We're thrilled to share that Realm VTT has officially partnered with EN Publishing — the creators of Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition — to bring A5E to our virtual tabletop, with official content available on the Realm VTT marketplace alongside the ruleset.
We're targeting a summer 2026 launch, and we want to use this post to share what the partnership includes, what the implementation looks like under the hood, and how to get involved before it ships.
What is Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition?
For anyone new to the system, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E) is EN Publishing's standalone reimagining of 5th Edition. It keeps full compatibility with 5e adventures and monsters — you can drop an A5E party into any 5e module without conversion — while expanding the parts of 5e that many tables have always wanted more of:
- Richer character creation. Characters are defined by a combination of class, background, heritage, culture, and destiny — giving you meaningful identity beyond a class and race line.
- Expertise dice. A scaling die that rewards advantageous positioning, training, and momentum, without the all-or-nothing binary of advantage.
- Combat maneuvers and exertion. Martial characters get a real resource system and a library of maneuvers to spend it on, so non-spellcasters have interesting choices at every level.
- Supply and encumbrance. A lightweight supply track for rations and gear that makes travel and exploration matter again.
- A real exploration pillar. Journeys, terrain, and exhaustion rules that treat overland travel as a first-class part of the game rather than a cutscene.
If you want to go deeper, levelup5e.com has the full rundown, and a5e.tools is a great free reference.
The Partnership
As part of our partnership with EN Publishing, Realm VTT will be launching with all three core A5E rulebooks as officially licensed marketplace modules. Pricing for these official modules will be in line with the DriveThruRPG PDF editions, so you're paying roughly what you'd pay anywhere else for the books — not a VTT tax on top.
A few specifics worth calling out up front:
- The A5E ruleset itself is free for every Realm VTT account. The character sheets, rules engine, and all of the automation described below are part of the ruleset and don't require a purchase.
- Official content is paid. If you want the full, pre-entered text and game data from the core books — monsters, spells, magic items, class features, and adventures — those are sold on our marketplace.
- Purchases don't transfer between platforms. If you already own A5E content on another VTT or as PDFs, you'll need the Realm VTT version to use it in-app, unless you'd rather enter it by hand from your existing copy.
- Our Monstrous Menagerie module will be cross-compatible with the Realm VTT 5e ruleset. If your table plays 5e but your GM wants to pull A5E creatures into the fight, the same module works in both places.
- More Level Up content will follow beyond the core books as we're able — adventures, supplements, and the broader Level Up catalog over time.
What the Realm VTT A5E Implementation Actually Does
This is the part I'm most excited about. A5E has a lot of moving parts, and a big reason to run it on a VTT is so you're not tracking all of those parts by hand. Our implementation is built around that goal — below is what's in the ruleset at launch.
Automated flanking detection for expertise dice
A5E's flanking rules produce an expertise die when allies flank a target, which is a great rule that nobody wants to adjudicate manually every turn. Realm VTT detects flanking automatically from token geometry. The system accounts for:
- Odd and even-sized tokens
- Diagonal positioning
- Reach weapons
- Faction alignment (so charmed enemies don't accidentally flank for you)
When flanking is detected, the appropriate expertise die is added to the attack roll automatically — no "wait, does this count?" pause in the middle of combat.
Full 8-step character creation wizard
Building an A5E character end-to-end is more involved than a 5e character, because there are more meaningful choices. Our character wizard walks you through it step-by-step:
- Ability scores — roll, standard array, point buy, or manual entry
- Class
- Background
- Heritage
- Culture
- Destiny
- Starting equipment & gold
- Summary & review
Every proficiency, innate ability, cultural skill, and destiny feature is applied automatically as you go, and the wizard handles cascading choices (like picking a spellcasting ability when your class needs one) at the right moment. You finish with a character that's ready to play, not a stack of things to still go look up.
An effects system built for A5E's new conditions
A5E introduces condition tracks that 5e doesn't have — most notably fatigue and strife — and the traditional "advantage/disadvantage + flat modifier" effect model of many VTTs doesn't really fit them. Our effects system is purpose-built to handle A5E's conditions cleanly, with over 50 A5E-specific modifier types you can apply to tokens as effects, including:
- Expertise dice (on attacks, saves, or checks)
- Maneuver DCs
- Parrying dice
- Prestige
- Trip and parrying weapon properties
- The full set of A5E conditions
That means any homebrew feat, maneuver, or magic item can be built inside the ruleset without touching code — you just compose it out of the existing modifier types.
Exertion, maneuvers, and supply tracked natively
The systems that give A5E a lot of its texture — and that historically GMs end up tracking on index cards — are all tracked natively by the ruleset:
- Exertion pools, including recovery
- Basic maneuvers (available to all creatures, no exertion) and combat maneuvers (exertion-cost)
- Mastered maneuvers with reduced exertion cost and improved effects
- Maneuver DC calculated from proficiency and the correct ability modifier
- Supply count and bulky-item limits
- Encumbrance and carry capacity
- Short and long rest mechanics that restore features on the right schedule
You can actually run A5E at the full depth the system is designed for!
Plus everything else Realm VTT ships with
All of the core Realm VTT features apply to A5E campaigns the same way they apply to any other ruleset on the platform — dynamic lighting, fog of war, animated battle maps, Universal VTT (UVTT) import from map-making tools, character sheets, and the built-in token creator are all there, included in the free tier with no player-count restrictions.
Timeline and How to Get Involved
We're targeting a summer 2026 launch for the A5E ruleset and the official marketplace modules. Between now and then, be sure to:
- Join our Discord to share feedback, report bugs, and talk with other GMs and players
- Join our Reddit or our Forum for longer-form discussion
- Support Realm VTT on Patreon or subscribe
- Read our full Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition landing page for the complete feature list, FAQ, and comparison
Thank you to everyone who's already playing on Realm VTT, and a huge thank-you to the team at EN Publishing for trusting us with Level Up. We can't wait to show you what we've built.