ToV PDF Thoughts, Part 3

I don't mind a CR+1 game. I have seen a few comments that since ToV's power level is one higher, they have yet to want to play it since 5E, and they don't want to play since 5E is super-heroic in power level. I want to test this since my own playthroughs have confirmed that characters get far too powerful at level 5 and higher, and I get bored of the lack of challenge.

It's important to note that Kobold Press, the company behind ToV, has a proven track record in monster design. They've published three excellent books of CR+1 creatures for their adventures and established solid 5E rules design credentials. They've thoroughly played and tested this version to ensure its balance and enjoyment.

Very few 5E publishers have the experience they have in crafting monsters, adventures, and encounters. KP's business depends on it.

Designing for 5E is no easy task. The game's balance is easily broken, and its loose design allows for a significant amount of broken 1st and 3rd party content. I've witnessed the impact of allowing 'attacks on bonus actions' in a fight, completely ruining many of my low-level encounters. This issue only escalated as the game progressed.

And 5E book after book throws in these sorts of attacks and other unbalanced bonus actions on a whim on everything from races, subclasses, backgrounds, and everywhere else, like giving players candy. This bonus action garbage poisons a character at level one; it feels great and powerful and worsens as the character levels as bonus action attacks start stacking with every other power and attack enhancement.

Much of the 5E content, from 3rd parties and Wizards themselves, is so horribly broken that it only worsens the "overpowered characters" problem. The more books you add, the worse it gets. Wizards broke bounded accuracy in Tasha's because "missing isn't fun," - which fundamentally altered the game and balance going forward.

90% of 5E is the problem with 5E, which gives it a bad reputation. The 5E base books were good, but the amateur designers at Wizards took over as people left, and the game took a turn for the worse. It became power gaming, and the action economy and bounded accuracy systems were abused and broken horribly to where very little mattered except denying the enemy's actions and stacking actions, damage, and power.

Everyone wants to sell books, right?

5E is easily broken, and things you think are minor giveaways for characters are actually game-breaking changes. No book tells you what to look out for; you need to have a few campaigns ruined to learn the ban list, and that is no guarantee that the next thing that comes along won't wreck it all the next time.

I sound negative, but this is a call for sanity and to point out the sheer wall of garbage infecting the 5E ecosystem. Very few reviewers are honest or have the experience to see problems in this massive matrix of interactions and overlapping rules. The general consensus is that "5E is overpowered," we have no idea if these statements are made with third-party content, broken Wizards expansion books, or what.

It is hard to balance a game when the people making it don't care.

ToV feels different and feels like a reset. As people begin to pull things in, the same problems will happen again, but I am more experienced this time. Bonus action attacks are "sus" from any source other than being a monster's unique ability that was never designed for characters.

I will give this one a chance before my 5E books are sold. Many of the junk items will be sold anyway. I know how they broke my game now.

Oh, and Hero Lab needs the new Deep Magic books ASAP. They were designed to work with ToV and should be one of the first added to the app, along with the Tome of Beasts books.

ToV PDF Thoughts, Part 4

Here is a good video talking about the ToV PDF releases for another point of view. A lot a great points are made, check it out, like and subscribe.

ToV PDF Thoughts, Part 2

More thoughts from designing characters and flipping through the ToV PDFs today.

I can understand the people who say, "Nothing special" and ignore this and other Open 5E games. People who are down the river with 5E so far bought into D&D Beyond, and their perceptions of what tabletop gaming is are welded to what they purchased and played with for ten years—I get it. I am bought in over here; this is where I play, I can't create core-book-only characters, etc. Even the perception of the game can be linked to a few power-gaming combos, and without them, it isn't the game anymore.

So why do we need ToV? Because it offers a fresh perspective on tabletop gaming, with unique mechanics and a vibrant community. It's a game system that's not afraid to challenge the status quo, and that's exactly what we need in this changing landscape of D&D.

D&D is changing, and not necessarily for the better. It's becoming more corporate, and the game is being monetized in ways that could harm the community. With the current state of the video game industry, who's to say D&D won't follow this Wall Street path? Could D&D Beyond be shut down or sold? These are real concerns that we need to address.

Who knows?

The tabletop gaming industry has crashed a few times in history. TSR went bankrupt. D&D 4E was a disaster. Xbox and PlayStation these days are on life support, and they could "never fail." Wizards laid off massive amounts of people.

