Note: I goofed up the sharing on the Google Drive, my apologies. It should be fixed now and available to everyone that follows the link.
I've been running a 5E campaign for some time now and found out what I like and don't like about it. Like most GMs I've created and tossed a number of Fantasy Heartbreakers. Well finally I decided why make a full game. The world is full of 5E knock-offs. Instead of reinventing the wheel, it might be simpler and better to just make a small addition to 5E sort of the way 5E Hardcore works. Or for the old timers the Arduin Trilogy or Arms Law and Claw Law and Spell Law replaced bits and pieces of the old D&D.
So I concentrated on 5E character creation. Specifically from the Basic Set that shipped with Lost Mines of Phandelvin some time ago. The rules are the same as 5E but it has a streamlined list of Races (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human) and Classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard). From there I fixed Background, providing 20 Background occupations built around the races. Then I updated Ideal, Flaw, Bond, and Personality Traits* which the old rules always left incomplete. I made 10 of each to give variety and I built these things around the races as well to make the races more distinct. I think it stinks the way WotC has been de-emphasizing the races so that now they feel like humans with perks instead of a different culture altogether.
After that I went after the classes. I hate the abilities gained at each level. Players may like them but mine rarely used them until 5th level when things started getting overpowered. So I removed them (I'll print up a similar document eventually that leans into those and tries to fix it a bit). Also I divided up spell lists to create spell schools for Arcane magic (making picking spells quicker since the lists are smaller) and making each school unique (since I tried to remove repetitions between schools). I did the same with the Cleric Spells but divided them up by Race, figuring folks worship a pantheon and not a specific Deity. This makes it easier for players to Grok things quickly and allows the GM to plug in their own Deities when they have time. Lastly I added AC and damage info to the gear so the newbie rolling up their character doesn't have to look around for that info.
So here it is free, released as Creative Commons so you can tear it up. I'm open to feedback, especially if you have trouble with fonts in the PDF or something (I think it embedded the fonts since its over 10 Mb in size but maybe that's the art?).
Gutted
* I originally didn't like Personality Traits but a comment back in July 2020 by Lich Van Winkle changed my mind. So here's a shout out to that.
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