Tales of the Valiant: Roll Your Own

One of the best parts about Tales of the Valiant is they went for a more straightforward character design process, with fewer things to write down in each step. I designed the same character in Level Up Advanced 5E and came out with twice the special powers, notes, and different abilities on my sheet than a comparable ToV sheet.

Level Up Advanced 5E is a game that truly embodies the 'more is more' philosophy. A level one character can easily have 12-15 special ability notes, compared to ToV's six. This abundance of abilities adds a profound depth to the game and makes character creation more time-consuming, which is a testament to the game's complexity.

When I am in the mood for it, it is excellent.

When I am not, it is not great.

Character sheets in Level Up must be done by hand since no program does them. It first took me 90 minutes to make a character, and I have gotten this down to 30 lately. Getting everything set up and recorded is still a long time, but the details are worth the effort.

ToV has Hero Lab, which makes the basic rules well, but the system can't be expanded for custom entries, so if you want to create a custom lineage or heritage, you are out of luck. However, I am hopeful that the ToV version of Hero Lab will improve and add the spells from Deep Magic and the Monster Vault creatures and the ability to add custom entries for items, spells, heritages, and lineages. I eagerly anticipate the inclusion of the Midgard and Southlands heritages and lineages!

The other Kobold Press 5E books should be available for ToV, but they are not. Since ToV is 5E compatible, we should have the option to use any 5E books we have for Hero Lab in this system, primarily since Midgard and Southlands are supported on the desktop version and are nowhere to be found in the online part.

I like Hero Lab for ToV; it is so limited that it is hard to recommend without seeing more new things to buy and support for custom entries. Even the "notes" section for characters is not present in this writing, despite this text box being in other games. Since the game is 5E compatible, the online version needs a custom content manager and a way to add our favorite things.

So, at this point, roll your character sheets and do them by hand. This way, you can pull in as much 3rd party content and subclasses as possible. Using online character creators is convenient, but it is anti-competitive. It can lock out almost every 3rd party who makes books for the game, and it especially hurts small independent publishers.

If a game is so complicated that you need computers, consider playing another game. This is especially true if that character creation system is locked behind a paywall and "everyone can't come inside." My answer is to do them by hand and play games where it is not too much of a hassle.

Level Up pushes the boundaries of my tolerance for complexity, but then again, that is the game. It is the Aftermath! of 5E and details everything.

Tales of the Valiant is streamlined and simplified, and it feels more like a B/X version of 5E. The game is more accessible for new players, which D&D can't claim (especially with 10 years of backward compatibility being critical parts of many character builds).

ToV is also a one-book implementation of 5E (for characters). It is a fresh start. While you can pull in your favorite 3rd part books, you don't need to, but the door is open.

That...I like.

ToV PDF Thoughts, Part 14

The Nerrath campaign from D&D 4E is something of my Holy Grail campaign to play again. I initially felt Level Up Advanced 5E was the game to play with, and it would work well since it has all the 4E "toys" and concepts.

Then Tales of the Valiant came along.

Then, as if to test our mettle, I encountered the 25-hp Orc in the Monster Vault. Its presence reminded me of the challenging and thrilling encounters that awaited us in the game, sparking a renewed sense of excitement and anticipation.

Back in 4E, the monsters were tough, and this is why we played. Goblins were not pushovers anymore, and Orcs were more level 3-5 monsters who showed up like the main forces of the Red Army when the demon lords were so angry they sent in front-line troops to clean up, kill everything good-aligned, and corrupt the land for Hell.

The ToV Orcs are those Orcs.

While doing a fully supported 4E Nerrath campaign with ToV is possible, a few things will be missing. Dragonkin is a race in Midgard, so having "official support" for those may be a while. But they can be simulated with our choices, or if you do your character sheets by hand, you can just port them in and use the 5E versions.

Remember, ToV does not do racial ability score modifiers - drop ALL of them! Your scores start higher, so you need not modify them for lineage choices.

