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

[Rant]

There are bigger issues for martial classes than some are noting. If someone played a Barbarian who used original Polearm Master and Sentinel together to act as a defender for weaker party members by hitting an enemy as it closed range and stopping its movement, their character doesn’t exist in Level Up, due to feat changes. They can now eat an enemy’s reaction, instead, so the feats they used to rely on to perform don’t exist in the same form. Same with a fighter built around optimized nova rounds with Great Weapon Master.
A Wizard focused on shutting down enemy spellcasters with counterspell loses their effectiveness. There are a lot of examples of how O5E builds “don’t work” anymore with the new rule set.
That’s fine since the two are different rule sets, and you can totally use Level Up to run a module written for D&D, but no, you can’t really play D&D classes with Level Up classes since they won’t work the way they used to.
Others noted, it’s a lot like Pathfinder, but more extreme, since Pathfinder did not change many basic mechanics from 3.5, it just added new ones. Level Up also changes basic mechanics. Critical Hits work differently. There’s universal maneuvers like Press The Attack that used to be the realm of dedicated class features.
It’s a bigger shift than Pathfinder was from 3.5. It wasn’t a good idea to try to play 3.5 classes alongside Pathfinder classes, and it really really doesn’t work for Level Up. Adventure compatibility seems solid, but rules compatibility by definition doesn’t exist because it’s a different rule set. Obviously classes built around a different rule set can’t work around classes designed around a new one, and vice-versa.

 

[Satirical Bard]

There are some very specific things you can't do the same or builds that don't work the same way, but that is a different thing to "you can’t really play D&D classes with Level Up classes".

 

[Satirical Bard]

I mean this is like saying "as soon as you homebrew any rules in your 5e game, you aren't playing a 5e compatible game anymore", which is nonsense.

 

[Rant]

There are some very specific things you can't do the same or builds that don't work the same way, but that is a different thing to "you can’t really play D&D classes with Level Up classes".

Seems more like a semantics difference. If a D&D character like the Barbarian using Polearm Master and Sentinel as described doesn’t work in Level Up, it might be more accurate to say “you can’t play D&D characters in Level Up,” characters, not classes, but again, that’s kind of a semantics argument.
It’s compatible for adventures but it’s not compatible for classes because it’s not compatible with the rules those classes relied on to function properly. It’s a different rule set that requires different classes, and it has them.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

If you mean "raw damage", then I might agree. If you mean "combat effectiveness"...I would dispute that.

An A5E wizard can get:

1) Cantrip as a bonus action Prof mod per day, leading to more damage.
2) An extra spell per day due to spell specialization
3) Can get a once per day added incapacitation or blind effect on a spell.

etc

Now is it "night and day" different.... for the wizard its not. But is it strictly better...yeah it is.

 

[Legendweaver]

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.

DPR is hardly the only thing that matters in combat, though - and even there, I'm skeptical. Some of the massive changes affecting wizard combat effectiveness include: "Signature Spells" (more spell slots), "Wizard Flair" (add control to any spell once per combat), "Bestow Magic" (one extra spell per combat, potentially a buff with concentration), "Arcane Defenses" (various defensive improvements), Spell intensity (including "Duality," which sidesteps arguably the most important aspect of caster balance in 5E according to the game's own designers), and Swift Signature (quickened spell for wizards).

Now, maybe you're factoring some of the spell nerfs and assuming A5E casters only used revised spells while O5E casters use the originals. I don't have enough of a handle on the matrix of interactions there to determine if that compensates for the class buffs listed above, but I could never run that kind of bifurcated game (which fireball does an npc wizard cast? If an A5e Wizard and O5E wizard both copy fireball from her spellbook, what spell do they get? What about a wand of fireballs? What if the O5E wizard wants to copy an A5E spell into his spellbook? Or an A5E wizard wants to copy a spell from Tasha?... let alone begin to consider how O5E and A5E spells might themselves interact based on unexpected wording if cast in the same fight!!!)...so I'm assuming all wizards draw from the same spell list.

