Zardnaar
Legend
On Sunday we played Star Wars Saga Edition and hacked it to use 5E levels of numbers.
I really liked how condensed the character sheet was, its 2 pages compared with 5E two or 3 but the pages in star wars are small it about 1.5 bits of paper. For those of you who don't know SWSE more or less uses 4E mechanics/engine but uses a complete different class structure with talent trees and feats. Its kind of like what Pathfinder 2 is going for but with a lot less complexity. The game also has 5 classes. You could probably fold 3 of those classes into 1 (scout, noble, scoundrel) and you could probably remove the Jedi class and make it a prestige class (or paragon tier). SWSE could do with another go around with some form of bounded accuracy IMHO.
With more traditional D&D it has often been mentioned that you could boil it down to 3 classes (Warrior, Expert, Spellcaster). In 4E terms probably Defender/striker, controller, leader. Defender and striker would be the same class how you built it and in how far in each direction you would go would be how the character ended up. Or you have 4 classes+ power/talent options.
However I would steamline it even further to an extreme degree. There is an OSR game called The Black Hack which is 20 pages long. The idea would be to reduce the classes down to 3-5, and each class would have no moving parts what so ever but it would use the 4E engine and powers. There are no feats, powers do exist a'la 4E and function exactly the same in terms of AEDU at least they might vary but each class might only have 4 or 5 powers and they scale on the other levels. The idea would be to have a character sheet as small as possible 1 maybe two pages, and it could even be abbreviated perhaps to a couple of paragraphs. All your powers are fixed in essences.
Idea 2 is its a bit more advanced, you do get a few more moving parts similar to 5E and you can pick some different powers, feats or class abilities. There are no subclasses but you might be able to build your own via talent trees/powers. A lot of classes would not exist though the tempest fighter might be able to be constructed with the default Warrior.
The powers would be very similar to the existing 4E powers maybe grab a character op guide however and eliminate everything that its not gold or light blue at the most. Even with the options though something like Frostcheese or radiant mafia can't be built but you might have 4-6 options to pick from a few times during your career. If you ever played B/X back in the day clerics for example only had 8 spells at each level, wizards had 12 (but didn't get to pick them). Its unlikely there would be very many levels, 10 maybe 15, 20 at the absolute max (probably 10 for the advanced version, 15-20 with the no moving parts one). 13th age has 10, B/X clones tend to have 14 (or less for some races)
If paragon and epic tier exist they would be scaled back to 4/3/3 or 6/5/4 or 8/6/6 or something like that. Heroic tiers would get more levels anyway (because most D&Ders don't play high level).
No I am not designing such a game (well maybe a SWSE 5E hack with a mate), but just wondering if a 100 page Basic Fantasy version of a 4E type game was ever made would you play it. There is no right or wrong answer, no agenda or gotcha or anything like that. You can assume it is tailored to your tastes the only requirement is you may be the one writing it so in theory less is more (you have a deadline if you write it say one year or two years). You may not be the one writing it just imagine if you had to.
Would you consider a basic version for short games, the advanced version would probably have the same powers but add more so you could swap some out. Total powers would be 1/3rd or less of the 5E spell section of the class chapter of the 4E PHB. Powers might be gated behind requirements (power source, level etc).
I really liked how condensed the character sheet was, its 2 pages compared with 5E two or 3 but the pages in star wars are small it about 1.5 bits of paper. For those of you who don't know SWSE more or less uses 4E mechanics/engine but uses a complete different class structure with talent trees and feats. Its kind of like what Pathfinder 2 is going for but with a lot less complexity. The game also has 5 classes. You could probably fold 3 of those classes into 1 (scout, noble, scoundrel) and you could probably remove the Jedi class and make it a prestige class (or paragon tier). SWSE could do with another go around with some form of bounded accuracy IMHO.
With more traditional D&D it has often been mentioned that you could boil it down to 3 classes (Warrior, Expert, Spellcaster). In 4E terms probably Defender/striker, controller, leader. Defender and striker would be the same class how you built it and in how far in each direction you would go would be how the character ended up. Or you have 4 classes+ power/talent options.
However I would steamline it even further to an extreme degree. There is an OSR game called The Black Hack which is 20 pages long. The idea would be to reduce the classes down to 3-5, and each class would have no moving parts what so ever but it would use the 4E engine and powers. There are no feats, powers do exist a'la 4E and function exactly the same in terms of AEDU at least they might vary but each class might only have 4 or 5 powers and they scale on the other levels. The idea would be to have a character sheet as small as possible 1 maybe two pages, and it could even be abbreviated perhaps to a couple of paragraphs. All your powers are fixed in essences.
Idea 2 is its a bit more advanced, you do get a few more moving parts similar to 5E and you can pick some different powers, feats or class abilities. There are no subclasses but you might be able to build your own via talent trees/powers. A lot of classes would not exist though the tempest fighter might be able to be constructed with the default Warrior.
The powers would be very similar to the existing 4E powers maybe grab a character op guide however and eliminate everything that its not gold or light blue at the most. Even with the options though something like Frostcheese or radiant mafia can't be built but you might have 4-6 options to pick from a few times during your career. If you ever played B/X back in the day clerics for example only had 8 spells at each level, wizards had 12 (but didn't get to pick them). Its unlikely there would be very many levels, 10 maybe 15, 20 at the absolute max (probably 10 for the advanced version, 15-20 with the no moving parts one). 13th age has 10, B/X clones tend to have 14 (or less for some races)
If paragon and epic tier exist they would be scaled back to 4/3/3 or 6/5/4 or 8/6/6 or something like that. Heroic tiers would get more levels anyway (because most D&Ders don't play high level).
No I am not designing such a game (well maybe a SWSE 5E hack with a mate), but just wondering if a 100 page Basic Fantasy version of a 4E type game was ever made would you play it. There is no right or wrong answer, no agenda or gotcha or anything like that. You can assume it is tailored to your tastes the only requirement is you may be the one writing it so in theory less is more (you have a deadline if you write it say one year or two years). You may not be the one writing it just imagine if you had to.
Would you consider a basic version for short games, the advanced version would probably have the same powers but add more so you could swap some out. Total powers would be 1/3rd or less of the 5E spell section of the class chapter of the 4E PHB. Powers might be gated behind requirements (power source, level etc).
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