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An Alternative OSR Style

I feel like the Old School Renaissance ('OSR') games could achieve their goals easier.

The exact goals vary, but it's something along the lines of:

Rather than ditching feats and clinging to classes, I think we can achieve these goals easier by using Feats to do what classes once did.

Imagine a level 1 person. They are nothing but a race.

Now let's make a quick list of Feats, derived from class abilities.

Finally, everyone gains 1 Feat per level.

A 3rd level fighter might look like this:

1. +1 Strength

2. +2 attack with axe

3. +4 HP

Now a paladin:

1. +2 attack with sword

2. Magic sphere (healing)

3. +2 Constitution

4. Turn undead

And a thief:

1. +2 sneak attack

2. Pick-pockets

3. +2 attack with sword

4. +2 Dexterity

But of course if that thief wants to 'become a bard', we could add:

5. Rousing Song

6. Use magical items

Now the thief can sing inspirational songs, and use magical items.

The Rest of the System

Of course, this system requires a lot more before anyone can use it, and we could flesh it out in any number of ways:

Derived Stats

We'll also need standard ways of computing Initiative, Armour Class, and the rest, based off Attributes and items.

In total, a character sheet would consist of:

More Simplification

Old School rules could have given us results in far less time than they did. We have a lot to remove:

Back to Objectives

With the old classes fairly represented by some Feats, and no more special skills than A,D&D proposed, we have a simple system to perform some old-school dungeon crawling.

If people want a 'rock up and play' game with OSR values, they could achieve all those values far better with modern rules.