High 5e: Review Resource & Request Thread

[Libertad]

Hello everyone. During my work on Odyssey of the Dragonlords I came up with the idea of reviewing third party 5th Edition sourcebooks. Much like the OGL of the 3rd Edition era, we have tomes ranging from professional writers with high production value to shovelware cash grabs. While many people are most familiar with WotC's work, I feel that it is remiss to ignore the many other sourcebooks out there, be they flying under the radar or are featured in Critical Role's next livestreamed session.

Before are a few of the products I seem interesting, offbeat, or weird enough to be review-worthy. While I have plans for reviewing some below, others should feel free to take up the mantle themselves.
Regular to Large-sized Sourcebooks

These include the industry standard, typically 160 to 400 pages.

Adventures From the Pot-Bellied Kobold: A series of 15 short adventures.



Adventures in Middle-Earth Corebooks: Part conversion of The One Ring, part building up original material on the 5e chassis, Adventures in Middle-Earth finally makes the DM of the Rings webcomic a reality.



The Adventurer’s Guide to Theria: A campaign setting based off of a livestreaming group’s D&D sessions.



Arcana of the Ancients: A conversion of the technomagic items of Monte Cook’s Numenera to D&D.



Arcanis 5e Setting: A 5th Edition conversion of the Arcanis setting.



BEOWULF: Age of Heroes: A 1 player 1 GM setting in a mythical version of Early Medieval Britain and Scandinavia based on the tales of Beowulf. Review.



Blue Rose Adventurer's Guide: A 5e conversion on the notable queer-friendly romantic fantasy setting. Review.



Brancalonia Spaghetti Fantasy Setting Book: A campaign setting derived from Italian culture and media where the PCs are lovable scoundrels constantly looking for the next big job. Review.



Esper-Genesis 5e Sci-Fi Core Manual: A starfaring science-fiction setting.



Faerie Fire, a 5e Supplemental: A fey-themed bestiary with a 1980s neon aesthetic.



GeneFunk 2090: A cyberpunk setting portraying a near-future dystopia where the proliferation (and abuse) in genetic engineering and biotechnology is just as prominent as traditional technology and cybernetics, and "genoism" of individuals who don't meet society's eugenic standards are yet another form of social inequality. Review by Nate_MI of RPGnet.



Grim Hollow: A dark fantasy setting that got a notable bump from Critical Role. Currently available as a Campaign Guide and supplementary Player's Guide.



Koryo Hall of Adventures: A campaign setting inspired by Korean history, mythology, and folklore. Review.



Legacy of Mana Campaign Setting: A world where magic is a natural resource of the planet, and the reign of an anti-magic evil empire is disrupting the natural order. Review.



Midgard Heroes Handbook for 5th Edition: a collection of new races, class archetypes, spells, and optional subsystems for Kobold Press’ Midgard campaign setting.



Midgard Worldbook: A Central/Eastern European influenced setting where masked gods take on multiple identities, ley lines form the foundation for magical kingdoms and extraplanar roads, and the most powerful country is dominated by the reptilian races. Review.



Mini-Dungeon Tome for 5th Edition: A collection of bite-sized dungeons perfect for an evening one-shot.



Monsters of Murka: A meme-influenced parody setting derived from modern American pop culture.



Primeval Thule Campaign Setting: You got my Conan in my D&D!



Rocket Age Corebook: A pulp-flavored retro-future campaign setting.



Runewild Campaign Setting: A dark fairy-tale themed forest setting.




The Seas of Vodari: A nautical swashbuckling-themed setting with lots of anime-style artwork. Review.



Spheres of Power & Spheres of Might: Conversions of Drop Dead Studios’ notable Spheres system to 5th Edition! Review.



Supers & Sorcery: Costumed vigilantes in medieval fantasy. Review.



Tales of the Old Margreve for 5th Edition: An update to a level 1 to 10 pseudo-AP taking place primarily in a Grimm's Fairy Tales styled forest.



Ultimate Kingdoms (5e): A domain management system for 5th Edition.



Unbreakable Volume 1: A group of authors from East and Southeast Asian nations and backgrounds who got together to write a series of adventures showcasing folklore, monsters, and other fantasy elements from their respective societies. Review.



Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva: An unofficial adaption of the setting of Pepper & Carrot, a public domain webcomic. Review by Amnestic on GiantITP.



Witch + Craft: A 5e Crafting Supplemental: A sourcebook of “domestic magic” spells and rules options.



