Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition's first-level adventure, Memories of Holdenshire, is designed to gradually introduce these rules to veteran D&D players, so running it could help ease users into the changes.
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While players won't need to learn an entirely new system, they will have to unlearn plenty of individual rules. Some D&D feats, like Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master, have also been weakened in their Level Up analogues. As part of Level Up: A5E's replacement rules, there are new rules for basic mechanics like critical hit damage calculation, as well as the way armor categories work. Still, certain changes in the work-in-progress, pre-release rulebooks provided to Screen Rant seemed at odds with making D&D 5e players feel at home. "Our target people that have been playing 5e for seven years and love it. They want to carry on playing 5e - they don't want to switch to a different game system - but they would just like maybe a little more depth." Though it is its own game, Morrissey said it's meant to add new layers to a system seasoned D&D players know well. The goal of Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, per its designers, is adding meaningful choices at every character level, giving all character classes more options outside of combat, and addressing some of the flaws in D&D 5e's monster design. Level Up: Advanced 5E Is A Familiar System, But Still Has New Rules To Learn The announcement of D&D's revised, 5.5-edition rulebooks for 2024 means Level Up's compatibility strategy could keep it relevant for years to come, though it might face a few challenges. In an interview with Screen Rant, Russ Morrissey, owner of Level Up creator EN Publishing, said Level Up is distinct from Paizo's D&D 3.5 successor because it is aiming to " remain 100% compatible" with D&D modules and supplements, now and in the future, whereas Pathfinder became its own gaming line separate from D&D, with its own adventures and supplements. This is where Level Up: Advanced 5E differs from Pathfinder. The new rules themselves are not modular players can't use Level Up's new armor types without its new subsystems for breakage and damage type vulnerability, for instance, but they can use the sourcebooks as desired. For example, players can use the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition Core Rulebook in conjunction with D&D's Monster Manual (with some extra calculation) or use the D&D Player's Handbook with Level Up's Monstrous Menagerie. That said, each sourcebook can be individually used in place of its D&D counterpart. Related: Dungeons & Dragons 5.5 News & Updates: Everything We Know So Far Level Up is essentially an unofficial D&D 5.5 (mostly developed before Wizards of the Coast announced the official D&D 5e revision), compatible with D&D supplements but building on and overwriting its basic ruleset. It is its own, standalone game, with three original sourcebooks - Core Rulebook, Trials and Treasures, and Monstrous Menagerie - meant to replace their D&D equivalents. It is not, however, a supplement for D&D. It has d20 rolls, six ability scores, ACs, DCs, saving throws, etc. Level Up: A5E is based on the core framework of the Dungeons & Dragons 5e ruleset.
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But while Pathfinder became a franchise of its own, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition aims to supplant only the current core rulebooks of D&D 5e and be used with existing D&D settings and modules. Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, a new tabletop RPG coming this November, appears poised to do with current-edition Dungeons & Dragons what Pathfinder did with its third edition.