In Level Up, ability score modifiers are dropped, too. They are a part of a character's background, and you only get 2 points. Personally, I like ToV's higher starting stats and no modifications after character generation better than D&D's race-based modifiers, or LU's background-based modifiers.

Simplify it! And the newer way in D&D (add 2 points to anything, because of any reason) is just as dumb. Why am I adding ability score points after generation? Factor them out, and add them at generation. Otherwise people may need to go back and adjust modifiers and other derived stats.

Using Hero Lab or other tools without custom lineage choices, you can simulate the missing 4E lineages. Now, this is only for Hero Lab. If you are doing sheets by hand, you have everything at your fingertips and can import anything except for the ability score modifiers (and most of the dark-vision).

Dragonborn, until we get the Midgard Dragonkin, can be the Beastkin (sturdy) lineage. This "good enough" substitution will work until ToV and Hero Lab do the official Midgard support.

Drow can be an Elf lineage with a stone heritage.

Even some Midgard races can be simulated, as the Ravenfolk in Midgard is really the Beastfolk(avian) lineage. The Gearforged in Midgard (and the Warforged out of 4E) will be a problem, and another Beastkin replacement will serve as a placeholder, or maybe a Human with that extra talent serving as a specialization.

The ToV Orcs can substitute for Gnolls, Trolls, Ogres, Bugbears, and others. It is "close enough" until more choices appear.

The ToV Humans, with the extra talent choice, can simulate a lot of races, from shadow kin to elemental lineages and many others - once you get creative. You can even override the lineage name in Hero Lab so everything appears correctly. Above is my "Orc as Gnoll" character, even though Gnolls are unavailable in ToV Hero Lab.

With ToV taking that +2 ability score modifier out of races and factoring it into ability score selection, whatever shape you become, it is a matter of selecting a race that is close enough or gives you a talent that sort of matches your lineage concept.

This is how we did it in the old ways.

Are you playing a ghost? Use the Human lineage with a necromancy focus. We will make you resistant to physical damage during play; put a note on your sheet.

Close enough is good enough.

You do not need perfect or an official paid-for selection in an online tool. If I were doing this by hand (which in ToV is easy enough to do), I would have anything I want. With online tools that don't have all the options, just get it close enough and say, "It works."

Hack it, make it work, and get playing ASAP.

Hero Lab: Tales of the Valiant Support

This is cool; Hero Lab has Tales of the Valiant support for 5E, making this the first commercially-supported Open 5E version in an online character creation tool. A few notes at the time of this writing:

• This is in beta now and only has the Alpha playtest material.
• This is $25 on sale for the full version and will be updated when the game releases.
• Hero Lab is $25 yearly but cheaper than the alternative.
• Hero Lab is a "pay per book" service, so it can get pricy, but the support is excellent.
• Online only.
• No user data imports like the offline tool. Limited customization.
• The offline tool has 5E SRD support and many community packages.

Hero Lab online is a premium service, but I like that you get the legacy version, which works for many game systems. The online tool supports Pathfinder 1e, 2e, Starfinder, Shadowrun 6th, and Tales of the Valiant. Gloomhaven is also coming to the system.

You can now create alpha-release characters in the four classes and ancestries. It is limited, but if you want to play the starter adventures, make your own character quickly, and have them be rules-legal, this is the way to go since it does all your checking.

What I don't like? Not all my 3rd party books are available, nor can I manually input them. The Pathfinder sets allow custom skill entries and feats you can rename, so these areas have little wiggle room. The offline tool (which does not support ToV) is more hackable (but takes a lot of knowledge), and community packs are available.

Hero Lab is a "pay per book" system, so you pay for the data entry and support. Every package is high quality and well-supported, so it is a cost for accurate information, ease of use, and ongoing support. It can get pricy, but if 'legal characters' are vital to you, this is the way to go.

If the tool gets enough support, I am sure future books from Kobold Press will be added to the system. I dream that 3rd third-party publishers, seeing a commercial Open 5E game on here, will start making their books' data files available for purchase. It takes work to add one, so there must be profit, but I can dream.

