High 5e: Review Resource & Request Thread
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It’s been a while since I posted in this thread or reviewed something from this list. But it’s been a few months and in that time I saw quite a bit of new books pop up as well as older ones that passed me by. I decided to make a new post rather than add these to the OP for various reasons: the first is that some forums I posted this thread on disallow editing of posts beyond a certain date. The second is that it’s less work on my part. Yes, I know I’m lazy.
But without further ado, here’s 16 more products that caught my eye:
The Adventurer’s Guide to Theria: A campaign setting based off of a livestreaming group’s D&D sessions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Midgard Heroes Handbook for 5th Edition: a collection of new races, class archetypes, spells, and optional subsystems for Kobold Press’ Midgard campaign setting.
Mini-Dungeon Tome for 5th Edition: A collection of bite-sized dungeons perfect for an evening one-shot.
Rocket Age Corebook: A pulp-flavored retro-future campaign setting.
Runewild Campaign Setting: A dark fairy-tale themed forest setting.
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.
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.
But without further ado, here’s 16 more products that caught my eye:
The Adventurer’s Guide to Theria: A campaign setting based off of a livestreaming group’s D&D sessions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Midgard Heroes Handbook for 5th Edition: a collection of new races, class archetypes, spells, and optional subsystems for Kobold Press’ Midgard campaign setting.
Mini-Dungeon Tome for 5th Edition: A collection of bite-sized dungeons perfect for an evening one-shot.
Rocket Age Corebook: A pulp-flavored retro-future campaign setting.
Runewild Campaign Setting: A dark fairy-tale themed forest setting.
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.
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.
Last edited by Libertad on Fri Sep 04, 2020 10:58 pm, edited 6 times in total.
A few of these look interesting. I do like the look of this stuff but I'm having trouble finding a good reviews for ones I might look into and I'm loathe to spend money on something that only seems interesting because of the art and premise. Ultimate Kingdoms probably isn't too different from other stuff I've looked at from Legendary Games since they have made a lot of stuff for Pathfinder I've had friends bring to me. Witch+Craft and World of Alessia look nice and I like the premise but I can't find any actual reviews that tell me much about the quality material inside. At least nothing you can't get from looking at the back of the box.
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The Adventurer's Almanac
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owlassociate
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The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:Unbreakable, Unbreakable!
So I have more free time during the weekend, but I took a look at this book tonight and ended up reading 150 pages and 7 (out of 10) adventures.owlassociate wrote:I'm with AA here, Unbreakable seems really interesting
With this ongoing energy, I figure I may as well make it my next review once I'm done!
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Lord Charlemagne
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OgreBattle
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The pathfinder version of Mini-Dungeon Tome is probably the most referenced book at the table when I'm DMing. Its fantastic for when I need to throw a quick dungeon into a campaign, or need a couple of plot hooks. The actual content isn't mind blowing, but its information dense and easy to modify quickly.
@Krusk, the mini-dungeon tome caught my eye, I have been running some Roll20 games recently and the idea of having a bunch of quick dungeons on hand seems like it would make life much easier. However, the preview pages didn't look particularly inspired to me. How would you rate the quality of the average dungeon?
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OgreBattle
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My only criticism is the characterization of Ghibli movie magic as only domestic and not scary-industrial, when the Howl's Moving Castle author criticized Miyazaki for inserting war-wizards and razing cities when nothing like that appears in the book. Spirited Away is also fairly harrowing in applications of magic as punishment and enforcing unfair contracts.Libertad wrote:Endzeitgeist reviewed Witch+Craft on RPGnet.
Based on the review, Kiki's Delivery Service seems to be the main Ghibli movie that Witch+Craft is based on.
I'd say that since there are more benign, and clearly domestic, uses of magic in the movies so it can count.
Last edited by MGuy on Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
C+ to B-?pragma wrote:@Krusk, the mini-dungeon tome caught my eye, I have been running some Roll20 games recently and the idea of having a bunch of quick dungeons on hand seems like it would make life much easier. However, the preview pages didn't look particularly inspired to me. How would you rate the quality of the average dungeon?
