Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything offers a host of new options for Dungeons & Dragons, and our journey through those options is accompanied by the notes of the wizard Tasha. Creator of the spell
Written for players and Dungeon Masters alike, this book offers options to enhance characters and campaigns in any D&D world, whether you’re adventuring in Greyhawk, another official D&D setting, or a world of your own creation.
What You’ll Find Within
Chapter 1 brims with new features and subclasses for the classes in the Player’s Handbook, and it presents the artificer class, a master of magical invention. The chapter also offers feats for groups that use them.
Chapter 2 contains patrons who can become one of the driving forces behind your group’s adventures.
Chapter 3 sparkles with new magical options, including spells, magical spellbooks, artifacts, and magic-infused tattoos—available for both player characters and monsters to use.
Chapter 4 holds various rules that a DM may incorporate into a campaign, including rules on sidekicks who level up with the player characters and on supernatural environments. The chapter ends with a collection of puzzles ready to be deployed in any adventure that the DM would like to spice up with some puzzling.
It’s All Optional
Everything in this book is optional. Each group, guided by the DM, decides which of these options, if any, to incorporate into a campaign. You can use some, all, or none of them. We encourage you to choose the ones that fit best with your campaign’s story and with your group’s style of play.
Whatever options you choose to use, this book relies on the rules in the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide, and it can be paired with the options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and other D&D books.
Unearthed Arcana
Much of the material in this book originally appeared in Unearthed Arcana, a series of online articles we publish to explore rules that might officially become part of the game. Some Unearthed Arcana offerings don’t end up resonating with fans and are set aside. The Unearthed Arcana material that inspired the options in the following chapters was well received and, thanks to feedback from thousands of D&D fans, has been refined into the official forms presented here.
Ten Rules to Remember
1. The DM Adjudicates the Rules
The rules of D&D cover many of the twists and turns that come up in play, but the possibilities are so vast that the rules can’t cover everything. When you encounter something that the rules don’t cover or if you’re unsure how to interpret a rule, the DM decides how to proceed, aiming for a course that brings the most enjoyment to your whole group.
2. Exceptions Supersede General Rules
General rules govern each part of the game. For example, the combat rules tell you that melee weapon attacks use Strength and ranged weapon attacks use Dexterity. That’s a general rule, and a general rule is in effect as long as something in the game doesn’t explicitly say otherwise.
The game also includes elements—class features, spells, magic items, monster abilities, and the like—that sometimes contradict a general rule. When an exception and a general rule disagree, the exception wins. For example, if a feature says you can make melee weapon attacks using your Charisma, you can do so, even though that statement disagrees with the general rule.
3. Advantage and Disadvantage
Even if more than one factor gives you advantage or disadvantage on a roll, you have it only once, and if you have advantage and disadvantage on the same roll, they cancel each other.
4. Reaction Timing
Certain game features let you take a special action, called a reaction, in response to an event. Making opportunity attacks and casting the
5. Proficiency Bonus
If your proficiency bonus applies to a roll, you can add the bonus only once to the roll, even if multiple things in the game say your bonus applies. Moreover, if more than one thing tells you to double or halve your bonus, you double it only once or halve it only once before applying it. Whether multiplied, divided, or left at its normal value, the bonus can be used only once per roll.
6. Bonus Action Spells
If you want to cast a spell that has a casting time of 1 bonus action, remember that you can’t cast any other spells before or after it on the same turn, except for cantrips with a casting time of 1 action.
7. Concentration
As soon as you start casting a spell or using a special ability that requires concentration, your concentration on another effect ends instantly.
8. Temporary Hit Points
Temporary hit points aren’t cumulative. If you have temporary hit points and receive more of them, you don’t add them together, unless a game feature says you can. Instead, you decide which temporary hit points to keep.
9. Round Down
Whenever you divide or multiply a number in the game, round down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater.
10. Have Fun
You don’t need to know every rule to enjoy D&D, and each group has its own style—different ways it likes to tell stories and to use the rules. Embrace what your group enjoys most. In short, follow your bliss!
My dear, sweet, lucky reader,
You know me. You’ve heard of my exploits. You’ve spread my titles: Natasha the Dark, Hura of Ket, Baba Yaga’s daughter, witch par excellence, and, if you’re not trying to impress, just plain Tasha.
For longer than I care to confess, I’ve sought out mysteries and wonders that beggar description. (Well, wonders that beggar the descriptions of those not raised in an immortal’s dancing hut, as I was.) Within this tome, you’ll find a sampling of the curiosities I’ve documented during my travels, including my exploits with the infamous Company of Seven; my studies with the original Mad Archmage, Zagig Yragerne; and my correspondences with world-hopping (and sanctimonious) luminaries like Mordenkainen. Unfortunately, at Mordenkainen’s request, a panel of experts from the Greyhawk Guild of Wizardry—which I’m assured is an esteemed center of learning and not at all an elaborate scam to swindle highborn rubes—has been granted editorial oversight of this work. As a result, I understand that some of my “less traditional” findings have been saddled with various rules, for the supposed “safe continuance of the mystical arts and, indeed, all life in the multiverse.”
No matter. Through a combination of irrefutable arguments and spells, I’ve convinced the editorial board to furnish me with this advance copy of their work.
In reviewing it, I’ve added a variety of helpful marginalia. I expect that—with the inclusion of my insights, guidance, threats, and critiques—clever minds will have all they need to advance their accounting of the multiverse’s infinite audacities. And even if not, read on and maybe you’ll learn something my archmage semi-peers are terrified of you learning.
I’m drawing back the curtain of reality for you, reader dearest. Summon your courage, and take a peek.
- Tasha