I would love to see the Roll for Combat books here for 5E and PF2.

I would love to see Level Up Advanced 5E, but it has been a while, and I doubt it is coming. These options may appear as more Open 5E books are added for ToV. While I love A5E, Kobold Press is "putting in the work" to create a commercially sustainable Open 5E ecosystem.

That alone is worth my support.

The demand for online character tools was there; the community wanted it, and now we have it.

The next thing the community needs to do is get the word out and support it.

5E (SRD) Hero Lab

If I am playing 5E, it will be with SRD sources and character creators. Hero Lab (classic) supports a 5E character creator module, and it works well. We used the Pathfinder version for years, and this was our Pathfinder go-to character manager. They do not have plans to support One D&D - since nobody knows if 3rd party content will be legal - and I am fine buying this and having it for 5E.

Why don't I want an official character creator? The same reason I did not want an official character creator back in the 4E days, it will eventually have support dropped, and they will force you to upgrade. If I bought 5E books, and I like the 5E game the way it was, then I am playing it that way. For the same reason, there is a considerable retro-gaming crowd that loves NES and SNES games; I get the feeling 5E will be the same way in a few years.

Nothing against One D&D; this is just how gaming works. I am still interested in the next game, but I enjoy 5E as it is today - and all of the game versions.

It is excellent having 5E as it stands today as a "dead game" and support ending for this version. They can say all they want about backward compatibility, but even in their own surveys and marketing, Wizards said 90% of consumers do not care about it anyway and will see a new version as a new version and avoid buying the old stuff. And I know it is not a "dead game," but in my book, when a company stops supporting the system as it was initially written, that version is dead, and the company moves on.

5E, as it was from 2014 to 2024, will be in the OSR soon.

The game as it was played and loved by millions will be preserved.

And third-party character creators like this will keep the 5E version alive and loved by the fans.

I wish they had Level Up 5E modules for this, as it would make a painful 2-hour character creation session where I am flipping back and forth through a 4-page form-fillable PDF and trying to cut and paste the text into too-small fields a more straightforward job. Low Fantasy Gaming does not really need a computer-aided design too like this, but 5E does.

There is way too much to manage in this game. Even in base 5E, there is still way too much to manage, especially if playing solo with a small party. With a B/X or OSR game, I can manage a 4-5 person party by hand easily. With 5E, forget it; these characters are on a complexity level of Palladium or Rolemaster, just in options and interlocking rules.

Now, I am not playing 5E without 5e Hardmode - not happening. Since this just plugs into base 5E, no character sheet changes are needed. Why? I would get bored without challenge. Base 5E is way too forgiving and easy without this book and plugging in the difficulty modifiers suggested.

I like a Dark Souls or Elden Ring level of difficulty, and if I am playing this solo, I want the extra challenge. Otherwise, I know the shtick: healing word (or similar insta-heal), get up, knocked down, healing word, and so on. The fact this routine has been baked into combat and challenge difficulty should give people pause. I am not playing a video game, and when even Mario is a bit more serious about death mechanics, this should make you wonder.

Hero Lab Online: Starfinder

I am back in Starfinder for a while and decided to check out the Hero Lab Online (subscription, expensive) product for creating characters. In my first campaign, I used the Starbuilder app (an excellent app, one price for everything), and as I suspected there were differences between the characters I built.

My one issue with Starbuilder was having to use Android to manage characters. I have an Android tablet, but I love typing and working on a PC screen so it was an annoyance to have to cloud transfer the PDFs around so I could have them elsewhere. I just work faster and more free on a PC, where I can look for character images, type a lot of text quickly for backgrounds, and generally work more comfortably than on a tablet.

Also, Pathbuilder 2e (the Pathfinder 2e app) is coming out with a free web version, which I find highly interesting.

