Quote from: Saplatt;1011666Ugh. 4th largest section of the entire book. What an incredible waste of valuable space!

Its really YMMV. Some players are HORRRRRRRIBLE at coming up with character names. So something like this is actually a great boon.
Same with the sort of lifepath/background section. Totally useless to some players.

And thats whats great agout the book. Theres alot of stuff in there thats useful to those who struggle for an idea or just need a little spart to light the fires of imagination.

Quote from: Dumarest;1011672What sort of names are on those 18 pages? Seems like it would be very difficult to make them interesting as well as useful. They would have to be run of the mill, like Carlos the Dwarf, and thus nothing anyone needs on a list; or else fanciful, like Everglade Springsong Elfinpantz, and thus useless to anyone who doesn't swing that way; or finally just made-up sound combinations, like Kurmbor the Orc, which I have a hard time seeing anyone clamoring for help with.  Got some examples? 18 pages is a lot of names.

50 names each female and male for each race. Then usually 50 more for the races clan, family, etc. Exceptions being Half-Orcs and Tieflings.
Elves also get 50 child names. Tieflings get a Virtue mane. So aside from the half-orc each race gets 150 names.
Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Orc, and Tiefling. 1000 total?

Humans are broken down by language more or less. Also 50 each male and female. No clan/family names though.
Arabic, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, English, French, German, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Mesoamerican, Niger-Congo, Norse, Polynesian, Roman, Slavic, and Spanish. 1700 total?

So a fairly broad spread. Enough to get up and running for a PC or a quick NPC. 2700 total???

But as noted above. Very YMMV for usefulness. Some will never need it. Some might need it once in a while. Others may use it quite a bit. Like any other quickgen aide.

update: I missed the Tiefling Virtue name so added that in and recalculated.

I'm not a 5e player, but a big list of names is evergreen and will probably turn out to be one of the most useful parts of the book. Always great to have such a list at hand!

I actually kind of wish they used more pages and gave us some family names for the real world ones.  I was very happy with the name lists -- helps with quickly generating an NPC.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1011330You guys are really reaching to make "players' options are really [bleepity] long term bang for your buck" an issue.

I can see fearsomepirate's argument. What seems like it will explode with replay value often ends up shelved because you're not running or playing enough games to dig deep into the material. I still get them, but on retrospect I also noticed the same small rate of return.

Thus this observation is a high crime and must be pilloried! Bring it, bitches! YOLO!

I DMed 4e for most of its run, so I think maybe 5 years? I bought:

PHB 1-3
DMG
MM 1 & 2
Heroes of the Elemental Chaos
Martial, Divine, and Primal powers

Nobody ever used HotEC. None of the PHB3 classes ever got used, and I think maybe only a couple feats ever did. PHB2 got a bit more use. I think I had an Invoker, a Warden, and a Druid, and Goliath definitely showed up. I don't think more than three or four abilities from any power source book ever got used. If you're playing tons of short games that run 2 or 3 sessions, I can see them being a good buy, but when you stick with the same character for a year or two, unless you keep playing that same edition for 15 years, you're not going to get much out of it. I ran the game for five years and saw at least a dozen different characters, and 90% of everything players did came from PHB 1.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1012157I ran the game for five years and saw at least a dozen different characters, and 90% of everything players did came from PHB 1.

I'm running 4e currently. I soon realised I could just bring a PHB and the adventure, and be able to deal with 99% of queries.

So far since buying Xanathar's book, I've only actually used one part of it at the actual table.

Want to know which part?

The names.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1012164So far since buying Xanathar's book, I've only actually used one part of it at the actual table.

Want to know which part?

The names.

Thats funny. and... er... same here. I needed a quick name for a NPC and used the book.

Im 100% certain later I'll be using other parts of it. Kefra is allready using the druids animals by region tables and Jan has been curious about the Arcane Archer path for the fighter. Eventually I'll make good use of some of those common magic items. The rest. Who knows? Never know when you'll need a wilderness check and that sections use.

So far two of my players have taken Feats from it, and I have also used the names table.

Currently I am very tempted to try and work Heward's Handy Spice Pouch into the game somehow as well.

I've used a couple of the Downtime activities in the AL ToA adventure, the names for NPC's encountered (it was odd, I've been getting meet a lot of fellow adventuring parties.  I need to switch up the dice) and the tool proficiency combo system.

Also, one of my players has used the spells in the book.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1012164So far since buying Xanathar's book, I've only actually used one part of it at the actual table.

Want to know which part?

The names.

Names tables can be super useful, especially if they're well designed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1013187Names tables can be super useful, especially if they're well designed.

They are, especially listing a bunch for each culture.

oops. I missed that Tieflings get a Virtue name. To that brings the races up to 1000 names and a grand total of 2700 names.

Updated my earlier post to correct that.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1013188They are, especially listing a bunch for each culture.

Yup.

Lion & Dragon, like Dark Albion, has name tables that are really based on the most popular names in 15th Century England, Scotland and Wales.

Welp. Used the name table in Sunday night's game. This is destined to be the most-derided, most-used part of the book.