• No Feats – in order to reduce decision points during character creation, to have fewer different mechanics in play and to augment the maxim that “anyone can try anything”.
• No Skills – This has been replaced by the broader “Proficiency Areas” to give fewer decision points during character creation and emphasize proficiency as a meaningful aspect of your character.
• Only goes to 10th level – most games never go beyond 9th level. ItU is focused on where 95% of the gameplay lies and supports the kind of play seen at those levels. The Companion rules, to be released later, will cover high level play.
• Simpler & fewer backgrounds – To keep the decision points manageable, ItU has a smaller selection attempting to cover all bases. It is simpler, yet allows flexibility to cover all bases.
• No Multi-classing – A simple multiclassing system will be found in the Companion rules.
• Condensed weapons list – ItU folds many different weapons into basically being the same weapon mechanically, with differences between weapons being mechanically distinct.
• Gold for XP – To give players different incentives than just killing things on the way to completing an adventurer goal, ItU relies on Gold-for-XP as the primary source of XP.
• No spellcasting focus or trivial spell components – Detracts from simplicity.
• Simpler encumbrance system – ItU tracks encumbrance in Stones and Items carried, rather than tracking pounds of many items.
• Different overland travel system – ItU focuses on hex-based movement for overland travel to
focus more on the element of exploration and uses a simple unified track to manage encumbrance, weather, terrain, etc.
• Reaction rolls – ItU’s default assumption is that initial encounter reactions have an element of unpredictability and that not all enemies necessarily want to fight you.
• Morale – All creatures have a morale score, which can be rolled against by the GM when fights go badly, to see if they flee or surrender, reflecting the fact that not all creatures will necessarily want to fight to the death.
• Henchmen – ItU assumes the party may want to hire henchmen to help keep them alive on adventures and has basic rules to address this.
• Harsher Healing rules – Hit dice for healing is a more sparse resource.
• Shorter Short Rests – These usually take only 10 minutes, but the gm may decide that different circumstances change the time required for long and shorts rests.
• Proficient Saving Throws - All PCs add their proficiency bonus to any saving throw.
• Simpler reach rules – Rather than having to track exact distance between opponents, battlemap style, reach weapons simply provoke opportunity attacks when opponents move within 5 feet of you.
• More coverage of improvised attacks – Since everyone can try anything, ItU has more focus on stunts and improvised attacks. It also encourages fighters to get creative by giving them proficiency with any improvised attack.
• Time Tracking – ItU has stronger focus on tracking time to maintain pacing in the game.
• Full Compatibility – The changes made in ItU have been balanced towards retaining full compatibility to 5e, so that a 5e character easily can join a gametable playing ItU with no conversion needed and vice versa.
