Title: Gems of A5E's Trials and Treasure
Author: Mike Shea
Date: 

As 5e expands beyond that of just D&D, we find ourselves with several game master guides including:

- The D&D 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide
- The D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide
- Tales of the Valiant's Game Master's Guide
- Level Up Advanced 5e's Trials and Treasure

This article is one in a series where we look at what each of these guides has to offer and today we're looking at  [Level Up Advanced 5e *Trials and Treasure*](https://enpublishingrpg.com/products/level-up-trials-treasures) book.

First off, this book is fantastic. If you have the opportunity to pick it up either as a PDF or a physical copy, I recommend you do.

Like the three other game master guides, it includes advice for understanding types of players, building adventures, building worlds, session zero and safety tools, and other common advice to help game masters build their games.

## Encounter Building

A5e's Trials and Treasure pre-dates the [Lazy Encounter Benchmark](https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html) but the designers of *Trials and Treasure* use a very similar and compatible system that works just as easily. It includes adjustments for building easy, medium, hard, deadly, and impossible challenges. The advice in this section is very good.

## Encounter Elements

Page 48 begins a section on various effects you can drop into an encounter to make things interesting. Pools of acid, brown mold, crowds, extreme cold, and so on. The book includes five pages of such options.

## Exploration

The exploration rules in *Trials and Treasure* are my favorite from all four game master guides. It has a nice checklist for building out travel encounters, a system for managing resources called "supply", and fourteen possible roles and activities the characters might take during a journey.

## Random Encounters

Part of the exploration section includes 37 pages of random encounters for more than a dozen different regions with tables for each tier. It also includes the elusive "dungeons" tables often missing from books of random encounters. Each encounter section includes possible weather and changes to the various exploration activities. These tables include not just monster encounters but exploration encounters as well, tied to other sections in the book.

These random encounter tables also tie directly to the encounter tables in each monster in the Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie – a fantastic book of monsters for 5e that includes potential encounters at various tiers for most of the monsters in the book.

I love these encounter tables.

The book also includes d100 tables of social and travel encounters.

## Exploration Challenges

Chapter 5 of A5e's Trials and Treasure includes dozens of exploration challenges tied to the random tables in the exploration section but each of them can stand on their own should you want to improvise such an event. These include events like Bridge of Sorrow, Corrupted Druid Grove, Dark Allies, Endless Plummet, God Corpse, and many others. Each runs as their own challenge with opportunities for the characters and ways to shake up other encounters. There are 50 *pages* of such challenges to dive into and choose from – way more than any other GMG.

## Treasure

The Rewards chapter includes fantastic tables for distributing treasure – the best I've seen for 5e. They're quick to roll on and provide a lot of context and value for the treasure parcels you give out.

## Magic Items with Costs

Like other GMGs, *Trials and Treasure* includes piles of magic items – each of which has a cost associated, either for the characters to purchase an item or for a potential cost should they wish to sell it to NPCs. You'll have to decide if the item works for you.

Each item likewise includes a potential component for crafting such an item. By tying specific components to the crafting of an item, GMs can control how easily a character can make such an item. This is very important to ensure players don't get every item they ever dreamed of – making any future rewards pointless.

## A Fantastic Addition to your 5e GM Library

Whatever flavor of 5e you play, the Level Up Advanced 5e Game Master's Guide includes tons of valuable resources you won't find in most others. It has tons of tools, tables, and concepts to fuel your game for decades to come.


