Level Up (A5E) Is Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition compatible with D&D 5E?

[Waller]

Short answer: yes. Long aswer: it is if Tasha's is.

So this quesiton seems to come up a lot, and I thought I'd quickly dive into it. Level Up isn't the same as D&D 5E (otherwise why buy it?) but it is compatible with it.

Level Up is compatible with 5E if Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is compatible with 5E. TCoE changes how races work. Eberron has a new class. But it's still compatible with 5E. That's what Level Up does, on a grander scale. Some things have changed, but they all still use the core 5E system.

Now different people might have different definitions of what 'compatible' means ranging from 'it has to be an exact reprint of D&D word for word or its a totally different game' all the way to 'if it uses a d20 it's compatible'. My measure is: can I run a D&D adventure with these rules? The answer is yes.

There are some people posting online that LU is not compatible with D&D, but what they means is it's not identical to D&D. Their definition of 'compatible' pretty much means most official D&D books aren't compatible with D&D, because they contain new content or rules. Eberron has a new class in it; Level Up has 13 new classes. If those classes aren't compatible with D&D then Eberron isn't either.

So YMMV. But this is pretty much 5E with more knobs and dials.

 

[Xethreau]

The term used by the A5e design team was backward compatible.

A5e is backward compatible with O5e content. You can run O5e content while playing A5e.

This is just like how Final Fantasy VII (the original) is a PS game, but you can run it on PS2 because PS2 is backward compatible.

 

[Legendweaver]

The term used by the A5e design team was backward compatible.

Wellll...they made a stronger claim than that. The Kickstarter campaign page actually says:

• Play 5E adventures or use 5E material with Level Up.
• Your 5E characters can adventure alongside your Level Up characters.
• Use new rules and monsters from Level Up in your 5E games.

And the differences are bigger than with Tasha. I think a better comparison is D&D 3 vs Pathfinder. Pathfinder also claimed it was compatible with 3E when it first came out, but I don't think anyone took that seriously; pathfinder is reasonably balanced against itself, but it has a very different power gradient than 3E. I think that's true here, as well. You may be able to run 5E adventures with minor modification, but an O5E character playing alongside a bunch of A5E characters is going to feel fairly underpowered.

 

[Waller]

Wellll...they made a stronger claim than that. The Kickstarter campaign page actually says:



And the differences are bigger than with Tasha. I think a better comparison is D&D 3 vs Pathfinder. Pathfinder also claimed it was compatible with 3E when it first came out, but I don't think anyone took that seriously; pathfinder is reasonably balanced against itself, but it has a very different power gradient than 3E. I think that's true here, as well. You may be able to run 5E adventures with minor modification, but an O5E character playing alongside a bunch of A5E characters is going to feel fairly underpowered.

Trying to grok what you’re saying from what you bolded. Are you implying that 5E characters cannot be played alongside LU characters? Because that’s very clearly not true. We’ve been doing that since the playtests with no problems at all. It’s not like they use a differemt rules system. They’re just new classes. Like the artificer was.

 

[Xethreau]

Wellll...they made a stronger claim than that. The Kickstarter campaign page actually says:

• Your 5E characters can adventure alongside your Level Up characters.

This is also an example of backward compatibility. Take your O5e character and put it into an A5e campaign, it works just fine.

 

[Legendweaver]

They’re just new classes. Like the artificer was.

They're not just new, they're more powerful. The wizard is an easy comparison to make here: side by side, the A5E wizard gave up none of the O5E wizard's abilities, and gained eleven new class features.

So what I'm saying is there's a fundamental imbalance between O5E and A5E classes (in a similar manner to between SW5E and O5E, and in a similar manner to Pathfinder vs. D&D 3.5 - and to a similar apparent magnitude). Yes, you can technically play them side by side, but an O5E wizard playing at the same table as an A5E wizard will definitely feel significantly underpowered by comparison.

 

[VanguardHero]

They’re just new classes. Like the artificer was.

This. For Martials they are Classes better balanced against Spellcasters, but if weighed against o5e "balance" they are well within the balance range just crossing the Martial/Caster divide. For Casters, I haven't looked at them as much, but a lot of the new stuff they got seems cool and flavorful. In exchange, the a5e version of a lot of OP spells got nerfed, which lowers their baseline power, as well as Martials actually giving competition. So the worst of it would be a5e Casters with o5e spells, but even then it's less powerful than the cheese you can get up to with just o5e, say a Chronurgist Wizard with a Peace Cleric dip. Mixing the two hurts the integrity of a5e's balance, not o5e's.

 

[Stalker0]

They're not just new, they're more powerful. The wizard is an easy comparison to make here: side by side, the A5E wizard gave up none of the O5E wizard's abilities, and gained eleven new class features.

So what I'm saying is there's a fundamental imbalance between O5E and A5E classes (in a similar manner to between SW5E and O5E, and in a similar manner to Pathfinder vs. D&D 3.5 - and to a similar apparent magnitude). Yes, you can technically play them side by side, but an O5E wizard playing at the same table as an A5E wizard will definitely feel significantly underpowered by comparison.

This is my take as well, though it does depend on the class.

I think for example the OG Druid and the new one could both play at the table and be reasonably balanced with each other. Same with old and new barbarian. Old and new Monk, no way. Old and new Wizard, no way.

Now for groups that don't care about absolute power, I don't see any real compatibility issues, but if they do....it would be very tough to have both versions of many classes at the same table without expecting one player or the other to feel a bit underwhelmed.

 

[Xethreau]

They're not just new, they're more powerful. The wizard is an easy comparison to make here: side by side, the A5E wizard gave up none of the O5E wizard's abilities, and gained eleven new class features.

So what I'm saying is there's a fundamental imbalance between O5E and A5E classes (in a similar manner to between SW5E and O5E, and in a similar manner to Pathfinder vs. D&D 3.5 - and to a similar apparent magnitude). Yes, you can technically play them side by side, but an O5E wizard playing at the same table as an A5E wizard will definitely feel significantly underpowered by comparison.

"fundamental imbalance" does exist between the two wizards, due to the fact that all A5e classes have support for all three pillars of gameplay. In the case of full casters, they received support for non-spell-related ways to contribute to exploration and social.

However, an A5e wizard has the same damage profile as the O5e wizard does. An O5e wizard won't be sad in combat alongside A5e characters because they are still viable in combat. This is true for all the classes.

 

[Timespike]

In terms of O5E design, all of the classes have a lot more "ribbon abilities." Just because there's more stuff on one character sheet than another doesn't necessarily mean the character sheet with more entries will do more damage, have a higher AC, etc.

Now, will they be more versatile? Yes, almost all the time.