethnic and religious persecution, with Greece only becoming an independent nation in 1830. Greeks were the oppressed victims of imperialization. Meanwhile, Greece is famous for having their culture stolen and robbed by other European explorers and archeologists. The most noteworthy example being the Elgin Marbles but the number of Greek statues, vases, and other historical artifacts held in overseas museums is staggering. But it feels different because everyone knows about Greek mythology and Greek philosophers, with the history of Ancient Greece often taught in schools. Mythical Adventures of Theros is a heck of a lot like doing a book on a fantastical East Indian-themed world with a focus on Hindu-esque mythology but having no Indian writers. (And after watching Baahubali I totally want to play in fantasy India and would buy that book, because that looked freakin’ awesome. But I never will because that’s not my culture and I have no right to use it as my playground.)
Image Copyright WotC
The Awesome
I love the art in this product. Specifically the star pattern on divine beings, which instantly identifies them as non-mortal while also just looking cool. It’s not particularly original, as anyone who reads Marvel comics will identify it as the Eternity look, but it’s still a great way to convey divine/ celestial power.
Each of the gods has a short half-page on their myths. These are brief little synopsis of the god’s tales, but they’re evocative and iconic in just the right way. And there’s lots of similar little myths and stories tucked away in sidebars throughout the book. This really helps capture the “mythic” tone of the book and the idea of a land filled with legends that are (probably) true.
Not all the monsters statblocks are generic variants. Some are individuals rather than a sub-type, like the harpy Aphemia or the surprising CR 19 Polukranos hydra. Which feels appropriate as so many Greek monsters weren’t actual species but individuals.
The sphinx entry has a handful of riddles. This is such a small addition that makes the monster that much more usable on the fly. I can think of five times I could have used this.
The chimera is designed to be customizable, so you can mix-and-match heads and other body parts. This is just cool.
It’s nice to see the return of nymphs. These are a classical monster who are fairly well known but have purposely been omitted from 5e to date. While not the traditional D&D nymphs with their particular idiosyncrasies (blinding beauty) these are more mythologically accurate, which feels more appropriate while also conveniently being less sexist.
Similarly, it’s nice to see the hippocamp again, which I’m surprised hadn’t shown up before. A very useful addition for aquatic campaigns.
Final Thoughts
I really wanted to enjoy Mythical Adventures of Theros. While it relies too heavily on the single hook and primary campaign concept for my tastes, that hook is different enough to be desirable while also filling a narrative gap otherwise present in the game. Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece is such a familiar and yet relatively underused setting for Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
But the content of the book just felt a little sparse. There are only three new mythic monsters. There are five holy artifacts: barely enough to fill a single party (and if you have a six player table, someone doesn’t get a cool magic toy). There’s not even one artifact per god! There are only two new subclasses and a couple races we haven’t seen before. There barely feels like enough world for the standard level 1 to 14 storyline adventure, let alone multiple tales. There are more than enough hooks to get you started and have a couple adventures assisting a god or two while opposing another few gods, but little to sustain you after. It feels less like a book for a campaign and more the book for an extended adventure. A mini-campaign.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if WotC hadn’t released Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount a few scant months before this product, which showed you can do a big expansive world guide while also having numerous plot hooks and multiple campaign threads.
Now, the limited scope isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It depends what you’re looking for out of the product. If you just want to do a quick visit to an Ancient Greece style world for a mini-campaign or quick adventure, then this product will work just fine. If you want help with a series of one-shots or short adventures to hook Magic the Gathering players into D&D then this will work as well. And if you’re a fan of Greek mythology and Ancient Greece already (or the aforementioned cheesy TV shows set in the era), you probably know enough already to fill out the gaps in the setting and flesh out its locations. In that regard, Theros is better than Ravnica as the source of inspiration is more accessible, and there are numerous books, websites, television shows, movies, and even video games that can be turned to for inspiration.
But if you want to spend a lengthy period in a Greco-Roman world with multiple campaigns then this product might not be your best option. You might be better served looking at Arkadia, which is also small but features a larger world. Or Odyssey of the Dragonlords, which has a variation on the Grecian theme and is also a much larger setting. This gives you more room to explore and more mortal factions to generate stories.
I don’t think Mythical Adventures of Theros is a bad book. And as a bonus book done primarily by the MtG team and freelancers rather than the D&D team, it’s a nice extra bit of D&D in the early part of the year. It’s good at what it does and you can easily buy this book and run a decently lengthed heroic campaign. But it also didn’t blow me away. It just compares unfavourably to other campaign settings I’ve seen, including the prior D&D book Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. And as the third of three official campaign setting books released in the last eight or so months, it is easily the weakest despite bringing so many new ideas to the table.
Shameless Plugs
If you liked this article, you can support me and encourage future reviews. My disposable income, which is necessary to buy RPG products, is entirely dependent on my sales. Seriously. Having only recently returning to work after being unemployed for 4 months, in part due to Covid-19, my finances and ability to pay for books to review is dependant on sales.
Additionally, the revision of my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding is on DriveThurRPG, available for purchase as a PDF or Print on Demand! (And now in colour!) The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
Plus, I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic! The art of which can also be put on cloth masks.
