The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Fri, 23 Aug 2024
Mike builds a 1st level character with Tales of the Valiant! Join the City of Arches Kickstarter! Tales of the Valiant Tales of the Valiant Character Sheet
Hello friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from SciFlourish. This is the third in a four-part series where I build characters with various versions of 5e. I started off by building a character with the new D&D 2024 Player's Handbook. Last week, I did Level Up Advanced 5e. Today, I'm going to do Tales of the Valiant. And later, I am going to do Shadow Dark.
And we're going to look at all of the processes that take place in order to build a character by actually doing it here on the show. So it's a fun series where we get to see what it's like to build a first-level character in all of these different versions of 5e. Please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. You can find a link in the show notes below.
The City of Arches is my current Kickstarter for a high fantasy city sourcebook for lazy GMs. It is a city filled with adventure and intrigue and discovery. that you can experience with your friends.
It is built specifically for you to be able to drop into any campaign setting, whether it is your own homebrew setting or an existing published setting, and yet has nearly infinite expandability into all different areas that you can build out for your own campaigns. Please check it out. The Kickstarter is about halfway through at this point. It's doing really, really well.
It's going to be an awesome book. You can check out the 42-page free sample, which includes a playable scenario, introduction scenario, a playable adventure, and a whole lot of material to show you what this Kickstarter is about. There's no reason to not go check out the 42-page sample, and I hope you will back it. Please check it out.
The link is down in the show notes, and thank you very much for your support. So as we have in the previous two shows, I'm going to build a first level character. We're going into the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide, one of the two core books for Tales of the Valiant, along with the Monster Vault. And we're going to walk through the process of building a first level character.
I downloaded a form fillable character sheet from Kobold Press on their store. It's absolutely free to download the form fillable character sheet. And we have it right here. And we are going to get started. So I'm excited to build a character. I already know. Oh, I just dropped my dice box on my keyboard. Hopefully that's not a problem.
I already know a fair bit about how to build a character with Tales of the Valiant, and I'm excited about it because it's got some things I really, really like. And we're going to talk about those while we do it. So we're going to skim through the book.
If anybody has questions, Kobold Press has given permission, blanket permission, to show whatever people want to show in their video, which I am doing right now. The book starts with an introduction, what it means to run a game, what it plays like, and then goes straight into character creation and leveling. Slightly different than we saw with the 2024 book, which had the rules for play up front.
And this is another one where the steps that we go through to make a character are different than the steps that we go through to make a character with other systems. So both 2024 D&D and this system are different than how the core 2014 D&D and...
level up advanced 5e did it so those are kind of interesting things to consider because basically the first thing you do is choose your class this is basically similar to how it happens in dnd 2024 and is different from 2014 dnd and level up advanced 5e which have you start by picking like your race or your origin and things and then working your way into class this one says no right off front choose a class
So the steps are choose a class, determine ability scores, choose a lineage, choose a heritage, choose a background, and choose your equipment. And at that point, and then fill in the blanks. And then at that point, you have everything for a character. So eight steps required to build a character.
One nice thing is that there's a little less jumping around, mainly because you don't have to modify your ability scores. Ability scores are all handled in one single step, which I think is fantastic. When it comes to character creation, I think that is my favorite thing that...
tales of the valiant does that none of the other four none of the other three systems do they all have some convoluted way that you add bonuses to ability scores when tales of the valiant just said look just pick your ability scores just here's the standard array all the modifiers are included put them where you want and you're done so much easier than trying to tie it to backgrounds or trying it to heritage or tying it to other things uh it just just do it right just just have it just have it set
So to start off with, we're going to pick a class. And I am going to go to the table of contents here because I'm going to roll a die on the class. The classes include Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Mechanist, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard. So there are 13 classes. So the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to roll a d12.
And if I roll a 12, I'm going to roll between the Wizard and the Warlock. so i'll roll off between those two that is not a nice purely random way but it suffices for our for our show today and we'll see if i get the mechanist three barbarian bard cleric i'm going to be building a cleric today so i already know cleric first level so now i'm already move my dice around here so i can type easier
I already know what class I'm going to pick. Great. So let's go back down to the steps here for choosing a class. So I have chosen a class. Your character class gives you proficiencies, a game term that describes what kind of equipment you are trained to use, blah, blah, blah. And so I don't have all of my class stuff yet. So we're going to go through the steps.
and write down all the class stuff one nice thing it has here in the in the tales of the valiant players guide is a similar to the 2024 dnd book it shows an example of the character sheet with keys to show you all of the things that you fill in and what chapter is there on both sides unlike the dnd 2024 book It also has a copy of the character sheet in full in the back that isn't modified.
