Nothing stops you from using anything in these articles or any other 5E-like game as your "base game," such as Tales of the Valiant. I chose Advanced 5E because the game is out and supports the classic pillars of play I love. ToV hasn't shipped a playtest packet since August (but has released an SRD), so I am on a wait-and-see. It still looks like a solid 5E replacement game, though.
ToV looks nice and is designed to make learning the game easier. One thing about Level Up A5E is that it helps to know base 5E, but it is not too hard to understand independently. It is a more significant "lift" than learning 2014 5E, but I appreciate the depth and options once you do. Having a ranger who excels at exploration makes them worth taking along, makes difficult hex-crawls possible, and gives them many valuable abilities in the wild.
There are things in LUA5E that make me say, "Wow, this is a complete game with tons of depth in exploration, combat, and social encounters, and not just a combat simulator."
Let's talk magic, specifically spells. I only have a little use for all sorts of special magic - unless I am creating a mage with a signature collection of cantrips that need to be flavored a specific way. Then, yes, break out the books of spells, and let's make this mage a hyper-specialist.
Kobold Press has us covered again with a fantastic two-volume set (revised and expanded) of Deep Magic. These two books have over 1,000 spells, new domains, and schools of magic, classes, subclasses, and everything we need to make a high-magic game shine.
Once I don't have the 2014 books on the shelves, I feel more free to add whatever I want to my game. I am also steering clear of electronic character-creation apps since I want to use what I want. Again, we will find many player options for magical characters in these books, so you can pick and choose from a buffet of options.
The Book of Lost Spells focuses more on spells from previous game editions, so it is an excellent source of some classics.
Magic items can be expanded using various sources, and one of my favorites is the One Million Magic Items PDF, which gives you an excellent raw thing that you can tweak and customize into a fantastic Diablo-like prefix and suffix-enabled item of power.
And Kobold Press has you covered for special magic items, too, with the above book. Other than that, the base magic items in the LU A5E book work well, and you can sprinkle in a few specials from the above sources and have more than you will ever need.
Oh, and MageGate Games makes these "250 best" books, to which people give high ratings, too. Now I have far more magic items than I will ever use.
Magic is one of these "look, and you will find it" areas; if you do a little searching, you will find thousands of spells and choices. There are books from the mundane to the amazing here in the 3rd party, and the Deep Magic books make me want to never look back at the 2014 books again - there is just so much variety here my mind gets blown.
The selection of magic and sorcerous character options in the 3rd party is more than enough for you to craft amazing games from.
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