The Distraction I Finally Stopped Supporting

The longer I spend away from 5E, the clearer the design decisions become. Some of them were always compromises. Multiclassing is one of the biggest.

I am basically banning it at my tables now. It is an edge case that pulls attention toward optimization spreadsheets and away from the character who is supposed to be sitting in the chair. Most of the time it is a distraction rather than something the game needs to carry. Base 5E, run as single-class characters with the tools the classes already give you, is a solid game. The moment you start layering on the older legacy options that were never cleanly integrated, the experience gets noisier, and the sessions get less focused.

Kobold Press did the best work they could with the chassis they inherited. Tales of the Valiant keeps the playable core, trims some clutter, and adds lineages, heritages, backgrounds, and talents so you can pick up flavor without dipping a level into another class. They made an admirable version of the system- one you can own in books, run without a subscription, and hand to a table that just wants to play. It is still 5E underneath, and 5E as a system is not the best game on the shelf. Other games do clearer class identities, sharper stakes, and fewer “just in case” rules. That does not erase what Kobold delivered. They took a messy, popular framework and turned it into something stable and usable.

Thank you, this is a good game. The designs are sane, like what we got in 2014. This is what I am used to, 10 years of my gaming life in a few books.

I still like sitting down with a single class and letting it do the work it was written to do. The further the table drifts from that, the more the old design flaws show up. I am done supporting multiclassing. The rest of the night gets better when that option stays as an unused optional rule instead of another thing to track on the sheet.

No Room on the Shelf

The shelves are full. I have been saying that for a while, and it finally caught up with me. There is no open space left for another hardcover, and I am not tearing everything down again just to make one more slot. The Tales of the Valiant books are still mine. They are still in the house. They are just not the ones I am reaching for right now.

I have the PDFs. I have the software. For a while, that is how I am going to play. Open a file, put a character on a screen, run the night that way. It is not the same as having the Player’s Guide in my hands at the table, but it is still the game I already own. The pages do not disappear if a server goes away. The material is still on my drive. That part has not changed.

This is not me quitting. I am not boxing the books up to sell them or pretending I never wanted them on the shelf in the first place. I am putting the physical copies aside until the space comes back. The hardcovers can wait. They have waited before. When I have room again, they will still be the same books I left.

Until then, the digital versions will do the work. I can still open the rules, look up a monster, and sit down to play. The blog is still here too. I am not done with ToV. I am just done pretending the shelf has room; it doesn't.

5.5E Power Gaming = End of Edition

ToV is still on a break. The D&D 2024 books left a slimy coating on the rest of the 5E shelf, and I am not picking up the ToV Player's Guide just to prove I chose it. The books are upstairs. I can get to them when I want them. It can sit. When I come back, those books will still be the game I left. I am not sure 5.5E will be able to say the same. The late options are already pulling the math around, and the pages look like they are posing.

Arcana Unleashed for 5.5E showed up this month, and the videos are already doing what late books always do. There is a monk that takes the sorcerer list and starts turning slots into Focus. There is a feat that hangs Fireball and Wall of Force on anyone who can already cast, then lets them peel a couple of hit dice into the blast. I am not going to sit here and work the combos. I have watched this part of a cycle before. The options get louder so people keep talking, and after enough of that the community starts wanting a new edition as a reset.

5.5E has a few years of this madness left; the new book drops, the OP options come out, YouTube makes noise, and the cycle repeats. This is engagement, not a balanced, sustainable game engine.

I do not need the clean sheet. Kobold Press is stuck with Tales of the Valiant; in a way, Wizards is not stuck with 5.5E. If this game goes sour, they do not have a 6E waiting behind the curtain, so they cannot spend the next two years creating OP character options to get the YouTubers talking about 5.5E again. They will add books, and I am sure they will. I don't have to take every one of them, and the Player's Guide I already own doesn't pick up a mystic monk or a wall feat because a video needed a title.

I am still taking a break from 5E, but ToV will be the game I come home to.