The World of Alessia Campaign Primer: A science-fantasy space opera setting.
Splatbooks:

These are far smaller, ranging from anywhere from a few pages to 64 at most.

5e: HARDCORE MODE: A series of house rules for making 5th Edition harder in an old-school spirit. Review.

Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e: A book that seeks a compromise between the bioessentialist “all dwarves know how to dodge giants” and making race not matter by providing new rules separating the two. That way, one can mix and match to have an elf raised in human communities, a hero of mixed gnome-tiefling heritage, and guidelines for converting existing races into the new system.



The Blood Hunter: Matt Mercer's Witcheresque monster hunter class. Review.



Call to Arms: The Warlord: Creator of Shadow of the Demon Lords brings the 4th Edition class to 5th Edition. Review.



The Caretaker Warlock: A warlock whose patron is an adorable monster who can grow into a more powerful one. Review.



The Channeler: Do you like Jojo's Bizarre Adventures? Do you like the Persona series of video games? What if we made a class based off of these series' supernatural companions? Review.



Defenders of the Wild: The Warden: A 5e conversion of the martial nature class. Review.



Eat the Rich: Revolution! A series of adventures with anti-capitalist themes.




Five Torches Deep: Do you like OSR retrolclones? Do you like 5th Edition? WHAT IF WE GOT CRAZY AND COMBINED THEM?! WOAAAAAH! Review.



In the Company of Dragons: Playable dragons for 5e (based off an earlier Pathfinder book). Review.



The Mistwalker: D&D YouTuber dude turns his homebrewed Ravenloft class into a professional product. A mobile gish who uses the Mists to teleport around the battlefield, confounding their foes. Review.
Door-Stoppers

Typically around 500 pages or more.


City of Brass: A level 1 to 20 adventure path revolving around the titular planar metropolis. Is actually a 5th Edition conversion of a 2007 3.X city sourcebook, but with expanded adventure material and new color artwork. Review.



Legendary Planet Adventure Path: A 1st to 20th Level sword and planet style adventure path.



Manastorm: World of Shin’ar (5e): A high-magic setting where magical radiation surrounds the inhabited planet.



Odyssey of the Dragonlords: An Ancient Greek-flavored setting and adventure path from two of Bioware's most notable game designers. Review.

What the Hell is This, War & Peace?!

Self-Explanatory.

Dark Obelisk Adventure Path: Notable for being the longest sourcebook for well, any D&D/D20 game by sheer pagecount in the thousands. More notable for its length than anything else. This is an undertaking only a rare few can do.

[OgreBattle]

Is Mistwalker something the existing full casters can replicate?

[Libertad]

Is Mistwalker something the existing full casters can replicate?

It has at-will short-range teleportation it can invoke as part of movement as its major class feature, which can be much greater than one's normal land speed while stacking with existing movement-enhancers such as Expeditious Retreat or the Rogue's Cunning Action.

Unless I'm missing some new spells or subclasses in the newer releases, I don't think 5th Edition's full casters have something like this barring the Shadow Sorcerer or using Conjure Fey to summon a blink dog, although that one's teleport has a recharge rate now. The major difference is that the Mist Walker is not so limited by slots or the proper conditions to use their signature feature.

I'd like to note that the Way of Shadow Monk, Shadow Sorcerer, and Horizon Walker Ranger all have at-will teleportation effects, but of shorter range and more limited use: at 6th level the Monk can teleport 60 feet but only between areas of dim light or darkness. The Ranger at 11th level can only do 10 feet but can get a potential bonus 3rd attack if they attack 2 different targets while doing so. The Shadow Sorcerer can do what the Shadow Monk does, but 120 feet and at 14th level.

A lot of reviewers have called the class OP given it can use its mistwalking to outright escape grapples and opportunity attacks without the need to roll. Which is definitely a tactic that can invalidate some of the deadlier melee-centric monsters, of more concern to a DM with balance on their mind is the class' kiting potential.

Honestly it doesn't have the extreme versatility that full casters can get, although at-will teleport does have some nifty utility features.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

To be facetious, it's a class that lets you... be an Abra? And that's OP in 5e?

[Avoraciopoctules]

The 5E Destiny conversion got a Polygon article or two a while ago. I think they introduced regenerating shield HP, some classes and mechanics trying to make the game feel quite different.

https://dndestinyproject.com/

[Libertad]

To be facetious, it's a class that lets you... be an Abra? And that's OP in 5e?

It is considered so by the DTRPG reviews. But on the other hand there's a lot of positive reviews. The Abra-fication is the sticking point most people have.

