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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ondath" data-source="post: 8913551" data-attributes="member: 7031770">Disclaimer: I'm running a hybrid O5E/A5E game where most of the player-facing content is from O5E, while I silently upgraded my DM tools to A5E and offered some A5E features to players. So PCs have O5E races, classes, subclasses and backgrounds, and the majority of their spells and magic items are the O5E versions (meaning things like the overpowered Fireball and Counterspell don't have their A5E balances). But they also have A5E Strongholds and Destinies, and I use A5E encounter guidelines when designing monsters (so encounters are balanced according to A5E's CR formula and I have Tier*2 encounters per day) and A5E monsters when available. The PCs are level 15 with a LOT of toys at their disposal.With all that preamble, here's my experience running this hybrid at Tier 3: I think everything that A5E adds makes higher level play easier to run, but there are still some problems inherent to 5E that A5E fails to overcome.The pros:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The encounter/day guidelines are much better, and provide a far healthier way of spending the party's resources. At lower tiers, they only need to go through 2/4 Medium encounters per day, but at Tier 4 they'll go through 8 Medium encounters per day. Also, the new CR-based encounter difficulty system really works: When they say the encounter will be hard, the players get a scare but manage to overcome the threat. A medium encounter is manageable at full resources. And the maximum monster CR at each level helps you avoid putting too dangerous a threat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gold now has a purpose. I'm O5E, Gold became meaningless starting from Level 9-ish. A5E's wealth curve is tighter (in O5E, each level at Tier 3 gives you tens of thousands of gold, while A5E reins this in a little) but there are also more options in the form of strongholds, donations, pets, ships, meaningful downtime activities and even crafting magic items. Granted, I think the prices on the last one are too low (a holdover from O5E pricing that put Uncommon items at a measly 500 gp but still involved fairly powerful items at that rarity), but in total there are far more ways to spend your gold, and that gives adventures in higher levels a cool new flavour and expands PC power horizontally (they can do more things) instead of vertically (their numbers go up).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Regions and exploration challenges make even high tier exploration pillar useful. Need a noncombat encounter for your high-level party? A CR 13 exploration challenge gives them something interesting to do. The party teleported to a location you didn't prepare? Picking the most appropriate sounding region and rolling on the Tier-appropriate table is not perfect, but it gives you sufficient inspiration to improvise. The tools at your disposal for the exploration pillar are simply more numerous.</li> </ul>The Cons:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Saving Throw disparity remains. I think this is 5e's biggest problem since the gap between a strong proficient save and a weak nonproficient save becomes insurmountable at later levels. To the point that a PC or monster that has its weak save targeted simply cannot hope to succeed. Sadly, this is a problem A5e inherits from O5E, and <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8216" target="_blank">even the lead designer behind the Monstrous Menagerie acknowledges it.</a> That said, I think the problem can be fixed and I'm currently considering writing a short article on the forums about fixing 5e's saving throw math with a little inspiration from old school saving throws...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Players still end up having too many toys, and combat takes LONG. Now, I did award them magic items above O5E's or A5E's guidelines, so my case might be a bit of a Monty Haul GMing too. But even beyond the magic items, higher-level play takes too much time IMO. The players have too many options, and that leads to analysis paralysis. Combat in particular has become incredibly long. An average encounter takes around an hour and a half, so I'm basically forced to have all my combats be interesting setpieces, otherwise the time investment isn't worth it. Especially spellcasters like the wizard have too many options that they could take, so players need time to choose, and they can do more things at their turn as well. I don't know how this could be solved, TBH.</li> </ul>The ones I can't comment on:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The martial-caster disparity. The party doesn't have anyone using the new martial classes with A5E's combat maneuvers or exploration knacks, so I don't know how these change the game's feel. But the O5E parts of this issue make sure that casters in my game are king. The Blood Hunter and the Wizard in the group had a Best of 3 1v1 in a non-canon fight, and Wizard won 2 times easily. Just too many options.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tier 4. Since the party is currently Level 15, I don't know how they will do at the far end of the level range.</li> </ul>If you have any specific questions, I can also answer those separately!</blockquote>

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