So you can take pictures of your phone. You can print it out however you want to do it. That is something I think the 2024 book dropped on the table. I didn't think they did as good a job as this one has of showing what elements of the sheet you're going to get from what steps forward.
Of your prep or what steps of your character creation what chapters you want to look at when you're filling in all the various pieces of the character sheet and the 2024 book does not have a blank character sheet in it which I think is a big omission I think that is something that would have made that book stronger and didn't and didn't have it.
So, but here we have our elements of the character sheet, which will be good when we're going through the steps of building a character. We can go and check that. So we're going to jump straight to Cleric. One complaint people have, and it's a big one, one big complaint that people have about Tales of the Valiant is that it's actually pretty light on subclasses.
There are basically only two subclasses per class. This is instead of in comparison to the four subclasses per class that the 2024 D&D book has. And Level Up Advanced 5e, I don't know how many subclasses it has, but it has a whole lot of subclasses in Level Up Advanced 5e.
So of the four variants of 5e, 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Level Up Advanced 5e, and Tales of the Valiant, Tales of the Valiant has the fewest subclasses in the core book. So that's a consideration when you're thinking about the different styles. The one thing I will say, though, is that the subclasses that they chose to include in the book are good meaty subclasses.
So if you look at the 2014 D&D book, for example, every class has like a generic subclass that's kind of boring and doesn't do a lot, and almost nobody picks because it's very boring and it doesn't do a whole lot. That's sort of like the default character subclass. This one, all of them are pretty interesting. All of them are ones that you would choose from, but still there's only two.
It's probably enough if you just want to kind of enjoy the game and run, but it could hurt the longevity of the game because it means that you'd have to pick up subclasses from other systems or from, you know, certainly Kobo Press is going to be releasing more subclasses in other books.
So it certainly gives them options to sell you more products, but it would have been nice if the core book had included more subclasses. Anyway, we are going to pick a class. So class features, we'll just walk right down the list. I don't need to read this. I know all about clerics. Hit dice is a D8 per cleric level. Where is, let's see, hit dice is type D8.
It's accidentally filled in there and I'm going to save this sheet. So there we go. D8, my max hit points right now at first level is eight plus con. I don't know what that's going to be yet. So I don't know what my ability modifiers are yet. So I'll do that later. I don't need that. Armor proficiency. So let's go to proficiencies. Light, medium, shields. I'll do light, medium, arm.
And other simple weapons. No tools. So we don't need to write that down. Saves are wisdom and charisma. So we will, let's see. We know we have a wisdom bang and we know we have a charisma bang. I don't know if those are the defaults or not that, or I don't know if those are the same as they are in 2014 D&D. That's interesting.
Skills, choose two from history, insight, medicine, persuasion, or religion. I think you have to go with religion, even though it's int-based. I'm going to go with religion. I like history. I don't really know anything about this character yet, but I'm gonna pick history. So I chose two, history and religion. I might change that. I'm gonna do medicine because it is wisdom-based.
I wanna have one min-max-y skill that I can do. Persuasion is also good, but we're gonna see with a background whether or not I can get persuasion some other way. So starting equipment, you start with the following equipment in addition to the equipment granted by your background. This is what I screwed up when I was doing it with. When I was doing it with 2024 D&D, I forgot the equipment.
So there's an equipment section here. And I could choose either mace or a warhammer. We'll go with mace. I could choose scale mail, leather armor, or chain mail if proficient. I wonder why it says if proficient because maybe you get it from another subclass or something. I'm going to go with scale mail. Light crossbow or any simple weapon. We'll go with light crossbow and 20 bolts.
A priest pack or an explorer's pack. We'll go with priest pack and a shield. All right. So we've got our equipment. Spellcasting. Go right into the hard part. You gain divine spells. See chapter seven on spellcasting. Here's this is kind of cool. Okay. Cleric quick build. To quickly create a cleric, follow these steps during character creation.
For ability scores, prioritize wisdom, then either strength or con, depending on if you take manifest might or manifest miracles. I don't know what that means. For lineage and heritage, choose any combination you like. For background and talent, choose add and mental fortitude. For spells, choose guidance, sacred flame, and thaumaturgy cantrips. plus ray of frost of taking manifest miracles.
Then prepare your first circle divine spells. Choose a number of the following spells equal to your wisdom modifier plus one. Bless, cure wounds, guiding bolt, healing word, and shield of faith. Finally, choose your first circle ritual, detect poison and disease. So that's kind of cool that they give you like, hey, you want to build a character real quick? Just go do these.
And I'll probably do some of those. I think, why not? Why shouldn't I? So where is the cleric spell? Here we go. This is what I'm looking for. So cantrips, let's see. It doesn't say, but we're going to go with what it says for the quick build. So it says guidance and sacred flame, of course, and thaumaturgy. Excellent.
