More Thoughts on Building my Ideal OSR System

I want to put together a shopping list of all the things I like out of the OSR and beyond to see if I can work towards building my ideal system. This is mostly me going through a fairly disorganized series of thoughts in order to try and come to understand what I really want out of a system.

By Piranesi Carseri

Ascending AC/Roll High on a d20

Yeah, I am a youngster, get over it. Honestly, I don't have a huge problem with Descending AC, except that THACO adds just one thing into the mix, not much but just a little extra step: an extra table to write on my sheet, and just one step of reasoning that makes it difficult for new players.

For instance, a newbie is going to immediately think of higher as better. A lot of cultural input is built around rolling high and the Nat 20 in D&D. It is just easier to have AC and all target numbers really to follow that same logic. If you are going to turn that around, it seems to me to always be better to have consistency in these central elements.

I, as a person who loves and has a lot of patience for games, is perfectly willing to and even delight in lots of different microsystems, but I want my ideal system to be as readily available to anyone I wish to play with and I run in circles with a lot of people who don't play Old School games as much as I do. People who play other kinds of games are typically pretty good at learning games but I would rather not put unnecessary obstacles in their way.

This is probably overstating the case, but you get the idea.

Saving Throws

I don't like the regular old school saves. They seem too specific especially given the many strange situations that your character can find themselves in. I like saves based on your stats modified by your class, DCC style, but I like old school saves that they are roll high and there is no need to set DCs, which I quite like. I don't want to use just straight up roll under score saves because, once again, we want roll high.

So here is an idea: each stat has a score, modifier, and save. (On a side note, I think I would prefer to reduce the amount of Stats, at least combining Strength and Con into Might.)

Saves would be 19 - your modifier- class adjustments.

So if you had 8 Dex, you would get a -1 modifier, and you are a Cleric with no bonus to Dex Saves at first level, then your Save would be 20. Maybe it would be best if negative modifiers didn't affect Saves, considering the potential to make some Saves impossible for unluckily rolled characters. Maybe that would be funny.

Ok 15 Might gets a +1 modifier, Wizards get no Might bonus, so your Might Save is 18. See?

Otherwise, I might just do a generic Save supplied by your class, modified under certain conditions, also supplied by your class. My only issue with this is that it feels detached from any kind of tangible reality otherwise supplied by the sheet. I guess it stands for your general readiness and hardiness against environmental hazards? The metaphorical boundaries of the game seem to get crossed by this system.

Health

Health is low and it ought to stay fairly low. Games are a ton of fun when player characters are really fragile. I like the idea of just an unmoving health pool, like just using a stat like Con (Or Might in our case). However, that then gives all pcs an average of 10 HP with possibilities for much higher and that seems wrong.

I think more standard HP progression, taking clues from Labyrinth Lord ought to do fine and I do want to maintain compatibility, so too much deviation from that standard might start to mess with things.

Classes and Race-as-Class

I like Race-as-Class for the simple reason that you can get weird creatures and turn them into classes whereas 5e style stat adjustments seem incapable of truly making a creature as truly unique as they deserve. You could never be Many Goblins or a Goat or I would think that something like a Murder Machine would still be a little out there.

However, Race-as-Class also seems to give demihumans, dwarves in particular, the short end of the stick. The characters are mechanically boring and weak and don't really maintain the identity of the demihuman anyway.

Dwarves, in particular, seem to get very little advantage in exchange for their smaller health pool.

So I would do a compromise. Each race only gets access to certain classes and they get different abilities from that class, Dungeon World style.

For instance, Elves ought to be able to be Thieves, Fighters, and Wizards, but their Thief skills would be supplemented by access to some spells, Fighters would be much the same, and as Wizards they would have a different spell list. Indeed, all elves would be able to use spells from a spell list with some Wizard and Cleric spells but more unique Elf spells. In each class, they would pay some penalty for having these abilities, no access to some skills as a Thief, lower health as a Fighter, fewer offensive spells as a Wizard, ect.

Dwarves ought to be Thieves, Fighters, and Clerics (Forge Clerics to be precise), but their Thief skills would probably be supplemented by Dwarven Runic magic, Dwarf Fighters would get a Rage ability, and their Clerics would have access to different spells.

Halflings ought to be able to be Thieves and maybe get some abilities to use their Luck (DCC style) to support their allies. I'd have to think more about Halflings.

Casters

Casters ought to be able to have more than one spell at first level or at least some Cantrips. For those that don't know, Cantrips in 5e are spells that have no cost and can be cast at will. 5e Cantrips are, however, very powerful and I would certainly not have such powerful magic be free. Cantrips ought to be highly specific and selectively useful.

Here's another idea for spells. Casters can cast spells safely with spell slots, but after this point, there is a rapidly increasing risk of something horrible happening to the caster.

So say you have two first level spells, and you cast one of them, using it up then, each cast thereafter has a # of times cast in 4 of something horrible happening.

Plus it seems a good idea to me to have all 1st level spells be available to all casters with spell slots standing for which spells you have prepared.

Backgrounds and Gear

I love rolling some dice and getting a character. Background tables seem to me to be a very necessary part of this kind of game, adding in differentiation for each character.

Gear needs to be randomly rolled for or packages provided to choose from. Buying gear is just too tedious for me and takes too much time. I want to roll some dice, maybe make a choice or two, and have characters ready for play.


Conclusion

This would be a fairly work-heavy system to make, with so many new spells to create. It's nothing groundbreaking but I feel like it satisfies a lot of my demands for an ideal game. Let me know what you think. If others have similar design goals, maybe I will try to actually make this thing.