Level Up (A5E) Summary of major differences between A5E and O5E?

[doctorhook]

Is there a summary of the basic rule changes in LU:A5E compared to O5E? I don’t mean spell-by-spell or monster-by-monster, rather just an overview of the major changes I should remember as a DM. (I used the search function but didn’t find a prior thread asking this question; sorry if I missed it.)

I’ve got a lot of 5E in my brain, but now that I’m preparing to run A5E, I’m wondering if there’s a list of things to watch out for. Thanks gang.

 

[CapnZapp]

I asked this question maybe three months ago; got only useless "read the documents" type of non-answers in reply.

Hint: if the answer is "no", it's okay to say that.

 

[dave2008]

No, but there are not a lot of rule changes (if you don't count completely new classes as changes) as much as rule additions. Unfortunately I am not well versed enough with the rules yet to provide a summary, but I would ask first: what do you consider a change?

 

[tetrasodium]

Is there a summary of the basic rule changes in LU:A5E compared to O5E? I don’t mean spell-by-spell or monster-by-monster, rather just an overview of the major changes I should remember as a DM. (I used the search function but didn’t find a prior thread asking this question; sorry if I missed it.)

I’ve got a lot of 5E in my brain, but now that I’m preparing to run A5E, I’m wondering if there’s a list of things to watch out for. Thanks gang.

Rules for exploration challenges, strongholds & followers, crafting, etc exist... That is huge impact on its own. Food & drink is abstracted into supply and the various parts of the system are made to not obliviate the need to acquire it if the gm chooses to focus on it while the allowances are generous enough to mostly ignore or handwave if not. The encounter building rules are improved to be a fraction of the total party level fir essu/mediim/hard/deadly encounters thanks to reworked monster math. Rare spells are a thing & don't need to be all that rare so you can have fun giving them out & making them up. Spells are better balanced. The weapons and armor are reworked to bring back subjective choice rather than being reduced to biggest number usable to a pc being objectively best. Player facing downtime rules for relearning class abilities are a thing and that's good because nearly every level allows them one or more choices. Flanking is an expertise die rather than advantage & with press the attack /fallback & maneuvers combat is no longer close to rockemsockemrobots. The encounters per long rest /adventuring day is a much more reasonable number that you the gm can once again push without resorting to loldeadly encounters all the time. Treasure at level and similar is a thing (similar to wbl) and the rules around that are pretty good. Character creation is redone with heritage culture background destiny rather than race class background bits, this is a much more robust & developed system than tashas half baked lineages. There is a ton of great gm advice in adventurers guide along with trials and treasures making it useful to read or skim relevant areas.


So yea, people might say to read the rules with good reason because so many little things add up, thankfully for you the gm a good number are of the sort you can say "no Bob I don't know how your class ability works, let's look it up" "I'm not sure but I'm going to rule x today & look into it during the break between sessions" or the thing(s) you wanted to focus on and center the session around if you don't know something thanks to things being much better balanced under the hood.

I'm about four or five sessions in and the transition has been pretty smooth. Memories of holdenshire is a pretty good starter adventure that does a nice job of introducing new stuff to help you get rolling & I recommend it for that reason.

edit: post was originally written on my phone & had lots of bad autocorrect/typos in it

 

[CapnZapp]

It's not rocket science, people. This reticence to just spell out the differences makes LU sound like it's super duper complicated.

Why not begin by answering the basic question "Does it play like 5th Edition?"

Assuming the answer isn't simply "pretty much yeah, except with fancy hats on the class names", then follow up with actual examples where game-play actually is different/improved/gonzo/whatever.

The question is obviously not expecting a complete datadump. It wants to get a feel for what LU offers.

 

[WaltyCole]

On a macro level? There's a lot more abilities etc surrounding social encounters and exploring. Maneuvers and some abilities give more options for combat so it's not quite as just trading blows. Basically it's built to be much more varied and give tons of choice. You could build a character with the same base stats, class and archetype as someone else and at level 10 have very different abilities, for instance.

 

[Rune]

The question, for me, is: How much O5e would I have to unlearn to run A5e?

And the answer appears to be: A lot of little things that interact with each other. For which, I would personally find a comprehensive changelog between O5e and A5e immensely helpful.

Because, frankly, I’m never going to get a chance to read these books cover-to-cover. Instead, I’m going to use these books like the reference books they are (or should be) intended to be: by looking specific things up as needed.

 

[TheHand]

Like others have said, no known list exists and a comprehensive one would be massive. Having incorporated A5e rules into my own games since the playtest, I personally decided to approach it like a toolset: I can easily incorporate the new features where applicable, but it doesn't break anything if I use an O5e rule, either because I forgot a new rule or I wasn't familiar enough yet with the new one.

Now having said that, off the top of my head here are some things I would note as major differences:

• The Expertise Die: not only replaces the original "Expertise" but also is featured in many situations that under O5e one might instead call for rolling with Advantage
• Maneuvers and Exertion, this is a big change to the martial classes
• Spells: Don't assume that a spell with the same name as O5e is the same in A5e, a lot of them got minor or even major tweaks. Also, rare spells exist.
• All the Journey rules with Supply and environmental effects.
• New status conditions like "Rattled" and "Confused"
• Fatigue and Strife replace Exhaustion
• You can do a lot more with what O5e called "Lair Actions" by adding in Environment Actions (not sure if that's what they are called!)
• Generally more "stuff" (more equipment, more magic items)
• Paladins = Heralds, Adepts = Monks, Berserkers = Barbarians, Marshall class is much like "Warlord" from 4e
• Heritages, Cultures, and Backgrounds replace Race and Backgrounds
• New Skills (eg, Culture, Engineering) and a few skill changes

Again, not comprehensive, but maybe this list was helpful. I strongly suggest anyone thinking of running A5e check out the starter adventure, Memories of Holdenshire. Even if you never plan to run it, it does a great job easing you into the new mechanics.

 

[tetrasodium]

Having incorporated A5e rules into my own games since the playtest, I personally decided to approach it like a toolset: I can easily incorporate the new features where applicable, but it doesn't break anything if I use an O5e rule, either because I forgot a new rule or I wasn't familiar enough yet with the new one.

I personally went the other way. I went through 3.0>3.5>PF & remember the headaches that often eventually turned up after trying to blend things across so just decided to avoid that entirely by making a clean break. I've read the entire AG, skimmed or read most of t&t and read the nonstatblock sections of the mm (ire encounter building stuff in appendix). One of my players mostly read or skimmed the AG while the other 4 players have read considerably less right up to one I'm pretty sure didn't even bother actually reading their class & archetype's pages.
Session zero was pretty much a full session devoted to character creation

Spoiler: character creation is pretty easy

Pick one of each, most have one or more choices

The first session or two involved a a few players fumbling to lookup what their abilities do & remember/write down relevant bits, this was mostly due to doing things like writing down an ability name without any details of what the ability does. By session two or three things were pretty smooth & despite a lot of combat in session4 the only thing that needed looking up was "some of you guys might have a weapon that's extra effective against a wooden door if it has the breaker:wood tag" followed by "I think I do!... ooo I deal double damage against the door!".

 

[WanderingMystic]

Besides what has been mentioned above every class is fairly different compared to o5e. Maneuvers have really changed how all martial classes feel and play to the point that in my mind they are completely different.

Warlocks and Artificers are also drastically different than their o5e counterparts.

Monster have more options.

A5e keeps the window dressing of O5e but the mechanics feel very different enough to me that it is a different beast.