First, we're going to figure out what my wisdom, my wisdom modifier plus one are the, are the prepared spells, but I'll go ahead and put all of the prepared spells on here because I can always, you know, I can decide whether I have them prepared or not. Bless, cure wounds, guiding bolt, healing word, shield of faith. And we'll figure out how many of them I can prepare.
And then rituals detect poison and disease. Okay, so I got those. I don't know if I'm supposed to put rituals anywhere separate. It does not look like it. Cool. So I've got spells. Now, one thing I didn't do is I haven't written down any of the page numbers of any of this stuff yet because I don't know where it actually is.
So what I will want to do before the end of character creation is actually put all the page numbers of these down so that I can look them up easily. That's my number one tip for building a paper-based character sheet or a character sheet where you're filling it in is write down the page numbers. In fact, for the cleric, I'm going to do it right now.
I'm going to put a little paren next to the cleric and we're going to say page 33, right? So right off the bat, always put the page numbers of anything. Treat your character sheet like it is an index of the book built for your character. I know my name is Mike. Let's see. There was something else that it brought up. Let's go to that list.
So manifestation of faith is something that you have to pick. What is that? Manifestation of faith. Clerics demonstrate the faith in one of two primary ways, wielding it as a holy warrior or calling it as a miracle worker. Choose how you want to manifest your faith with one of the following. Manifest might or manifest miracles. I'm On evens, it is manifest might. On odds, it is manifest miracles.
And I rolled evens. It is manifest might. So I'm going to put that down in my features and traits. You gain proficiency with heavy armor. All right. That's why it brought up whether or not you wanted to pick heavy armor or not. So I may change my armor, right? Because I think it said...
chain mail if proficient so we're going to change my scale mail to chain mail okay what else do you get from manifest might you gain proficiency have the armor and one type of martial weapon of your choice hmm We'll go with Warhammer. And then I think that changes my equipment too. Because I'm going to pick Warhammer instead of a mace. Cool. I may change that up later.
In addition, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine energy. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can deal additional radiant or necrotic damage equal to your proficiency bonus. I'm going to just copy that and paste it right in there. And I'm not going to do necrotic. That's evil. I don't do evil things.
Let's return when you hit a creature with a weapon attack. So I can remove that because I know that I'm, oh, I can put that over here. Cool. And actually in manifest might, I can put a little dash and that way it's uses a little less space and put the page number down, Mike. What's the page number manifest might is page 34. Cool. All right. Any other class features?
The channel divinity you don't get till second. Rituals. I can do ritual casting. We'll put that down here. At first level, choose one ritual from the divine ritual list. See the divine ritual list in chapter seven. And they already told me one. You can learn more rituals at higher levels as shown in your rituals. So rituals known as one. And then we'll put a page number.
Even though it's the same page. Okay, so that's cool. I've got that. I think I've got everything from the class. I'll just remember that my... Oh, spell save. So I'll have to do some calculations in this. I really probably should have done my ability scores.
I'm kind of... I guess it's sort of like a chicken and the egg on whether you do ability scores before you actually pick a class, but let's do that. So determine ability scores. Three ways. I'm going to pick the easiest way, which is the standard array. Look at this. To just get going... I want to just get going. Use the standard array. Start with six numbers, 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, 8.
Assign them as ability scores however you want. Again, don't modify them any further. That's it. So I am going to wisdom is going to be my primary. I think we're going to do con as one of the 14s. I can do strength as one of the 14s. Intelligence as the 13, right? 16, 14, 14, 13, 10 for Dex and eight for Charisma. I am not a good looking person, even though I've got a proficiency in that save.
plus two plus zero plus two plus two lots of lots of twos plus three and minus one that makes my save here and then we know does it talk about proficiency where does where does it mention proficiency we'll have to find that out well we'll not we'll not you know i'm curious i know what it is obviously like somewhere there's a proficiency bone it is is two but i want to know where it says that so we'll pretend that i don't know that
that means i don't know exactly what the saves are either but i still have marked them off and i don't i'm not going to fill in the skills yet we'll see we'll see how to do that so i have my ability scores now that does mean i know how many hit points i have because it's two plus eight so my current hit points maximum is ten Cool. Was there anything else regarding ability scores?
I think like this is just, see, this is just so much better than everything else. I mean, maybe people like to nitpick about their ability scores. I think it's just a pain in the ass. And I would much rather just be told. Now, I'll tell you one step further you could go, which maybe you can't do if you're making like a direct 5e compatible game.
You can skip the ability score and just have bonuses and say, you get a plus three, plus two, plus two, plus one, plus one. And then do that instead of having the scores.
