This is my last part of general overview and navel gazing and then I have to really get down to details.

Saves are actually the easiest part. As I’ve said before I really like Swords & Wizardry with its single Save but I want to go a little beyond that with just a little bit of tweaking. So the easy part there’s the base Saving Throw determined only by the character’s level. It starts at 15 for 1st level characters. Then you’ve got the four broad modifiers for Saves determined by stats, race, and class. In essence, there’ s four categories “Saves”: Death/Disease/Poison (CON); Magic (WIS); Traps/AOE (DEX) and Luck (CHA). Most are pretty obvious except Luck. That’s the when in doubt, just make a Save to see what happens, and catch-all for anything else. Simple and easy.

Now Skills are always a big headache. Some folks like them Some folks hate them. A lot of game just have too many damn Skills and some not enough. It’s a fine line. For this I want to break skills down into three very broad categories and work from there.

First, there’s the crap anybody can do with little or no training. That’s an Attribute check using the good old x in D6 model.

Second, cool stuff a character because of their class. For this I’m talking about cool tricks the only characters of certain class. Once again these are on an x in D6 model.

Then there’s stuff any character can try if they’ve got a bit of training. And this is where I’m really brainstorming. There’s those handful of tasks that just about every adventurer wants to do sometime during their career. Everybody wants to sneak somewhere, forage for food, climb, and so on. To keep things consistent, I could still use the x in D6. But I’m also think of something with more granularity. Maybe x ind d12. Because, hell, d12’s need more love. But then Thief skills were based on percentages so there’s that option. On the positive, it does give skills a different feel than other rolls and can add a different twist to things.

I guess next I need to start actually putting all my rants and ideas together.