I haven't found any dungeons that are just straight unusable, which is more than I can say for a lot of adventures or 1 page dungeons. I tend to modify them a decent bit via improv as I go to cover the smaller gaps that exist. There are some that are interesting, and some are genuinely good. The high level ones are actually high level concepts as opposed to the same thing as level 1, with bigger numbers, which is nice. The average dungeon in the book is a 2 page spread, with art. Some go as long as 4, but I don't think there are any bigger than that.
Like I said, the big use case for me, is when the players want a short 4-6 hour real time derailment. Maybe they are exploring a hex in a crawl, and I want to throw something cool, but not plot related there, or maybe they are going to the tavern and looking for a quest board and I need to throw out 5-6 hooks real quick.
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OgreBattle
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Randomly selected level 20 dungeon. The Temple of Annihilism.
Way back when, ancient aliens lived in deep space and embraced entropy. Two ancient void dragons built a temple to embrace this philosophy, and it houses a sphere of annihilation. If you try to join the club, you get sucked into walls forever to be a ghost wall and sad about it.
Throughout the dungeon crawl, 6 unique ghosts harass you and claim its their temple. The two dragons also dimension door about the temple and harass the PCs in specific places. Lining the halls are a bunch of 30ft flesh colossuses with arbitrary immune to damage from PCs who are chaos/law aligned. Meaning if you got in via the riddle, you can't beat these.
The entrance to the dungeon is guarded by 3 nightwalkers, who make you solve a riddle. If you win, it strips your chaotic or lawful alignment from your PC, and presumably rewrites your moral character. There's also a trap you can trigger on yourself to get in causing a destruction spell to hit you before you can just walk in if you can't solve the riddle. You can also "find an alternate way in", but kicking down the door makes the nightwalkers fight you.
Inside the dungeon are a bunch of rooms, obviously. including 4 that let you meet some neutral evil person, who lets you drop stats to increase wis or int. usually a pretty cool CR 20 pathfinder monster (yamaraj psychopomp, akvan div, void yai oni, olethrodaemon) all of whom have a chamber related to their element. Hanging out in a pillar of flames, a colossal throne of ice, a storm of violet electricity, and a pool of aniline green acid.
The final room is a yellow wall of subsonic energy, made from a permanently active combination of implosion and wail of the banshee, containing 3 talismans. One is of the sphere, one of pure good, and one of ultimate evil. a little riddle happens, then the talismns fly to the dragons, who battle you with a sphere of annihilation, and a well of many worlds. They specifically will draw the entire room to a random destination, and hope its not hospitable to the PCs.
I don't know that its enough to run a whole campaign with. But its got space dragons, loads of high level spells (many of which i skimmed), Actually CR 20 monsters, planar travel, ghosts who fight tactically, and it kind of tries to wrestle with some ephemeral concepts like chaos and law. It checks the boxes for what I'd want in a throw away one shot dungeon at high level.
I know the den hates level 20, so Ill do a level 16 one as well, a little more brief. Time out of Joint.
Deep in the underdark the party finds a cave in with loads of dead drow and deurgar. They can find a onyx and gold panel, which opens into a ship encased in platinum. Inside, it comes out that this ship is piloted by Astralnauts, a marut crew who were unhappy with the underdark war, but then crashed. Its got an astral dragon bound to a power core, and a bunch of robots working on it. Mithirl golems and some smaller golems run the machinery throughout. An Astral Levithian is also bound to provide steering and control while the dragon gives thrust. Then it has rules for running an astral ship, and how its Subjective: directional gravity, timeless, strongly neutral aligned, etc. It walks through how if you defeat the marut crew, and let the leviathan leave the ship won't fly, but can be stripped for parts to fund a kingdom. Or you can keep it bound and have an astral ship, like the one from legends of tomorrow.
