Posted January 17, 2024 by Danielaurence
After some playtesting, there was some feedback that the rules for determining armor class were too fiddly. I originally designed it as 5 + HD max + up to +5 with 5 pieces of armor. This was done to keep the concept of class hit die being mechanically important at the forefront. But I have opted to simplify things and just offer three armor kits for leather, chain, or plate mail, giving an AC of 12, 14, or 16 respectively. This functionally comes out to be almost the same as the old system, although it caps out a "fully" armored warrior at AC 17 instead of AC 18. It also requires adding a restriction to each class as to what armor can be worn, but we are all so used to those tropes at this point, I think it will work out.
I made a few other minor tweaks to the core rules, including doubling the Barbarian's battle frenzy from +2 to +4. I also eliminated the somewhat confusing bonus point system when rolling stats. Now you just roll straight down the line for your 6 stats and that's it. To throw players a bone, however, I added a rule where choosing a class provides +1 to the class's prime attribute.