But then if you especially if you're adding ability bonuses to feats, which I'm pretty sure Tales of the Valiant does, then the halfies matter because you don't want to offer a full ability score bump on top of a feat because that's a whole lot. All right, so I have chosen my ability modifiers, and now we are going to pick a lineage. So let's go back up to a list of the lineages.
Do they have a list of lineages? Yes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There are eight lineages. So I am going to roll a D8 and see what my lineage is. Lineage is sort of your species. It's sort of like your physical... physical trait and it is three. Three is beastkin dwarf elf. I am an elf. I think my other character is an elf too. And I can jump straight to elf. Look at that.
So lineage elf. Whoops. Where did that go? I just typed something I didn't want to type. My lineage is elf and that is on page 106. Let's look at elves. Elves, long-lived people regarded as first mortal beings to walk the world. They're both ancestral ties to magic realms populated. Most elf settlements were established long before living memory.
Beautiful cities situated in quiet groves deep within the mist-shrouded peaks that touch the sky, rich in magic and beauty. Due to long lifespans, even elves born afar from elven cities eventually feel compelled to visit the towering forests. Age. Although elves reach physical maturity around age 20, mental and emotional faculties reach full maturity around 100. Elves can be up to 750 years old.
Do I have age anywhere on here? Is that one of the traits? There is a thing here. So age. We're going to say I'm 99 years old. That's fun. Age. Sizes medium, is that, where is that? Let's see, proficiency, that's not there. I do not see size listed anywhere on the character sheet. I think I'm missing it. There's like, why is there three speeds? That's weird. Speed, speed, speed.
I wonder if those are different things. Well, my speed is 30. I have advantage on perception checks that rely on, so this is a thing, heightened senses, which we can drop in here. And this is on page 107. And we can cut some of the text here just to shorten it up a little bit. Magic, you have advantage on saves against charmed magic ancestry. We'll just abbreviate that. And trance we have.
I'm going to run out of space for features and traits probably. We'll see. All right. So that is it for being an elf, right? That's all that you get. So you're, what do they call that? They call that the lineage. The lineage is actually pretty light. Let's look at heritage. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
So I'm going to roll a D 20 until I roll something 14 or less. me take a couple of roles uh one thing i kind of like about the heritages in uh tales of the valiant when compared to the whatever they're called in level up advanced 5e one problem i think they're called it they call them lineages they they've the the heritage thing has gotten mixed up between the two systems, which is unfortunate.
There are fewer of them here, but they are less tied to specific... Where if you look at the ones in Level Up Advanced 5e, there are still kind of like gnome ones and orc ones and dwarven ones. These are completely separate, which does bring up what's the difference between one of these and the backgrounds. So that's a question too. And I think...
And 2024 D&D just said, we're just going to focus on backgrounds. The only problem with the backgrounds is they're kind of boring compared to these. Like you're not a cloud heritage or diaspora or fire forged. It's like, you know, you're a soldier. So they're kind of boring. Anyway, I'm going to pick one of these. 12. Look at that. Supplicant. I am a supplicant heritage.
Characters in this heritage are raised in a community bound to serve a monstrous overlord. That's grim. Who is the monstrous overlord? And this is page 116. Monstrous creatures of fearsome might and intelligence have always sought domination, but domination implies someone to dominate. Minions and subjects made loyal through adoration or fear. Your people served and still serve such an overlord.
They built their lives around whatever whims and commands fell to them. Many creatures make suitable monstrous overlords, but the most common are dragons who use servants to maintain and defend their lairs. As such, most supplicant communities live in natural shelters such as cave thickets, precarious rock faces. So I think this is like...
you know you would think kobolds in worship of dragons near their overlords redoubt there they they cultivate traps and deadly hazards right so this is almost exactly what kobolds would do it's easy to imagine why easy to imagine why a member of this heritage might leave in addition to running away an overlord might command subjects to take an expedition together information or treasure perhaps the overlord has been recently dispatched forcing your people to explore strange new freedom
Interesting. Backstory wise, why an elf would have this would be kind of interesting. You could go with, I was just watching Cate Blanchett eat hot wings yesterday and I was thinking about Galadriel and then you always imagine the Dark Queen Galadriel. What if I am a supplicant of the Dark Queen, but she could have been, maybe she's been defeated. So did I put the, I did put the page number down.
Look at that. Good, good job past Mike Shea. So scurry, move 10 feet without, that's pretty good. I can go and run away. Supplicant, you have proficiency in either insight or persuasion. We're going to go with insight. When a creature within 30 feet of you spends doom, you have advantage on ability checks and saves until the beginning. That's cool. So advantage when doomed.
I'm going to put a page number next to this. So I can look it up because I'm not going to remember what that means. It is kind of interesting because it is one where you look at it and you go, they obviously had kobolds in mind when they wrote that. So that's kind of fun and kind of interesting.
