Level Up (A5E) Using Heritage, Culture, etc to replace 5e's Race, Subrace, Background.

[Scrimps]

I'd like to know if anyone's tried replacing 5e's Race, Subrace and background options with Heritage Culture, etc from A5e, but then reverted to PHB rules for everything else?

Obviously you'd have to make some sort of allowance for expertise, but I'm wondering if there are any other pitfalls you'd need to be wary of.

Similarly, I'm toying with the idea of adopting A5e's Fatigue and Strife instead of 5e's standard Exhaustion rules. I can't see any major issues with this on paper, but I'm interested to hear the experiences of others who may have tried it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Morrus]

By "Heritage Culture, etc" which elements are you suggesting? Basically everything except class? That works fine.

Heritage + Culture is equivalent (mechanically, not thematically) to O5E's Race + Subrace. The only real thing to consider is that the abilty bonus is found in background in A5E not in race. If you're not using A5E's backgrounds you might want to simply consider giving the players a couple of floating ability bonuses. If you are using A5E's backgrounds, it'll be OK.

 

[Scrimps]

Yes, to clarify, I was intending on using Chapter 2 of the the Adventurer's Guide ( so Heritage, Culture, Background and Destiny) to fully replace chapters 2 and 4 (race, Subrace, background and personality) of the PHB.

 

[Morrus]

That should be pretty much seamless then!

 

[Pedantic]

The only things to worry about covering are expertise, skill specialties and the occasional bonus to culture or engineering I think.

 

[Scrimps]

Thanks. So what would be your approach to making A5e Expertise play nicely with standard 5e classes?

I was toying with the idea of granting an Expertise Die to any class that got the original 5e "Expertise" feature OR any build that got the same skill proficiency from more than one source. Do you think that would work?

 

[Morrus]

I'm not clear why expertise wouldn't just work as-is? If something from an A5E feature gives you expertise, you roll the d4. Obviously no O5E features would grant expertise dice, but I don't think that's an issue? Just means it will come up less for you.

 

[Scrimps]

In 5e, "expertise" allows some classes (the most notable being the rogue) to double their proficiency bonus on skills. As far as I can tell, this mechanic is essentially replaced by A5e's Expertise Die, so there's no options for doubling proficiency , you just gain the Die. Additionally, A5e also allows other classes to focus on being really good at particular skills by NOT restricting Expertise Dice to a specific subset of classes; you can get it from a variety of sources, like your culture or background. I'd like to carry that idea over into my otherwise standard 5e game.

 

[Morrus]

They share a name but one isn’t a replacement for the other. Expertise in A5e was designed as a way to have more granular advantage.

The similar names might make it a little confusing, yet there’s no reason you can’t use both types of expertise in your game.