Way back when, ancient aliens lived in deep space and embraced entropy. Two ancient void dragons built a temple to embrace this philosophy, and it houses a sphere of annihilation. If you try to join the club, you get sucked into walls forever to be a ghost wall and sad about it.
Throughout the dungeon crawl, 6 unique ghosts harass you and claim its their temple. The two dragons also dimension door about the temple and harass the PCs in specific places. Lining the halls are a bunch of 30ft flesh colossuses with arbitrary immune to damage from PCs who are chaos/law aligned. Meaning if you got in via the riddle, you can't beat these.
The entrance to the dungeon is guarded by 3 nightwalkers, who make you solve a riddle. If you win, it strips your chaotic or lawful alignment from your PC, and presumably rewrites your moral character. There's also a trap you can trigger on yourself to get in causing a destruction spell to hit you before you can just walk in if you can't solve the riddle. You can also "find an alternate way in", but kicking down the door makes the nightwalkers fight you.
Inside the dungeon are a bunch of rooms, obviously. including 4 that let you meet some neutral evil person, who lets you drop stats to increase wis or int. usually a pretty cool CR 20 pathfinder monster (yamaraj psychopomp, akvan div, void yai oni, olethrodaemon) all of whom have a chamber related to their element. Hanging out in a pillar of flames, a colossal throne of ice, a storm of violet electricity, and a pool of aniline green acid.
The final room is a yellow wall of subsonic energy, made from a permanently active combination of implosion and wail of the banshee, containing 3 talismans. One is of the sphere, one of pure good, and one of ultimate evil. a little riddle happens, then the talismns fly to the dragons, who battle you with a sphere of annihilation, and a well of many worlds. They specifically will draw the entire room to a random destination, and hope its not hospitable to the PCs.
I don't know that its enough to run a whole campaign with. But its got space dragons, loads of high level spells (many of which i skimmed), Actually CR 20 monsters, planar travel, ghosts who fight tactically, and it kind of tries to wrestle with some ephemeral concepts like chaos and law. It checks the boxes for what I'd want in a throw away one shot dungeon at high level.
I know the den hates level 20, so Ill do a level 16 one as well, a little more brief. Time out of Joint.
Deep in the underdark the party finds a cave in with loads of dead drow and deurgar. They can find a onyx and gold panel, which opens into a ship encased in platinum. Inside, it comes out that this ship is piloted by Astralnauts, a marut crew who were unhappy with the underdark war, but then crashed. Its got an astral dragon bound to a power core, and a bunch of robots working on it. Mithirl golems and some smaller golems run the machinery throughout. An Astral Levithian is also bound to provide steering and control while the dragon gives thrust. Then it has rules for running an astral ship, and how its Subjective: directional gravity, timeless, strongly neutral aligned, etc. It walks through how if you defeat the marut crew, and let the leviathan leave the ship won't fly, but can be stripped for parts to fund a kingdom. Or you can keep it bound and have an astral ship, like the one from legends of tomorrow.
Re: High 5e: Review Resource & Request Thread
Spheres of Power & Spheres of Might: Conversions of Drop Dead Studios’ notable Spheres system to 5th Edition!
Can’t believe I forgot to post them there.
Re: High 5e: Review Resource & Request Thread
So I'm going to finish Koryo first, but after doing City of Brass I'm debating whether to review Brancalonia or Spheres of Power & Might next. The Spheres books are such that they'd be best reviewed together rather than separately, but in comparison to Brass shouldn't be too hard.
Here's the Strawpoll for voting. I'll check the results after one week of this posting to determine a final result.
Here's the Strawpoll for voting. I'll check the results after one week of this posting to determine a final result.
Re: High 5e: Review Resource & Request Thread
3 more entries!
Adventures From the Pot-Bellied Kobold: A series of 15 short adventures.
Blue Rose Adventurer's Guide: A 5e conversion on the notable queer-friendly romantic fantasy setting.
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.
Adventures From the Pot-Bellied Kobold: A series of 15 short adventures.
Blue Rose Adventurer's Guide: A 5e conversion on the notable queer-friendly romantic fantasy setting.
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.