Hero Lab Online is very nice. They made some strange UI choices where I am chasing down errors in different tabs, the equipment lists feel arbitrarily divided up between tabs, and I do miss editing the data files or crafting my own - maybe they will implement this in the future and let us create custom entries. Some of this is due to odd choices in Starfinder where mechanics have to have a "custom rig" attached to a particular type of tool kit, you click on the error, and it does not tell you where to go, what to buy, or what to do. They have special pieces of equipment called things like "hacking kit w/custom rig" that you buy and the error goes away.

Also, my complete Pathfinder 1e Hero Lab collection is now online. Very nice. Considering I can use anything in Pathfinder 1e in a Starfinder game, this doubles my content for monsters, races, characters, and all sorts of craziness. The subscription fee? Not too bad, but I have a lot of Starfinder books I want to have fun with, so I either pay up and have a tool that makes my life easy, or these are going back in a box and I am not having any fun with them.

So, why back to Starfinder...?

Pathfinder 1e

Sorry, Pathfinder 1e is still a great game played by many people, and I have 13 years of books I can use with Starfinder. Now,  I can't go an give a Starfinder character the Pathfinder alchemist class, but I am free to have an alchemist NPC as a part of a campaign. I can toss a purple worm at the party and watch them blast it with rocket launchers. I can use a classic Pathfinder 1e vampire and put her in a starfighter. Any one of the classic dragons can show up, wearing powered armor with miniguns on the sides of their helmet and air-to-air missiles mounted on their back.

Lucifer himself from Tome of Horrors Complete could show up and start demanding planets surrender to him, and then sending his generals around to conquer worlds and the players racing around trying to stop his dastardly plans in epic adventures and massive star battles.

Lucifer, from Frog God Games' Tome of Horrors Complete

Cool stuff.

Heavy Metal stuff.

Kick ass, wild ass crazy stuff Appendix N sort of stuff we only get from Dungeon Crawl Classics. But this time with heavy weapons, mechs, starships, tanks, fighter jets, and freaking lasers.

Guns, lots of guns. Rock music too.

The true "Pathfinder in space" stuff we were promised.

Stuff I have game stats for and is 90% compatible with Starfinder (conversion guide in the back of the main Starfinder rulebook).

The Campaign?

I am staying away from the Starfinder adventure paths, maybe I will steal parts as filler, but the campaign I want exists hundreds of years in the future, way out on the edges of explored space, so far away from Absolom Station that people derisively call that place "The Core" and they live in an area of space called The Shattered Expanse, a frontier area of former fantasy worlds and civilizations that gone sci-fi. That Heavy Metal campaign of countless worlds and endless wars.

Those sci-fi matte paintings of a planet, with a few giant planets in the sky, with moons around them, and more moons painted in for good measure. And every one of those giant planetary moons that should cause massive tidal waves on this world - every one of those planets is a hexcrawl.

And there are hundreds of moons and planets in the central supergiant star of this area of space called Titan, and they are all being fought over by different space factions. You conquer Titan, and every star within hundreds of light-years shall be yours just because of the wealth, resources, raw energy, and space for the population you will have.

Systems like this are the throne of empires.

And there shall be good factions, space paladins, space orcs, star elves, scheming drow in space, neutral factions, dwarf miners, goblin traders, kobolds and space dragons, space demons, undead moons, gnoll space pirates, hobgoblin mercenaries, space vampires in giant goth temples, good guys, bad guys, races of robots, android societies, and whatever.

I start off simple, on a resort world (generated with the tools at donjon) ravaged by war, between the space paladin factions and the star demons, with opportunist space orc raiders coming in to try to stake a claim here, and expand from there. Put a neutral corporate faction, allied with goblin traders (the more World of Warcraft corporate goblins and not Paizo's) trying to hire mercenaries and reopen the resorts to make money.

Since all of these worlds were once "Pathfinder 1e fantasy worlds" and have been for thousands of years, lots of lost civilizations, temples, old-school monsters, magic items, scrolls, artifacts, magic +2 swords, and other powerful stuff lying around - and adventures and exploration to have. Maybe there are even forgotten civilizations of people that don't know anything is going on out there and are still living in medieval villages and grand castles. Lost tribes of lizardmen. Dragons that plot to manipulate the outsiders. Elemental temples of evil.