It will still be stable, playable, and balanced when I return.

5E & Me

I tried to like D&D 2024. I pulled the books the way I pull a new ToV book when it shows up, sat with the layouts for a few evenings, ran a couple of sessions, and kept waiting for the moment when the game would stop posing and start treating its own material like it mattered. What I found instead was a lot of shine laid over rooms I already knew. The pages look expensive, and the options feel arranged to be photographed, and underneath that arrangement I kept stepping into the same fights and the same character-build conversations I have been having for a decade, only now they arrived with a store-window finish that made the whole night feel lighter than the subject deserved.

That finish did not stay in the 2024 books. It rubbed off on the rest of the 5E shelf, including Tales of the Valiant, which is a problem because I still like ToV and don't think the books earned that suspicion. They still work without a website, the monsters still hit, and the pile of 2014 material still plugs in the way it always did. After a week inside style-over-substance, though, I would reach for the Player's Guide and for a minute see another clean spread and another menu instead of a game sitting with its world. That is not fair to ToV. It is just what happens when the flashy version of a family sits in your hands long enough that every neighboring book starts to look like it is performing.

I need time away from the whole 5E itch so that aftertaste can wear off. I am not trying to write a verdict on editions or dare anyone off their table. I just cannot feel 5E as a serious subject while the varnish is still on my fingers, and forcing another session in that mood turns the night into a comparison instead of play. When I want a game that looks at its own material without flinching, my hands go to the other crates. Hyperborea will let you freeze without winking. Palladium puts the rolls in order and allows the world to be ugly. A Dead Reign porch night does not care how the page photographs. Those tables are baggy and a little messy, and right now that is the register I trust.

ToV stays on the shelf. I am not boxing it up or pretending I chose something else. It is still the 5E I picked when I wanted the 2014 game in a form I can own and pass on. I just cannot hear that through the 2024 coating yet. When the shine fades, I will know, because I will pick up the Player's Guide the way I used to, without bracing for a show. Until then, I am leaving 5E alone and spending the chair on games that take their worlds as seriously as the dice on the table.

Why 5E Stopped Paying Me Back

I like Tales of the Valiant.

That is not a small statement. I spent a decade inside 5E. I own the books. I ran the modules. I built the characters. I kept the binders. And then the desire to sit down and play that game fell off a cliff.

It was not boredom with fantasy. It was not a sudden love affair with some other system that “does it better.” It was simpler and more insulting than that. I put more into 5E than I ever got back.

I do not mean the dopamine of a new subclass or a feat that lets me stack another rider on a cantrip. I mean the actual session. The hour at the table. The fight that should have been dangerous and instead became a spreadsheet. The character that started as a person and ended as four pages of exceptions, riders, bonus-action tax, and features I had to look up because they only fire once per long rest and I forgot they existed.

5E rewards building. It is generous there. It is stingy at the table.

You spend an evening assembling a character. You hunt for the right lineage, the right background, the right feat chain, the right magic item that patches the hole the class left open. You print another page. You add another box. You write another reminder in the margin because the game will not remember it for you. Then you sit down to play, and the return on that work is a long fight, a monster that is a bag of hit points, and a feature you never used because the trigger never quite lined up.

After a while the wheels come off.

The sheet gets thicker. The character does not get more interesting. You are carrying more rules than personality. You are carrying more options than decisions. You are carrying a legal document that happens to have a name at the top.

I had the proof sitting right in front of me at a quarry.

The party was up against goblins and dire wolves. Interesting terrain. A timer. Hazards. Elevation. Places to shove people off a ledge. All the encounter-design boxes ticked. A good story attached to it, too. This was not a hallway with six identical rooms. This was supposed to be the kind of fight you remember.

After a while, I got so bored I started fudging the rolls just to make it end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn’t miss the goblin. Hit with the arrow. Why is this still going? The characters felt invincible. They were invincible. There were no stakes. The wolves were scenery. The goblins were speed bumps with hit points. The timer stopped mattering because nobody was actually going to drop. The terrain stopped mattering because nobody was scared enough to use it.