I don't consider that kind of thing to be OP in 5e in and of itself. More on how it's deployed.

The 5E Destiny conversion got a Polygon article or two a while ago. I think they introduced regenerating shield HP, some classes and mechanics trying to make the game feel quite different.

https://dndestinyproject.com/

Interesting. It seems to be a homebrew project? While it can be interesting, I'm biased in favor of doing 'professional' work for lack of a better term. I have higher standards for people who charge money for their work as opposed to free stuff.

Also I added 3 more products to the above. A CoC conversion by Sandy Petersen, a Grimm's Fairy Tales style AP, and an anime-looking Age of Sail setting. I think that this should be enough to tide us over for now until more of the above are fully reviewed.

[OgreBattle]

So what's the channeler like? PF Eidolon or Synthesist Summoner?

[Libertad]

So what's the channeler like? PF Eidolon or Synthesist Summoner?

The book comes with a handy-dandy infographic which sums up the class and subclass' roles:



I do feel that given their briefness it'd be better to explain the class' further in a review proper, so once I'm done with Odyssey of the Dragonlords I'll review several of the class splatbooks.

[Dogbert]

I request whatever looks more asinine first. The dumber the better.

[Krusk]

I request whatever looks more asinine first. The dumber the better.

That would be the dark obelisk. Especially if you get into the actual company/guy who made it and his process, with his 5billion other kickstarters.

[Libertad]

I request whatever looks more asinine first. The dumber the better.

That would be the dark obelisk. Especially if you get into the actual company/guy who made it and his process, with his 5billion other kickstarters.

As someone whose major exposure was the "Quarantine Bundle" on Drive-Thru RPG, what's the story behind this?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Everybody's gotta make a fucking Jojo class at some point, huh?
Looks cooler than mine. Nevermind, it's still 5e.

[Krusk]

I backed the original adventure path, because it sounded too good to be true. I knew it would be, but had some extra cash and figured I'd support a small time RPG guy.

Original module was decent enough, but obvious that it was a single guy production. Rough edges, really could use an editor, that sort of thing. If you look at the credits for most of the first PDFs there is a running not-subtle joke where he has an entire RPG Studio staff credited (like 2 pages of credits), but its really just his name spelt in a bunch of different ways.

His entire business model is kickstarters with crazy low goals. Then he sets stretch goals, that sound reasonable. "Ill throw in a 10 page adventure" or "Ill flesh out the druids enclave a little more". Traditional basic stuff. Then before shipping the first kickstarter, he announces that when he started work on fleshing out the adventure and/or goals, he got carried away and couldn't contain himself. Great news! You get the original promised thing whenever he finishes it, but he is also spinning it into its own KS to be a full fledged book! That KS has the same model. Low goal to ensure funding, and half the stuff promised gets spun into its own KS yet again. You've got to continue to back each newer KS if you want the originally promised thing, and many launch prior to completion of others. I ended up backing like 3(?) products at the hardback level before I caught on, and now have 6 shelfbreaker 500 page tomes, and a collection of smaller books, and 25 pdfs. Over the last 2 years or so, every 3-6 months a new book shows up at my house, or pdf shows up in my inbox. I can't even track what I'm supposed to get anymore. Its a great value if....

Three big gripes, that weren't super evident in the original book, but get worse with each release.

1 - Reprinted content. Half of each books is reprinted content from other books. He actually addresses it in the books and says its so you can run with just the one book, and not need to flip between them.
2 - quad charts - his proprietary chart mechanic thing. Its a neat idea, but it kills so many pages with reprinting the same thing over and over. You want stats for a horse? Well here is a level 1-5 horse, level 6-10 horse, 11-15 horse, and 16+ horse. What is a level 17 horse? Fuck you thats what. I actually emailed him, and can dig it up, but the gist is he wants the game to be playable at whatever level your characters are. But won't acknowledge that by having the same encounters, with different numbers, you end up meaning that levels don't matter. This quad stat block approach applies to everything. You rolled for random content of a dresser in an abandoned house? Well here is 4 possible d100 tables to use based on party level.
3 - Bloat. No books in the series exemplify this more than the artifacts and artifice series. A&A2 is 387 pages. It contains 45 magic items, most of which are terrible and no player would want. The books have numerous blank pages, or pages with a half sentence on them. He reprints quad statblocks for shit like horses in multiple books. Every NPC in every town gets a multipage quad statblock. These statblocks include full text for any racial/class feature they get and each version ends up being multiple pages.

