Character Creation #

Creating a character should be quick and easy. As a result there is not a large catalague of skills and subclasses and subraces to choose from. Those more specific archetypes and be achieved by reskinning existing classes and backgrounds.

Roll Ability Scores #

Rolling Method #

3d6 Shared Array #

Roll 3d6 six times to generate six numbers. Everyone at the table takes the same six numbers and each allocates the numbers to different abilities any way they choose.

This method insures that even if there are some very high or very low scores rolled, it won’t be too debilitating to a single player as every character will have a similarly low or high ability.

Abilty Descriptions #

Abilities are the scores used to determine how well a character can naturally do different tasks.

Table 5: Abilities #

Ability Bonuses #

Abilities determine bonuses to roll ability checks.

Table 6: Ability Bonuses #

Choose Background #

Backgrounds determine the skills and tool proficiencies and choose two abilities to increase by 1 to indicate prior training.

Table 7: Example Backgrounds #

Choose Class #

Classes determine the character archetype.

Table 8: Class List #

Choose Equipment #

Each character starts with one light weapon, One tool relevant to their background, and 3d6 x 10 gp.

They can buy armor, shields, stronger weapons, and other sundries and adventuring gear from the equipment list before starting on their first adventure.

Choose Spells #

Spellcasters select 2 spells for their initial spellbook, if they have spellcasting ability at first level. Spells are listed in Table 33 for arcane spellcasters and Table 34 for divine spellcasters.

Calculate Starting Numbers #

Now that the main choices have been made, there’s just a few more things which need to be filled out before you’re ready to go.

Table 9: Starting Numbers #

And that’s it. Happy adventuring!

Higher levels #

As time goes on and your character plies their adventuring craft and practice the tasks of dungeoneering and combat and questing, they are bound to eventually get better at what they do. As they do, they will gain class levels and grow more powerful as their influence spreads.

How to Level Up #

All that’s needed to level up is to adjust a few vital statistics.

Hit Points #

Each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total (minimum of 1) to your hit point maximum.

For example, a Fighter with a Constitution score of 14 (+1 bonus) will see their Hit Points increase by 1d10 + 1 each level.

Proficiency Bonus #

Your proficiency bonus increases by 1 for every four levels gained. So it starts as +2, increases to +3 upon reaching level 5, increases to +4 upon reaching level 9, +5 at level 13 and so on.

Spell Slots #

The spell slots for a spellcaster are updated according to the chart in their class description.

Spellcasters add 2 spells to their spellbook of a level for which they have spell slots. They may not add any spells not in their respective spell list. If they do not yet any any slots upon leveling, they do not add any spells to their book.

A spellcaster may also add any spells from another spellbook or scroll to their own book as they find them, provided the spells are in the spell list for the class.

When to Gain Levels #

This one is left entirely to the GM. There are as many opinions on how to determine this as there are GMs. The only rule imposed here, however is to reward the kind of behavior the GM wants to promote. Here are a few ways leveling can be used as a reward to promote a particular play style.

Something to consider is changing the leveling method mid- campaign. This can be a very effective tool for keeping the campaing exciting as characters grow out of different play styles. A good point to change up progression is when the tier of play shifts.

For example, maybe low levels are about getting loot from dungeons, so using gold for experience is appropriate. Later when the PCs gain a stronghold, they may level as certain objectives are achieved. At that point, they determine the direction of their domain and are dealing with the consequences of their decisions, so the GM may set objectives based on what the players’ long term goals should be, and level the PCs as reward for chasing those objectives.

Table 10: Leveling Methods #

Tiers of Play #

As characters gain in power, they seek challenges of greater power while their presence invites greater conflict. In other words, the world should react to the change of the balance in power that higher-level PCs will bring. Doing so changes the focus of play to something greater in scope. These changing foci are called tiers of play. When the tier changes is determined by the GM in response to player actions.

Tier 1: Local Threats #

PCs tend to start out exploring a local area, fighting monsters that pose local threats. The blacksmith’s daughter is missing. There’s a nearby cult. Here the rewards tend to be gaining combat power and wealth.

Tier 2: Regional Politics #

At some point the PCs tend to have amassed enough power that they find themselves, willingly or not, more responsible for the local area against larger regional threats. At this point it’s usually not a single monster as much as it is organizations.

Ususally it is appropriate for the PCs to gain a stronghold and start to attract followers.

Tier 3: Kingdoms and Warfare #

At this tier, the adventurers cannot be easily challenged by any single person or monster, but are dealing with some of the campaign setting’s central tensions which prop up the world’s power structures. The threats at this stage are to entire countries or even the world, and can involve leading armies in massive struggles.

Tier 4: Transcendence #

This tier is when the focus of the players is on their legacy. They will meet with the proxies and avatars of deities directly. PCs will seek immortality either figuratively or literally, possibly seeking godhood.

