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<blockquote data-quote="Iron Sheep" data-source="post: 1756097" data-attributes="member: 4965">I've thought a bit about what would be needed to make a nice &quot;Basic D&amp;D&quot; or &quot;D&amp;D Lite,&quot; and I think that the most important thing is that while many options and complexities would have to come out, to be a successful first-step to &quot;Real D&amp;D&quot; you have to be able to put the options and complexities back in without resetting the game.In other words, any character you create with the &quot;Lite&quot; rules should still be a valid character with the &quot;Real&quot; rules.So simplifications like Unearthed Arcana's &quot;Max Ranks&quot; skill system (where you just pick skills, and automatically get max ranks in them) would be good, since they still produce valid characters.In fact, you could probably have a quite enjoyable game where you simply present a collection of character packages like &quot;Dwarven Fighter,&quot; &quot;Swashbuckler,&quot; or &quot;Halfling Rogue&quot; that consist of valid, reasonably optimised characters where your skill and feat choices have already been made.&nbsp; You could even construct packages using multiclassing.The biggest problem would be finding the sweet spot of just how many packages you should have: Fighter, Mage, Rogue, Cleric is probably too few; spelling out every possible race/class combination and class variant is too many.As far as the more intricate rules, a lot of the intricacies go away if you remove the exceptions.&nbsp; No tumble skill, or Mobility or Combat Reflexes feats, and limit combat special actions, and attacks of opportunity become much simpler; if you do a bit of work you could probably get it down to the level of &quot;if you move through a threatened square, you get attacked.&quot;&nbsp; It's less important to have these rules be precisely compatible with &quot;real&quot; D&amp;D since they apply to specific, transitional situations, and it's much easier to later say &quot;OK, we're playing with this more detailed, but slightly different rule now.&quot;In summary: keep characters upward compatible between versions of the game; other rules can be simplified if it really helps the level of complexity.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Iron Sheep, post: 1756097, member: 4965"] I've thought a bit about what would be needed to make a nice "Basic D&D" or "D&D Lite," and I think that the most important thing is that while many options and complexities would have to come out, to be a successful first-step to "Real D&D" you have to be able to put the options and complexities back in without resetting the game. In other words, any character you create with the "Lite" rules should still be a valid character with the "Real" rules. So simplifications like Unearthed Arcana's "Max Ranks" skill system (where you just pick skills, and automatically get max ranks in them) would be good, since they still produce valid characters. In fact, you could probably have a quite enjoyable game where you simply present a collection of character packages like "Dwarven Fighter," "Swashbuckler," or "Halfling Rogue" that consist of valid, reasonably optimised characters where your skill and feat choices have already been made. You could even construct packages using multiclassing. The biggest problem would be finding the sweet spot of just how many packages you should have: Fighter, Mage, Rogue, Cleric is probably too few; spelling out every possible race/class combination and class variant is too many. As far as the more intricate rules, a lot of the intricacies go away if you remove the exceptions. No tumble skill, or Mobility or Combat Reflexes feats, and limit combat special actions, and attacks of opportunity become much simpler; if you do a bit of work you could probably get it down to the level of "if you move through a threatened square, you get attacked." It's less important to have these rules be precisely compatible with "real" D&D since they apply to specific, transitional situations, and it's much easier to later say "OK, we're playing with this more detailed, but slightly different rule now." In summary: keep characters upward compatible between versions of the game; other rules can be simplified if it really helps the level of complexity. [/QUOTE]

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