From a DM's perspective, this is easily the best book of a good series. A lot of monsters are short chapters, They could have been printed as stand alone supplements. Lore, behaviour, tactics, variants... you could run multiple oneshots on a lot of the individual entries.

Everything in 5e, plus a whole lot more. With no increase in complexity. I recently started two tables of mostly new players. One with 5e. One with a5e. It took us a couple of sessions to get going, and then we were racing. But a5e just has a hell of a lot more possiblities in play.

Unlike the 5e DMG, i actually use this book. A lot.

When runnng 5e i'd have four to five supplements and blog posts open to deal with everything outside a dungeon. What is the weather? What happened on the trip? Can we go down that alley? What is on the corpse? Can we sell body parts on the open market? How much? What can we do with all the money we made from selling bulette eggs?

Pretty much all of this is in T&T.

I introduced Level Up: Advanced 5E to my gaming group, and it has quickly become a favourite. We all like D&D and 5E, but 5E is so cookie-cutter that characters often feel flat or like retreads. A5E offers a huge variety of character creation and advancement options by decoupling a PC's species (or "heritage") from their culture (among other changes), as well as extensive changes to the classes themselves. The addition of features like expertise dice make skills and ability checks feel valuable, and not just accessories tacked on as an afterthought to combat abilities. Exploration challenges offer a great variety of additional engagement for players, making travel fun and interesting again. Where we have made use of 5E material, there has been little to no difficulty in making it work equally well with A5E.

I'm very pleased with this system, and look forward to running and playing it even more!

A few sessions into a new campaign using this system, migrating from D&D 5e, and it's already proving to enhance our game significantly. Extra systems for traveling and downtime help round out connective pieces that our group loves to engage in, while changes to more directly existing 5e rules help solve some of my personal gripes with how death and injury work. While these changes initially appear to appeal to a slightly more tactical end of the spectrum, many of them are focused on subtely guiding story or narrative beats. Each class has been given a suite of entirely social class abilities to compliment their combat abilities, which are greatly expanded in options. Martials in particular feel like much more interesting options than their original 5e counterpart with the addition of Combat Maneuvers.

I do feel like I should throw a word of warning here: Some of the marketing for Level Up claims it adds depth without complexity, which I don't think holds up. There is some additional complexity here with character creation that is unavoidable, with some level of decision making required almost every level. Many people, myself included, welcome this additional complexity, but a few people in my party have expressed some difficulty adjusting from original 5e's ability to pick a class at level one and a subclass at level three and call it a day. Again, martials in particular involve interacting with an unavoidable new breadth of options, there's no pick and forget class option here. However, other options for additional depth and complexity, like the journey mechanics, are just that, options and are there if you find that sort of thing engaging, and easily brushed over if you don't.

That said, all of this additional complexity has hit a sweet spot for me, providing much more interesting options, a stronger reason to look excitedly forward to the next few levels, without becoming overbearing. Other rules like chasing a bigger Expertise die create interesting feedback loops that drive interesting plans and focusing on characters strengths in a way that the binary Advantage can't. Finally, it's worth nothing the Foundry VTT system my group uses to play is phenomenal even in its early stages, which is important to my group for any game we play as we're all spread over the US.

My only gripe is that A5E came up with a less confusing word to denote different tiers of Combat Maneuvers (which are rated by degree, instead of level), and did not apply this distinction to Spells, which continue to share namespace with the wildly different scale of character/class levels.

A Fantastic Return to the world of Zeitgeist!

Our group played through the entire Zeitgeist campaign back in the day. We started in 4th Edition and then converted about two-thirds of the way through to 5th Edition (long before there was an official 5e version!). We finished that campaign four or five years ago and have been playing a new campaign in our own aftermath-of-Zeitgeist setting.