But you can see how you can sort of turn it around and say, okay, well, what would make sense for an elf? And I like the idea of like, you know, having formerly served a dark queen. And you can almost make, I mean, because the elf could certainly be like a drow. So you could say you were a supplicant to like Loth or something like that if you're doing a Forgotten Realms or something.
dnd style setting but instead you could say like no you know a dark elven queen you know not a like a yeah like a evil elven queen but maybe i broke free let's take a look at the steps all right chose a class determinability scores choose a lineage choose a heritage choose a background is next okay so let's take a look at backgrounds 10 backgrounds so we are going to roll a d10 and see which one we get
Nine. Scholar. That works. So we go to here and go to background. Got to really give it a good click. Scholars on page 123. Cool. You choose arcana, history, nature, or religion. So arcana. So I like history. Let's see. Choose two. I think arcana would be good too. One thing though is like...
you really like a cleric is really one of the most perceptive characters so i think i'm going to swap medicine out with perception because as exploration goes perception is so valuable and the cleric is one of the best ones to be able to do it because their wisdom is usually so high so i'm going to pick perception i'm going to do a little it's a little min maxi but like you know for your group having somebody who's really good at that is something you want
Learn two additional languages of your choice or gain proficiency with a tool or vehicle relevant to your field of study. I'm going to have Celestial as a language. I wonder where the languages are. I missed languages. So I'm just going to write two languages down because I also seem to have missed a place where I was supposed to pick languages the first time. Equipment.
I have bottle of ink, ink, quill, knife, reference book on a highly specific subject, clothes, pouch with 10 gold pieces in it. Not, I'm not super. And talent. So this is, talents are their equivalent of feats. You have spent time researching particular academic subjects at an institute of learning under a knowledgeable teacher. Choose a talent from this list to represent your experience.
Polyglot, ritualist, or school specialization. So an interesting thing they've done here, which I think is better than what 2024 D&D. 2024 D&D ties only a single background, right?
single background to a single feat to a background this one offers you a choice of three which means i'm a lot less likely to change my talent around or change my background along just to get the talent i want i still could if i really wanted a min max but now at least i have a choice of three that that makes sense so i'm gonna go i'm gonna go check those out and i'm gonna go read up on what the talents are to pick one before i go
adventuring motivation has a nice role list and we're just going to roll one. The coin I need for my research comes from adventuring. So I really need the money for research. Not the strongest background. Let's see, do they have that? Adventuring motivation. Look at that giant space they have for one sentence. Skin pale, hair blonde, weight 99 pounds, eyes ice blue, of course.
Height, we're gonna say five foot eight. I'm a little small for my little details since I was here. I'm starting to get a feeling for that. So that's all I need for the background. So that's, that's pretty fast. That's nice. I missed languages. I wonder if languages are under class and I, and I skipped it or under speech and the lineage.
I don't know where it went, but let me take a look at class first and it doesn't show any languages in the list there. So now let me go to, let's go to lineage and see if there was one there. I don't see anything about language there either. Let's go to heritage, but I didn't see anything about languages in either of those places.
I wonder if that's one of the like fill into details kinds of things, but it's interesting that languages were not covered in the other ones. It only says you get two additional languages, like addition to what? So I was of the supplicant heritage. Yeah. Oh, languages, you know, common and one additional language of your choice. Okay. So there was languages and I skipped them. Whoops.
Don't bother to write common down because everyone knows common, you know, common and one additional language, typically the language favored by your current and pre or previous overlords, such as draconic giant and under common. And I get two more. So I'm going to say certainly Elvin and then two others, but I don't know where those languages are. I wonder where the list of languages are.
Let's take a look at the table of contents. Let's go to the index. Hmm. One 10, one 11 to one 12. Here we go. This is a page I wasn't looking at. I should have, I should have read. So elements of heritage languages, your heritage includes how many languages, you know, by default, all characters know common language and one other language, but some heritages and backgrounds allow more.
choose from the list the standard languages table or one typical in your campaign with the gm's permission you can instead choose a language from the exotic languages table or a secret language such as thieves can't so let's see i have elven and i get two others i'm gonna go with goblin because i'm gonna say like elves and goblins were both supplicants to the elf queen
And then I am going to pick celestial because I'm going to say that the elf queen used to speak in celestial. I kind of like the idea the Elf Queen is dead, right? She was defeated. She was good, then went bad. We were all supplicants to her. We did what she said, then she was defeated.
And now we're all like, man, we all have this hole in our lives from where she used to be, but we recognize that it was a terrible, terrible, dark place. I think that could be kind of fun. So there's, there, now you got a background. Okay, so I got languages. What else? Let's go back to the steps. Oh, I was going to pick talents. So talent choices.
