Xoth.Net has a cool & very substantial 5e swords & sorcery free player's guide for the World of Xoth up - http://xoth.net/publishing/freebies/world_of_xoth_players_guide_5e.pdf

Get it before it's bowdlerised!

If this means more Xoth stuff is on the way I'm going to be a very happy S&S fan.

Thanks for the link!

Looks cool. I got a copy so I might "Savage it up" for my next SW fantasy game. Nice stuff.

Interesting.  Sexy art on page 31.

Yoink! Thanks!

There is some interesting ideas in there. I think I would have swapped out or restricted more classes. The magic (Sorcery) chapter is mostly genre adviceon how to restrict the spells available; a start, but still does not go far enough for me: I want Cantrips restricted. However I would give every Class access to the Cultist class altered as an archetype instead. Or perhaps Feat access to Ritual Casting for the freaky deaky Gods. The Cultural type (Civilized, Decadent, etc.) is a little half baked for me... yet I do like the idea of dividing Race with this essentially "Upbringing" layer.

I am wondering whether to 5e Basic this, burying these alt classes as archetypes of the main four Classes. Then this Race "Upbringing" broke apart and subsumed into Background and Lifestyle... something about buying into, or degrading out of, a Lifestyle Feature is appealing to me. ("Wanna go Degenerate or Decadent? You get a good widget and a bad widget! ... Oh, leaving your Lifestyle will cost wealth & Status, of course.") Rituals, if 'curated', might be worth opening up for genre reasons...  

A fun thought experiment so far!

Interesting. I like the cultural archetypes. It nicely captures R.E. Howard's literary themes of civilization without having racial modifiers for humans.

I would lean against having PC spellcasters at all, rather than the modifications they suggest. However, I'd appreciate some more notes about how well that works in 5E.

Does anyone have experience with no PC spellcasters?

Quote from: jhkim;1106411Does anyone have experience with no PC spellcasters?

My 5e Wilderlands game for a good while had no casters (by player choice) just Barbarians Rogue & Fighters; my current Primeval Thule game has no primary casters but has a multiclass Rogue/Fighter/Warlock and an Eldritch Knight. I'd say it works fine. One thing I noticed is the Thule group at level 11-14 with a couple Fighters, a Barbarian & a Rogue have huge single-target damage output (the multiclass RFW contributes much less to damage).

Quote from: jhkim;1106411I like the cultural archetypes. It nicely captures R.E. Howard's literary themes of civilization without having racial modifiers for humans.

I like the idea a lot; I'd probably tweak the implementation but having your mods be for your Savage, Decadent or Degenerate lifestyle, rather than for your Race, has both a cool S&S vibe and is relatively Politically Correct!

Quote from: jhkim;1106411Does anyone have experience with no PC spellcasters?

I ran an all-martial PC campaign for 4e (so fighters, rangers, warlords, rogues) that worked great, and it was fun how the players interacted and dealt with the lack of casters. But 4e has easy non-magical healing.

I've run plenty of WFRP1e with no casters by player choice (aka, they just picked other careers, no input from me). Often those were the best Warhammer sessions as it became about men with nothing but cold steel against Chaos.

As for OD&D and S&S, I've run Carcosa which doesn't have traditional casters. Sorcerers are limited to lengthy and complex rituals, usually involving human sacrifice. Thus players gravitated to just playing fighters and thieves in the setting. For me, that was a tad wonky and in retrospect, I feel OSR games need PC casters...but that could just be my experience.