We’ve played a handful of sessions with the rules as I wrote them originally, an almost word-for-word copy of Skerples' "Many Rats on Sticks". After having played for a bit, I’ve identified some things I don’t like, and so I’m going to fix them.

Additionally, while I’m in the weeds here, I’m going to reorganize the rules section to be more useful. We’ll see how these go, and I’ll likely have another update mid-September.

Bonuses

I hate stat bonuses. Even as a formula I’ve found that it’s tripping up my players. So I’m going to eliminate them for a bit, see how that goes. Here’s how I’m changing up the Secondary Attributes to remove them.

Movement

This has never come up in my game, since we’re mostly TotM, and it’s extra junk on my character sheet. Removed outright.

Save

As a mechanic, I like it, but deriving it trips up players, especially since bonuses aren’t really a thing anywhere else. I’m gonna try turning it into Luck, a 7th attribute that can be spent, similar to DCCs luck stat. See the rules for specifics.

Stealth

I’m on the fence about tossing this one. On one hand, we need some way to handle this mechanic, on the other, it’s bonus soup. For now, I’m going to go with [Dexterity - Filled inventory slots]. This actually keeps the same penalty for armor with less work. The only downside is that stealth scores will be slightly higher on average, but I’m not too worried about that.

Defense

I was once an active member of the eternal debate of "dodge vs block". Now I am older, and care less, so I’ve come to a boring yet functional middleground. A characters' defense is either it’s Dexterity or it’s Armor. High dex characters will be unarmored swashbucklers, and low dex characters will be in tin cans.

Attack & Weapons

Attack is fine as-is; damage, however, needs tweaking. I’m going to drop all melee weapons 1 die size, and scrap the strength bonus. I’m also going to codify dual wielding as an option for light weapons. This makes a nice balance of damage-vs-options. Light weapons have more options at the cost of lower damage, and heavy weapons deal more damage at the cost of no variety.

I’m also scrapping the proficiency rule. It doesn’t interest me, so it goes.