I had either polyglot ritualist or school specialization. I don't know which ones they fell under. So school specialization, choose one of the eight schools of magic, abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, invocation, illusion, necromancy, transportation, get these benefits. When you cast spells of your chosen school, your spell attack bonus and spell save DC are both increased by one.
Interesting. If you use a spell book to cast your spells, the gold time, I don't. When you spend two or more sorcery points, I don't do that. So that seems to benefit wizards and sorcerers more. Although I could, for example, do like divine. What can I choose? Abjuration, conjuration, divination. I could pick like... whatever school Guiding Bolt comes from.
And it would give me a plus one bonus on stuff for like Guiding Bolt or Sacred Flame. That's not terrible. That's a nice boost. So that would be school specialization. Ritual list. Study of magic has unlocked the mysteries of ritual spells. When you gain this talent, you also gain a ritual book, which contains the rituals you know. To cast a ritual spell, you must have your ritual book in hand.
Choose a spell source, arcane, divine, primordial, or weird. You must choose your rituals from that source's spells list, regardless of which source you choose. You use your normal spellcasting ability for these. When you gain your ritual book, add one ritual for each spell circle you have already unlocked via your spellcasting class.
For example, a cleric who selects this talent at fourth level has spell slots for first and second level circles. So they would add one first level circle ritual, one second level ritual. That's interesting. Each time you gain access to a new circle of spell slots by gaining. So I could get more rituals, add one new ritual. And I presume I could pick rituals from another area.
So that would actually let me expand out into certain ones. That's kind of interesting. I'm also trained in Arcana. So it kind of makes sense that like as an elf who formerly followed the witch queen, the elf queen, I might have ability to dive into magic that's a little bit different. I could even pick like weird, that would be fun. So that is ritualist and school specialization.
And then polyglot is one I can choose. And I don't know what that, is that a technical talent? You have studied language exclusively. You can communicate in multiple languages. Learn three new languages. When you converse with a creature in a language you both know, you have advantage on a single charisma ability check made to influence. This sounds boring.
When you make an ability check related to understanding the meaning of verbal, yeah. You're like the language person. I think we're going to go with ritual. I like the idea of being a ritualist because that sort of fits this background of being a, you know, the father of the elf queen. So that means if I'm going to pick ritualist, that means I have to pick a source.
Spell sources, arcane, divine, primordial, or weird. Let's take a look at the weird rituals. So spell casting. Let's see if they have the weird spells listed. That's arcane, divine, primordial. Let's look at weird. So let's see. Weird rituals. First would be find familiar, illusory script, unseen servant. And that's what I would start with is like one of those.
Find familiar would be pretty interesting because I could have like a small creature that's pretty powerful, right? And the thing is like I could be trying to break away from the elf queen's kind of control, but the creature that I follow is still like she's still out there and you have to do what she wants. It'd be like the devil on my shoulder. I like that.
So we're going to say ritualist and weird. And that gives me find familiar. And I'm going to put find familiar in my spell list. I'll put an R next to it and say it's a ritual. Cool. So I've got that. And ritualist is a magic talent. And that is on page 127. Okay. So I got that page number down. Let us go back to character creation. So what have I done? I have chosen the heritage background.
Now is equipment, starting equipment. Two methods for determining what equipment your character starts with. Method one, take class and background equipment. That's what I did. Method two, determine starting wealth. So you can instead choose starting wealth, but I like to take what they say to take. Starting equipment. Look, there's like a nice thing on starting equipment at higher levels.
It's pretty cool. So that means that that part of it is done. I'm going to save. Let's see. Save my character sheet here so I don't lose it. And now we have fill in the blanks. At this point, your big decisions are locked in. You'll still need to pick spells of your character, but we've got the basic squared away. Take the time to look things over.
Fill in any blank sections of your character sheet. Give your character a name. and decide what they look like. It's also a good idea to think about it. Where was proficiency bonuses? Here we go, proficiency bonus. Your proficiency bonus is always based on your total character level, not your character level. For example, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You gain your first level in a class other than the initial class, you gain some, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's the proficient, no, that's character level. These are total spell slots. Where does it describe proficiency bonus? Let's look in the index. Proficiency bonus 22. I guess it's on the class list and I just missed it. Let's take a look. Yeah, there it is.
So I skipped it when I was doing class stuff because I'm so smart. Proficiency bonus is plus two, which I knew. But I wanted to know where it said that. So now I can fill in some other stuff. For example, for my proficient saves, I can put the ones that are there. For here now, I can fill in these. Man, that's some small text. I'm really good. I got some good skills. Cool. So I chose that.
