And welcome to Day 13 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using the 5e based fantasy game from Kobold Press titled: Tales of the Valiant. This game has a free open gaming license and is compatible with D&D 5th edition with some changes. So how does it stack up? Well after finding the PDF on sale last year on DriveThruRPG, I was able to finally snag a digital copy.
The blue tinted character sheet is two pages long. The character creation step-by-step listing starts on page 11 and is broken down into nine steps. 0- Gather materials, 1- Create a character concept, 2- Choose a class, 3- Determine ability scores, 4- Choose a linage (aka race), 5- Choose a heritage (where the character was raised before adventuring), 6- Choose a background (also known as the character’s day job before they decided to become an adventurer), 7- Starting equipment and 8- Fill in the blanks. There is even a final checklist on page 14 to make sure you didn’t miss anything small like motivation, size, etc.
For the gathering materials in step 0 it lists the basic equipment that all RPGers should be familiar with (pencil paper, dice, etc.). I will say that I’ve been using a yellow mechanical pencil for the past 3 character creation challenges. It seems to wait for me to pick it up again the following year.
Step 1 is Create a character concept. While the classes look like the standard classes that you’d find in a D20 based game, I think I’m going to stick with a fighter just because I’m trying to chug through these posts as quickly as possible. Why is he a fighter? Dunno, perhaps something will inspire me while I’m creating the character.
Step 2 is already done from the previous step. He’s a fighter currently without a name. When I scrolled over to page 48 where the fighter was listed, they had a “Fighter Quick Build” side-note that talked about the items you wanted to focus in on while creating the character. There was a note about the fighter subclasses that you can select at higher levels. Spell Blade sounded interesting. There is a class in TOV called the Mechanist which is an inventor/tinkerer. That is one I might have explored if this was going to be a character for an actual campaign.
Determining the ability scores is our third step. This is the standard attributes that you see in a D20 clone. There are three methods provided to determine this. Rolling 4d6 and drop the lowest and assign as desired. Once this is done, add 2 to one score of your choice that is under 17 and add 1 to a score that is 17 and under. OK, I don’t think I’ve seen that before. The second method listed is a point buy (not really my cup of tea) but you don’t get to add anything after generating your scores. A standard array is listed as the third method with scores ranging from 8 to 16. Tempting as I want to get this blog post done past, but I can’t turn down the chance to roll some attribute dice. So I rolled and assigned and altered and chopped and sauteed. Oops, sorry about that last one, I must be getting hungry.
OK, step 4 is choosing a lineage. The choices that were available are Beastkin (bipedal animals) Dwarf, Elf, Human, Kobold (well it was released by a company called Kobold Press), Orc, Syderean (beings from another plane of existence like albino Celestials or the horned Fendish) and Smallfolk (aka Halflings and Gnomes). I’m thinking of making a Beastkin-Avian that has the head and wings of a bird after seeing the picture on page 105. I wrote down the details of that race.
Step 5 is the Heritage. While there are some recommended heritage listed, but a player can choose any of them if they want to try something unusual. However, as this is the first time I’m going to pick the standard heritage for Beastkin of Wildlands.
On to Backgrounds and Talents for step 6. Looking over them to see which background fit an Avian and knowing that he’d be a fighter, I picked Soldier. There was an adventuring motivation list that I could have rolled on, but I was attracted to having a dishonorable discharge so I have to adventure to make a living. So I’m thinking this unnamed birdman was a defender of his tribe/clan/what ever they are called and failed in a mission so he was kicked out of the group.
Starting Equipment for step 7, there is some equipment listed for the fighter that I was tasked to choose from as well as some from the background. That was easy. So for the last step, Fill In The Blanks so I looked at the final checklist. Basically this is making sure that anything you are missing on the character sheet is filled in. This included the talents and skills and a name (which I pulled from a random name generator) of Grunnubawk. I’m sure I missed something, but dinner is calling. Let me know if I did miss anything. Here are the character sheets.
Afterthoughts:
I like the final checklist. I just wish that the checklist had included page numbers if I wanted to look up additional information.
I need to get a physical copy of this book. I tend to learn a system better with a dead tree version. Yea, I know it’s basically 5e, but (insert gasp here), I’ve only played 5e a few times in convention one-shots. And we didn’t really get into the minutia there.
I’m wondering if this is the game that everyone would flock to if the general public decided to “BlueSky” the Wizards of the Coast products. I know that Pathfinder has a lot of popularity, but it has a nickname of “Mathfinder” that may steer people more towards ToV and other similar clones. Would I play this? Yes. Would I home brew for it? Possibly if I get into a campaign.
Additional Notes:
My apologies to anyone who tried to get to my website earlier today and found it down. As you can already see the issues were resolved and we are back to normal. But I’d like to stop having one website issue per week in 2025. This year has sucked so far and I’m hoping it won’t be bad as the year-that-shall-not-be-named.
Coming Up Next:
Stars Without Number
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