A ways back in 2024, I wrote a review of the Tales of the Valiant GM Guide. And recently the good people over at Bundle of Holding had a deal on the remainder of the books. I jumped on it, and now it’s time to review Tales of the Valiant in its complete form!

NOTICE: Kobold Press provided me with a review copy of the TotV GM Guide, but only that book in this collection. The remainder were purchased by me via Bundle of Holding

Background

In the fallout from the OGL 1.1 scandal, some of the major third party publishers and companies whose content relied on the OGL 1.0a decided it was time to break contact as much as they could with Wizards. Kobold Press took the new CC BY 4.0 SRD and decided to run with that to develop their own 5e based system and SRD, Black Flag Roleplaying. Through 2024, they released the core books for Tales of the Valiant (TotV), and immediately began developing adventures for it, offering a supported experience. Since then, it’s been running steadily and will be seeing its first expansion, a Norse themed and inspired adventure setting called Northlands.

Overview

The full review of the GM Guide is in the link in the opening paragraph, so I won’t repeat the observations here.

The Player’s Guide and Monster Vault are the TotV analogues of the 5e Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual respectively. Both are better laid out and follow the same logical and useful layout practices that the GM Guide had. But what’s notable in both is that they’re designed to facilitate use. They front load the information that you need immediately, and layout the supporting material in a logical way in the rest of the book. Both books feel approachable both from the perspective of someone already deep in the 5e ecosystem, and by someone who’s relatively or completely new to the game and hobby.

The Good

Tales of the Valiant is a 5e derivative in a good way. It’s a more polished game where fan level attention has been paid to friction points, with sufficient differences to make it a familiar but distinctive experience. A good comparison would be going from a standard to a luxury model of the same car. The baseline is there, but there’s a lot of quality of life improvements and performance upgrades that make it a better ride.

The re-engineered character creation makes things feel important. Players pick a lineage (their biology), a heritage (their culture), and a background (what they did before the adventure) and it all stacks up for creating a complete and interesting picture before you dive into classes and subclasses. You can go full narrative style or optimize, and both paths result in viable characters.

The added and changed mechanics are solid. They don’t feel like beta testing or tacked on extras. Luck is phenomenal. And the approach to weapon mastery facilitates both narrative fighting and just good old fashioned beatdowns. 

The opening chapters in the Monster Vault are a MUST READ. not only do they break down the contents of the book, they walk you through encounter creation, modifying monsters, and even dip into what monsters and NPCs/animals etc.. all hang out together. It’s some of the best information I’ve seen and I honestly wish I’d had something like it when I was getting started years ago.

Solid diversity. The art isn’t just high quality and consistent in style (which adds to strong messaging about what the game is about), it’s diverse. It’s very easy to see yourself in this game, and for a game competing for 5e cash, that’s a feature that broadens its appeal.

Spell Circles are a quality of life improvement that needs to be recognized. In a level based game, it’s awkward in-setting (outside of LitRPG ones) to talk about levels of magic. TotV approaches this by referring to these levels as “Circles”. Narratively, it’s easier for an NPC or PC to say “That’s 7th Circle magic!” or “I have only just unlocked the secrets of the 3rd Circle…” This doesn’t mechanically change the game at all, but damn does it add some flavour!

The Bad

The selection of lineages is pretty standard with a few nods to modern tastes in gaming. They’ve decided to go with a no-hybrid model of fantasy (different lineages can get it on but there’s either no kids or the kids are biologically one parent or the other for mechanics purposes), and that’s fine. I like it when a company makes a choice. But there’s no direction or facility I was able to find to play the many humanoid monsters (Gnolls, Harpies, Lizardfolk, Minotaurs etc…), things normalized in 5e prior to 2024. This was a fumble.

There’s only two subclasses per class. I get that there’s space restrictions, but there needs to be more of a hook in the core book for classes. The reason is simple, it’s the book that most players and GMs are going to have access to at the base level of the game. So it needs to feel more than perfunctory in the subclass region.

The monster selection isn’t 1:1 with the 5e SRD, but it’s not a significant departure. Where Pathfinder’s Monster Core went all in on redefining itself with unique monsters and creatures, Kobold Press was much more tepid in their approach, filling out a roster but mostly sticking to the classics and legally distinct versions thereof. The additions to the list prove they have the skill to create a defining bestiary, but they opted not to.

The Ugly

It’s a three book set. I get that’s the standard for D&D-alike games, but it’s a cost thing. Tales of the Valiant is on par with 5e in terms of initial costs, with even the pdfs for the core books clocking over $40 CAD. This isn’t doing them any favours in presenting themselves as an alternative to 5e.

I hate spell slots and Vancian mechanics for magic. Palladium Books figured out a functional point based system for a level based magic system in the 1980s and the fact that there’s not even an optional set of mechanics for that in any of the core books is a big dropped ball. I get that it’s 5e based, but I also think that Kobold Press has the skill to make it work.

Final Thoughts

The greatest strength that Tales of the Valiant has is that it knows EXACTLY what it wants to be. Where 5e flounders in terms of genre identity by trying to be all things to all levels of fantasy, TotV is aimed squarely at being an updated, smoother classic D&D type experience. It comes through in the carefully polished mechanics, its flexibility, the consistent messaging in the art, and a dozen other ways. All of that said, it’s not without its own issues, some of which may be resolved when the Player’s Guide 2 rolls out. However, at the core trio level, I’m comfortable assigning Tales of the Valiant a Rank A rating. It’s a solid update to 5e’s formula that isn’t overwhelming, and that offers more with fewer tasks being downloaded to the GM and players to figure out. So if you’re in the 5e ecosystem, and you’re looking for more but not wanting to change the core systems you’re used to? Tales of the Valiant is a strong contender.