ltThis is a system I'm writing myself. It's a work in progress and it moves slowly, but play is fully supported up to 6th level as things stand, with one exception: spells, where roughly half of the 3rd-level ones are written so far. I'm playtesting it at my own table as I go, and I'd like to hear what people make of it: what reads well, what doesn't.
It is a tabletop RPG built on the D&D 5e SRD 5.2.1. The shortest description I have is Chaucerian medieval meets sword-and-sorcery. Earthy and a little bawdy on one side, Cimmerian on the other.
Rules are CC BY 4.0, and readable at https://ineptwizard.com/posts/
Source repository: https://git.chunkybastard.com/flavius/ttrpg
Mirror: https://codeberg.org/flavius/swords-and-sceptres
More on where it's at. Core classes, equipment, 53 feats and spell levels 1-2 are complete, with 3rd-level spells about half written. Spells are paid from a Spell Point pool and upcast on uniform formulas, so a 2nd-level spell cast at 3rd covers most of what isn't there yet. Releases are rolling; there are no numbered editions and no 1.0 to wait for.
What's different, roughly by how much it changes play
Seven abilities. Luck joins the six. You add your Luck modifier to every saving throw, whatever ability the save uses. There are no Luck skills and no Luck save.
Skill Ranks and Knacks instead of a Proficiency Bonus. Characters buy ranks with Skill Points, at 2 per +1 in something you have a Knack for and 4 without. Your maximum rank in a Knack skill is your level divided by two (or four with no Knack), rounded up. Monsters keep a Proficiency Bonus tied to Challenge Rating.
Resistance Points instead of resistances. Every creature has an RP total per damage type, from −20 to +20. Take damage of a type you have RP in and you roll 1d20: at or under your RP, you take nothing at all. Negative RP works the same way but doubles the damage.
Natural 20 and natural 1 do something else entirely. Both apply to attack rolls only, never to ability checks or saving throws.
A natural 20 hits regardless of modifiers or AC, and damage dice are not doubled. The target gains an Injury instead: roll 1d4 on the table for the damage type, and there's one table per damage type. The acid table has pitted armour, a melted weapon arm, a seared throat, a blinded eye. Slashing has a cut brow bleeding into your eyes, an opened forearm, a deep leg, a severed tendon that leaves the hand useless.
An Injury ends when it is treated, and not otherwise. Rest doesn't clear it and neither does healing back to full Hit Points; a Healer's Kit treats one, as do some features. A creature with +20 Resistance Points against that damage type suffers no Injury from it, and neither does one that shrugged the damage off on its Resistance Points roll. Vital damage has no Injury table at all, since the body scores no Critical Hit upon itself.
A natural 1 always misses, and a Complication happens instantly: 1d6 on a table chosen by what you attacked with, whether unarmed, melee, thrown, bows, other ranged, or spells. One per attack. These are specific to the thing in your hands. A melee weapon can be knocked to your feet or damaged badly enough to need a smith (a tenth of its price, never less than 1 cp). A bow can kick back into your jaw, part its string mid-fight, or, on a 6, take the whole draw into itself and be destroyed. A spell can go off in your hands, or strike the nearest creature instead of the one you aimed at.
Archery is rebuilt from the bow up. A bow is a draw force: the pounds-force needed to bring the string to full draw, running from 15 to 200 on the table. Draw force sets the damage, the Strength score you need, and the price. From the book's own aside: two characters may both carry longbows and have nothing in common as archers, because one draws 60 lbf and looses often while the other draws 150 Mary Rose, shoots seldom, and settles the matter when the arrow lands.
Strength decides which bow you can shoot; Dexterity decides whether you hit with it. Attack rolls are d20 + Dexterity + your Skill Rank in Bows.
Arrows are a separate decision from the bow. There are eleven kinds, and the choice matters. A bodkin reduces the target's Piercing Resistance Points by 5; a broadhead raises them by 5 but deals 2 extra damage, so the question of armour is decided before the shot. Flight arrows lengthen both ranges by half and halve the damage; war arrows do the reverse. Barbed heads can't be pulled back out. Whistling arrows deal no damage and are audible a thousand feet away, and armies that use them agree beforehand what each volley means.
And the archery feats cost you your body. Basic Archery Training drops any bow's Strength requirement by 5. Extended, at level 10, drops it another 5, and your bones thicken, your shoulder wears, your spine sets into a lean: −5 Resistance Points against Bludgeoning and Disadvantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics). Elite, at 18, drops it 5 more for 15 total, and takes Bludgeoning to −10, Speed −5 feet, and Disadvantage on Athletics to climb or swim. Negative Resistance Points mean a chance of double damage, so the finest archer in the world is fragile to a club and slow to get away from one. That's the Mary Rose skeleton written as a feat chain, and it's the clearest example of what this system does that 5e doesn't: mastery that marks you.
Spell Points, and no preparation. Spells cost 2 SP per spell level, and every spell you have learned is always ready, with no daily preparation. You learn spells permanently from grimoire pages and scrolls. Ten schools in four groups: Elemental (Air, Fire, Water, Earth), Ego (Body, Mind, Spirit), Moral (Light and Dark), and Holy.
No character can draw on both Moral schools, and which one is open to you follows from alignment rather than choice. A good-aligned cleric can learn Light, an evil-aligned cleric Dark, and a neutral cleric neither. Holy belongs to the paladin, who always gains it alongside all three Ego schools.
No subclasses. Six classes: Archer (d8), Cleric (d6), Knight (d12), Paladin (d10), Rogue (d6), Wizard (d4). A class grants no fixed feature at a fixed level. Who your character is comes out of skill points and feats.
Upbringing feats instead of backgrounds. One feat for life before adventuring, and it does something: Sturdy is +1 HP per level, Savage doubles your damage dice on the first hit each turn, Medic heals a dying creature as a bonus action.
The party pool. One player rolls 24d6, drops the three lowest, and the remaining 21 dice are a shared pool. Everyone arranges them into seven groups of three. Nobody arranges the pool the same way, and nobody sits at the table ruined by the dice while the player opposite rolled three 17s.
The conditions are rebuilt from scratch. Sixteen of them. Four from 5e are gone (Charmed, Exhaustion, Incapacitated and Poisoned) and four are new (Drunk, Insane, Burning and Suffocating). The test each one had to pass was: what physical or mental fact does this describe? Incapacitated names no state at all; Poisoned and Exhaustion are umbrellas over things that don't work alike; Charmed is an emotional state, and those are out of scope.
That last one has a slogan attached: the rule describes the body, the player describes the man. Frightened is cotton legs and shaking hands; it does not tell you to run. And once you've been through it, you're permanently immune to fear from creatures of that type, because that is what standing in front of a thing and living does to a person.
Rulings are precedent. When the rules don't cover something the GM rules, and that ruling is then the table's law for every later instance. It changes by agreement with a stated reason. "We were wrong, and here's why" changes a ruling; "I've decided otherwise" doesn't. The rules are sovereign and the GM administers them rather than standing above them.
It's a cooperative game, and says so. Party members are allies. "My character would do that" is not a defence, and GMs are asked not to build scenarios that set players against each other.
Conditions of Play is detachable. Conditions, mishaps, hazards, diseases, boons and weather live in one chapter, deliberately separable from the core. If you're building something strange, with no weather or different causation, you can take the core, drop that chapter, and write your own without touching anything underneath.
Where to start
Vicious Tales 1: Gods of the North is a level-2 adventure for 4-6 players, adapted from Robert E. Howard's 1934 story and statted for S&S. You can run it with your existing group without converting anything, and it sits inside the range the rules currently support.
Questions, feedback and corrections especially welcome.