Is there anything else I needed to fill in as far as proficiency bonus stuff? Yes, my ability is wisdom. That's plus three because of that. Save DC is eight plus proficiency plus, so it's 13. And my bonus is plus five. Cleric. Spellcasting class and source. I don't know what that is. I don't know what source means. That's interesting. So let's see, up here, we are gonna put my main attacks.
Those are probably the ones that I'm gonna put in here. Sacred Flame is a 13. I'm gonna put, instead of bonus, I'm gonna put the DC. Guiding Bolt is plus five. Warhammer is my strength. That's gonna be plus four. And my light crossbow is gonna suck. It's plus two. So that's like, you know, everything is falling apart. Passive insight is going to be 10 plus the bonus, right?
Passive investigation is 12. Passive perception is 15. And it's got speed, speed, speed. I think that's an error. I bet you there's an error in this character sheet. Initiative is zero. All that is filled in, all of that is filled in. All that stuff is filled in. I'm gonna assume that this is size and I don't know what the other, I don't know what the other one would be. Skills are set.
Attacks, I'm gonna look up when I do some equipment and look at it. Spells, armor, chain mail, and a shield. I like that it's got with and without shield for armor class. That's really cool. Hit points are all set. Death saves. I haven't died yet. Equipment I've got. Proficiencies I've got. Features I've got along with page numbers. Backstory and I love. So character appearance.
This is something that people miss. It's like being able to drop a picture in here is really cool. Or being able to like write it, draw a picture. I like it when character sheets let you draw a picture of your character. And then I got this stuff and I'm going to go look up all those spells when I go.
so that is good so now we're going to go to the equipment section got something interesting to talk about with equipment and you know i like that it shows like what this stuff looks like this is something that a lot of the books have been doing so i have chain mail is ac16 and with shield the shield it says is two so that's an 18 armor class at first level that's that's nice
And chain mails, it has, let's see, chain mail, cumbersome, strength 13. Oh, luckily it's not. Noisy. And the shield, don't have to worry about that. That's plus two. Okay. Cool, so that's good for the armor. And then for weapons, here we go with weapons. And I have a war hammer. I've decided I'm gonna swing a war hammer. And a war hammer is a D8 or D10 bludgeoning.
So go to war hammer and that's gonna be plus two. But I've got that ability, right? Where, let's see, I was looking at manifest my once per turn. When I hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can deal an additional radiant equal to proficiency. So I'm going to put manifest. What's it called? Might. Warhammer's melee. Light crossbow is a D8 piercing. That's cool. But I have no dex bonus.
So it's just a straight D8 piercing. Range on the light crossbow is 80 slash 320. Loading and loading slash two-handed. Now the war hand also has the bash and disarm weapon options. I'm going to say might. Say I'm going to give some bash. And this is where you get into these weapon options. And Bash and Disarm are both 139. So I'm just going to do 139 next to them.
I don't know how that's going to show up. There we go. I'll just say Dis. And I'll put the page number down. So this is interesting. So D&D 2024 has weapon masteries. And the weapon masteries are super powerful in D&D 2024. I would argue that they are a little, you know, overpowered if you ask me. And the reason why is like there's no option here. You don't take anything away.
You just get to do all this new extra stuff. So when they talk, just weapon masteries alone mean a whole slew of new things that characters just get to do with no cost. It happens all the time. They still do damage. Weapon options in Tales of the Valiant are more restrained. First of all, you do not do damage when you do the thing. So if you're going to, so I have the bash and disarm, right?
Bash, make a melee attack with this weapon. On a hit, the target has disadvantage on its next attack roll. That's instead of doing damage. If I want to make sure it's next attack roll is at disadvantage, I can bash it. Disarm, make a melee attack with this weapon. On a hit, the target must succeed. On a strength, their deck saved, target's choice. Or drop a weapon shield or object it is wielding.
The dropped item lands on an occupied square within five feet. If no unoccupied space is within range, the item lands at the target's feet. So you can knock something out of somebody's hand. But you have to do that instead of doing damage. It's an option, right? So that I think is an important consideration in how these sort of weapon options work.
Now, the other difference is you don't have to be trained. So the weapon, the whatever they're called in D&D 2024. Now, I got all these different names in my head. The weapon masteries in D&D 2024, you have to... have that mastery. There's a limitation of which masteries you can have, which masteries you can have at any given time, and which classes even have them. This one, anybody can do it.
All you have to do is be proficient with the weapon. So just because I'm a cleric does mean I get this option. But I have to sacrifice doing damage. Unless specified otherwise, a weapon... A weapon attack used to perform the weapon option has only the options listed effect and doesn't deal normal weapon damage. That's one consideration, which I think is good.
Weapon options can be used only when the wielder takes the attack action on the turn, unless a feature like the fighter's martial action allows a weapon option attack to be performed as a bonus action. So I guess certain classes can do other things. characters of the multi-attack feature can perform a weapon option in place of one of the attacks granted by multi-attack.
