D&D General 5E, A5E, or ToV?

[MerricB]

Having used Uncharted Journeys extensively and A Life Well Lived to a certain extent, while both have great ideas, their implementation is half-baked. There are significant problems with their assumptions and rules knowledge that make me think that any 5E variant from Cubicle 7 won't work well.

 

[Shardstone]

Having used Uncharted Journeys extensively and A Life Well Lived to a certain extent, while both have great ideas, their implementation is half-baked. There are significant problems with their assumptions and rules knowledge that make me think that any 5E variant from Cubicle 7 won't work well.

Can you talk a little more about the problems with their assumptions and rules knowledge?

 

[Distracted DM]

I worked on A5E a bit, and while I like a lot of the intention, for now I stick with O5E, though O5E also doesn't really work the way I wish it did.

A5E definitely lets you make distinctive characters. Even two fighters will play differently. But much of the new content feels (understandably) mounted on atop the existing O5E chassis. I imagine a 2nd edition of A5E (A5E2E?) could make all the little flourishes feel more integrated and elegant.

E.g., dividing 'races' into heritages and cultures is great, but some of the cultures are very broad and some are weirdly specific in ways that I think would have been better achieved by making a 'pick and choose' suite of options to build your own culture, and then having a half-dozen examples.

That's just my preference, though. I don't like systems with tons of widgets. I would prefer a game with "energy blast" as a spell, with some ways for it to scale, and some options to personalize it, and a few fun, thematic examples to inspire players, rather than having 75 different spells that often feel just finicky enough that resolving them slows the game down: acid splash, ray of frost, sacred flame, scorching ray, magic missile, burning hands, acid arrow, etc etc.

I kind of wish A5e hadn't been so concerned with staying backwards-compatible with 5e, mostly with regards to classes... but it's quite understandable why they'd want to stay compatible with classes from The World's Greatest Roleplaying Game

 

[Distracted DM]

I'm not very interested in the new "Balkanized" landscape of 5E variants. The core game does what I want, and I don't want to bother with keeping track of each microvariant's peculiarities. I'm not even sure I'll bother with 5E 2024.

Definitely. If you're incredibly satisfied with the current WotC 5e, there's little reason to look elsewhere!

 

[Weiley31]

I still want to get both Uncharted Journeys and *A Live Well Lived.

 

[MerricB]

Can you talk a little more about the problems with their assumptions and rules knowledge?

With Uncharted Journeys, it presumes you make a journey in which - depending on length - 1 to 4 encounters take place. (Perhaps more, but unlikely). The way it is written is for journeys where the starting and end point are known, so it doesn't adapt that well to journeys of exploration (a big feature of hexcrawls and similar D&D scenarios).

This is not surprising - the journeys in The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are well understood as having starting and ending points.

For most of the journeys I was creating, this averaged at 2 encounters. After randomly rolling, one of them was a Place to Rest (so a chance to take a long rest), the other was an encounter which - if failed - would cost the party a hit die. Given that you expect parties to take a long rest after a journey of a week or more, this seems underwhelming.

"Oh, that's one journey" you might say... but it's a pattern that repeated again and again. Very rarely would you have a journey that actually challenged the players, mostly they ended up with slight inconveniences. (The use of Exhaustion also felt often like a sledgehammer; that is not a good 5E mechanic). When I started adjusting the system to involve more combats, things came to life. But that's not in the system as written - very few encounters lead to the possibility of combat.

I realised that for the system to even begin to work, you had to have a standard journey as 4 encounters. At that point, slight penalties in one encounter can build up so when you get to a combat, the players feel the effect of previous failures or successes.

Uncharted Journeys includes a lot of inspirational material, and I strongly recommend it from that point of view, but as a system that played well, it felt half-baked, and I'm not alone in that assessment. (I have another whole rant about setting DCs for the journeys).

Further reading on my Uncharted Journeys experiences:

• Thinking about Wilderness Travel – Merric's Musings
• Adventures in Greyhawk: The Plains of the Paynims – Merric's Musings
• RPG Products I’m Reading – Merric's Musings

Now, as to A Life Well Lived, here is the text of one of the camp craft abilities: Crash Course.

Crash Course
Requirement: Proficiency with the skill, tool, or weapon you are teaching.
You take another under your wing, demonstrating your skill and teaching them to follow your lead.
Choose a skill, tool, or weapon that you are Proficient with and a party member or ally willing to learn. Until the party member or ally’s next Long Rest, they can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Tests they make with the chosen skill, tool, or weapon. The ally you are instructing can’t take any Campcraft Activities during this Long Rest.