The challenges in this tier have to do with the great cosmic conflicts and interplanar creatures.

Backgrounds #

Characters weren’t born as adventurers. They grew up in an area, in a certain niche of a certain society. They learned the in’s and out’s of the business of those around them. They learned the trades of the adults around them. They exercised their bodies and minds to perform certain tasks. They got proficient in certain types of work. They developed different outlooks.

Backgrounds are meant as an abstraction to cover all of the experience of growing up, all the way up to picking up your adventuring gear. Where you come from and how you were raised gives each character advantages in different situations, and nobody ends up perfectly well-rounded.

Each character picks or develops their own background on character creation. It should be something clear enough that the one-word name of the background should give people a good idea of what kind of activities your character my might expected to excel at.

Where’s the Skills? #

Individual skills are not included in this game, to be replaced by a general sense of what people with your background might do often. When an ability check happens, the GM can indicate whether your background may allow you to add your proficiency bonus to the roll.

While the GM is expected to maintain a list of each character’s backgrounds, feel free to ask (not argue!) if this is a task which resembles something you have experience with. For example, someone raised as a farrier (one who makes and fits horseshoes) would reasonably be expected to be proficient in both smithing and animal handling, along with knowledge tangential to both fields, while a carpenter would be procifient in woodworking, nature where it concerns the forest and trees, some structural engineering learned when making houses, some knowledge of the law concerning housing, residency, building codes, and so on.

This way of handling proficiency has several advantages:

1. When it comes to decide which character should perform a task, volunteering because you “worked with animals all the time growing up” is less immersion-breaking than doing it because you “have a +5 to animal handling”.
2. The list of skills is flexible to fit any genre. Maybe a world had sci-fi or modern elements: instead of adding skills, you can flexibly determine proficiency easily on a case-by-case basis, without having to add skills relvant to that society like “hacking”. Also, as a GM you don’t have to worry about diluting the skill point value by making skills too granular.
3. It saves character sheet space significantly and can speed up play by not having to look up numbers.
4. Encourages creative play, so you don’t feel limited to only doing actions that are part of a list.
5. You can fit all the things a character can do well inside a list.

Making a Background #

A list of example backgrounds is included in Table 3: Backgrounds, but you are not limited to just those options. The sky is the limit, subject to GM discretion, of course. You just need a few things to make your own background:

1. A name that is identifiable enough to give another person a reasonable idea of what skills you might possess just from that one word.
2. Two ability scores that would be developed by such an envrionment to reflect the years of physical and mental conditioning involved in that background.
3. A reason why someone in that profession would adopt the high-risk, high-reward, “adrenaline junky” lifestyle of an adventurer.
4. GM buy-in. Make sure the GM understands what’s involved in growing up in this background, and agrees to the ability bonuses.

Classes #

A character’s class is the archetype that they embody. In this game, classes exist to give characters mechanical abilities. In other words, while backgrounds define who they are, classes define what they can do.

Table 11: Quick Summary of CLasses #

Hit Dice #

Hit dice describe three intertwined concepts.

Hit Points #

Hit dice describe how many dice you should have rolled to determine your total hit points. So if you have 5d6 and upon level up you now have 6d6, your hit point total increases by 1d6 + your Con bonus (minimum 1).

Power level and Spell Resilience #

Many spells affects a certain number of hit dice of creatures. Use the hit dice listed in the class table to determine whether or not it affects you.

Healing While Resting #

When resting for 8 hours, the hit dice indicate how many hit points are gained over the course of rest. For example, if you have 5d6 hit points and you rest, you heal for 5d6 + Con bonus hit points.

Racial Archetypes #

Three of the classes: Dwarf and Elf, are representative of three idiosyncratic martial traditions of these three cultures. Namely, elven bladesingers and dwarven warpriests. Each of these is a blend of other class abilities, along with some unique traits of their own.

Don’t read the racial martial archetypes as being strictly limited to those races. The whole point is to be light on the rules, and allow variety through GM discretion and reskinning. So if you want, say, a human bard who can fight and sing and use some magic, take the Elf class, give them a human musical background, and you’ll be set.

Reskinning #

Many of the classes in other games are not present here. That’s because it’s highly encouraged to take one of the seven base classes and to “reskin” the class by changing the flavor text, giving alternate explanations to how and why certain class traits work, and make cosmetic changes to the traits themselves to emulate other character archetypes out there.

Below is a list of suggestions as starting points or even drop-in replacements for some classes you may be looking for:

Table 12: Class Equivalents #

Multi-classing #

A class is chosen at character creation, and as the character gains levels, the classes may offer new abilities. For simplicity’s sake, a character may not change classes, and they may not take on more than one class at a time. However, there are certain classes, namely the various racial martial archetypes, which effectively function as multi-class options, as they borrow abilities from two other classes.