Tales of the Valiant - a Look at the Rules

 

I've talked about the setting for the new campaign but today let's talk about the rules. It's been a while since I've run a traditional fantasy RPG and with the 50th anniversary of D&D this year and a bunch of new D&D type games coming out I figured it was time to do that for our next campaign. The crew agreed. I pitched them a few ideas and we ended up with ToEE/Greyhawk/Tales of the Valiant. 

Why ToV? Well, my guys have played a lot of 5th edition over the years and some of them are burned out on standard 5E. There are several alternate 5E's out or coming out now - MCDM, DC20, ToV, and some others I am forgetting. ToV is still close to 5th but different enough it feels like a revised edition of the existing game in a lot of ways. I wasn't looking to break compatibility as I have a fair amount of material for 5th that I want to run and I don't really want to convert it all to a completely new system. So once the Kickstarter books arrived I had read through them and realized it was a great fit for a prospective 5E revival retaining that compatibility while still feeling like something new. 

How about some specifics on the changes:

• Race is split into "Lineage" and "Heritage". Basically one is nature and one is nurture. This lets players get creative with their backstory and lets them mix some mechanical options in new ways. Say you're putting together a half-elf character - now you could choose an elf lineage with a human heritage - or the reverse. I had someone play a half-orc once where the other half was supposed to be elf. With this approach he could have actually chosen the parts that might have fit that better than the traditional half-orc racial features. It's not a tremendous change once you are playing the game but it is one more way to customize a character.
• Additional note: race no longer gives an ability score modifier. Lineage covers some physical traits like darkvision and then heritage gives some things like a choice of skill proficiencies but no more +1 Dex or +2 Con etc.
• Backgrounds are similar to 5E and fill the same role  - Lineage, Heritage, and Background pretty much sketch out your backstory - but every background grants a Talent, the ToV version of a Feat. Most of a character's Talents will come with the "Improvement" granted every 4 levels where you can choose an ability score boost or a Talent but those are gated by your class choice - more on that below - so this is a rare chance to pick up a Talent outside the usual type for your class. It is a short list of specific Talents, not just choose one from a category, but it makes the background more important mechanically.
• Talents are divided into Martial, Magical, and Technical. Most classes can only pick from one of those categories as they level up - Rangers and Mechanists get to pick from Martial and Technical - so that background option, or the Human Lineage bonus of being able to pick any Talent, could be important. Say you're a more fighty type of cleric and you see a Martial Talent that you like - the only way to take it is by being human or by taking a background like Soldier if it's on that list. So while it's not wide open there is some flexibility there.
• The "Improvement" every 4 levels has some options: +2 to one ability, +1 to two abilities, or +1 to one ability and choose one Talent. I suspect that last one will be extremely popular. 
• The classes are generally similar to the 5th Edition classes but there are tweaks to the levelling progression - mainly no dead levels. The sub-class levels are unified across all classes at 3-7-11-15. This does break compatibility with prior 5E classes & subclass options but it does open up the interesting possibility of a subclass that's not tied to a particular class. There are none in the main book and I'm not sure what that would look like but it would be an option now that we did not have before. Classes and subclasses in particular are another obvious direction for future expansion - especially for Kobold Press.
• There is also a standard cross-class feature at 10th called the Heroic Boon and at 20th called the Epic Boon. Right now for 10th at least there are usually a couple of choices for each class that set the tone for how you want to play that class. For example the Ranger has an option to make their fighting via their Mystic Mark class feature better -or- to improve their spellcasting options with more cantrips and rituals. There is only one option for the Epic Boons per class right now but this is another obvious area for future expansion and since they are all at the same level, and presumably of comparable power levels, this is another area where you could have cross-class "boons" to cover some unusual  concepts. 

• One big question: Did they fix the Ranger? Declared the "worst" class in 5E from very early on this tends to be an area of focus whenever 5E's weaknesses are discussed or whenever someone starts talking about new classes. So did they? I don't know. It looks better to me on paper but we all know how that can go. I do have one in the party though so i will be watching.
• Spellcasting has a lot of holdovers from 5th but there are some tweaks. You have the usual cantrips for at-will stuff, regular spells as we all know and love, and then Rituals which are the extended casting time operations like Identify, Animate Dead, and Find Familiar but they are broken out into a separate category so they do not interfere with either your cantrips or your regular spells. This should help make Rituals a more useful and common thing in the game than I have seen previously.
• The other big spellcasting change is that there are no class-specific spell lists - there are 4 big lists (similar to Pathfinder): Arcane, Divine, Primordial, and Wyrd. This means Wizards and Bards, both Arcane, are casting from the same spell list so yes, Bards can cast Fireball.  Clerics and Paladins use Divine, Rangers and Druids use Primordial, and for now only Warlocks use Wyrd. 
• Class-wise one other item of interest is the new class - the Mechanist. I keep seeing this one mentioned as ToV's Artificer and while it may fulfill a similar role it works quite a bit differently as it is not a spellcaster. The class abilities are tied up in various devices it can build and enhance but it has specific features to do this - it's not coming from a spell list. So it is not exactly the same thing - it just looks like it on the surface. I will have one in the party for this campaign so we will see it in action right from the start.

One of the more notable game changes is Luck. This is a replacement for Inspiration which if your experience was similar to mine was easily and often overlooked or forgotten in the heat of play. Coming from a long Savage Worlds campaign I do like the idea of some player Fate point/Force point/Bennie mechanics in D&D and this looks a lot better than Inspiration.

• Everyone starts with 0 luck
• If you miss an attack roll you gain 1 luck
• If you fail a saving throw you gain 1 luck
• The DM can award a point of luck for all of the usual reasons
• You can never have more than 5 luck and if you end up going over you immediately roll a d4 and now have that much luck instead
• After you make a check you can spend 1 luck to add +1 to the roll - up to as much as you have
• After you make a check you can also spend 3 luck to re-roll the d20.
• You can't create a nat 20 or offset a nat 1with luck

This is a really smart mechanic. It's easily understood and easily flows in and out during actual play and puts a lot of the responsibility for keeping up with it on the players instead of being solely on the DM. I like everything about this one and I would bet that this is the single most "stolen" thing in this book for use in regular 5E games. 

There are also Downtime rules in the Player's Guide. This is another nice addition that gives a mechanical framework and some firm options for doing something active between adventures. I'm planning to use it as a filler for players who miss a session. Characters can make some money, do spell research, and make contacts, among other things, using this system. 

Overall I'm looking forward to trying this set of rules out. That should happen this coming weekend and I will definitely be discussing it afterwards.