Level Up (A5E) My first impression

[Jmarso]

These will always be the orcs in my world...

 

[Lord Mhoram]

The Stoic Orcs remind me of Vulcans: they're so emotional they had to purge themselves of emotion and embrace logic. Which is so amazingly different than the way orcs have always been shown that I love it. (Also, then non-Stoic Orcs are now Romulans.)

When I was describing how the ritual effected them I told my wife "It's like Kolinahr".

I'm actually using Stoic Orc for my first character, a half elf that was raised by diabolists, that were killed by a group of good guy orcs, and raised by them after, and he keeps getting worse and worse nightmares of a demon lord to come claim him. Play starts when he starts having emotions again, and becomes a celestial warlock.

 

[Satirical Bard]

My main first impression is not so much with individual things (almost all of which I really like), but with questions about its true interoperability with o5e.

Because a lot of the cool new things rely on other new mechanics in a5e, they aren’t really as modular as they first appear.

So I can see myself easily using new monster stat blocks over the old ones, for example, but I’m less sure about mixing and matching classes and subclasses, or a5e classes side by side o5e classes in the same party.

 

[Timespike]

My main first impression is not so much with individual things (almost all of which I really like), but with questions about its true interoperability with o5e.

Because a lot of the cool new things rely on other new mechanics in a5e, they aren’t really as modular as they first appear.

So I can see myself easily using new monster stat blocks over the old ones, for example, but I’m less sure about mixing and matching classes and subclasses, or a5e classes side by side o5e classes in the same party.

O5E subclasses generally tend to work just fine on A5E classes. The subclasses got made after the classes did, so we mostly playtested with O5E subclasses. There are a few places I'd advise caution (Battlemaster + the A5E maneuver system would be a ton of bookkeeping and weird edge cases) but in general terms, you can just drop them right in.

 

[Satirical Bard]

O5E subclasses generally tend to work just fine on A5E classes. The subclasses got made after the classes did, so we mostly playtested with O5E subclasses. There are a few places I'd advise caution (Battlemaster + the A5E maneuver system would be a ton of bookkeeping and weird edge cases) but in general terms, you can just drop them right in.

Thanks for that feedback! And yes I assumed that where you've done a relative like-for-like subclass (like the new beastmaster or the burglar for thief), you should take the new subclass. It's more for a gloomstalker ranger or a shepherd druid or whatever.

 

[Jmarso]

Reading through all the combat maneuvers now, it's clear that a ton of thought and work went into this. Really well done.

I read some of them and their inspiration just jumps out- stuff from Kung Fu or marial arts movies, old westerns where the hero shoots a gun out of his adversary's hands, Zorro cutting that famous "z" into his opponent's tunic, or stuff like Ah-Nuld weaving an around-the-head-behind-the-back web of steel with his classic bastard sword to the thrumming of Basil Peledouris's music...

Used properly in-game, it will be possible to add tremendous cinematic, story-telling elements to thrill and delight everyone at the table. The player's gotta buy in and use this stuff, though!

 

[jadxq]

I was hoping there would be more changes to spells from regular 5e. Why is True Strike still even a thing? There's a lot of either crappy or OP spells, so it would have been nice if they were changed or removed.

 

[Timespike]

Thanks for that feedback! And yes I assumed that where you've done a relative like-for-like subclass (like the new beastmaster or the burglar for thief), you should take the new subclass. It's more for a gloomstalker ranger or a shepherd druid or whatever.

Yeah, the "corresponding" subclasses tend to hook into the new mechanics of 5e a bit more, so you're correct about that. But if you're really feeling like playing and Echo Knight for your next Level Up fighter or if you want to use one of the warlock patrons in COFSA, you should be able to do so without any problem.

 

[Timespike]

I was hoping there would be more changes to spells from regular 5e. Why is True Strike still even a thing? There's a lot of either crappy or OP spells, so it would have been nice if they were changed or removed.

For what it's worth, we went through and rewrote all of the spells from O5E as part of the design process. Sometimes the changes were small or non-existant, with new wording more as a legal consideration than a mechanical one, but we rebalanced a lot of them as we were going along. I know I made balance tweaks to several of the ones I worked on; while people are obviously going to have different opinions about which spells need what treatment, double-check that the spell hasn't been changed before getting too disappointed. We also used rare spells to help with some of the stinkers; the example you give of True Strike was one example of that, actually! There's a rare version of True Strike that reads as follows:

Kasvarina's Greater True Strike. You gain an almost total understanding of a creature or object’s defenses and body language. The duration increases to Concentration (1 minute) and you gain advantage to three additional attack rolls of your choice that are made before the spell ends. Once per round, you can choose to use that advantage when you make your first attack roll on your turn.

So if you've always liked the idea of true strike, but not the implementation, that's now there to be found as treasure or researched in down time.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

For what it's worth, we went through and rewrote all of the spells from O5E as part of the design process. Sometimes the changes were small or non-existant, with new wording more as a legal consideration than a mechanical one, but we rebalanced a lot of them as we were going along. I know I made balance tweaks to several of the ones I worked on; while people are obviously going to have different opinions about which spells need what treatment, double-check that the spell hasn't been changed before getting too disappointed. We also used rare spells to help with some of the stinkers; the example you give of True Strike was one example of that, actually! There's a rare version of True Strike that reads as follows:

Is there a list of spells with major changes anywhere? (e.g., fireball type changes).

Besides how manuvers will play out, I'm finding any potential spell changes as the hardest thing to figure out impact through a quick read. Someone commented on how the Wizard seemed buffed from O5e (not a great result if true IMO) but if there are more fireball like adjustments then maybe not. Really hard to figure out without going through all the big spells.