Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, a whole lot of them have a family resemblance to D&D.

In 2008, Wizards of the Coast released the extremely restrictive GSL, making it unattractive to develop for the 4th edition of the game, which led to the creation of Pathfinder, a game that effectively allowed gamers to continue using the familiar structure of D&D 3rd edition in a familiar fantasy roleplaying game. In 2023, Wizards of the Coast attempted to assert that they could revoke the OGL and issue an amended one that gave them more control over creators, which resulted in a lot of creators building their own games. Today, we’re looking at one of those games, Tales of the Valiant, built on the Black Flag System Reference.

Cavaliers first appeared in AD&D 1st Edition in Unearthed Arcana, and like many wealthy nepo babies, were probably more trouble than they were worth. That said, they were the first class that had a built-in way to advance their ability scores when they gained levels, with all of their physical abilities having a percentile score that went up by 2d10 when they leveled. By the time 3rd edition came around, everybody started getting ability score boosts at set levels. Thank goodness we’re not still trying to make a class whose main abilities are about mounted combat work in an adventure game where mounted combat is pretty rare. We save that for a subclass now.