Kuunari

I love Microlite20.  What I like best is that it’s the barebones d20 rules, and it makes it much easier to add rules and pieces that you like.

Here’s my first of hopefully many revisions of Microlite20. My goal with this revision is to create a version of D&D where a person can create a character and start playing the PC within 5 minutes.

Background: 

The very first thing I remember about creating D&D characters in middle school was the six stats.  I would look at the 6 in dex, and imagine what kind of character had a six in dex.  With modern versions of D&D, there just isn’t as much weight placed on the character stats.  There is one simple reason for this, the fact that every 2 points in a skill you get a +1.  You can’t afford to have a character with an 8 in a skill or not have a 16 or 18 in your primary stat.

So the changes will involve using all six stats and a different point progression for the stats.  Also, the modifier will not affect things like the number of hit points earned each level, the attack bonus or other scores.  People like to hit and in 4e at least, always have an 18 in their primary stat.  In some ways, it seems unnecessary to have these stats in 4e, as everyone will have an 18 in their primary stat.  My goal is to come up with a way to reward high stats, without punishing those who don’t have high stats with being ineffectual.

In order to help differentiate a 7 from a 14, I am hoping to write one word descriptions for each stat.

The Revision:

In Microlite Revision, there are six stats. You roll 3d6 for each stat in order.  If a character has only negative and no modifiers, they may reroll their stats.

• Strength (STR): Strength is a measure of the characters muscle and power.  It will affect melee damage and ranged damage with thrown weapons.  This also affects your ability to resist forced movement.
• Dexterity (DEX): Dexterity is a measure of hand eye coordination, agility and mobility.  It will also affect ranged damage with bows and slings.  This also affects your ability to dodge.
• Constitution (CON): Constitution is a character’s health and endurance.  Constitution will influence the starting hit points of a character.  This affects your ability to save against fortitude.
• Intelligence (INT): Intelligence is the knowledge a character has.  It affects the damage from mage spells, as well as the number of spells that a character knows.  This affects your ability to ward off mind attacks.
• Wisdom (WIS): Wisdom is the common sense of the PC, as well as the perception of the character.  It will affect damage from cleric spells, as well as the number of spells a cleric knows.  This affects your ability to ward off attacks against illusions.
• Charisma (CHA): Charisma is the attractiveness of a character, as well as his or her force of personality. This affects your ability to defend against attacks against your will.

Each stat provides a bonus based on this table.

3: -2

4-6: -1

7-14: 0

15-17: +1

18: +2

Each point above 18 is an addition +1 up to 25.   9-12 is considered average.  a 13 or 14 is above average and would put the character in the top 25% of a small village.  a 7 or  8 would put the character in the bottom 25% in a village.

Inspirations and References:

D20 SRD:  some of the descriptions of the stats are paraphrased from the d20 SRD.

Stars without Number: The progression of the stat bonuses was inspired/borrowed from this system.

The Secret Fire: I still haven’t read this yet, and I don’t plan on until I come up with the descriptions, as I got the inspiration for descriptions for the stats from a preview article I read.