A couple of years ago, I did a review of Pathfinder 2e, comparing it to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (D&D5e). I used an ice cream analogy to show how liking one didn't mean I hated the other. But what do you when the game systems are *practically* the same, aside from a few tweaks under the hood? To keep the analogy going, when you are comparing one brand of strawberry ice cream to another brand of strawberry ice cream. Either way, you're getting strawberry, and you might tend to eat one more but they are functionally the same.

What am I babbling on about? If you listen to the podcast, you'll know that recently we interviewed Wolfgang Baur from Kobold Press. They produce a RPG system called "Tales of the Valiant" (ToV), a D&D5e compatible system. When I say "compatible", I mean the differences between ToV and 5e are as minute as the 2024 Players Handbook and the original one. Think of it as a set of "house rules" for D&D5e written down in one place. Yet, ToV is also a stand-alone system, meaning that if you don't want to support Wizards of the Coast (and there's plenty of reasons not to), you can buy a set of Player's Handbook ("Player's Guide")/Monster Manual ("Monster Vault")/Dungeon Master's Guide ("Game Master's Guide") without giving Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast (WotC) a cent.

I've had a chance now to go through each of the "Core Books" for ToV, but if you know D&D5e, you'll already know 75% of the concepts in ToV. So let's go through all 3 books and cover that last 25% in just one post*

Note: I mean, I could easy babble on and make 3 long articles, one for each book, but "Brevity is the soul of wit", and we're all about wit here.

A Handbook? There's No Boy Scouts Here

We'll start off with the most essential of the 3 books, the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide. If you wanted to switch from "Fully Leaded" D&D5e to Tales of the Valiant, this is really the only book that you need. It contains all the rules to play ToV, meaning that even if you've never played D&D5e, you could pick up this book and understand how to play. It's not a "supplement" to 5e, it is a fully rulebook that just takes the framework of D&D and builds something slightly different on top.

First of all, all the player classes have been tweaked - including the ranger! So if you're still unhappy with how WotC is treating your favorite class, you now have an alternative to use. Also, the abilities have been spread out across all the character levels so every time a character levels up, they are getting something new and fresh. No more getting to a level and going into the book to find out you get a few more hit points and that's it. D&D2024 did this to a degree as well, but to a much lesser extent than ToV. There's also a "Final Checklist" for character creation - something that I'm surprised it took until 2024 to have. I know many times I've looked at my character sheet, feeling as if I'm missing a section. This checklist makes sure you hit all the important pieces, especially if it's your umpteenth time making a character and you've glazed over some sections.

A place where ToV branches out from 5e is a new mechanic called "luck". Whenever a player fails a roll, they gain 1 luck point. On future rolls, they can spend luck points to increase said roll. For example, suppose that you've figured out that you need to roll a 16 to hit a creature. On your next attack, you roll a 13. Instead of just failing as you would in 5e, you can spend 3 luck points to make your roll a 16 and thus a success.

But wait, you might be saying, then can't characters save up those points to make guaranteed hits on big baddies? Nope. There is a built in check against this - once you've earned 5 luck points, any additional luck points you earn cause you to lose all your points and reset back to 0. This encourages players to use these points, instead of saving them up for one big blowout. Which means combat can be much more dynamic instead of rolling a fail and feeling like you've wasted a turn and sit until it gets back around to you.

Also, this is another opportunity for the Game Master to provide roleplaying hooks to the player. Why did that "failed" roll suddenly work? What did the character remember, or random act of chance happen to suddenly make that attack a success? Maybe instead of falling of the ledge, they managed to slip but catch the lip that was like 6 inches down instead?

However, while I like the new mechanics and pieces of ToV, I much prefer the organization of the new 5e Player's Handbook (PHB). ToV takes the approach of the original 2014 PHB and has you go through making a character before it dives into telling you about the rules. When I see statements like "review the elements of a character sheet", I'm just like "how about you teach the game first?" Then, when you are making choices for your character, you have a bit more understanding of what to pick option A over option B. In the grand scheme of things, it is a minor peeve, as it really only matters the first time you read the book.

A Vault of Monsters and Where to Find Them

A common complaint around 5e is that "the monsters are too easy". If you make encounters exactly the way that WotC describes, your players will probably steamroll through your adventures. There's several built in solutions to this: you could just add more monsters to each encounter or simply use higher challenge level monsters. ToV takes the later approach, keeping in line with other Kobold Press books. As we found out in our interview, Kobold likes to create monsters at that are 1 challenge rating higher than what they are listed at (meaning that a CR 4 monster in a Kobold Press book would be a CR 5 monster in a WotC book). This also means that if you've been using Kobold Press supplements in your D&D5e game, your players will already be used to the difficulty ratings of monsters in ToV.

