Comparing and Contrasting Tales of the Valiant to D&D 2024 (5.5e)
By EricMesa
- 6 minutes read - 1153 wordsThe only constant in the universe is change and so of course I should come to tabletop roleplaying games right when there’s a big shift. Dungeons and Dragons 5e came out in 2014, but I didn’t know that when I picked it up about 2 years ago at the behest of my kids. And it was D&D instead of Pathfinder because that’s what my brother had introduced them to at Christmas the year before. As soon as I spend a bunch of money on the big three source books (Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide) they decide to revamp the game in 2024. Perhaps learning the (right? wrong?) lesson from D&D 3.5, they don’t christen this new version as 5.5e. The publisher, Wizards of the Coast, goes to great lengths to say that the game is both backwards and forwards compatible. That is, old adventures will work with new 2024 characters. New adventures (or at least recently published ones) will work with 2014 characters and monsters. Somehow in all that chaos I also found and became interested in Kobold Press’ Tales of the Valiant. Tales of the Valiant is a fork (in the free and open source sense of the word) of the 5e system. For now it remains highly compatible with D&D 2024. The forks may eventually diverge, making Tales of the Valiant the Pathfinder (which split off from D&D 3.5) of this generation. (The fork happened because of the OGL license scandal of 2023 when Wizards of the Coast attempted to change the terms of the deal. What I found interesting is that there was a certain feeling in the air - either among the players or the developers - that led to a lot of convergent evolution in both D&D 5.5e and ToV despite the ways in which they are different. (quick disclaimer to say that this isn’t a post about which is better or which you should play, just what I’ve noticed is different)
What is the Same or Similar
Both D&D and ToV converged on the idea that all classes should get their subclasses at level 3. Prior to this change, different classes would get their subclasses at various points in the game. While this does simplify things from a gameplay and rules creation point of view, it also creates some issues that need to be worked around in-game. For example, warlocks gain their patron’s support and source of their magic along with their subclass. This means a game starting at level 1 (something not all tables do) has a patron-less warlock. This can be solved in-game by having the patron be an unknown working in the shadows who only reveals themselves at level 3. Or maybe the player is originally patronized by an underling of their final patron.
All the characters in both systems got many buffs to their stats so that the players can feel more heroic while playing. This necessitated making the monsters more powerful so that the game doesn’t get too boring. Both systems decided to increase monster power. (Or at least introduce both higher and lower levels to their monsters). Both systems also have worked to help dungeon masters to see monsters as working within an ecosystems. ToV’s Monster Vault 1 has tables that list monsters that typically work together. Monster Vault 2 will have monster packs - barebones scenarios of an increasing level of challenge from monsters who might work together. D&D 2024’s Monster Manual is supposed to show (at least through the art throughout the book) which monsters might be found together.
Finally, both systems have added some sort of weapon mastery system. With D&D 2024, all the weapons that the character has mastered have extra damage modifiers. For example, graze will hurt an enemy even if you miss. Tales of the Valiant decided instead to give weapons a special action. For example, you might use a ranged weapon’s ricochet attack to bounce a bullet off a wall. Or you might hamstring them so they can’t get as far. The big difference is that in ToV this is an either/or proposition while in D&D it’s an extra property.
What is Different
Tales of the Valiant adds in a mechanic that I’m seeing more an more in other systems like Daggerheart or the Cosmere RPG (with, of course, variations on how exactly it works). With ToV every time a character misses, they gain a luck point. They can then spend these luck points later to increase a roll’s total. It’s adding the gambler’s fallacy as a game rule: I’ve been unlucky so far, my luck is sure to turn soon! I like this system a lot as it removes a lot of the disappointment to missing/being parried, etc.
As the young upstart, Tales of the Valiant has a bit more of a fun voice to the 1st party books. One of them paraphrases Dr. Suess with an “oh the characters you’ll meet” before introducing the GM to the characters in the adventure. I also like that the covers of the Player’s Guide and Monster Manual are telling a story. The Player’s Guide’s wizard ransacks a lair, ignoring his sidekick. This has dire consequences with the Monster Vault cover.


The Player’s Guide has a bit more of a greenfield look to it with a very “clean” aesthetic. There are some images that show characters in battle or in the middle of something, but most of them look like below. (I’ve left in the works so you can see how it frames the character.

This video also talks about the tone of Tales of the Valiant. Fast forward to about the 1 minute 4 second mark.
Beastkin and Artificer-like characters are first-class options in ToV rather that coming in sub-books like in D&D.
I also like what Tales of the Valiant does for their first party books where they provide you with motivations and other important facts for key NPCs in a nice pop-out that makes it easy to reference and understand how to roleplay that NPC. Here’s an example from Caverns of the Spore Lord:

Character Design
I want to end this post by looking at one of the areas where both systems made similar, but divergent changes. The creators of D&D emphasized that they wanted to facilitate more creative character options with 2024 Tales of the Valiant character creation also allows for quite a variety. I especially love the Talent mechanic a bit more than the Feat mechanic. I made a video last week comparing D&D character creation to ToV character creation. (The intro repeats a little of the intro to this blog post)
My video was focused on the creativity of character creation. This guy has a series where he more focused on how powerful (or what features) are different between D&D 2024 and ToV:
Hopefully that’s been helpful for anyone who’s curious about how these 5e implementations differ.