So I see people talking about how the new class options are bad and to nerfed and I see some people talking about how the new race stuff seems bad but I don't see people talking about how the rest of the book seems underbaked.

so tashas adds the following: new subclasses, new class options, new race changes, group patrons, new magic items/spells, sidekicks, parlaying with the monster, environmental hazards, and puzzles.

I think that outside of sidekicks everything else in the book is underbaked. I am not going to talk about the new subclasses but I will talk about the rest.

the new class options are just not enough. the system was advertised as a way to customize your class. but it is mostly about replacing class features that are bad or adding new class features/ expanding old ones. and to be honest this just doesn't help. most of the replacement options are just more powerful, which is welcome but removes any choice. I feel their new features would be better if every replacement got 2 options of equal, power. one witch follows the theme of upscaling and correcting the old feature and another that is a true alt choice.

the Race changes are weird. I like the Respect part. although I feel there should have been rules for armor proficiencies, I know it only affects one race but that race has been directly buffing because of these new rules. if armor proficiencies up to medium were on the table it would bring dwarves down and in line with some of the other races. it wouldn't fix everything but it would help.

the second part of the race changes is the Custom Lineage. it was hyped up as a way to make interesting new races and heavily customizing your race, but it was just a buffed V human. I feel this could have worked if there was a set of special feats meant for this system or something like that. a way to truly create a new race or special descendant of a race. to be honest, I would have preferred a system like pathfinders 1e but simpler. once again a feature was promised to do one thing and didn't really do that.

Group patrons, this feels like a repeat of the piety system/renown system. It's great but should have instructions for inexperienced DMs. their system is great until you need to create a patron not listed and have to reverse engineer the rules used to make them. I feel when Wtoc adds a system like this it should be accompanied by some extensive discussion of the design policy/rules for creation to help newer DMS.

Spells. they're just so few non-reprints and the few non-reprints are mostly summoning, don't get me wrong summoning needs more spells and an all-around rework but out of the 21 spells 5 are reprints, and 10 are summoning spells. other areas need attention, and we can see that they know this as the rest of the new spell cover other areas then need more spells, and then there is the part where most of the summoning spells could have been cut and merged into a few.

Customizing spells, this looked like it would be a discussion on things like burning hands and frost fingers, but instead, it was just a blip about flavoring a spell's appearance. I would have loved it if it explained upon the ideas set in the DMG about customizing spells but instead, it is a restating of the "Let players describe their spells how they want" from the same section of the DMG.

Magic items, kinda the opposite of spells. I think tattoos got it good. there are enough of them to satisfy most people but the rest of the Magic items are a bit odd. each of them feels like they're part of a set/group like the tattoos but don't have compliments.

Sidekick, great I feel like they nailed it. but this is mostly because they have been working on this idea for a while and have had 3 major versions now. sidekicks are good because they spent a lot of time getting playtested and iterated on.

Parleying with Monsters, wonderful interesting but just doesn't have enough space. this should have been a chapter or a 6-10 page spread. It should have interactions with social encounter rules and expanded them, not just use these rules, and here are some examples. It's a great idea but that's it. it's the literary equivalent of writing Hero and then 20 examples.

Environmental Hazards I just wish this was most structured. for places like the far realm and fey wilds, this makes sense but for hunted houses, Blessed Radiance, and most of the rest they need more structure. there are some rules in the dmg for other Planes and I wish the rules had something like that for these more structured locations. here is 1 or 2 always-on things and then the tables and special rules. I also wish these rules dived into creating your own special environments and balancing them.

Puzzles, this is what many of the other systems needed. it's well developed and great but I feel it gameifys puzzles a little too much. but this type of development is what most of the other systems needed.

I think almost everything in this book should have been worked on longer.