Level Up: Advanced 5E, the project I’ve been working on for a year, is now live on Kickstarter! (Funded in 18 minutes!) Go back it immediately!
Let me tell you about my contributions to each of the 3(?!) core books.
The Monstrous Menagerie
The Monstrous Menagerie is closest to my heart. I’m the lead writer and designer on this one. In this book, I’ve worked over every stat block in core D&D (except the dozen Wizards IP monsters: mind flayers, gith, displacer beasts, and so on). This is a straight up upgrade of the Monster Manual. There’s really no reason not to get the Monstrous Menagerie.
Gone are the boring bag-of-hit-points monsters. Every monster does something interesting.
Monsters have been re-balanced, so there are no more disappointing one-round disappointments (looking at you, mummy and vampire).
There are more monsters! About twice as many stat blocks as in the MM, including NPCs (my favorite monster).
A big team of writers re-did the lore for every monster: Andrew Engelbrite, Anthony Alipio, Cassandra Macdonald, 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, Yvonne Hsiao, and me. By throwing a lot of biological determinism in the garbage, we opened up a lot of room for more interesting storytelling.
More dragon stat blocks than the Monster Manual and Fizban’s combined, with more interesting and specific abilities too boot. Cassandra Macdonald and Andrew Engelbrite did great design work here.
I got to add every bell and whistle I wanted in a bestiary: name lists, sample treasures, monster behavior charts, and other game-running aids.
Dozens of “elite” monsters, much stronger than legendary monsters, which can provide solo challenges to high-level parties.
New monster-building guidelines based on my MM on a Business card.
New encounter-building guidelines. If you’ve noticed that high-level characters are impossible to challenge using the traditional guidelines – or that first-level parties are too easy to TPK – I’ve got fixes for that.
the Adventurer’s Guide
OK, you already know about the Monstrous Menagerie – I talk about it plenty. The Adventurer’s Guide is the player-facing book, with classes and spells and so on. What did I do on the Adventurer’s Guide?
I did the rogue class, along with three new subclasses: the cutthroat, burglar, and trapsmith. Like all A5E classes, the rogue has a lot more customization options than the 5e class, including access to battlemaster-like combat maneuvers. My biggest change to the rogue class, though, was the addition of skill tricks, a menu of mini-abilities that expand the way you can use a skill, and which incidentally grant you an expertise die.
What’s an expertise die? It’s a replacement for 5e’s doubled proficiency bonus (which I don’t particularly like: I play a lot of high-level D&D, and a +12 bonus to a skill roll smashes bounded accuracy). You add an expertise die to a roll when you are particularly skilled at a task. Expertise dice stack in an interesting way. When you first gain an expertise die in, say, Stealth, you get a d4. If another feature grants you another expertise die in Stealth, the d4 becomes a d6. You never roll more than one expertise die on a check. Expertise dice started as a rogue feature and ended up becoming an important A5E design tool.
Spells! In my opinion, this is worth the price of admission alone. It was very important to me that we rebalance 5e’s spells. If you play high-level D&D, you know that certain spells, like force cage and animate object, make for less-fun encounters. We redid every spell, clarifying confusions, fixing broken spells and outliers, and folding in errata – and we’ve also added about a hundred new spells.
Rare spells! Another one of my home-game inventions that I snuck into the final project. I’ve always loved the idea of a special version of a spell, which can be obtained as treasure, which has an extra, cool effect in addition to the standard usage. For instance, a version of flaming sphere that you can ride like a chariot, or (very important in my game group) a permanent version of animal friendship. The other developers loved this idea and ran with it and now we have tons of rare spells.
Backgrounds. I redid the format of backgrounds, with an eye to providing adventure possibilities past level 1. Instead of a d6 list of bonds, a background now includes a d10 list of connections: specific NPCs from your history that the GM can leverage. Instead of a single equipment list, a background comes with a d10 list of trinkets or mementos, each of which provides a plot hook. For example, as an acolyte, your connection might be “the inquisitor who rooted out your heresy (or framed you) and had you banished from your temple” and your memento “a half-complete book of prophecies which seems to hint at danger for your faith—-if only the other half could be found!” Finally, each background comes with an “advancement” section detailing how you might earn an extra background advantage at high level. (An acolyte who advances their faith might earn devoted followers.)
Math! I did a pretty good amount of balancing for all the classes and combat maneuvers. “Balance” isn’t everything, but you might as well shore up the classes that lag behind.
The above are just my contributions, out of a dozen designers. Other stuff you should look for: every class has been expanded and rebalanced. Weapons, armor, and equipment have been overhauled and expanded. 5e “race” is gone, replaced by a hugely expanded set of ancestries and heritages. A character can now pick a destiny, which is like a fully-baked version of inspiration dice. Plus there are new feats, new combat maneuvers, and so on.
Trials and Treasure
If you’ve been following A5E, you might be surprised to see… there’s a third core book! 1000ish pages was just too big for a single book, so the core book was split in two. (Including the 500+ pages of the Monstrous Menagerie, the three core books are now 1500 pages!) Trials and Treasure is a primarily game-master-facing book.
The main work I did for Trials and Treasure is an overhaul of treasure. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t love the 5e treasure tables, and I got a chance to make my own. They’re granular and provide a better treasure mix; they come with a hugely expanded list of random jewelry, art, rare books, and other valuables; and they’re completely compatible with 5e economy, but with the proud nails hammered down. (Plus, of course, the list of magic items is, like, doubled.)
In D&D, sometimes it can feel like there’s not much to buy beyond level 3 or so. A5E includes prices for the training of monsters and the hiring of armies; the eggs of griffons, dragons, and other beasts; and extensive rules for strongholds and bases.
Lots of great stuff in here by other people, including safety tools, magic item crafting, and a really cool system where hazards and traps are expanded into well-defined, leveled encounters.
forwards compatibility
Level Up: Advanced 5E is, of course, backwards compatible with 5E. What about the 5e refresh that’s coming out in 2 or 3 years? Will A5E still be compatible with that?
No one knows much about the 5e update (beyond the fact that it’s coming out in 2024), but all signs point to it being a fairly small change, with some new updated base classes, a new way of handling races, and so on: more of a 5.5E than a 6E. Wizards has said that it will be compatible with their older material. That means that A5E should be just as compatible with it in 2024 as it is with D&D in 2021.
I’m excited to get the new 5e books when they come out! And I know I’ll be using them along with A5E – probably mixing and matching. In the games I DM, players will be able to use classes and player-facing features from 5E, 5.5, or A5E (though I may insist on them using the A5E fixed versions of broken spells) – but the A5E-only GM tools – the new treasure tables, the rare spells, the blessed high-level support, plus my precious Monstrous Menagerie – are going to be invaluable for years to come.
Back the Kickstarter!
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