.I can only speak to it as a DM running an old Zeitgeist group through a new chunk of Zeitgeist material. This look into the Zeitgeist world again was amazing. The nostalgia and callbacks were very satisfying, and left everyone wanting more Zeitgeist-world material. Our sessions moved slowly as the players asked for more detail on the various nations and the factions within. It takes place 20 years after the end of the original campaign so there's a lot of material hinting at the way the world has developed since then. Every NPC has a tie to one of the great nations of the Avery Sea, letting the players catch up on twenty years of politics in conversation with them. And wow is there a lot of conversation!

A group new to Zeitgeist would probably not be as hooked in to the rest of the world info and will be more focused on the main plot. As the DM, the plot was easy to manage. The motivations on the eleven(!) NPCs were easy to follow, though I did lose track of where some of them were supposed to be at one of the critical moments. I recommend having a cheatsheet on what each NPC does in each of the 5 acts of the adventure to help you out.

There are some heavily-scripted set pieces with a lot of NPCs to handle. Some of these I ran as-is, and some I ran in a more freeform style. Either method works fine, but I would recommend giving these bits an extra-thorough read-through to make sure you know what is to be revealed to the players in each part.

There was an interesting spying and investigation subsystem which allowed PCs to make social skill rolls to make friend and turn them into assets (in the espionage sense). Some of my players enjoyed the system more than others, but it gave a nice mechanical pin for me to make decisions on what the NPCs would do at certain critical moments. The adventure leaves the conclusion fairly open; based on which NPCs have been succesfully interacted with, the final scene can go in many directions.

There's a mystery to be solved for those who like to figure things out, but there's also an NPC who will just take the lead and tell everyone what he thinks happened, Sherlock style, if the players don't want to play that game. I appreciate the flexibility the adventure has to accomodate different play styles.

All in all a 5/5 for me, and I can't wait to see what EN World and Ryan Nock have coming next for this world!

Great little murder mystery adventure. Artwork and maps are all look good. Role playing tips for all the NPCs. Pretty straight forward to run. Plenty of opportunities for the players to role play and enjoy an investigation that wasn't just dice rolling. Only thing I didn't like was there was a lot of NPC to NPC dialogue. Which is the DM spending time talking to himself. But that is a minor quibble. If you want to run a murder investigation adventure , run Death of an Author.

This game is a little more complex than what some people may percieve going in, but on the whole, its an incredible and rewarding addition to D&D.

Biggest Pros:

1. Heritage, Culture, Background, Destiny replace race and background in terms of your character building (i.e you can have a dwarf who was raised by elves, who gets dwarven racial feats, but elven cultural traits. Stat boosts come from background (which you can read to be more like an occupation, or just 'what your character did'), which makes MUCH MORE sense than purely racial. What you do should be more important than what youre born as.
2. The exploration pillar. My goodness its totally rebuilt and better than I thought possible. It's mechanically sound and gives the ranger an area of expertise (while theyre still very useful inside any city as well). If you don't use exploration, at all, then youre missing out on a really great system. The exploration bullet points apply more to the
3. The character options have been improved, and martials feel awesome. I love the changes to Fighter, Monk (adept, in this system), Ranger, Bard (instruments have a purpose!!!), Sorc and Wizard. I havent gotten to try much else, given its only been out for a month.
4. The Marshal class. I think people were saying its "4e's battlemaster?" I did not play 4e, but if that helps you visualise it great. Its a martial support class, which can use one of its attacks to compel one its allies to attack instead. This is a unique class, and I love the idea of a support like this. One excellent feature is "Help" as a bonus action
5. Spells, and RARE SPELL Variants. Special variants of spells that do unique things.
6. The "Rattled" condition, and the reworking of special maneuvers (shove, grapple, disarm) to only use one of your attacks (meaning at higher levels, it can be beneficial to to use a special maneuver instead of 2 attacks, since you dont have to sacrifice all your damage that turn.
7. Theres a lot more, but Strongholds, Followers, Strife and Fatigue, and Crafting all have great reworks/additions that make them important.

