OSR New edition of OSE in 2026 (updated with some links)

[Nikosandros]

Confused why a new edition of OSE is needed. I thought that's what Dolmenwood was essentially going to be?

Is this for players who don't have Dolmenwood and also don't want a faithful retro-clone anymore?

It is still a faithful retro-clone. A couple of rules have been changed to make it even closer to B/X.

 

[Evaniel]

The optional increase to backstab is triple damage at levels 6 - 10 and quadruple at 11+.


It seems to me that the section on thief skills has remained unchanged and nothing from that article in Carcass Crawler 1 has been added, AFAIK.

Thanks! One last (I think?) question: what's the "formula" they're using for "training time and cost to level up?"

 

[Nikosandros]

Thanks! One last (I think?) question: what's the "formula" they're using for "training time and cost to level up?"

Training takes 1-4 weeks, either randomly rolled or chosen by the referee based on player's skill. The idea is quite similar to AD&D 1e and I could find no further discussion in the referee's book.

Each week of training costs 400 gp per current character level. If a character trains without a mentor, time is doubled, but cost is halved. I'm not sure if overall cost is halved or if it is cost-per-week (in this case, the total cost actually remains the same).