D&D is in the Wall Street AAA gaming space now. It isn't good for third parties, and the "shots were fired" during the OGL fiasco. I do not blame them for making their own cross-compatible games to support the large D&D player base while cultivating their communities of players who choose to play the non-D&D games.

This is the original Paizo Pathfinder 1e strategy, supporting the outgoing 3.5E game (with a CR+1 balance model); we won't know how things will be until D&D 2024(5) comes out and how D&D Beyond monetizes that version of the game. We haven't seen the "next huge mistake" yet, and that will be the thing that forces people to leave that game and support the one they started with—which will be an independent ToV and building a new one to pick up the torch for people who like things exactly how they are now.

So, we are in the building phase. You can't have a game for people to flee to as a valid option if you don't have a game. For people dismissing ToV, wait until the next colossal outrage and be happy it is here. Pathfinder 2e was like that; they built a game many dismissed, and then the OGL fiasco hit, and they instantly benefitted.

ToV is in the perfect position now to capitalize on any small or big mistake, blown out of proportion or not. ToV will be the Pathfinder 1e to the mistakes D&D Beyond will make. And I don't feel 5.5 will make many mistakes; given how conservative the team is, they will most all be in online support now. Or, again, something stupid that the parent company does or says.

And don't discount Wall Street's "firing customers" mentality. If you are not a whale spender, no mobile game or monetized platform wants you, and they will actively work to fire you as a customer since you lose money for them.

Don't laugh.

Just wait. ToV's day will come. We are far too early to dismiss this game.

We should be happy that a major third-party publisher is investing this much money and effort into providing a valid alternative for our community. This means they can keep making amazing adventures and books, which helps everyone. ToV is the company's lifeboat, which they will happily take us into in case something horrible happens.

But it is more than just a lifeboat; it is an entire cruise liner with many fun adventures, worlds, activities, and things to do. You can be over here and have the same fun you do over there. It is still early, and there is paint on the walls in places and a few pieces of scaffolding up, but this will be a fun place very soon. We have the basics and more is coming. Our old stuff works.

The most significant weakness right now is in the online character builders, specifically Hero Lab. Hero Lab is excellent, but I want more. I need more options, classes, spells, and choices. Again, it is way too early the first week in, and we have a great start with a pair of solid books.

But again, I don't want tons of garbage. That ruined 5E for me and why I wanted to get as far away from that game as possible. It felt like playing Skyrim with too many junk mods.

D&D Beyond forcing you to buy entire books will ruin the game. People were able to buy only what they wanted. Now, you are forcing them to take hundreds of garbage options that will clutter up their character creation tools. This happened to me but in an offline sense, and it also happened with my offline Hero Lab and Pathfinder 1e. Pretty soon, the tools will be unusable, with 10 years of junk options littering the character builder and a few items people need or want.

Tales of the Valiant saved a few 5E books for me and got them out of my sell boxes.

That is huge.

ToV PDF Thoughts, Part 1

A few thoughts on flipping through the ToV PDFs...

They need more backgrounds, lineages, and heritages. Level Up A5E has them beat here, and with all of the books, they can create many more types of characters. That said, I like ToV's fewer special powers per option. In this regard, LUA5E will overload you with specific abilities in a category, and the list of specials grows to an annoying length. LU's dozen or more specials after character creation felt great, but character after character, it got to be too much and annoying. Less is more, and ToV hits the sweet spot.

There are times in Level Up A5E that the designers overdo it.

Tales of the Valiant has a good amount of restraint in terms of design.

ToV's streamlining and simplicity win.

One notable aspect of ToV is its flexible luck mechanic. Unlike the rigid 'inspiration' concept, luck in ToV is a resource that can be easily house-ruled. With just 3 Luck, I could allow players to create a small narrative change in their favor. Alternatively, a 'GM intrusion' style mechanic can be adopted (like Cypher System), offering Luck to players in exchange for a negative consequence. This dynamic and empowering mechanic significantly improves the old 'inspiration' system.

Interestingly, the Facebook groups for ToV are small and quiet. While I initially expected more excitement there, the community has found other vibrant platforms for discussion. This discovery piques my curiosity and makes me eager to explore these different avenues of engagement.

Level Up is a crunchier, more old-school game that does things differently. ToV is a direct drop-in replacement for 5E at a CR+1 power level, but the monsters are balanced against that.

Machinist is a core class. I am 'meh' on Steampunk, but it is a part of Midgard, so I get it.

More cleric domains are needed.

Oh, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks included. Barbarians are not renamed. Nice.

