the Level Up: Advanced 5e kickstarter and me

I haven’t been posting much here, but I’ve been writing D&D every day – and wishing I could share it with you. Soon, you will be able to get ALL the “Paul Writes DND” content you could possibly want.

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This is the Kickstarter for enworld publishing’s upcoming 5e reboot, Level Up: Advanced 5e – their biggest project to date. I’ve written and contributed to a ton of pieces of the core book! The treasure tables! The backgrounds! Spellcasting! Rebalanced spells! Rare spells! The rogue class! Stuff to spend money on once you’re high level! New and improved encounter guidelines! We’re really proud of how this project came out: it adds lots of neat things that 5e has been needing.

AND… that’s my name on the cover of the Monstrous Menagerie.

The MoMe’s going to be HUGE – more than 500 pages. A big team of designers worked on the Monstrous Menagerie, including Anthony Alipio, J R Zambrano, Jocelyn Gray, Josh Gentry, Mike Myler, Morrigan Robbins, Peter Coffey, Peter N Martin, Russ Morrissey, Sarah Breyfogle, Sarah Madsen, Shane Stacks, Will Fischer, Will Gawned, and Yvonne Hsiao, along with 80 pages of dragon wrangling by Cassandra Macdonald and Andrew Engelbrite, and spectacular work by editor Will Fischer.

This is the monster book I’ve been wanting to write. I think it’s going to be the best monster book ever.

The MoMe has 95% of the monsters in the Monster Manual (minus some, like the mind flayer, which are WOTC IP) and then adds 250 more monsters, variants, and templates – enough for a second manual. I’ve carefully rebalanced every monster’s math, and I’ve created new, highly playtested encounter guidelines that provide challenges at high level. I’ve created dozens of “elite” monsters – improved legendaries that can, I believe, provide a solo challenge to high-level parties. (They said it couldn’t be done! I think it can! We’ll see when you get your hands on the book!)

And there’s so much adventure fuel in here. You can flip open the book to any entry and generate everything you need for a full encounter – including monster motivations, names, treasure, and future adventure hooks, all with a few dice rolls, without looking anything up.

Here’s an example entry, the mimic:

Mimic at 11.06.08 PM

Sign up to be notified when the kickstarter launches!

2 Responses to “the Level Up: Advanced 5e kickstarter and me”

  1. Trespassers says:

    This looks so cool! I’ve been following the blog for Level Up with interest and excitement and I’ve signed up to be notified when thre kickstarter starts. I really like what I’ve seen so far!

  2. Ken Finlayson says:

    Just wanted to drop in and say how much I am looking forward to the entire Level Up release, and (as a GM) the monsters especially. This is incredibly exciting stuff, and I can’t wait to reinvigorate my 5th edition games with new options for the players and new tools for me. I am cackling. October 5th can’t come soon enough.

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