Have a look at that. What happens when you use Crash Course to train a fighter who is already proficient with the weapon? At higher levels, that's a +4 to attack rolls for the session! Is the intention that it can only train someone who isn't proficient? Probably, but it's very sloppy not to include that.

And there are other examples where things just don't quite line up - and some activities way outstrip the bonuses given from others.

Again, I really, really like the ideas and expanded possibilities, but there's fix-up work to be done on the mechanics to make it work.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Shardstone]

With Uncharted Journeys, it presumes you make a journey in which - depending on length - 1 to 4 encounters take place. (Perhaps more, but unlikely). The way it is written is for journeys where the starting and end point are known, so it doesn't adapt that well to journeys of exploration (a big feature of hexcrawls and similar D&D scenarios).

This is not surprising - the journeys in The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are well understood as having starting and ending points.

For most of the journeys I was creating, this averaged at 2 encounters. After randomly rolling, one of them was a Place to Rest (so a chance to take a long rest), the other was an encounter which - if failed - would cost the party a hit die. Given that you expect parties to take a long rest after a journey of a week or more, this seems underwhelming.

"Oh, that's one journey" you might say... but it's a pattern that repeated again and again. Very rarely would you have a journey that actually challenged the players, mostly they ended up with slight inconveniences. (The use of Exhaustion also felt often like a sledgehammer; that is not a good 5E mechanic). When I started adjusting the system to involve more combats, things came to life. But that's not in the system as written - very few encounters lead to the possibility of combat.

I realised that for the system to even begin to work, you had to have a standard journey as 4 encounters. At that point, slight penalties in one encounter can build up so when you get to a combat, the players feel the effect of previous failures or successes.

Uncharted Journeys includes a lot of inspirational material, and I strongly recommend it from that point of view, but as a system that played well, it felt half-baked, and I'm not alone in that assessment. (I have another whole rant about setting DCs for the journeys).

Further reading on my Uncharted Journeys experiences:

• Thinking about Wilderness Travel – Merric's Musings
• Adventures in Greyhawk: The Plains of the Paynims – Merric's Musings
• RPG Products I’m Reading – Merric's Musings

Now, as to A Life Well Lived, here is the text of one of the camp craft abilities: Crash Course.

Crash Course
Requirement: Proficiency with the skill, tool, or weapon you are teaching.
You take another under your wing, demonstrating your skill and teaching them to follow your lead.
Choose a skill, tool, or weapon that you are Proficient with and a party member or ally willing to learn. Until the party member or ally’s next Long Rest, they can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Tests they make with the chosen skill, tool, or weapon. The ally you are instructing can’t take any Campcraft Activities during this Long Rest.

Have a look at that. What happens when you use Crash Course to train a fighter who is already proficient with the weapon? At higher levels, that's a +4 to attack rolls for the session! Is the intention that it can only train someone who isn't proficient? Probably, but it's very sloppy not to include that.

And there are other examples where things just don't quite line up - and some activities way outstrip the bonuses given from others.

Again, I really, really like the ideas and expanded possibilities, but there's fix-up work to be done on the mechanics to make it work.

Cheers,
Merric

Thanks for this! Very helpful to read for my own designs. I agree with Uncharted Journeys; I really was not happy with how the wilderness travel played out, and in AiME it felt underwhelming too. If the focus is on the journey, I expect it ought to either be an encounter day of 4-8 encounters with a low chance for some positive ones. Instead, it comes out much how your example described.

 

[jayoungr]

Definitely. If you're incredibly satisfied with the current WotC 5e, there's little reason to look elsewhere!

Do I detect a note of sarcasm there?

 

[Distracted DM]

Do I detect a note of sarcasm there?

Nope. When you say "core game" are you referring to all the WotC stuff or just the core books? Cuz if it's the latter that's actually very refreshing

 

[Buzzqw]

I recently finished the core rules for my own 5E spinoff, so I'll be playing mainly that. However, out of these three options, my choice is 5.2 D&D. I like Level Up, but I don't enjoy its exploration all that much; I don't think it's bad, just not to my taste. Tales of the Valiant has left me feeling very underwhelmed, but that's only having read the SRD. I need to get the PHB soon to see how it goes. That being said, 5.2 WotC D&D has some of the best class design going off unearthed arcana, and I like the bastion rules a lot. Ultimately, though, I plan on stealing as much as I can for all three to better enhance my own table.

Feel free to share your work

BHH