Some art is the new-school PC style but balanced with lovely classic-style pieces. Overall, the art direction is down the middle and doesn't overdo it with the colored hair, modern hairstyles, Tik-Tok selfies, and other distracting tropes many games have. My problem with those pieces is they feel like modern people cosplaying at a gaming convention instead of putting you in a fantasy world. It does the job and isn't distracting. LU has an excellent art style as well.

Immersion always beats modern-day-ism. I pay for immersion that puts me in the mood to play and live in that world, while I can get modern-day-ism "fan art" anywhere.

The bearded female dwarf was funny and a nod to a gaming meme. I laughed. It gets a pass from me.

The "characters floating on a page" art needs to go. It is too 2020s, and Pathfinder did it to the point of parody where people would float on every page looking high or bored. Give me a panel of them in the world any day, doing something, having an emotional reaction to something dramatic. Many of them show emotion and are doing something, but a few float and have a neutral expression, like a T-posed 3d model's blank stare.

Other than that, the art is excellent, with a few uninspired ones, but they are okay. I have no complaints, but I know what inspires me.

Multiclassing is optional, on or off for the whole campaign, or only for specific characters or NPCs. Thank you to whatever deity your cleric follows; this is a long-overdue change. Sanity comes to multiclassing, and you can finally turn the whole thing off if you like.

Multiclassing in D&D 5E reached the point where if someone did it, I instantly wondered, "What is the player up to?" It was never a valid character or story choice; it was always an exploit in the making. I called it out and people got pissed at me for denying their cheat builds. Keeping a ban list in your head for combos and exploits sucks, and the cheat builds in D&D 5E are worse than the ones they had in 3E.

My GM safety tool sheet lists "multiclassing" as something that triggers me as a referee. I'm sorry, but I turned it off because the concept upsets me.

White-skinned drow, like the old D&D Mystara shadow elves.

There is no alignment at all. It is shocking to see a game implement this. What does this mean for characters? They can be paragons of light one moment and murder hobos the next. Even the cleric domains say "encouraged to" instead of "must," which is a huge difference. Paladins follow an oath, and it isn't said if that is necessarily a good-aligned one. With no alignment, a referee must go the "hand of god" on consequences for player actions. The party acts like murder hobos, and word gets out - they will be hunted down and killed. It is all or nothing without alignment, which may turn some people off.

In games with alignment, players can hide behind it and pay lip service to it. I am a paladin, lawful good. I don't do X, Y, and Z. People see me as a paladin. They know I don't do X, Y, and Z. Alignment is a two-way street.

Without alignment?

Your reputation is your alignment. That paladin? How do townspeople know they can trust them?

They don't.

You could be a paladin of Asmodeus, as far as they know.

Same with the drow you encounter. They could be sadistic killers or mushroom-hugging hippy drow. Dragons, monsters, and even demons and devils. You can assume demons and devils are evil, but nothing says they are. A section in the monster book states that "demons are chaos, fiends are lawful," but those are not concepts written into the game. All are said to be evil, but again, evil is not a defined concept in the game - though "you know what evil is when you see it."

Part of me feels strange not having alignment, but a part of me sees this as opening the door to a harder line on party reputation, even the GM saying, "You did evil; you are now corrupted and heading down a fiendish path," and just old-schooling this as a GM ruling and handling it all in the story.

No alignment? Then, as the GM, I can call it as I see it.

Live with the consequences of your actions without those guardrails.

In trying to make a game more new-school, they inadvertently made it more old-school.

Hero Lab is invaluable. They keep going back and giving you tool proficiencies in character options. I am like, I already made my picks! Why do I need more? If I did this by hand, I would miss half of them and not care.

Pop-up healing is a thing, but at least they set you prone. Level Up does a better job here. I hope the GM's Guide has a hardcore option for damage, death, and pop-up healing. I could always pull in the ToV rule in and put a level of exhaustion for every drop below zero hit points, and I hope there is an option like that in the GM's Guide with guidance on balance.

ToV feels like a solid 5E replacement game.

I can play this and not feel guilty or bad about supporting a company that does not share my values.

It is also a fresh start, without 10 years of broken baggage the game needs to haul around.

Tales of the Valiant PDFs

The Tales of the Valiant PDFs for the Player's Guide and Monsters Vault were released yesterday.

These are great PDFs and a top-notch version of 5E that is free from Wizards' influence and Wall Street practices. You could feel good playing this game, still be playing something familiar, and have a guilt-free conscience.