I want to be clear: I like A5E, I want to play it soon, want it to succeed, and I'm trying to tear through my PDFs to uncover (and hopefuly get fixed) as many exploits and edge cases as possible to make it better...I just don't think it'd be good for A5E or O5E to mix characters in a single game.

 

[Satirical Bard]

Considering the power inbalance within o5e, I don't see the new base classes being that much of an issue alongside o5e classes. But I think the key thing here is that it's not first and foremost designed with that in mind. The clear intent is that everyone will play with the new classes. They are just saying 'yes it can be done'.

 

[VanguardHero]

Considering the power inbalance within o5e, I don't see the new base classes being that much of an issue alongside o5e classes. But I think the key thing here is that it's not first and foremost designed with that in mind. The clear intent is that everyone will play with the new classes. They are just saying 'yes it can be done'.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and o5e has some BRITTLE links when it comes to balance.

 

[Blue]

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.

Here's a definition of compatible: if I run a classic 5e adventure day, will the existing challenges be of the same general difficulty?

1. In other words, can I keep the DCs the same or are their skill inflation/deflation? In tier 1? In tier 4?
2. Can I keep the same encounters or is there power creep?
3. Will the same number of encounters per short rest and long rest cause the same amount of usage attrition of features?
4. Do the two longer-than-a-long-rest attrition (HD spent and exhaustion) still recover at the same rate?

Note that I'm not asking about mixing O5E and A5E classes and getting the same spotlight from features - that's one of the points we're trying to fix, giving more interesting options to everyone who needs them.

Tasha's passes the above in terms of compatibility. We see more variety of race/class combonations, but that's part of allowing more options. It stretched a bit on #3 with a proclivity for long rest recovery instead of a mix, with the changes to the Bladesinger being a great example of that difference. But its still in the neighborhood.

So, how do you rate A5E compatibility for those four points? Are they in the same rough neighborhood?

 

[Morrus]

Here's a definition of compatible: if I run a classic 5e adventure day, will the existing challenges be of the same general difficulty?

1. In other words, can I keep the DCs the same or are their skill inflation/deflation? In tier 1? In tier 4?
2. Can I keep the same encounters or is there power creep?
3. Will the same number of encounters per short rest and long rest cause the same amount of usage attrition of features?
4. Do the two longer-than-a-long-rest attrition (HD spent and exhaustion) still recover at the same rate?

Note that I'm not asking about mixing O5E and A5E classes and getting the same spotlight from features - that's one of the points we're trying to fix, giving more interesting options to everyone who needs them.

Tasha's passes the above in terms of compatibility. We see more variety of race/class combonations, but that's part of allowing more options. It stretched a bit on #3 with a proclivity for long rest recovery instead of a mix, with the changes to the Bladesinger being a great example of that difference. But its still in the neighborhood.

So, how do you rate A5E compatibility for those four points? Are they in the same rough neighborhood?

So that has two answers.

1. Yes, you can do all that. The basic goal was to allow you to run an O5E adventure using our rules.
2. Even if you couldn't the game would still be compatible with 5E. A DC 18 check and a DC 17 check are both compatible with 5E. Three goblins and two goblins are both compatible with 5E. There's no incompatibility there.

I guess different folks can define compatibility in different ways, but to us it means that you can use O5E stuff in our game (adventures, characters, monsters, etc.) If you want to run Curse of Strahd in A5E, you can do so. Our Thursday night game has us playing Tomb of Annihilation using A5E rules. It works just fine, except that the DM keeps saying how much he enjoys the new tools at his disposal.

But a new 5E rule is compatible with 5E. Otherwise no new D&D book would be compatible with D&D! You can change a 5E rule and keep it compatible with 5E.

Now, if you define compatibility differently, then only you can decide whether it's compatible. But that's our definition and what we mean when we say 'compatible'.