Why did I even bother?

I wanted ToV to be the fix. On paper it should have been. Luck instead of Inspiration. Lineage and Heritage instead of the old ability-score tax. Talents instead of feat shopping. Monsters that are supposed to hit harder and die faster. Printed books I actually own. Compatibility with a decade of 5E material. The Monster Vault looks meaner than the 5.5E book. The design says the combats should squeeze.

At my table, they did not.

Same chassis. Same long rounds. Same invincible party. Same feeling that I had built a good scene and the system paid me back with a grind. I still found myself staring at the dice and deciding the goblin got hit so we could all move on. ToV did not change that experience. I am still struggling with it.

That is the honest part I have to write down, because this blog is not a press release. ToV is still the 5E I chose. I still prefer it to 5.5E. I still want the books on the shelf instead of a client and a subscription. I still think Kobold Press kept more of the game I liked. None of that made the quarry fight scare anyone.

The problem is deeper than branding. It is the 5E math, the action economy, the way hit points and healing and bounded accuracy conspire to make a “deadly” encounter into a twenty-minute accounting exercise. You can dress it in Black Flag language, and it is still the same machine. You feed it a better encounter, and it gives you a safer one. You feed it a clock and a cliff, and it ignores both until you start lying to the dice.

I am not done with the 5E library. I am done pretending the official game, or the better clone of it, is paying me back for the work.

If the character needs a second page, it had better be because something interesting happened, not because the rules ran out of room on the first one. And if I build a quarry with wolves, a clock, and a drop, I want the fight to scare the table. I do not want to sit there and start missing on purpose so we can all go home.

ToV is still on the shelf. I still like it. I am still looking for the part where the table feels dangerous again.

Tales of the Valiant: Printed Books, No DLC

My Tales of the Valiant books work without software or website support. 100% of the content I can own, either in physical books or PDFs. While some adventures may be available only in PDF, all the rules are in physical, printed books that will last for a few hundred years.

These books can be resold, passed down, traded, and enjoyed long after the supporting websites (hopefully never) go away. The core rules are in the Black Flag SRD. While not all the online rules are as complete as Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2, they are still far better than a digital-first D&D 5.5E, with its Drops and digital, subscriber-only content that will vaporize when D&D Beyond or 5.5E support finally goes away.

Tales of the Valiant is an evolution of 5E, and a superior game to D&D 5.5E. It maintains full compatibility with my 10 years' worth of 5E books.

This is the game I chose for 5E.

Mail Room: Northlands Saga (Worldbook & Sagas)

The hardcovers for the Northlands Sagas and Worldbook came today, and I am impressed. These are very nice books, and they don't try to paint a modern veneer on what should be a brutal and savage world. They don't go out of their way to shock us with violence or gore, but the art does present the setting in a respectful, culturally appropriate, and non-modern way.

If this were 5.5E, Wizards would purposefully do things to annoy you with the art, take shots at old-school players, and then sanitize classic monster lore to the point where nobody has a reason to fight anyone. ToV is my 5E for the foreseeable future, and D&D 5.5E let me down.

Despite all my struggles with 5E, I do keep up with all the Kobold Press crowdfunding, so I am happy I jumped in on this even though my ToV books are in the closet during my last shelf reorganization. They are out now and occupy two of my premium display shelves, next to the three I have for DCC.

We get character options, a gazetteer for the Midgard setting, and new spells and monsters. We also get detailed rules for cold survival, which part of me wanted in the corebooks, but I understand why they were placed here. The rules are here and keep parties from walking straight lines

We also get a book of adventures, a complete adventure path for this land. The adventures are well-written and look fun, and are themed around the new setting.

You could also use these books to play a ToV version of Gods of the Forbidden North, an excellent OSE adventure across three huge books, but if you wanted to play this with ToV and a version of Open 5E, these books are your best bet. This would be a fun campaign with a lot of monster swapping, but worth the effort if Open 5E is your system of choice.