Biggest Cons:

1. The character creation process, because youre probably coming over from 5e, is extensive, since you need to re-learn a few things, and there are so many options for Heritage, Culture, Background, and Destiny. You might need an extra long session 0.
2. If you run a one city campaign, the exploration pillar might not be used at all, which, imo, may kneecap this system. iMO the class and fatigue/strife things are well done enough to subsist, but I think Rangers become pretty meh in a "one city campaign" scenario. Exploration and journeying is so baked into the idea for this system, I think its important to include it.
3. The book is meaty, but the journey activities section is totally located in the DMG (trials and treasures) meaning the players dont know about that entire aspect of the system, until you can work it out with them.

Overall, its a super strong system with a lot of positives that you can structure a campaign around to make it a superb experience.

So i'll keep this brief; while this is structured for A5E, the level up system and all that, its totally backwards compatible with the original 5e system. And tbh, while the other books are great, you can find some questionable decisions in the other 2 books, (Adventurer's Guide and Trials and Treasures.) Not everyone can agree with EVERYTHING that everyone does.

But then theres this book. The A5E monstrous Menagerie is so good that I can genuinely say its a better monster manual in every fashion and aspect. A5E has significant fixes to Challenge Rating system, and makes it understandable, and this can be kept in original 5e too, since the CR system was always a mystery. So, this book can be used in both systems Every single monster type has unique qualities. I'm going to use the Chimera as a review subject, because its a classic creature. This book goes into detail on aspects such as:

1. Legends and Lore, Roll an arcana nature check, and you can see what you have heard about the creature, with two different options, one for a DC10 and a DC15.
2. Signs: 4 options (d4) here, some creatures have more. 'Signs' are clues you can use to know that a certain creature is nearby without giving away everything. Chimera's include ' charred trees', 'tracks with a mix of big cat and hoof prints', and 2 more options. These signs are not totally unique to the chimera, but thats the point, theyre clues, many things can have them, and youre just trying to help clue your party in.
3. Behavior: what it would be doing in the moment you see it, a d6 option here, including "Two of its heads are fighting with one another" or "flying overhead looking for prey."
4. Sample Treasure
5. the statblock, of course
6. Combat Tendencies
7. Variants and regional chimeras. Chimeras that differ based on the region there from, like the sea chimera, which seems to be a lobster-shark-narwhal. theres 5 more variants but you get the point

This book I can genuinely recommend no matter the system, its just so good.I love the easy to understand CR system is, and all the extra detail that was put into each creature, making them all unique and very improvisable.

This book is really terrific. The authors have taken 5e's pretty whitebread version of d20 and given us a number of great ways to use it.

Highlights at my table:

• Ranger and adept (monk) players are very excited that their character now seems to better match the source materials. If I can get someone else to run, I'll pop into a marshall.
• Culture half of the old "race" concepts worked so well with backgrounds.
• My players are very interested in the exploration and social interaction part of the storytelling so it isn't just interconnected fights.

There's a lot more to praise here, but most of that is in the other two books.

The Monstrous Menagerie is by far the strongest of the Level Up A5E line. It can be used with 5e D&D, unlike the A5E other books which use a different, incompatible system, and it seems to have been written by a different individual or team that is much more familiar with the mechanics of 5e D&D. It adds some problems the original MM did not have, including making CR even further from accurate than even the flawed math in the original, but the majority of the changes to existing monsters are legitimate improvements, unlike the poorly thought out changes to the core rules in the other A5E books. It is one step forward, one step back, with some improved monster mechanics, but an even less usable CR guideline system, so on the whole, this book is about equal to the original flawed 5e Monster Manual, which is a 3 out of 5.

This is a 1 star product and earned its 1 star review. Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is a perplexing product to everyone save those who have been involved with it from inception. The marketing materials used misleading language, and it's best to know what exactly it is, and what it isn't. First, it is not "compatible with Dungeons & Dragons" as almost every Game Master and player would define compatibility. Some of the material used this, or similar phrases, which is inaccurate. It is an entirely new rule system that shares some common traits with 5th Edition D&D, so they can technically say that 5e D&D modules can be used with Level Up, with some tweaks, much like how Pathfinder could run 3rd ed D&D modules, with (fewer) tweaks. It is not actually compatible, given the staggering amount of rule changes, many of which are very poorly thought out.