Subdivide these 20-mile hexes into 2-mile mini hexes, stock them randomly with ruins, lairs, encounters, crashes starships, small settlements, and all sorts of hex-crawl crack and we are good to go.

Heavy Metal: The Hex Crawl featuring Starfinder with special guest star Pathfinder 1e.

I am keeping it simple.

Everything Pathfinder 1e compatible I got.

In one epic hex-crawl game covering multiple worlds and all the space between.

Our Pathfinder Game and Hero Lab

We play Pathfinder basically as a best-of-the-best compendium of Hero Lab modules, including:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
• Advanced Player’s Guide
• Ultimate Combat
• Ultimate Magic
• Advanced Class Guide
• Occult Adventures

...with Ultimate Intrigue coming later, or course. The add-on books are kind of spotty, with the following being considered core for us:

• Advanced Race Guide
• Pathfinder Unchained
• Inner Sea Gods
• ...and I want to add Inner Sea Races soon, maybe

These are optional, since they are less-character focused (Campaign, Gamemastery, NPC Codex, and Equipment), or game-changing (Mythic):

• Ultimate Campaign
• Mythic Adventures
• Ultimate Equipment
• NPC Codex
• Gamemastery Guide

Monsters are needed!

• Pathfinder Bestiary 1
• Pathfinder Bestiary 2
• Pathfinder Bestiary 3
• Pathfinder Bestiary 4
• Pathfinder Bestiary 5
• Monster Codex
• I also use Tome of Horrors Complete to throw in unpredictable 3rd party wild-cards
• ...I would like to add Tome of Horrors IV and Advanced Bestiary as well

The following third party spell add-ons are also used, I feel they are must-haves to add extra spell and class options:

• 1001 Spells
• Deep Magic
• Gothic Campaign Compendium

The following two are optional class add-ons, they have some good options but they need some work integrating into everything:

• Secrets of Adventuring
• New Paths Compendium

Everything else is a nice-to-have item, if we have it, great, and it adds color and options. We also use the following worldbooks and adventure design books for extra color:

• Inner Sea World Guide
• Rise of the Drow
• Tome of Adventure Design
• ...I would like to add some of the mega-dungeons as well:
• Rappan Athuk
• The Slumbering Tsar Saga

We add as we go, and the game world morphs and takes on its own shape and form. I like the third-party additions, and they keep things unpredictable and off the standard Paizo railroad tracks - especially the trio of Gothic Campaign Compendium, 1001 Spells, and Deep Magic. These three (yes they have some unbalanced spells) take magic-based classes and give them a really cool and wonderful custom flavor and feeling.

Races are whatever you want, we have this crazy, almost World-of-Warcraft meets Star Wars creature cantina view of races where anything cool you can come up with using race design with the Advanced Race Guide is cool with us. Our Jade Regent game seen races derived from the Zodiac populating those lands, so we have ratlings, snakemen, rooster/birdmen, dragonmen, and all sorts of other crazy animal-hybrids populating those lands. Why? Just for fun, and the adventure path never laid out what was there so we ran with it. Race design is cool, and while it leads to some crazy races and combos, it is very cool and lets all sorts of strange characters appear in our games. A top-hat wearing bear-man investigator of crimes committed by undead with a crab-man kung-fu monk sidekick?

Go for it. Have fun. Do not take yourself seriously. But...please take the rules and playing seriously.

And this list never stays really the same for long. If something new comes out, we collect it, and figure out a place for it. Once you accept the throy and fun of modding, and open yourself up to the possibilities, you begin to see the strength of an open system such as Pathfinder and all of the crazy, wonderful, and insane creations you can build with all of these books. This openness, plus a desire to let player's imaginations go, is what makes the game special for our group, and keeps us playing despite other games being out there and waiting for our attention.