A small gripe.
Later books in the adventure path use his random rewards generation system. Which when pitched sounded like a godsend to the series, but in execution is miserable. So in the first book, you'd be in some bullshit irreverent house opening a dresser drawer, and find a half page devoted to random charts for its context, he eventually decided to save space. Instead, the contents say shit like - General Supplies small, Coin Treasures medium, armor large. Then, you open a separate 92 page book, and browse to the quad coin treasures charts. Figure out which chart you roll on, get a result. That result is a random value like "2d4 copper" or some bullshit. Now do it again for general supplies, and again for the armor chart. It saves page count, but there is so much flipping its insane.

I genuinely think he believes quantity=quality.

Maybe the combined bundle is the way to go, but its $125 PDF. You going to take the gamble?

[JigokuBosatsu]

g1BbEri5h

AAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Libertad]

Thank you very much for the outline, Krusk. It definitely sounds like that classic case of over-ambition combined with cutting corners.

Alas, even at a bundle discount I don't think I'll be picking it up anytime soon. For $125 I can pretty much buy a half-dozen other more readable sourcebooks.

[Libertad]

Finished reviewing Odyssey of the Dragonlords! Plan on moving to 5e class sourcebooks next!

[Libertad]

Given that I'm nearing the end of the class mini-sourcebook marathon review, I figured to post another product I found interesting.



Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva: An unofficial adaption of the setting of Pepper & Carrot, a public domain webcomic.

[OgreBattle]

That's a good sized cat head, makes me want to read it

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I guess they weren't allowed to actually say "D&D supplement"?

[Libertad]

I guess they weren't allowed to actually say "D&D supplement"?

This is one of the terms of the OGL, whatever Edition with which you happen to be writing.* This is why so many of these 3rd party supplements say "Xth Edition of the world's oldest/greatest/most popular role-playing game."

4th Edition is a bit novel in that it has a more restrictive Gaming System License. If you ever write 4th Edition compatible products, it prevents you from further publishing products for other Editions, which is why 3rd party support for it is so few and far between.

[Username17]

I guess they weren't allowed to actually say "D&D supplement"?

Since 2008, WotC has really clamped down on letting people use D&D brand identity. Of course, most of what you'd consider to be "Dungeons & Dragons" is not owned or even ownable by WotC or anyone else. You can't copyright game mechanics, and most D&D monsters and classes are just normal words.

As long as you write it fresh rather than copypasta, you can basically publish an entire reasonably straight regurgitation of any edition of D&D. I mean, that's basically the story of Pathfinder, right? But WotC is a lot more circumspect about letting people literally reference trademarks like the actual words "Dungeons & Dragons" than they were during the golden age of the OGL.

Of course, 5e being the flabby vaporware edition that it is, I'm not really sure what you'd want to copy. There aren't a lot of rules or setting elements to rip off.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I dunno, there's uh... um... Advantage?
What a barren fucking edition.

[Libertad]

I dunno, there's uh... um... Advantage?
What a barren fucking edition.

You forgot about playable drow in the PHB. And Rick & Morty getting an official licensed product.

[OgreBattle]

The D&D brand name is authority, it's synonymous with socially acceptable role playing. It's the correct way to play as protestantism is the 'correct'
way to worship in America.

For many tables suggesting an alternative is like telling your bible studies class that they should start converting to Islam.

People don't follow rules for the soul guidance of religion, they follow brand names, so a tabletop game with some dice mechanics isn't going to be any more consistent.

So Hasbro controlling the Brand Name, not allowing the brand name to be used without their authority, branching the brand to more popular IP's to absorb some fans, seems to be the 'correct' thing to do in terms of running a church in America.

[Sigil]

As long as you write it fresh rather than copypasta, you can basically publish an entire reasonably straight regurgitation of any edition of D&D. I mean, that's basically the story of Pathfinder, right?

Well, only kind of. Pathfinder still uses and adheres to the OGL, which prevents them from doing things like advertising Pathfinder as being compatible with 3.X D&D, or featuring any branding calling Pathfinder a "d20 system", etc. They could have put the work in to write pathfinder entirely from scratch and been able to market compatibility and the like, but opted to accept those restrictions so they could use phrasing from the rules of the SRD and not need to rewrite it. I'm actually not aware of anyone that's gone through the effort to clone 3.X with their own rewrite to the extent that lets them bypass the license, though obviously there are systems that aren't direct clones that take elements of 3.X that can and do ignore the OGL.