Level Up (A5E) Do you plan to back Dungeon Delver’s Guide?

tetrasodium · Jul 19, 2022

I'm really looking forward to the second & third chapters mentioned here so can't wait

Stalker0 · Jul 19, 2022

Faolyn said:
May I ask which crunch?

I'll answer but I want to be careful as it can very easily be viewed as a "bash". There is a lot of things in LU I like and continue to like, but its very easy for these things to go negative when people see a list like this. So just putting out that note, don't want this to turn into "oh you hate LU".

Specialties: I find often forgotten by myself and my players.
Destinies: Very hard to remember I have found, and my players haven't really grabbed on to them for any real roleplaying notions. I also think there's a find balance disparity between a lot of them, some of them seem "obviously" better than others, something my players have commented on as well.
Some Spells: Something I have found is that the spells that got minor changes my players keep forgetting, as do I on occasion. When its a major change sure, but a lot of spells got a small tweak....and I find that we often get the versions confused.
- Certain slightly OP spells got nerfed into the ground (Banishment), but others that are commonly in the top 10 of bad spells didn't get touched (Arcane Sword). I actually had a player call me over and explain where Arcane Sword had been changed, because they "knew" that LU had of course changed such a terrible spell and they must be missing the adjustment.
The prestige system: Tried it out but quickly found it not to my liking, just didn't see the point of having mechanics for these things as compared to just roleplaying it out.
Journey Activities: I still like the concept, but I think the system was designed to just "lightly sprinkle" into journeys. You walk a week, you pick an activity, roll a few rolls, etc. So funny enough I think it's too inbetween. On the one hand I think I wanted even more journey mechanics, really get in depth. So the current rules feel too light for me to want to use a lot, and therefore, its a lot of mechanics I don't really need.
Some Maneuvers: As much as a liked the system at its first read, over time I have looked back at envy at the Battle Master maneuvers, which I feel get 80% of the same power but with a tenth of the mechanical complexity. There are certain maneuvers that I think are solid, but a lot of maneuvers that really aren't all that great....and picking your maneuvers with the constraint of the schools than REALLY limits what maneuvers you can actually take, to the point where I find it's not really that much of a choice in the end for some classes. I think the system could have dropped the schools, reduced the number of maneuvers, and tightened them up, and it would have been a much slicker system.

Faolyn · Jul 19, 2022

Stalker0 said:
I'll answer but I want to be careful as it can very easily be viewed as a "bash". There is a lot of things in LU I like and continue to like, but its very easy for these things to go negative when people see a list like this. So just putting out that note, don't want this to turn into "oh you hate LU".

No, that's fair enough. It's heaps better than o5e but still has problems.

Stalker0 said:
Specialties: I find often forgotten by myself and my players.

I agree here. Unfortunately, the example of how to make a character doesn't include adding specialties so I often forget to add them.

Stalker0 said:
Destinies: Very hard to remember I have found, and my players haven't really grabbed on to them for any real roleplaying notions. I also think there's a find balance disparity between a lot of them, some of them seem "obviously" better than others, something my players have commented on as well.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I don't think my players will care all that much, though, because in our D&D games, we allow inspiration to stack up to 3 and we give out both one player inspo and one DM inspo at the end of each session, so having a destiny inspo isn't as big a deal.

Stalker0 said:
Some Spells: Something I have found is that the spells that got minor changes my players keep forgetting, as do I on occasion. When its a major change sure, but a lot of spells got a small tweak....and I find that we often get the versions confused.

Certain slightly OP spells got nerfed into the ground (Banishment), but others that are commonly in the top 10 of bad spells didn't get touched (Arcane Sword). I actually had a player call me over and explain where Arcane Sword had been changed, because they "knew" that LU had of course changed such a terrible spell and they must be missing the adjustment.

Hah! It's a mystery why that spell didn't get improved upon.

Personally, I always write up my character's grimoire so I don't have to keep referring to the books, but there are players at my table who don't so I can see how they might have the same problem.

Stalker0 said:
Journey Activities: I still like the concept, but I think the system was designed to just "lightly sprinkle" into journeys. You walk a week, you pick an activity, roll a few rolls, etc. So funny enough I think it's too inbetween. On the one hand I think I wanted even more journey mechanics, really get in depth. So the current rules feel too light for me to want to use a lot, and therefore, its a lot of mechanics I don't really need.

I view the journey activities as being for when you don't actually want to RP every step of the way. If the travel is an important part of the adventure, I wouldn't use them. If the travel is more just about getting to your destination, then I'd use them so at least it's more than "you walk for a day and then reach town." I can see where you'd want more info for important travel, though.