For those of you not aware of D&D Offshoots, Scarlet Heroes is a pen and paper role playing game intended to simulate things like the Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, etcetera. It features larger then life heroes, and unlike D&D where you need to cover all the bases (Magic User, etcetera) requiring full parties, this is explicitly designed for 1-2 heroes at top.
The free quickstart is available here:
Scarlet Heroes Quickstart - Sine Nomine Publishing | DriveThruRPG.com
It also comes with a solo adventure generator, which I will use to put our heroes through adventures worthy of swords and sworcery, and let you folks decide what our two heroes are, and what they do.
A couple quick changes for those of you who don't have time to read the quickstart:
Damage is pretty different: You definitely don't have the "Bucket of Hitpoints" that comes with D&D. A creature's hit dice translates directly into how many hit points it has (a 4HD monster will have 4 HP for example). Characters will have 10 or so HP tops at first level.
However, damage also changes. When you roll damage, you convert it as follows:
1 - 0 Damage
2-5: 1 Damage
6-9: 2 Damage
10+: 4 Damage
The other big thing is the "Fray Die": This is to simulate the fact in sword and sorcery, the heroes can lay through groups of bad guys at any time. It's basically a bonus free damage roll that can be done any time (depending on class, is the die you roll). You can only use the Fray Die against opponents of the same level or lower (so if a first level fighter takes on 2 1 hit die thugs and a 2 HD boss, the Fray Die result can ONLY be used against the Thugs)
Character creation is 4d6, drop lowest, arrange to suit, and if no stat is a 16, get a free 16. Once we decide the characters we want, I can roll up a character or give it to someone else. The next post will have a quick
Next post will have a quick description of the classes and their stats.