Level Up (A5E) My Level Up Campaign has Ended! Level Up Feedback

[Stalker0]

Create water doesn't create Supply.

Ah I just confirmed this was errated, so that’s good one less thing to contribute.

Your suggestion about increasing the supply drain…again the fundamental problem for my group is, the ranger produces 3 supply every day, +2 when they succeed on a hunt check (and with their various bonuses they almost always succeed). So even if I just destroyed every supply container they have (meaning they literally carry 0 supply at all times), the ranger alone would still cover the party’s needs.

Probably the main solution is to remove the grub knack for the ranger in favor of something else. Without that constant refresh of supplies it provides (+ the errata on create water you indicated), that might do the job

 

[Stalker0]

The other issue I had with the journey system was its “inflexibility” when it came to roles. Say we had a 10 day journey, and I’m suooosed to have the party roll at the beginning of the journey.

So let’s say the ranger does hunt (and doesn’t have all the auto supply from knacks). Their succcess or failure on that check means +20 supply for the party or 0.

So the party could literally start starving to death on a bad roll (and that part im actually fine with, that’s the survival I’m talking about!). But, by the rules the party can’t change their jobs midway through the journey. The praying cleric…sorry bucko I know your people are dying of starvation but you started praying 5 days ago, and by gum you have to finish it! No hunting for you!

That’s narratively just crazy to me.

 

[Morrus]

The other issue I had with the journey system was its “inflexibility” when it came to roles. Say we had a 10 day journey, and I’m suooosed to have the party roll at the beginning of the journey.

So let’s say the ranger does hunt (and doesn’t have all the auto supply from knacks). Their succcess or failure on that check means +20 supply for the party or 0.

So the party could literally start starving to death on a bad roll (and that part im actually fine with, that’s the survival I’m talking about!). But, by the rules the party can’t change their jobs midway through the journey. The praying cleric…sorry bucko I know your people are dying of starvation but you started praying 5 days ago, and by gum you have to finish it! No hunting for you!

That’s narratively just crazy to me.

Who says they can’t change activity during a journey? The recommendation is per region, not per journey, just for ease of use, but even then it just says “usually”.

Like with the Supply penalties and availability, I think you’re taking (our lenient) suggestions as law. It’s honestly up to you! That was our intention. I’d hoped we’d made that clear in the text, but I guess we didn’t.

(I do agree that ranger knack is quite generous… I agree it would be better just restoring hp and not Supply! In fact I think it's an excellent candidate for errata.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

The other issue I had with the journey system was its “inflexibility” when it came to roles. Say we had a 10 day journey, and I’m suooosed to have the party roll at the beginning of the journey.

So let’s say the ranger does hunt (and doesn’t have all the auto supply from knacks). Their succcess or failure on that check means +20 supply for the party or 0.

So the party could literally start starving to death on a bad roll (and that part im actually fine with, that’s the survival I’m talking about!). But, by the rules the party can’t change their jobs midway through the journey. The praying cleric…sorry bucko I know your people are dying of starvation but you started praying 5 days ago, and by gum you have to finish it! No hunting for you!

That’s narratively just crazy to me.

You are certainly not wrong to play RAW but from my experience that generally never yields good results either for the players or the DM and sometimes both.

Based on the above, when I incorporate the journey rules (or traps), I assess if the loss conditions for that journey are meaningful for the table (classes present, level of the party etc plays a role), if they gel with our own house rules (and we have plenty) and finally if they work thematically. From that angle, I adjust the journey rules accordingly.

 

[Stalker0]

Like with the Supply penalties and availability, I think you’re taking (our lenient) suggestions as law. It’s honestly up to you! That was our intention. I’d hoped we’d made that clear in the text, but I guess we didn’t.

I did mean "region" in my example so apologies for that. While its true that you do say "usually" in the description, you also note that "all journey checks are made at the beginning of the region". So in theory the party still has to "plan out" all of their journey activities at the beginning.

I did try at first doing the rolls but then "retconning" if a player changed their mind based on what came out, but that was messy and gamey. Player gets a critical success on the roll and then decides "well that's day 1 I want to do something else". Ultimately I switched to daily rolls for the journey activities, which was more tedious but addressed the narrative problems I mentioned. However, that has its own problems, as now the chances of getting critical successes and critical failures are significantly higher if I'm rolling 10 checks rather than just 1.

