“A ‘sin’ is something which is not necessary” – G.I. Gurdjieff

After seven months of running sessions of Beyond Thule (the placeholder name for this homebrew), I’ve begun to notice what is necessary and what is unnecessary.

Adjudication and Creativity

One aspect I find necessary is more game master rulings of actions described by the players instead of players relying on what their class abilities or feats tell them they can do. This leads to far more interesting and creative gameplay than the latter. This is kind of a no-brainer for old school gamers.

So I need to look into dropping feats and simplifying classes from the already pared-down version of Pathfinder I’ve adapted for this.

Skills and Skill Rolls

Skills and ability rolls have also been absolutely key. Since combat in this setting amounts to mostly intimidating people, killing cultists, or running away from monsters, there has to be a replacement to add some dice rolls during play outside of combat.

My players like rolling dice. They like the thrill of rolling a 20. They even like the thrill of rolling a 1. So I added a lot more opportunities to use skills, and had lead to some good results and some dramatic tension when there has been a lot riding on a single skill check.

Races and Classes

Having all the PCs as humans with restricted classes has worked. PCs not having darkvision or low-light vision is good for horror. And nobody seems to miss the motley assembly that usually results at character creation. If we get a hankering for that, we’ll switch to Starfinder for a while.

Minimal Monster / NPC Stats

Those full column or full page monster or NPCs in the books are unnecessary. Generally all that is needed is a general idea of the power level of the NPC or creature (Hit Dice), abstracted into an overall modifier to dice rolls and hit points, plus anything unique or special about the NPC or monster. 

Tomes, Rituals, and Spells

While this is a low magic setting, with no full spellcasters and no magic items, there are still some things that seem unnecessary. Occult tomes are a good fit. Rituals are a good fit. But spells have not been so good. They still really slow down the game, requiring the player to look through their spell lists and read through descriptions. I need to come up with something simpler for spells.

Low Hit Points

Capping hit points is essential. Player characters shouldn’t be wading into combat with tons of hit points. A critical hit from a pistol or other weapon ought to be deadly or at least give them pause. So I will be capping player character hit dice at 10.

Non-Trivial Conditions

Similar to capping hit points, a lot of conditions in default Pathfinder are fairly weak. The saving throws are often so low that almost no player characters fail their saving throws.

Facing a deadly disease such as the Hollowing Curse that will kill you in seven hours is much more interesting. Getting transformed into an immortal, perfectly preserved but completely immobile mummy at the sight of a Great Old One is much more interesting.

Player Character Sheets

Character sheets with Pathfinder, even a modified Pathfinder, are still too much. Players are often searching their sheets for this or that information. I miss the days of pre-generated characters that weren’t more than a few lines of text. Character sheets need to be much simpler, like old D&D was, or like OSR/retro-clones are now. Or maybe like Venger Satanis‘s Crimson Dragon Slayer with no character sheets required!