Level Up A5E is part of the reason Tales of the Valiant did not launch as strongly as it should have. Many of the "Alt 5E" players were already on Level Up, and when ToV did not introduce many new features, people stayed with this system. I don't blame them, and I was one. I had everything I wanted here: the nods to the old school, the challenge, the improvements, the support for the pillars of play, and the better martial classes without resorting to silly "tricks" with weapon properties.
Many felt, "We have A5E, why do we need ToV?"
ToV and D&D 2024 got specialized weapon fighting wrong. Putting "special tricks" on the melee weapons is lame and increases complexity for everyone. Making these moves, fighting styles that martial classes get, and tracking a stamina resource, is far more the "5E way" of doing things. A5E does fighting styles right. Martial classes are fun in A5E, offering options and a new tracked resource. The martial characters and half-martial characters in this game are fantastic fun to play.
A lot of what made D&D 4E special is in this game, and you see the influences. There is a "battle commander" type class, and the 4E races are represented well. You can use this to play a 4E-style Nerrath campaign and have everything you need right there. The system is the best of the 2014 5E and 2008 4E systems, with an influence from the OSR.
Fatigue has real meaning, and pop-up healing can doom your character permanently. Rangers are needed, and aren't just "ranged light fighters" like they are in 2024 D&D. You need rangers to survive the wilderness. Oh, and they finally fixed Goodberry.
Many of the stupid problems in D&D were addressed four years ago, and they fixed them all in a complete rewrite of the system and the SRD, just to remove the OGL. A5E is like D&D with a sanity upgrade and quality of life features.
Oh, and the safety tools presented in the book? They actually went out and got permission to use them. Whether you like safety tools or not, thank you for asking for permission and mentioning that you did in the book, along with who created them. I don't use them, but doing the homework and giving community attribution for elements like this means something.
Your heritage (race) gains an advancement at the 10th level. Your culture (where you grew up) matters. Your background (job) can advance through adventures. The destiny system elevates the inspiration system to the next level, enabling you to achieve long-term goals and reap benefits from pursuing what drives you. D&D's inspiration system seems lame and too "toggle switch" compared to this.
Everything in this game has a deeper layer of depth and detail, which is incredibly satisfying.
With so many walking away from D&D and 5E, and the rest of the D&D crowd handing Wizards the fantasy monopoly and creating the next litigious "video game company" out of them, it will kill the hobby. We already saw Wizards try their hand at a form of "software patents" with the OGL revision, where other VTT platforms "could not do spell animations" and similar nonsense. More of that is coming, and while it will make the D&D YouTube content creators happy, they will get more outrage clicks; the rest of the tabletop hobby will be flushed down the toilet.
I refuse to hand one company a monopoly on gaming, "just because it is easier to play there." I know where this all ends up, and I can't do that and have a clear conscience.
A5E falls into a "Niche 5E" market, and with 5E in general slowly becoming "the D&D Beyond game," it makes me kind of sad to see honest innovation marginalized. Even ToV is like "hold your nose D&D," a sort of facsimile edition that is "hot swappable" for 2024 D&D, but with few core differences, mainly in the areas of class design and subclass power progression. ToV is the better game, but A5E went much, much farther to address core structural problems in 5E, such as the lack of meaning in social and exploration, and the dullness and weakness of martial characters.
Death means something in A5E.
Death means nothing in ToV, D&D 2014, and 2024.
A5E is the 5E that the hardcore players would be playing if they hadn't all jumped ship to the OSR and Shadowdark. There is a level of maturity here, the silly cosplay elements are not in my face, and there is a grittiness and realism to the rules that tell you "this is still a dungeon crawling game."
It is not playing baristas, rescuing corgis, ripping off Harry Potter, visiting planar socialist utopias, or breaking into a goblin birthday party to murder them all like in the new Keep on the Borderlands. The tone of anything D&D these days is like a narcissistic cosplay murder hobo simulator.
And honestly, all those diverse and special citizens of the Keep? If this were original D&D, they would be killed and looted, too. I hate this trend of "art code" characters as "default good." It's more inclusive to have every character potentially be a hero or a villain and let them play the roles they want.
A5E is the only version of 5E that I miss. The design sensitivities were close to how I saw 5E when it came out, and it makes nods to the old-school gamers. While ToV is new and exciting, it doesn't feel that much different from either 2014 or 2024 D&D.
A5E hit differently.
It is a strange game from an alternate universe where 5E is still cool.
A universe I wish I were in.
No comments:
Post a Comment