What I then houseruled to solve that problem was: "only one critical failure and critical success can be generated per journey task per region". So if the cleric critical fails their prayer on day 1, they can't critically fail on the other 9 days through the region.

So you can see how the issues somewhat cascade, and that's ultimately my feedback. The journey system really didn't feel like a polished "system". As you said, its more of a "suggestion" on how to do things, but that wasn't what I was looking for in a crunchier 5e rules type book that LU was marketed as.


OH that does remind me (something I forgot in the original feedback). I believe the errata around Pray is incorrect. I believe you intended that to be for the "critical success" area, but it's stated as the success area.

 

[Morrus]

I did mean "region" in my example so apologies for that. While its true that you do say "usually" in the description, you also note that "all journey checks are made at the beginning of the region". So in theory the party still has to "plan out" all of their journey activities at the beginning.

I did try at first doing the rolls but then "retconning" if a player changed their mind based on what came out, but that was messy and gamey. Player gets a critical success on the roll and then decides "well that's day 1 I want to do something else". Ultimately I switched to daily rolls for the journey activities, which was more tedious but addressed the narrative problems I mentioned. However, that has its own problems, as now the chances of getting critical successes and critical failures are significantly higher if I'm rolling 10 checks rather than just 1.

What I then houseruled to solve that problem was: "only one critical failure and critical success can be generated per journey task per region". So if the cleric critical fails their prayer on day 1, they can't critically fail on the other 9 days through the region.

So you can see how the issues somewhat cascade, and that's ultimately my feedback. The journey system really didn't feel like a polished "system". As you said, its more of a "suggestion" on how to do things, but that wasn't what I was looking for in a crunchier 5e rules type book that LU was marketed as.


OH that does remind me (something I forgot in the original feedback). I believe the errata around Pray is incorrect. I believe you intended that to be for the "critical success" area, but it's stated as the success area.

Well, I think we’re just going in circles. It’s not to your tastes, clearly, but if you were looking for a crunchy gritty survival ruleset, that wasn’t our goal, and it’s not what T&T is. Our goal was a toolkit the Narrator could use as they needed to make journeys more interesting.

But I’ll leave it at that now. Maybe the LotR one will be more to your tastes?

 

[Stalker0]

Well, I think we’re just going in circles. It’s not to your tastes, clearly, but if you were looking for a crunchy gritty survival ruleset, that wasn’t our goal, and it’s not what T&T is. Our goal was a toolkit the Narrator could use as they needed to make journeys more interesting.

But I’ll leave it at that now. Maybe the LotR one will be more to your tastes?

Agreed, at the end of the day, this is just one datapoint, its one gaming group who used your gaming system for an entire campaign. How useful that is to you is completely up to you, but of course has to be measured against the feedback from other groups. And of course its easy to get focused on the negative aspects of the feedback (as we humans love to fix things), but there are some key positives to note as well.

Perhaps the LOTR will be, hehe as I am clearly in the market for new travel rules

 

[TheHand]

Thank you for the campaign summary. It's not too dissimilar to our own table's experience. We're now running 5e with some A5e elements mixed in, mainly using Culture/Heritage, the option to use A5e or original classes/subclasses, mixing the monsters from either source, and adding in the new spells & items.

One of the features we were most excited for and let down by were Maneuvers. We're still using them, but if I had more time/energy I'd really like to go through them all to rebalance them, make them work more consistently, and scale up better as characters level.

 

[Belisarion]

In the end it's all about player preferences.
I just wonder that of all the player who likes optimization the most had the most problems with the greater pool of customization options in LU as there is literally none in OG 5e. Each fighter/archetype is almost identical to each other with minor differences. Hard to really optimize anything there.

And for supply, I mostly cut it out in my games as my players don't like the micromanagement. It only really matters to us, when the group is stranded in a rather unknown/harsh environment, where survival is of more importance.

I'd like to hear more about the story of your campaign, maybe the milestones and how the pros and cons played out in them.

 

[Staffan]

And the rules don't really give that much guidance on how often to have encounters when traveling through a region. Once a day, once a week?

One per journey.