A lot of core feats and spells were changed from their D&D versions, purportedly for "game balance" reasons. If the end result was a tightly balanced game, this could be excused, but for every supposed "imbalance" in the original (far superior) 5e D&D rule set (which is not even one of my favorite editions of D&D, notably) they "fixed," Level Up adds at least three new glaring imabalance issues. Despite a second round of edits, the game is riddled with poorly thought out mechanics, poorly worded mechanics, and unusable mechanics. The amount of house ruling it would take to make this game functional is so massive that very little could be used "out of the box" in any kind of a functional game experience.

Those who remember 3.0 D&D's Toughness feat and other similar options recall the issue of "trap" choices and builds. Level Up has added many, many more of these than D&D has ever had in any edition. There are now even "trap" mechanics built in alongside core elements like Grapples and Bull rush. A new armor table is both massively complicated and further unbalanced. It introduced armor and weapon breakage and repair rules that are mandatory, not optional, as the entirety of the balance of the armor table is based on some armor types, otherwise objectively better than others, breaking more often. This is the kind of tedium that most editions of D&D, especially 5e, have moved away from for a reason.

On the rules as a whole, a big letdown is how inseparably linked they all are. It is not possible to treat Level Up like a "optional add on rules toolkit." It is a full system replacement, only, and cannot function otherwise. You cannot use the armor and weapon table without adding the breakage and repair rules. You cannot use many exploration pillar class features without the paired rules limiting carrying capacity in strange, unrealistic ways. The game wants foraging for food to be ever-present, even for level 20 planeswalking characters, so now decanters of endless water produce non-potable water, food stored in bags of holding does not satiate hunger, and spells like Goodberry and Create Water no longer relieve hunger and thirst.

It's unclear who Level Up is for. It is far more complicated than Pathfinder, 1st or 2nd edition, massively more complicated than 5e D&D, and any prior edition including 2nd edition Advanced D&D, and the payoff is dubious, at best. It is not a rewarding system tactically, but rather, riddled with trap builds, bizarre, illogical mechanics, and in need of more than another round of edits, but a complete ground up revision, making it much more of a hassle for potential Game Masters than it is worth. Some of the ideas were sound, like giving classes things to do outside combat that lacked them, adding on martial maneuvers, magic item prices and item creation, and so on. From multiplying static modifiers on critical hits, to altered spells, feats, expertise as rolled dice instead of a double proficiency bonus, and other altered rules, Level Up seems to have made an effort to be as incompatible as possible with D&D rules, while still claiming compatibility with D&D modules.

All of this is so poorly worded, balanced, and presented, in the book, that I cannot imagine a GM who doesn't opt to either find another third-party product that adds similar elements in a more professional fashion, elect to form their own house rules instead, or just play a different game entirely - which could include simply choosing to play 5th edition D&D, since it is a different game from Level Up. It is very strange to see the game made more incompatible than it needed to be, with all of its bizarre rule changes, when none of them were required to "add content to 5e D&D that was not there." Magic item prices are a welcome addition. Creating a system both more complex than simply tracking encumbrance, and less realistic, adds both abstraction and needless minutae that does not fit within the heroic fantasy mold of D&D, or the grittiness of many "hard core" OSR throwback games.

If you want to have to read every new class ability multiple times and then take your best guess at what the designers "meant," since what is written is incomprehensible, have at it. If you want to run official D&D modules but think that weapons and armor breaking mid-combat, followed by a series of largely negligible difficulty rolls to repair them, somehow adds verisimilitude to your games, maybe Level Up is of value to your group. If you plan to use any actual 5e D&D content, however, whether it's classes, sub-classes, races, or feats, whether from Wizards or third parties, you cannot, with the Level Up rule system. There are vague claims that it has been playtested and balanced to work alongside actual D&D classes and races, yet it cannot, by definition. Feats, spells, and abilities those D&D classes rely on to function are altered beyond recognition. New rules for the exploration pillar are addressed in features of Level Up classes that obviously do not exist for actual D&D classes, being new rules, making D&D classes unable to function with these rules, unless the GM wants to engage in such laborious house ruling that it calls the whole endeavor into question.