That is a restriction I really wish they had put in place in D&D 2024. It is here in Tales of the Valiant. I think Tales of the Valiant knew how to restrain these options so that they are not happening constantly. I really worry about the topple
six topple attacks in one round that a fighter can do at at fifth level or fifth level fourth level i guess 11th level is when they get three and then action surge still that's a lot of stuff anyway so i've got that So those weapon options I think are interesting. I'm glad they have them here. I think that's cool.
I didn't look at the fighter and like, can the fighter do stuff with these weapon options that other people can't? It looks like they might because they have that description in there. So let's see. Where's the save? They talked about whether weapons are option save.
If an option requires a creature to make a save, the DC equals eight plus the attacker's proficiency plus the attacker's strength or dex mod. So the save DC. So I'm going to put, I'm going to just stick this under features and trait. And I put an option DC there. And that's 14, right? Eight. So 12. It's a DC 12 because that's my proficiency plus my strength modifier. All right. So that's cool.
Now, the last thing we want to do, which isn't super interesting, is we are going to put page numbers down for all of these spells. So we're going to go to spells. We'll go down to spell descriptions because that's where we really want them. And we will start with guidance. I guess I could do them in alphabetical order if I looked at them.
One of my, so let's see, I had, there's one general complaint that I heard and then I have my complaint about Tales of the Valiant. So bless is 260. Let's go to cure wounds. Cure wounds is 169 or 269. I don't think you need to worry about the parentheses. Detect. Where's the detect poison and stuff? I see detect evil and good and detect magic, but I don't see detect poison.
287.
Sacred flame. Sacred flame is 307. Sacred flame of D8 still. Yep. d8 decks you could even write that right you could do 1d8 decks if you wanted to you could put a little little thing just to remind you what it is if you forget it thaumaturgy so let's see oh shield of faith 309 it's a bonus action to do shield of faith that's cool i think i guess it was before thaumaturgy
is page 316, and that is everything up through the rituals. And we go to rituals. Interesting that rituals are handled in a totally separate section. So we will, what are our rituals? Detect poison and disease, 332, and find familiar. Bat, cat, crab, frog, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish, rat, raven, seahorse, spider, or weasel. I can't, maybe a spider.
335.
So there I have the spells. Is there any other thing that I needed? So I got my spells. Oh, I have my total slot. So let's go back up to class. and spellcasting class got a cleric and where's the table total slots is two and my the total amount that i can prepare i think they said was where is it here spellcasting
wisdom is your spell casting ability you have a you've prepared a number of spells you can cast anything by using divine shows how many divine spell slots you have at a given level your wisdom modifier plus cleric level so total prepped is i'm level one plus three so four so i can i can prep four spells right let's see let's make sure i get that right You must prepare spells in advance.
You may prepare any spell on the divine spell list from circles for which you have the divine spell slots. You determine which spell slots you can access by checking your level on the cleric progression. You can choose a number of spells equal to your wisdom modifier plus your cleric level, minimum one. This is your list of prepared spells from which you can cast.
So I would probably, healing word is always good. I would probably do guiding bolt and I think cure wounds and bless. So that's, that's pretty straightforward. Those would be the ones that I would memorize. So no shield of faith for me, unfortunately, but I have a really high armor class anyway. So that is solid. It's interesting that they don't really show you how you're prepared.
I guess that's what the check boxes would tell you, but I like to have that sort of listed. tons of room for background here, but everything else is pretty solid. So, oh, and I don't have a name. I don't think let's just go to the index, but I didn't see anywhere.
This is something that all of the books, I think the 2014 players handbook does this and none of the other ones do, which is give me a list of names. Help me out. Like give, just stick some names in one of the lineages or heritage areas or something like that. because you're making me come up with a name. I don't have a name, right? There's no name list in here, so that's a bummer.
So Calavelle Windwhisperer. That's a pretty boring elven name, but there it is. So I have myself a first level Tales of the Valiant character. And I think the process going through this was pretty smooth. There's definitely things I like a lot about how Tales of the Valiant builds out. I love the character sheet. The character sheet is great.
You know, a really, really usable character sheet, only three pages long and very fillable. So I have myself a fun cleric that I could totally play. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while I built a character using Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press. If you enjoyed the show, you can help me out by checking out the City of Arches Kickstarter.
The City of Arches Kickstarter is live right now. You can find a link down in the show notes. High Fantasy City Sourcebook for your fantasy RPG. Totally compatible with Tales of the Valiant. Compatible with all the versions of 5e and other fantasy RPGs as well. please check it out. Check out the 42 page free sample. It is awesome. I'm super proud of it.
And I think you're going to absolutely love that book. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.