Pathfinder as Skyrim

This to me sums up my feelings about Pathfinder and its current state nicely. Having modded Skyrim with over 230 mods, creating merge patches, bash patches, leveled lists, and all sort of other techo-wizardry, I have my custom version of Skyrim running well with all sorts of lovable insanity happening on the roads and wilds of this maniac world, with unpredictable chaos happening around every bend and strange dungeons in places one would never expect. There is also the enemy of survival against the bitter cold, where a lack of preparation against the elements can kill you just as easily as a unique and named draugr in a crypt somewhere.

It is also a finely tuned custom game, with over a year and eighteen versions tested and improved upon, there are mods we like and those we don't, some that are heavy and others that are not, and lots of tweaks and settings to get it working just the way we like things. Modding Skyrim is a hobby for us, much like one would take up model railroading, and the results are satisfying and tragically chaotic and wonderful as we get hours of enjoyment out of that game.

I should say yes, we are looking forward to Fallout 4 and the mods there. We have a similarly modded version of Fallout 3 we have yet to explore, so we have plenty to play with and we are patient. I do look forward to the modding community of Fallout 4 and eagerly await the wonderful pieces they put together there for us to assemble and use in our mod collections.

Pathfinder is the same way for us. Heavily modified with books like 1001 Spells, Deep Magic, and other class compendiums (supported by the wonderful Hero Builder program) it is a big-tent game with options we would never, ever get to explore in a thousand lifetimes, but they are all there for us to enjoy and wander through. Books like Rise of the Drow, third party mega-dungeons, and others make our world a unique place, not exactly how Paizo ships it, but recognizable enough on the surface, much like Skyrim's cold and bitter lands when modded and tweaked with new dungeons and environs. Five monster bestiaries, plus many third party ones make our world a dangerous and unique place filled with the unexpected and unknown. It is as heavily tweaked and customized as our Skyrim version, the modding of the pen-and-paper world and its rules systems every bit as carefully crafted as our electronic world.

D&D 5, at this point, feels a bit like Diablo 3 to us. A fun game, but up until this point it is pretty much the same experience as everybody else's world, minus the stories and unique choices every group makes. The starting point is the same, and while yes you can customize, there simply isn't the fun options that out Pathfinder game has been crafted with over the years. Also, like Diablo 3, D&D 5 is a game that you can easily jump into, so there is that 'instant fun' factor that comes into play. Skyrim, like Pathfinder, can be a complicated beast prone to bugs and finicky problems, but once you get it running great, nothing else comes close in options or the random, chaotic world filled with enemies that pull powers and deadly attacks and combos from books players never had the idea they were coming from. Of course, with D&D 5 it is early, and they just released the game's core under the OGL, so time will tell what we have to play with in the future.

With Pathfinder, if it is published somewhere and included in our 'mod mix' it is fair game, so it takes a special player (and referee) to survive and excel in this environment. With this amount of mixed up madness, you can bet there are exploits, but part of the fun is finding the cheese and house-ruling a fix, just as we would come up with a way to make two conflicting Skyrim mods find a way to work together without breaking things. We are mature enough to know if something is really broken that it needs to be fixed or outright ignored, usually the former, but sometimes the latter and we will revisit it in a later version of the game by removing books or option we don't like, just like a pesky Skyrim mod that never seems to play well with others (randomized and increased world spawns and incredibly long load times in Skyrim).

With us, it is not the question of 'which game is better' for us, it is a question of modding and which game is the better hobby for us. Right now, Pathfinder is our modding game of choice. D&D 5 is a good pick-up-and-play game, but then again, so are many of the retro-clones as well, such as Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord. It is about choice for us, really, and part of the hobby of this game is modding and tweaking, which we enjoy just as well as playing.

Last Day for Hero Lab Pathfinder Module Sale!

Remember, the sale on Pathfinder modules for Hero Lab ends tomorrow, so if you have been waiting for a sale, this is your last chance to jump on these great deals.