Level Up is made to replace D&D, and for most, it simply isn't good enough to do that. It is certainly not made to "work alongside" D&D. It is not a series of rules "expansions" that can be cherry-picked from. Everything is, regrettably, linked, so Level Up is a rule set that is all, or nothing. For me, I prefer "nothing," given that the effort of trying to pluck the good bits from this linked web of rules would be extreme (there are some good bits, just not enought to warrant the effort). If you are just looking for magic item price guidelines, there are official Wizards sources, as well as free resources for those. Other third-party products have provided Tome of Battle style martial maneuvers that "add on" to D&D without a system replacement. Essentially, everything Level Up offers that is of worth can be found elsewhere in a version that is more compatible with D&D, more professional, and better thought out.

This game is needlessly complex. Dense rule sets like Exalted, Anima: Beyond Fantasy, and 1st edition Pathfinder running with multiple supplements, are more intuitive. It is extremely imbalanced, adding far more balance problems than those it "corrects" from 5e D&D. Many new rules simply do not make sense, and a GM will have to guess what was intended, because it certainly wasn't written down coherently. It seems to lack editing and playtesting. Given that some major rules changed during the short window between the books' "beta" versions and "final" drafts, by definition those versions of the rules were not playtested, since they were brand new, last minute course corrections done in a span of weeks.

It is entirely understandable that a product like this can happen, unfortunately. With enough time and resources spent on something, re-writing and revising a work multiple times, as well as conducting surveys, reading suggestions, and so on, after enough time a version emerges that seems "good enough." If you've spent long enough on something, it must be good, right? Not in this case. Some works need to be crumpled up and tossed aside for a fresh start. This game clearly needed that at some point, but after sufficient time and investment, a project presses on, whether it has merit and value or not. Level Up does not.

Buyer Beware, and all that.

I am thrilled with the plethora of ideas and options presented in this book. The designers basically stripped the 5e core down to its roots and rebuilt it from the ground up. Its recognizable as D&D, and many of the classess or options could be floated directly into your 5e game, but I think you'd be better off just running it fully as your core game. For me, the redesigned classes have really breathed life back into the original concepts for the standard rogue/fighter/wizard/etc core classes, cleaning up much of the problems found in their original designs. FINALLY! FRIKKING FINALLY! Some monk designs my players want to play. Excuse me.. Adept! :)

The product also went to great lengths to try to strip out old stale design language that might be problematic for some people, as well as changing old conventions to avoid cultural stereotypes. So Herald instead of Paladin, Adept instead of Monk, etc. And I, as an old grognard who started playing D&D back in '79, appreciate it. I love this game and want it to be able to be shared by everyone, the effort to make it accessible is an extra plus in my book. +1 bonus star.

I've bought many RPG products for various games, this is one of them that gave me content that I KNOW I'll use at my table!

Game on!

The base 5th edition manual is one of the most utterly useless tree products I've ever held. I've DM'd for years (since 3.5), transitioned to 5th edition, and decided I hated the DMG—it had the magic items I wanted in it, but nothing else I found of value. So I used maybe 10% of that book, ever. With the practical editions in Trials and Treasures, not to mention the glorious expansion of crafting and travel rules (and exploration-based encounters), I could easily see myself regularly using at least 70% of Trials and Treasures. That's a 60% improvement! Even more of an improvement if you compare direct page counts.

I have no intention of ever using the regular Monster Manual ever again. Monstrous Menagerie does an excellent job of updating almost every single monster into something that feels fun and distinct. It's unfortunately that certain monsters weren't able to get the glorious conversion for reasons of intellectual ownership—I'd love to see waht a Monstrous Menagerie beholder or illithid would be like.