BXN (Working Title)

a Distillation of Materia Mundi

So, I’ve spent the past few months asking myself, “what is the bare minimum D&D system I’m comfortable with, that can support the Materia Mundi setting as I would want it to be run?”

And I stripped out all the art and all the fiddly bits, and rebuilt Materia Mundi into five small handbooks, each less than 100 pages (most less than 50). I also removed all the AI-generated art; I get that right now, this is a contentious enough issue that it’s not worth the heat to evangelize for it.

The Whole Game

So anyways, here’s all five books, for free! They’re all released as CC-SA4, so you are encouraged to use them as the foundation of your own commercial works.

BXN - Introduction (Intro to RPGs, character creation, and player-facing procedures)

BXN - Panoply (Full armor, weapon, magic item, potion, and spell lists for all classes)

BXN - Bestiary (PC races, animals, fey beasts, and monsters)

BXN - Lore (Materia Mundi setting guide)

BXN - Referee’s Guide (all the tables, charts, and procedures you need to run the game)

I’m still hopeful to be able to get a Kickstarter going, hire a few good artists, and produce an actual physical copy someday. In the meantime, please have fun with it!

What To Expect

BXN is a simplified B/X game. It uses some concepts from 5E to make B/X even more simple and B/X-like than the original B/X.

Firstly, the entire game has been simplified to only ever use two types of dice — the d20 for attack throws and saving throws, and the d6 for everything else.

Saving Throws & Attack Throws

There is a single, unified saving throw and attack throws mechanic, which uses B/X scaled ability modifiers to create six possible saving throws and two attack throws:

• Save vs. poison, disease or death (15 - [Con + Level])

• Save vs. knockdown or paralysis (15 - [Str + Level])

• Save vs. blast, breath or ray (15 - [Dex + Level])

• Save vs. illusion or confusion (15 - [Int + Level])

• Save vs. beguilement or curse (15 - [Wis + Level])

• Save vs. fear or despair (15 - [Con + Level])

• Your melee attack throw is the same as your Strength save — 15-(Str+Level).

• Your ranged attack throw is the same as your Dexterity save — 15-(Dex+Level)

This means that your saving throws and attack throws always go up each level, and are always exactly what you have written on your character sheet. (Exception: attack throws have an additional rule that you need to match or beat your throw threshold to hit a creature with a Dex of +0 or worse, but need to beat your throw threshold to hit a creature with a Dex of +1 or better).

Skills

Then, there are twelve “N-in-6” action categories (you can call them “skills” if you want), each connected to a different ability score. Dex, Int, Wis, and Cha each have 3 “skills” associated with them; they all start at 1-in-6 if the associated ability modifier is +0; otherwise a number of skills equal to your ability modifier start at 2-in-6 if you have a positive ability modifier, or “inept” (can’t even try those actions) if you have a negative ability modifier.

• Agility (Dex) for climbing, balance, and maneuvering while airborne

• Finesse (Dex) for picking locks, picking pockets, disabling traps, and crafting

• Stealth (Dex) for hiding, moving silently, and performing sneak attacks

• Arcana (Int) for understanding and identifying magical or scientific phenomena

• Lore (Int) for remembering bits of history, religion, culture, or other trivia

• Medicine (Int) for diagnosing and treating injuries, poisons and diseases

• Animal Ken (Wis) for predicting, training, or controlling beasts’ behavior

• Perception (Wis) for noticing traps and secrets, listening, and spotting ambushes

• Survival (Wis) for hunting, foraging, navigating, and other bushcraft activities

• Charm (Cha) for influencing the attitude of NPCs towards you through dialog

• Leadership (Cha) for directing henchmen and maintaining morale

• Wit (Cha) for influencing the beliefs and behavior of NPCs through dialog

Adjusting Difficulty

All rolls — whether d20 attack throws, d20 saving throws, or d6 action checks — are always equal to the value written on your character sheet. To adjust difficulty, the referee can decide that a particular roll is either “harder” (roll two dice and choose the worse roll) or “easier” (roll two dice and choose the better roll) than normal. This means you never have to add modifiers to a roll based on circumstance; you always roll vs. what’s written on your sheet, either rolling a single die for a normal roll, or two dice for an “easy” or “hard” roll.

Armor and Weapon Damage

There is no AC, since your to-hit is always written directly on your sheet. Instead, armor provides damage resistance. Light armor always reduces damage rolls by 1, medium armor reduces damage rolls by 2, and heavy armor reduces damage rolls by 3. There are ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ versions of each kind of armor; certain weapons are ‘piercing’, which can ignore half the reduction of soft armor.

Weapon damage is always consistent, based on the type of weapon.

• Small weapons always deal 1d6-1 damage

• Light weapons always deal 1d6 damage

• Medium melee weapons deal 1d6+Str damage if held one-handed

  • Medium melee weapons deal 2d6 damage if held two-handed

  • Medium ranged weapons deal 1d6+1 damage

• Heavy melee weapons deal 2d6+Str damage

  • Heavy ranged weapons deal 2d6 damage.

Classes & Races

There’s now four human classes, three dwarf classes, and three fey classes (with barbarian humans choosing from the fey class list)

• Warrior (the “Fighter” equivalent)

• Scout (the “Thief” equivalent)

• Wizard (the “Magic-User” equivalent)

• Priest (the “Cleric” equivalent)

• Stalwart (the Dwarf version of the fighter)

• Delver (the Dwarf version of the thief)

• Dweomersmith (the Dwarf version of the magic-user; basically an artificer)

• Champion (the Fey / Barbarian version of the fighter; basically a berserker)

• Hunter (the Fey / Barbarian version of the thief; basically a ranger)

• Druid (the Fey / Barbarian version of the magic-user)

For new players, picking it up should actually be a bit faster than picking up B/X, since there’s less class information to transfer (without five independent saving throw progressions, you can just quickly do the math as you make your character).