Play this, and be free of D&D Beyond. Hero Lab has a subscription service for creating characters, so you have an option if you want to pay for an online hosted character designer.

Could you play this instead of D&D? Why not? Tales of the Valiant is the ultimate guilt-free 5E.

Level Up A5E is still an excellent option, and I like its old-school design philosophy. But Tales of the Valiant is so easy with Hero Lab. It is almost addictively easy. With LUA5E, I take 30-45 minutes of reference and flipping through PDFs to build a character.

With Hero Lab and ToV, it takes about 3-5 minutes, which is a huge difference. All the math is done for you, so there is no guesswork or missing selections. You pick a few things, and you can play. The characters come pre-equipped, but you can change gear and pick it yourself.

Yes, you need to buy books on Hero Lab. There is a yearly fee. This is a premium service; people must be paid to work on these and support the system. Validated characters, online storage, and ease of use are worth the price.

You do not get any expansion material here; this is just base book content, and you have no 5E third-party character options. For some, this is a deal-breaker since there are players who will never part from their broken and exploitative 5E builds unless you pry them out of their necrotic, zombified fingers. Me? If I switch games to something like Dragonbane, I can play another version of 5E with a base book only.

Also, there are 5E books on Hero Lab (many by Kobold Press) that are their generic 5E version only and do not work with the Tales of the Valiant part of the program. I hope these are ported over, or you can pay a small upgrade price for the conversion costs and have them. This is only the second day, so I am patient, but it is worth pointing out. Books like Midgard Heroes or Tome of Beasts should be usable here, even if it is an option initially. I bet this is being worked on.

Part of me feels the current state of third-party 5E character options has a few good books, but most of the hundreds of books out there—including the ones Wizards put out—are garbage. If my sell boxes ever go out the door, I bet you most of these will be broken character option books that are pure, untested, break-your-game junk.

I don't want to grandfather in 10 years of Wizards' broken and power-gaming 5E content, and I am not buying the 2024(5) books. I don't care about Tasha's. I don't have cheese builds to support.

90% of what is wrong about 5E is in the books released after the first three. We can reset here and be free of people redesigning our game. Yes, ToV is a redesign by a team I trust and want to support. Seriously, the week after D&D Beyond eliminates al-a-carte character option buys, ToV's PDFs drop.

• And I can use Hero Lab.
• And the books are on Hero Lab.
• And I will have physical books.
• And I have PDFs that I own.

VTT support is also available for Demiplane, Shard, Alchemy, and Foundry. Roll20 is not yet available, but I am sure that is coming.

If I ever go back to 5E, ToV will be the game.

With my 5E books and D&D? I am not happy. The game has grown too big, the grift has killed balance, and the actions of its owners left a bad taste in my mouth.

I know. I love LUA5E, and I was tired of the mess of character options and random garbage on my shelves. The mess was part of why I divorced D&D and 5E. If I sold 90% and just kept the best with this as a core?

I would be happy.

Good Video: Not DnD - What's OLD is NEW (W.O.I.N)

Here is an excellent video by the designer of WOIN, in which the design principles and goals behind the game are discussed. This video is from 10 months ago when the Starter Set was discussed.

WOIN, a fun and tight D6 system, is not rules-light, but its resolution system feels that way, aligning with the ideal state of all systems. Currently, the game is in its 1.3 version, a testament to its continuous testing and development. This ongoing process, a rarity in many games, keeps the excitement and anticipation high for what's to come.

This system was inspired by the classic 1980s dice pool systems, but it has so many differences that it can be considered its own game. It is like calling Aftermath and D&D the same game since they both use a d20. It started as a Star Trek-style D6 game that went into generic sci-fi, fantasy, and modern games.

Every genre book is a stand-alone game, but the mechanics are all compatible.

People are comparing this very favorably to games like Savage Worlds. What I like about D6 pool systems over Savage Worlds is that Savage Worlds has a lingo, abstract concepts, and all sorts of "ceremonies" you must follow to play, and you need to load the "Savage Worlds OS" into your brain to get your mind all set. You also need plenty of "toys" on the table, such as poker chips, dice, cards, and resource wheels. With a straight D6 pool system, you only need dice, and the gameplay is "roll over a number."

I have run D6 pool systems with new players, and very little explanation and concepts of rules need to be communicated. Most of the time, I was not explaining actions, combat turns, or how to make a skill roll or attack. It was just "what do you do" and "roll the dice."

You can give someone a character sheet, and they can figure out 90% of the game.

