What would you think of a book with all character options included?

[Myth27]

Imagine a book with no rules, simply a list of all the possible Races, classes and backgrounds of all the official material published so far. Basically everything that you could possibly need to create a character all in one place. Would you buy? Would wizard of the coast ever make one? Does it make no sense for some reason I’m missing ?
I feel that right now the character options are too “spread out” and hard to find

[nickl_2000]

I would love it, but it is never gong to happen. Why would WOTC publish something that would make the bulk of their players only buy one book as opposed to two or more?

The rules are all in the SRD. So, players would just print that and but the player option book.

[MrStabby]

It would be a huge book. Every race and class. Every beast you can summon or wildshape into, every creature you can shape shift or polymorph into, every feat, every spell...

[False God]

A book with all Races/Classes/Backgrounds? Yeah sure. I imagine it wouldn't be quite as big as it sounds. But it's clear WotC is set on selling "combo books" that include a little bit of everything rather than "Big Book O'Monsters" or "Big Book O'Classes" and so on.

[intregus]

I can see this after they're done with 5e and starting on 6e.

But before then there is no point since as soon as you make more content you already need another book.

[Jerrykhor]

Use a character creation phone app, most of them have all the official character options available, including some UA like Revised Ranger. You can also use a fantastic app called 5e Character. It has all the official race, class, and feats for your viewing.

[Wizard_Lizard]

It’d play merry hell with PHB+1 and eventually they’d make new classes and races, but I’d love it.

[Contrast]

I wouldn't buy it (I already own them and have in many cases already bought them multiple times for physical and digital copies).

If you want everything all in one place, that place already exists - D&D Beyond. For the purposes of character creation, for me at least, a book would be a substantial downgrade from that.

Would Wizards ever make this book? Probably not for reasons already mentioned - they want you to buy all the books individually, they want to continue releasing books after this 'all encompassing book', they would worry about the backlash from older players for releasing a book primarily consisting of already owned content. While I don't personally agree, one of the main complaints I see from people online in terms of book releases is about the lack of content for 5E - I can only imagine how those people would feel if they spent time and effort producing a book that was literally just repackaged old releases.

[Chronos]

Another reason they wouldn't is because of the reason behind PHB+1 in AL play: It makes it a lot easier to balance if you only have to worry about interactions within each book, rather than between them. In an all-books environment (which this would effectively be), you can look for "This ability from this race, combined with this ability from this class and this other ability from this other class, plus this feat, combine to make an unstoppable character". With the options split into multiple books, especially with most of the races in books containing only races, the number of combinations is decreased by multiple orders of magnitude, and you only need to worry about combinations with other things in the same book (which will often not even be possible) or with PHB options.

[Dungeon-noob]

It would also go out of date pretty quickly: the next book likely includes at least something that players can pick. And if that isn't in this book, then this book has no purpose.

[Spiritchaser]

It should probably only exist in digital format, and come with a free update subscription.

AL can just deal with it. Or forbid it. Or monster bar specific combos if they feel like it.

I’d pay for it

[KittenMagician]

i personally am already a proponent of this happening. it would be an opportune time to fix problematic things such as ranger (officially update it), weaker subclasses (berserker, assassin, etc), and put the races and subclasses all in one place. they could also condense/fix spells from multiple books.

i think a major selling point for it could be maybe add some new races, subraces, and subclasses found only in this book. it would also be a good spot to add in any UA stuff (make it official) and condense feats or add new feats (i personally want more racial feats for non phb races (kobolds and kenku need some love))

i would honestly buy this book as it would be easier to hand this one book to a new player or even making a character myself rather than flipping back and forth between 2-4 books just to make one character (race and base class found in PHB, subrace in MToF, subclass in new theros book, and feats found in XGtE) and only having to snag one book would be great. they could probably even make it pretty pricey (maybe $80-$100 rather than the normal $50)

they wont ever do this though for reasons stated above by other people but they could do a similar condensing of monsters for a new monster book and DM stuff (traps, tips, and magic gear) for a new DM book and essentially have the Core Books Revamped ($100 a piece) i think the ease of finding different things would make this a pretty great idea. adventure modules would still be a thing and would still sell, and setting guides could still be a thing and still sell as they provide more than just player options.

*edit: AL can eat it. WotC should still promote D&D play in stores but AL is stupid and its obnoxious rules and restrictions suck and take some of the fun from the game (since artificer only appears in 1 non-PHB book you can't play any race as this class unless said race (or subrace) appears in the PHB or this 1 other book which is stupid). AL, go away, nobody likes you.

[Anonymouswizard]

I can see this after they're done with 5e and starting on 6e.

But before then there is no point since as soon as you make more content you already need another book.

Yeah, this. If there's such a book it won't come out until the last year of the game at best, and will mean that 5e is basically over. Which is fine, there's a lot of streamlining I'd like to see in 6e, but does mean this book is at best a sign that WotC don't care about 5e anymore.

What I think we might see is a 5.1 edition someone in the next five years, which replaces the Player's Handbook with an updated one, with some tweaked and optional rules, some additional races and subclasses, and a some other changes. Nothing to make it incompatible with your existing books, and but updating the other 'core rulebooks', but serving as an excuse to replace things they've grown to dislike.

[Warlush]

It’d play merry hell with PHB+1 and eventually they’d make new classes and races, but I’d love it.

Yeah it would make AL much more attractive.

[Tanarii]

Meh. 99% of content that's interesting, balanced, and usable in a not-bizzarro campaign is in two books already, PHB and XTGE. Which, not coincidentally, were the only two books I allowed at my tables.

Volos is fine if you're running a monster madness campaign. Ditto Mords. SCAG is campaign specific and the content everyone wants to use is wildly unbalanced anyway.

[Anonymouswizard]

Meh. 99% of content that's interesting, balanced, and usable in a not-bizzarro campaign is in two books already, PHB and XTGE. Which, not coincidentally, were the only two books I allowed at my tables.

Volos is fine if you're running a monster madness campaign. Ditto Mords. SCAG is campaign specific and the content everyone wants to use is wildly unbalanced anyway.

You're forgetting the Artificer, which I suspect will find it's way into the next XGtE book, although it's balance is probably arguable. However it is a fun and different option, to the point where my rule is 'PhB plus Artificer plus a case by case basis'. The entire Eberron book is in play if we're playing Eberron, otherwise only the Artificer is automatically allowed.

I mean, we'll likely see more reprints down the line to mitigate some of the limitations of the PhB+1 rule, like how XGtE reprinted silver SCAG, but I'm not sure we'll get XGtE2.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I mean most of my pcs are monstrous. But I never get to use those so that's kinda irrelevant. Most of my players only use PHB or eberron as those are the two books I own, and anyhow, most use DnDbeyond Basic rules for their characters.

[Bosh]

Would be good as a kind of capstone 5.1ed with a few rules tweaks but we'd only see it as the last 5e book.

[Makorel]

I do have something like that but the problem is that it's a website, not a book. Certain information is more easily digested as a database or wiki than in dead tree form. The only issue is that D&D Beyond requires you to buy all the sources for your database even if you have the books.