mamba
Legend
why would they? These books are not licensed under ORC, the SRD is
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The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Black Flag Tales of the Valiant is out (in PDF)! What do people think?
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
That's what I was trying to clarify, thanks.
If Hardy is used sparingly, I don't think it's a problem. Players can wear adamantine armor and take crits off the table for the DM, so the occasional time you can't crit a monster isn't so bad.
I'm planning to run an adventure converted from 2e with old school Drow, who all have adamantine equipment. So they'll be immune to crits because they're wearing the stuff, but then if they die it becomes party treasure, and if they feel that being immune to crits by wearing adamantine chainmail is better than wearing chainmail +1, that's a trade off they're willing to make and that's fine with me.
Now if Hardy gets thrown on every big monster to the point we're back in 3.5 something like 35% of monster types were immune to crits (I recently checked, someone took offense to my hyperbolically saying 50% lol), that might not be so good. OTOH I think the game could live without crits, personally, when WotC was talking about removing monster crits, I was for it, simply because under normal circumstances, I crit someone, wow whee, I get 7 more damage from my great sword. A Giant Ape crits me with a rock, and I take 24.5 more damage...something about that doesn't seem right, since the DM already has way more chances to crit me than I do his monsters, lol.
I'm planning to run an adventure converted from 2e with old school Drow, who all have adamantine equipment. So they'll be immune to crits because they're wearing the stuff, but then if they die it becomes party treasure, and if they feel that being immune to crits by wearing adamantine chainmail is better than wearing chainmail +1, that's a trade off they're willing to make and that's fine with me.
Now if Hardy gets thrown on every big monster to the point we're back in 3.5 something like 35% of monster types were immune to crits (I recently checked, someone took offense to my hyperbolically saying 50% lol), that might not be so good. OTOH I think the game could live without crits, personally, when WotC was talking about removing monster crits, I was for it, simply because under normal circumstances, I crit someone, wow whee, I get 7 more damage from my great sword. A Giant Ape crits me with a rock, and I take 24.5 more damage...something about that doesn't seem right, since the DM already has way more chances to crit me than I do his monsters, lol.
Southpaw Soldier
Explorer
Much depends on the nature of crits at your table. My monsters don't crit; player crits do max+1roll; example a 1d8 weapon becomes 8+1d8.
Just did a CTRL+F for "Hardy" in the Monster Vault; only finds the trait on dinosaurs. Making it a trait of a few thematically similar creatures is less offensive, I guess.
Just did a CTRL+F for "Hardy" in the Monster Vault; only finds the trait on dinosaurs. Making it a trait of a few thematically similar creatures is less offensive, I guess.
The ORC license is used for the Black Flag Reference Document (BFRD) rather than for ToV itself, they do use the 5.1 SRD CC for that however due to attribution
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I had a chance to play in a demo game using Shard VTT yesterday with very little upfront knowledge of ToV.
As someone who hadn't intended to run anymore 5e, it changes things just enough, and provides it in a more coherent package that I absolutely would run this.
- Ranger was fun. Beastkin (or something). The ancestry provided alot of goodnfluff and mechanics as did the background.
- Luck. Why in many decades of d20 did I not figure out this 'one simple trick'.
- It feels like dnd 5.5e versus its own system, which I believe is its intent.
As someone who hadn't intended to run anymore 5e, it changes things just enough, and provides it in a more coherent package that I absolutely would run this.
I got both my books on Thursday...now keep in mind this is STRICKLY for the pdf's as the physical copies won't ship till later in the month for Australia, middle of June for the US and TBD for UK/EU.
They are fantastic, Celeste Conowitch and the team did an amazing job with the product overall. It is a beautiful product and I'm 1000% happy with it. The artwork is topnotch and there is a TON of it in there, some of the best work comes with the armor and weapons (each piece has a reference art) AND with the conditions that have a kobold being affected by them (attached)
The good:
The system overall is very accessible, it feels like 5e but also distinctive and slightly more complex, especially at character creation. There are more options for customization, even if the PG options are limited, it's very...VERY expandable (Celeste said during the streams this was on purpose, anything bullet pointed can be expanded in future books). Heritages, Lineages and Backgrounds/talents are much more interesting options than just straight race/background combos from vanilla 5e.
Classes: Mechanist is awesome, absolutely love the class and am excited to play it. Ranger got a lot of love, as did Fighter, Cleric and Warlock. Warlocks are now a hybrid caster, having both Pact Magic and half-caster spell slots.
Magic weapons are in the PG and done on purpose to give players access to the items for reference and planning reasons.
Weapons in general have abilities added on, ala OneDnD/Revised/5.5 but not as expansive, so it's not a big jump to use them, I'll be implementing them along with Luck (which I have already implemented into my 5e groups)
They released a FREE conversion guide for everything that needs it.
The Bad:
There are limited options for a lot of things that you would expect there to be more of (Heritages, Lineages, Backgrounds, Talents, Subclasses), but nothing that can't be fixed in the long term. THOUGH it would have been nice to have 3 subclasses across the board, particularly for the Mechanist.
Rogues and Monks only got light touches, I'll likely be using the 5.5 version of the class for my group.
A personal nitpick, monsters have static HP instead of Hit Dice, but it's not a huge deal to just buff the HP.
I personally will be using the books as a enhancement to vanilla 5e as the system overall is very modular. I'm definitely on the Mike Shea "5e ecosystem" bandwagon and will be using the Monsters (I used the Owlbear and Will'o whisp yesterday in my Ravenloft group and they were a lot of fun)
If you're ONLY buying one of the books though, get the Monster Vault. It's a great book and the monsters fit very easily into any setting.
Attachments
Southpaw Soldier
Explorer
Do you have the other KP creature books for comparison? I love their imagination and themes and ideas, but even with errata I find them a bit hit or miss for CR. Flee, Mortals! set a high standard in that regard.
Something I meant to do but haven’t is compare the TOV Bar Brawl in the module I ran against the original in the Creature Codex, as well as doing side by sides of Monster Vault versions against their original stat blocks.
The lack of options for creation was a big complaint with the group I ran last night; they had certain specific concepts that weren’t supported (yet?) by the Player’s Guide. The conversion guide has sections on Backgrounds, Races, subclasses, etc., so in the future I may convert existing material rather than trying to shoehorn something that doesn’t feel right (Rogue player was BIG MAD at no Urchin-esque Heritage; and Cosmopolitan option didn’t fit).
Jadeite
Hero
That's somewhat misleading. The book isn't released under Creative Commons, but they are required to attribute the 5.1 SRD.
I have Tome of Beast 3, they are probably closest compared to that book as far as quality, if not a bit better. I can't say much about compared to Flee Mortals, as I haven't gotten it, but I've heard it's close to it, but probably a bit under.
Compared to vanilla 5e, the monsters are tougher overall doing more damage and having more abilities (many have a bonus action). Some were brought down in CR, biggest one that stands out to me (besides dragons that dropped slightly) was the Death Knight going from CR 17 to CR 8, BUT I see that as a positive to have a fairly iconic undead boss NPC for a lower-level groups (I'm going to be using it against my Ravenloft group who are level 4).
Converting backgrounds are super easy to convert to either a heritage or background. I personally would do urchin without converting as Cosmopolitan heritage and Criminal background.
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