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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 9554372" data-attributes="member: 53082">I'm running ToV now and have been for several months. We are 16 sessions in and I have 8 players. All of us have extensive experience with 5E - and most of us have played a wide range of other RPG's over the decades as well. I'm using the Goodman Games 5E version of Temple of Elemental Evil as the basis for the campaign. The party is pretty much 4th level, pushing to 5th though we are using individual experience so they are not all at the exact same point of progression as not every character makes every sessionI can say as a DM it runs with much of the familiarity of 5E and recent editions of D&D in general but it has a lot of polish and interesting adjustments like the Luck mechanic.  Downtime is defined nicely. Going by the parts we have actually used it works very well. My only real conversion work with the adventure is using Monster Vault versions of the monsters - they are far more interesting than original 5E MM critters - and using the ToV magic items and spells where they appear.My players really liked character creation and the way it plays as well. Luck has been a hit for the whole table. No one is looking to go back to standard 5E and no one is asking about 2024 D&D either as this game does what we were all looking for it to do - general satisfaction is something that has been commented on pretty much every session which is an extremely positive sign as my crew can get pretty picky about some of the details. Class-wise we have:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighter</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paladin</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cleric</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rogue</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bard</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wizard</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ranger</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><s>Artificer </s>Mechanist</li> </ul>No one has complained about their character's capabilities, no one has -really- died yet and no one has asked to switch out a character thus far which is remarkable as at least one of those things typically happens in the early levels of a D&D type game with us. I consider that a sign of how well-done this game is.The reason we went with ToV is that we were in the mood for a D&D style campaign after a long Deadlands game and a shorter Mechwarrior game but no one was excited about 5th. I brought up ToV and pointed people to the "demo" versions that were available to see what they thought and they started talking about it with enthusiasm. This has continued for the duration so I am very happy with our choice.Now I am running an old-school  dungeon-centered campaign set in old-school Greyhawk so I am probably not pushing some of the limits here but the experience has made me want to run a more wide-open campaign using the same rules and using some of the stranger monsters KP has put out in recent years. I consider that a good sign too.As far as which books you need the Players Book is the core of the whole thing. You definitely need that. The Monster Vault is great and gives you drop-in replacements for the Monster Manual creatures but you could use the main book to run through any 5E adventure and it will work just fine. The whole thing is very modular as you could use the ToV monsters in a standard 5E campaign as well. Luck could be ported into a 5E game with no real issues as could many of the things broken down in the GMG. It's a pretty flexible setup.I only have two complaints:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Needs more sub-classes. It needs more player character material/options in general but the limited number of sub-classes feels pretty tight.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The indexes in the printed books are just terrible. Need to check the Stealth rules - Stealth? Not in the index. Sneak maybe? Nope. Hide? Nope? Another example - Heal or Healing? Nope. There are a lot of things we've gone to check in play, especially early on with a new set of rules, and it's just not in there. Definitely room to improve there.</li> </ul>Don't let those two items get in the way though! If you have a group that is tired of/burned out on/no longer excited about 5E D&D then Tales of the Valiant might be the right mix of familiar but improved to get them going again. I can't tell you how it will work for your group but it's working really well for ours.</blockquote>

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