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.

Monsters Hit Hard

Another reason to love Tales of the Valiant over D&D 5.5E is that the monsters hit hard.

From the SRD 5.2.1, the Ancient Red Dragon, actions:

Multiattack. The dragon makes three Rend attacks. It can replace one attack with a use of Spellcasting to cast Scorching Ray (level 3 version). 

Rend. Melee Attack Roll: +17, reach 15 ft. Hit: 19 (2d8 + 10) Slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) Fire damage.

Fire Breath (Recharge 5–6). Dexterity Saving Throw: DC 24, each creature in a 90-foot Cone. Failure: 91 (26d6) Fire damage. Success: Half damage. 

Spellcasting. The dragon casts one of the following spells, requiring no Material components and using Charisma as the spellcasting ability (spell save DC 23, +15 to hit with spell attacks): 

At Will: Command (level 2 version), Detect Magic, Scorching Ray (level 3 version) 

1/Day Each: Fireball (level 6 version), Scrying 

-SRD 5.2.1, Wizards of the Coast, p319

Legendary actions (3, 4 in lair) are Commanding Presence (level 2 command), Firey Rays (level 3 scorching ray), and Pounce (free Rend attack). The dragon also has 4 or 5 Legendary Resistances that allow the beast to make a saving throw. It is a pretty simple monster, but it feels underwhelming.

Let's look at Tales of the Valiant, from the Black Flag SRD:

Multiattack. The dragon uses its Frightful Presence. It then makes one Bite attack and two Claw attacks.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 21 (2d10 + 10) piercing damage plus 14 (4d6) fire damage.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d6 + 10) slashing damage.

Tail. Melee Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target.

Hit: 19 (2d8 + 10) bludgeoning damage.

Frightful Presence. Each creature of the dragon’s choice that is within 120 feet of the dragon and aware of it must succeed on a DC 21 WIS save or be frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature’s save is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to the dragon’s Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

Fire Breath (Recharge 5–6). The dragon exhales fire in a 90‑foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 24 DEX save, taking 105 (30d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. 

-Black Flag SRD, Kobold Press, p276 

The dragon can "Boil Over" if it hasn't used their breath weapon, and do a 30-foot AoE that inflicts 2d6 damage on a DC 24 CON save, and inflicts a level of exhaustion. Legendary resistances are 3/day. Across the board, damage is more serious, and the Kobold Press version has a bite attack with fire damage, and claws that do not have that.

The dragon also has access to special "lair attacks" and regional effects.

The legendary actions are where things take a hard turn into lethality. The Kobold Press dragon gets an auto-Detect feature, so it cannot be snuck up on or trapped. A tail attack can be made, along with a wing attack that does 2d6+10 and a DC 25 DEX save, or be knocked prone. The kicker is the Elemental Roar, a DC 21 CHA save to all within 120 feet, and failure makes the character vulnerable to fire damage or removes fire resistance until the end of the next turn.

Yes, this means you take double damage from fire attacks

Instead of being a bag of hit points for level 20 heroes to humiliate, the ancient red dragon in Tales of the Valiant can TPK and entire party and incinerate them all in an elemental roar and fire breath combo. Who cares about the 5.5E scorching ray and single fireball spell at level six? Characters will laugh this damage off.

Hit points in ToV are less: 507 for D&D 5.5E, and 382 in BF-SRD, but in general, the Kobold Press monsters hit harder, but go down faster, leading to faster combats that are more lethal. Kill them quick before they kill you. In D&D 5.5E, we have a lower-damaging dragon that dies much slower, leading to a long, boring, and pretty much easy fight before it even begins.

ToV combats are significantly tighter, faster, and better tuned than in D&D 5.5E. You feel the "squeeze" the designers put into the monsters; these are designed for fast, hard-hitting, brutal, and challenging combats. You will be encouraged to use the monster abilities early and as often as you can, which will address the notorious lack of lethality and pushover fights of 5E.

Do you want spellcasting? Apply a spellcasting template to the dragon. At CR 21, up to second-circle spells are at-will, 3/day up to 5th-circle spells, 2/day seventh, and 1/day 9th. The dragon just got insanely more powerful, and it could have a wish spell handy. Yeah, you're dead.

These are NOT the same games.

Tales of the Valiant is the better game, tuned to how I want things to play.