Level Up (A5E) What's Your Unofficial Errata?

[xiphumor]

I love A5e very much (just ask any of my friends), and I think it represents a huge improvement over O5e. However, no game is perfect, and there are a handful of things I'd prefer to do differently. I thought I'd start a thread to collect some of the ideas people have for tweaks to the official rules.

My biggest tweaks would be as follows:

1. Marshals can be Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma based, just like Warlocks. Charisma is theoretically an important stat for Marshals, but the base class doesn't actually depend on it until rather high tiers of play, so disruption to the class design is pretty limited.

2. Savants get a full exertion pool if they choose to use combat maneuvers, but are limited by which schools they can choose. The half-exertion pool has always felt weird to me and it makes it really hard for savants to use maneuvers.

3. Maneuver progression is standardized into about three possible paths, similar to full, half, and one-third casters. There are some really bizarre idiosyncrasies in the way that adepts and berserkers progress, and no one has ever given me a satisfying explanation as to why this should be the case, either for flavor or balance reasons.

3.a. I don't have the specifics for this, but I would revise the multiclassing rules for maneuvers to reduce the crazy benefits heralds get from a single level of fighter.

 

[Ondath]

Something I already asked about in the forums: I bring Rural and Urban Stronghold pricing to same levels. I understand the prices are different for realism reasons, but the gold-based D&D economy is already pretty distant from real-life pricing, so I thought bringing the two stronghold types to equal footing makes more sense for fairness's sake.

I also want to implement the changes to Bard abilities and Hymns that @steels12 designed for his home game, but I never got around to playtesting them. However on paper they seem far more preferable to RAW.

I also don't think I'll implement the magic item crafting subsystem, mostly because I don't think they suit my playstyle (also, at later levels you can just mass produce uncommon magic items that, at 7 or 8 items, break the game).

 

[Tessarael]

For rare spells, they do count against the limited number of spells known for spellcaster classes with that restriction. In which case, you have both the standard and rare variant available. End result is that my Warlock has not learned any rare spells as yet.

 

[Selganor]

Warlocks always have the spells on their expanded list prepared without them counting against the number of spells. (All other classes that get other spell lists get them free and their second list by invocation does so too, so why not the first one?)

Artificers don't need a seperate schematic for every possible bonus and weapon/armor combination (like +1 dagger, +2 dagger, +1 sword, +2 sword, ...) instead they can study "weapon +1 (uncommon)", "weapon +2 (rare)" and "weapon +3 (very rare)" and "common armor" (which would only include Padded cloth +1), uncommon armor (which would include padded cloth +2, and all other uncommon magic armors), rare armor (which would include padded cloth +3, padded leather +2 and all other rare magical armor) and so on.
This leaves a complete weapon/armor "enchanter" with 3+5=8 schematics instead of 3 per weapon and 3 per armor

Ode to Blood suppresses your unconscious condition (if it would only remove incapacitated the target would still not be able to sense his surroundings and move)

 

[W'rkncacnter]

smith's tools and medicine can be selected for bonus knowledge

path of blustery autumns gives a +5 foot bonus to speed instead of a +10 foot bonus to travel speed (since the latter isn't a thing)

trained accuracy is 1d6/2d6/3d6 (improving to 1d10/2d10/3d10 at level 11) instead of 1d6/3d6/5d6 (and archery fighting style works normally with it at level 11)

explorer's instinct recovers on a short rest

warlocks gain proficiency in either int or cha saves

maneuvers and similar features that let you make attacks based on number of creatures in an area (e.g. missile volley or whirlwind strike) treat each space of a squad as a separate creature

i have more written down but those ones i'm less sure will work out well lol

 

[lichmaster]

trained accuracy is 1d6/2d6/3d6 (improving to 1d10/2d10/3d10 at level 11) instead of 1d6/3d6/5d6 (and archery fighting style works normally with it at level 11)

For me it would be similar but level-gated as a sneak attack

Also, I'll remove most material components shenanigans. In general I deeply dislike material components.

Unification of maneuvers progression is definitely a thing, I did some simple math and if one wanted to preserve the class idiosyncrasies for whatever reason one could simply include that as a level and class feature.

All strongholds allow to choose the ASI

I may remove the restrictions on which combat traditions are available to each class

I'm very tempted to tamper with the exploration system, I'm not sold of how magic in general was nerfed to be ineffective at providing supply. If feeding someone with magic is harder than raising them from the dead, there's something deeply wrong IMO.

There are surely several others, but these are just on top of my head

 

[W'rkncacnter]

All strongholds allow to choose the ASI

oh yeah, i forgot about this one. i'd probably also give training halls and workshops dexterity as an option to boost.

 

[Stalker0]

We swapped the level 1 and 2 penalties from strife.

 

[Ondath]

oh yeah, i forgot about this one. i'd probably also give training halls and workshops dexterity as an option to boost.

I actually like the strongholds giving a specific ASI, and especially Dexterity not being an option. Dex is already a god stat (affecting ranged/finesse attack roles, most initiative rolls and AC, and its save is a pretty big one), so the ways to increase it being limited make sense to me.

 

[Ondath]

For rare spells, they do count against the limited number of spells known for spellcaster classes with that restriction. In which case, you have both the standard and rare variant available. End result is that my Warlock has not learned any rare spells as yet.

That sounds like it actually makes rare spells useless, no?