(reprint of the introduction)

WHAT IS THIS?

This document presents an alternative way to create and play characters for D&D 5E. The goal is to streamline and simplify character creation and the amount of rules that players need to remember during play. In order to achieve this, skills, alignment and backgrounds have been done away with, races are somewhat simplified, the classes and their archetypes have been reworked and short rests and features that depend on them have been removed, including spell slots. These characters will be underpowered as compared to a standard 5E character, but the difference shouldn’t be huge.

The benefit is that someone who is at least somewhat familiar with D&D 5E should be able to create a character in about 10 minutes. This is good if you want to run a more deadly game where the potential need to create replacement characters is real. It is also a good way to introduce D&D to new players without getting too bogged down in the character complexity that even the basic rules suffer from. For really basic play, you could choose to completely ignore class archetypes. Characters created using these rules would also be great for enjoying OSR modules.

Note that XP and abilities have been rebalanced so that 10th level is the highest level that can be reached. Characters will stay much longer at lower levels and will be limited to Rank 5 (5th level) spells. A lot of spells have been removed, first to conform to the SRD, and second to remove those spells that are simply cheat codes for exploration, such as the ones that create food. Some spells have been slightly modified. The list should be closer to what was found in the B/X version of the game, while still keeping the 5e flavor.

I’ve made this version based on the one from Jeremy Deram for my own use, with my own preferences in mind, but feel free to use the Google Docs “Make a Copy” feature to create your own fork and edit as you see fit.

There are two versions of the document, one that includes cantrips and one that doesn't (my latest draft). Enjoy!