5th Evolution: Carbide City #1 Review

5th Evolution: Carbide City is a supplement that allows you to take D&D 5th edition rules and enter the realm of comic book heroics.

The book contains 43 pages of content. This is an adventure and rules supplement for 5th edition. You need the core books, basic pdf, or the srd to use it.

It starts with a  full color comic book that sets up the game. It discusses the history or supers, Carbide City (the setting), and the events that lead into the scenario. The scenario has four encounters and a nice little variety of opponents. This is followed by two pages of genre rules and equipment, several pages of npc's (a few generics and several named villains with art and adventure hooks).

The artwork for these characters is fantastic and each character feels like a real comic book character. I could easily see any of them being a part of DC or Marvel. A few of them are definitely homages to pre-existing characters in those companies.

Because characters in comic books don't tend to really change power-wise often, Carbide City characters don't have levels. You pick an archetype that you can customize. These are the equivalent of level 12 characters from traditional 5e games. The archetypes are:

• Blaster
• Brick
• Feral
• Gadgeteer
• Ghost
• Martial Artist
• Marksmen
• Speedster
• Telepath
• Teleporter

The book ends with a  page describing how to reward characters in Carbide City (since they don't level up) and a page discussion the crunch of the archetypes (and how you can modify them).

While I've not played it yet, I really like this book. It seems very functional and you can easily add to it by pulling from existing 5e material. Though I would like a more detailed level up system, the book makes a great point... supers don't really change all that much in comics. 

If you want a taste of what the book is like you can go to the 5the Evolution website and download the preview adventure, No Going Back. If you have the full pdf, this still provides you with an adventure and a few new npc's for your game.

Currently only backers of the Kickstarter (like me) have print copies, but you can pick the pdf here. The end of the book mentions more villains and archetypes to come in the next issue, though thus far there's only one out. If you like the 5th edition rules of Dungeons and Dragons and love supers, you should definitely pick up 5th Evolution: Carbide City.