I played Savage Worlds with a new player and needed a "tutorial character" to explain every step of the game to them. Still, it took up an entire session, and we ended up not playing again because there was too much in terms of rules scaffolding for them to remember. Every step of teaching Savage Worlds was to stop and explain the next thing. Once you "get it," you "get it," but it is a lot of abstract concepts to remember.

Cypher System was a hit with the same player, and it comes down to how simple the core task and action resolution are. There are so many abstract concepts here that it is way more complicated for referees to grasp than for players. Just figuring out Cypher System can be a challenge; I had that book for months and could not figure it out. For players, it is easier.

Rules-light games that go hard on abstraction are a weakness of the genre. A game can get so abstract it floats in a gray soup of meaningless concepts and ideas. And they are super hard to teach and keep in your head.

WOIN, like Cepheus, is a simple dicing system anyone can understand, with few abstract concepts to grasp. I bet WOIN would be just as easy to sell to that player since I know how easy D6 pool systems are and how straightforward the approach is for new players to grasp.

WOIN seems steeper for referees and, like the Cypher System, for character design since the career system introduces many choices. Still, with pre-gens, any D6 pool system flies with zero abstraction.

"But I Wouldn't Play it As-Is"

Whenever I see a Basic Roleplaying review, I hear the caveat, "But I would not play it as-is," or, "This is a book more for game designers."

My question is, why not?

BRP is "there" for 95% of what you need and is far more complete than many games. Flipping through the book, I see it has enough to work like a GURPS, a framework for creating games without worrying about converting too much.

I play GURPS "as-is" and Cepheus Engine, too. I play most versions of B/X as-is.

BRP ships with many optional rules, along with all sorts of subsystem choices. You will need an equipment list for a specific setting, and you are good to go. The gear lists here are a good start. You could review the skill list and tweak them to your setting, but the skills work fine for almost any setting. Much of what you need is already in here, like a fate point system.

I don't see why this isn't "ready to go" for most genres.

Some things don't need to be converted. Starfinder has many leveled weapons and defenses, and those will never convert in the right way. The stock sci-fi weapons here are good enough to reskin as whatever you need, and besides, a laser pistol is a laser pistol.

Gamma World is another one of those games. This is a CON-d6 system. While the missile and energy weapons work fine, forcing players to use a d4 dagger or a d8 sword versus 35+ hit-point starting characters makes players laugh at old-tech weapons like they were butterknives. Gamma World has always had this problem. The monsters are also CON-d6, so converting them is touch compared to anything B/X. Again, forget the weapon damages and monster hit points and go by size and stats. Again, a laser pistol is a laser pistol.

Mutations, if you use the Gamma World list, must be converted. For example, if one does as much damage as a laser pistol, use BRP's laser pistol for the damage.

These conversion problems exist for any game that strays too far from B/X. Even 5E has this problem, so sticking to B/X-style numeric ranges is always the best bet for gaming. Scaling systems are horrible beyond the flat monster HD ratings in B/X. A level 8 character in B/X still does weapon plus modifier damage, like a d6+2, but they have a better chance to hit (thus, more significant overall damage). That 8 HD (30 hp) monster rating is still valid at all levels. You get a 5E, and level 8 characters are doing 25-40 hit points damage a round (where they were doing a d6+2 at first level), and 8 HD does not mean 8 HD anymore; it is more like 1 HD to that level 8 character.

The damage scaling Wizards introduced broke the game. It has been this way since 3E.

Hit points in BRP are calculated from ability scores (CON + SIZ / 2). Since this is all based on real-world numbers, you are not concerned with arbitrary hit-die systems. A dragon has a lot of hit points because it is large and has a high CON.

Thus, weapon and character damages are on the same scale, from low level to high. So, even conversions are easy once you adopt BRP's real-world measurements and stick to ability scores before made-up numbers. "How things work and feel" will change since you are in a more grounded system based on actual numbers, without much guesswork.

BRP is ready to go out of the box for most genres and games.

I recommend creating your unique "subsystem" to tie the rules to the game world. Runequest has the runes system, which isn't in this book. Call of Cthulhu has expanded insanity rules. You can make your own! Let's say you were doing a "Star Force" game with a "light side and dark side" sort of system, then make a fun, two-sided alignment system that works well with a percentage system, and this will be your "setting-specific rules" that you will snap on to the game.

You don't need to be a game designer to play this, nor do you have to write a game based on this.

But the game gives you plenty of room to craft and design if you want to dive in.