If you looked closely a couple of days ago at the demographic breakdown of classes individuals of 0-level or higher, you would have noticed a couple of things that are different from standard OSR fare.
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| Tieflings bug me. |
1. There are no 0-level Wizards or Elfs.
An 0-level Wizard is just a learned peasant. They are no different than a Normal Man.
Elfs are a little different. By the time they visit the realm of Men, they are already over 100 years old and very learned. They have mastered the skills necessary to be a 1st level Elf guy.
So that's what's up with the demographics chart.
2. The other classes have interesting things.
First of all, it's going to be race-as-class.
Adventuring is a particularly human pursuit. Other races are not people in funny suits, but rather quite different in almost every way. The clanholds of Dwarfs do not value individuality or striking out on your own. Elfs are not numerous enough to consider one another expendable. Hobbits consider adventuring to be scandalous. It's not something a civilized person does. For these reasons and more, the individuals who do become adventurers are rare and unusual and there are no Demi-Men character classes. Each uses the skills that come to him naturally to make his way in the world.
0-level Clerics can wear heavy armor like a fighter but also have weapon restrictions and behavior patterns. 0-level Rat Catchers have their vision skills and can serve as adequate guides in some places in the underworld. Of course the remainder of 0-level guys are just basic Fighting-Men but with worse hit and save rolls.
The other thing you might notice is that there is no Thief class. There is a mechanical reason I made it like that: when a Thief does his Thief stuff, the rest of the characters tend to stand around and wait until he's done it. It slows down the action. Additionally, while a Thief has a small chance of doing something incredible (hide in shadows/move silently/etc.), anyone including a Thief can try sneaking and hiding and stealing.
So if you take Thief out, you find that everyone does Thief stuff. If you want to be like the Thief, be a Rat Catcher, which is kind of like the urban ranger archetype. They get bonuses in the dark, when fighting some favored foes, when dealing with indifferent or friendly animals, and so forth. They also get a limited kind of sneak attack instead of backstab. Or just be a Fighting Man and wear leather armor and play sneaky.
Here are some special things about this campaign in particular that involve character generation.
3. All weapons deal 1d6 damage and all Hit Dice are six-siders.
This means both damage and hit points will be lower overall but the differences are equivalent. Additionally, the +1 damage from a high strength score, +1 damage from two handed weapons, and the +1 damage from being a Fighting-Man will be really powerful proportionally.
Fighting-Men still get more hit points overall and Wizards still get less, but that is handled based on the numbers of dice rather than the size of the dice, like it was done pre-Greyhawk.
When it comes to weapons, a dagger will kill you just as easily as a halberd. They all do the same damage. While this will feel unintuitive to most everyone, you will find it means that players will choose the weapon that suits their character rather than the weapons with the most mechanical benefit.
4. Hit Points are generated daily.
In the morning, a player rolls all the character's hit dice. That's his max hit points for the day. Some days you're gonna feel great and other days you're gonna have to hold back. This should be an interesting balancing act. I have no idea whether it will work.
5. Here's my hope
The Fallen Empire setting is super humanocentric. I really hope the players understand this. If things go the way I want them to, we get less than 40% Demi-Men PCs. I'll try to urge people to play Men, but I don't know how to do that without being heavy handed about it. What do you think?
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