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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thrommel" data-source="post: 999394" data-attributes="member: 12208">Here's the key distinction from my point of view: 3.5 is a revision of a product. AU is a product of innovation.Much as the flames have fired over what's good, bad, or indifferent about 3.5, the bottom line at the end of the day is that 80% of your game is going to be the same. From what I've seen, a 3.5 Fighter is still pretty much a 3.0 Fighter.In AU, there is no Fighter. There are fighter types (and some great ones at that) but the tropes which pervade traditional D&D have been tossed out and reinvented.Sounds pretty drastic, right? Here's the brilliant part -- all the fundamentals are still there -- skills, feats, actions, saving throws, classes. All the basic mechanics are the same. (Thus it integrates just fine with the MM and DMG.)So the learning curve is low because you already know how to play the game. That leaves you all kinds of room to discover what the game can be like with a non-Vancian magic system, large & tiny characters, no alignment, etc. In my experience, AU changes the nature of your game, not the fundamental execution of it.To the original point, the only way these products compete is that they're both $30 hardcover products that are rules-heavy and are coming out within a week of each other.So it's just competition for attention and dollars. Substantively, AU delivers a LOT more than 3.5.And if your budget is really tight, Monte will be publishing the bulk of the book as a series of three PDF's on August 7th.I hope that clears things up a bit.-Thrommel</blockquote>

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