OK, yeah. I was a little rough on Primeval Thule for 5e in the last podcast. But there’s some good things too. And being forever the tinkerer of rules, I’ve got a few ideas for what may in the future become my next 5e campaign.
Off that bat. Races. It’s still a big no on Elves, Dwavres and Halflings. Just humans. That’s enough to keep things interesting. Use the normal human character rules.
Classes. OK. They threw the kitchen sink in there. But to keep to the low magic and Sword & Sorcery vibe. Reduce classes to Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue and Warlock. That’s it. Drop an class specializations that cast spells like the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight. And there some good class specializations in the book. For the Rogue, there’s the Poisoner and for Barbarian, the Slayer. For the Warlock broaden the spell list and include many of the spells from the Wizard and Sorcerer lists plus many of the spells from Primeval Thule. I’d probably limit the Patrons to Fiend, Great Old One (which is awesomely augmented in Primeval Thule) and Hexblade. No I haven’t done THE spell list yet. That’s for the hurried campaign prep stage of things. What about healing? Now, those short rests are much more important. And with standard 5E healing, you get all your HP back overnight. I know this ain’t grimdark gritty but without Mr. Cleric Healbot along for the ride, it’s one of those things I could live with. Additionally, there a couple of ways to get some healing in Thule without the cleric.
Background from the Players’ Handbook. Drop them. Because Primeval Thule did it better with “Character Narratives”. Just what are Character Narratives? Like Background, you get a couple of skills. But in Thule, you also get some neat special level-based abilities. For most of them, the abilities at 6th and 10th levels aren’t that great. So I’d probably drop those. But the first level one’s are pretty cool. You notice there aren’t Rangers mentioned as a class. No prob. Take Hunter. No cleric. There’s a healer that gets 3 HP/level of healing sort of like a Paladin’s lay on hands. I’d say my two favorites are the Soothsayer and Bearer of the Black Book. So for Soothsayer, you can tell a character fortune. The mechanics are simple Roll 2d20 and write those numbers. Those numbers can each be used once to replace the character’s roll or an opponet’s attack roll. Bearer of the Black Book. Cool. You have an Artifact. You gain a spell slot. And there’s good chance somebody is going to try to pry it out your cold dead fingers.
For Feats, there’s some good one’s in the book that keep the vibe going. Use those too.
So overall. Inspirational and useful. But like so many things, I’d house rule the heck out it. Sure there are more cool bits and pieces but those are the highlights.
Roll Dice. Kill Monsters. Take Their Stuff. And Have Fun.