Ask Jiro presents an assortment of kobold scribes and sages to clarify Tales of the Valiant RPG rules and confirm errata sleuthed out by the ToV community!
Since the announcement of ToV, the dynamic community on the Kobold Press Official Discord has been a vital asset. They’ve helped shape the direction and momentum of the game. If you haven’t already joined this diverse, dedicated, lively community, head over and get involved! Your voices, ideas, and opinions are welcome!
Let’s get to the questions!
NoOne asks about the barbarian’s bear necessities
The 3rd-level Animal Focus feature of the Barbarian Wild Fury subclass has four different animal options. The bear option lets you use a bonus action to gain temporary hit points that last for 1 hour.
Is there anything stopping you from using it every round while raging, replacing the temporary hp (or any remainder) from the round before? This effectively gives you your barbarian level + CON bonus as extra hit points every round and advantage on attacks the entire time you’re raging! It seems strong but not CRAZY strong; I want to be sure I’m not misunderstanding how it works.
ANSWER!
You are not misinterpreting it. It’s a good subclass feature! Keep in mind though, that the power of the feature is kept in check by a few conditions which you must meet before you can use it:
- It’s great in combat, but the rest of the time? Eh. There’s nothing stopping you from using the Rage feature during an interaction or exploration encounter, but just getting temporary hit points is probably not the best reason to turn on your Rage.
- You must spend a usage of your Rage, which is a limited resource pool.
- You must commit your bonus action each round to re-upping the temporary hit points. This means you aren’t spending it on other attacks or available actions for your character.
- You must pick bear over the other three animal options available for the Animal Focus feature. Each of those other animals also has some bonus action benefits you’re giving up to generate temporary hit points.
FrostBurn326 requests rules clarifications for Celebrate Life
The Celebrate Life Bardic Performance feature says that allies within range can choose to expend a hit die and recover hit points equal to the result + your CHA modifier. Does this total add the allies’ CON modifier, like expending a hit die normally would do?
ANSWER!
No, the expended hit die heals for the result + the bard’s CHA modifier only. This is a situation where a specific feature’s rule overrides a related general rule.
The main benefit to Celebrate Life is its ability to allow for hit die expenditure and healing during combat rather than having to wait until a short rest to use the hit dice for healing.
Cozypower 6 asks about wizard’s spells vs. rituals known
The Player’s Guide states that rituals can be added to a wizard’s spell book like any other arcane spell. Does this mean a wizard can know more ritual spells than the wizard progression table indicates for Rituals Known? For instance, if a 1st-level wizard found a ritual spell scroll and added it to their book, would they still gain a new ritual when they hit 2nd level?
ANSWER!
Wizards are unique in their ability to learn more rituals than what is strictly given in their class progression table. Any rituals a wizard learns and adds to their spell book don’t count against the number of rituals they know/automatically learn via the class progression. When your example wizard hits 2nd level, they get a new ritual, following the class progression table, regardless of the number of rituals they currently know or have in their spell book.
That’s it for this month, but if you’re craving more Tales of the Valiant treasure, there’s so much more!
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault are now available on Fantasy Grounds VTT!
Go get you some keys!
Player’s Guide
Monster Vault