For the Monster Vault, instead of a detailed breakdown, I'll do what I normally do for bestiaries and just list a couple of my favorite monsters:

Void Dragon

For a game based on Dungeons & "Dragons", it really isn't surprising to see that almost 60 pages of the book is taken up with information on different types of dragons. "Dragon Turtle" is a runner up to this list, because well, it’s a turtle and it's a dragon and that's awesome! But my favorite dragon in the ToV vault has to be the Void Dragon. It's such a cool concept that it had to go in this slot, almost like an "anti-dragon". The artwork on the page makes it seem like it's a dragon shape hole in the realm, and that's pretty wicked. Also, their lairs are up in the space between stars instead of underground and enclosed spaces.

Mephits

Imagine if goblins had wings and were from different elemental planes. If the idea of a flying magma goblin or a flying ice goblin doesn't both terrify you and inspire you, this might not be the book for you. They only have a CR of 1/2, so they are more of a nuisance than an actual threat, but I'm sure in enough quantities they could definitely bog down your players. There's even info about making a Mephit a familiar! That would be intimidating when grilling a suspect for information.

Star Crow

Another creature that won't put up a terrible fight for your players (CR 1/4), but these are alien creatures that feed on memories. Apparently, they can also give people memories from other creatures that they've fed on. So, basically psychic vampire fire flies - another combination of words that probably shouldn't go together. So while it might not be "the big bad" of your campaign, it could be used as a plot device. The evil cultist that your players are trying to stop has captured a Star Crow and is trying to get ancient powerful secrets out of it!

A Guide for all the games (And their Masters)

It's interesting to see how both ToV & 5e tackle their versions of the Dungeon Master's Guide/Game Master's Guide. Functionally, they both have the same job: to guide the Dungeon/Game Master. So you could imagine that both books would be mostly the same right? Eh, not quite. On a conceptual level, both books do that premise of guiding the DM/GM, but each book takes a different approach to getting there. In the case of D&D5e, I mentioned in my DMG review, the DMG provides a lot of suggestions and tools to help DMs create their own adventures. However, it still grounds everything within the 5e system.

The ToV Game Master's Guide is another story. A majority of the advice that it provides could actually be applied to any RPG a person seeks to run, not just ToV. There are a few specific pieces, like the homebrew chapter, that go into the 5e/ToV math to talk about how to come up with monster/item/character stats, but that is a very minute section of the book. The first chapter, titled "How to be a GM", introduces words that anyone who has GM'ed before would recognize but might be new to someone who has never run a game before (homebrew, one-shot, module, etc.). Then, the book goes into generic play styles that a person is likely to run across. With each breakdown of player play styles, the GMG lists things to do/not to do to keep that player engaged in the game. If you have played with a group for enough time, it'll be easy to identify which people align with each play style and tailor your game to interest all of your players, not just one style. That's helpful advice for any game system, not just ToV.

I forgot to mention it in the DMG review, but one item that was removed from the new edition that I missed was there wasn't enough randomized tables to help with idea generation. That's one piece of content that never goes stale, as being able to randomly generate cities/dungeons/locations/names is always helpful no matter what the skill level of the DM/GM. The ToV GMG does not lack in randomized tables - there are plenty scattered throughout the book and then a whole appendix dedicate to generating random encounters. Need a Mountains based encounter for your players? Ok, what level are the players? There's tables for lower level characters all the way up to max level characters - and once again, the listed encounters aren't mechanically detailed so technically could be used in any fantasy based RPG.

Have you been around the 5e block enough and picked up ToV to add some spice back to your games? There's a few resources for expanding out your games to other genres while keeping it inside the 5e framework. If you've played Call of Cthulhu, you might be familiar with the idea of having a "Sanity" stat and slowly losing it as your character experiences more and more of the unknown. The ToV GMG has optional rules for a "Dread" condition that works in a very similar manner to bring in horror aspects into your game. Got a player needing a new hook for a character? There's rules on firearms in the GMG, so expand the definition of "fantasy" in your worlds and let them be a gunslinging adventurer!

Conclusion

With the new 2024 D&D5e rulebooks out and everyone experimenting with new things, take a look at what Tales of the Valiant offers and see if you can get your players interested in it. They can't use the excuse "But I like 5e!" because it IS 5e!
If you like writing and creating your own content, Wizards of the Coast may have changed their mind on the OGL, but I would almost bet that they will try again to change it in the future. I would put more faith in the Black Flag Reference Document that I would Hasbro's hands.
Also, if you are confused by the idea of mixing fantasy with firearms, I highly recommend checking out the "Skullkickers" comic by Jim Zub. It's an awesome comic and they even made a 5e adventure for it!

Notes/Disclaimers: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon. Or, there are affiliate links in this article. They also help support the site without costing you a dime! Lastly, thanks to Kobold Press for providing review copies of these books.

D&D Handbooks Aren't Exclusive to Hasbro? Tales of the Valiant Review (D&D5e)