I keep hearing rumors about 5E games stalling to a halt around 7th-10th Level…
Out of 20. What’s up with that? Are characters too powerful?
If you want a game that still rocks the house at any “level,” I have the game for you! It’s called Dragonbane and it has professions, not classes. It uses skills, not levels. It’s still got Dragons, magic and Dungeons (*wink*) Dragonbane doesn’t need an expensive monthly online subscription to a website just to make a character. In fact, you can whip up a Dragonbane character in about 10-15 minutes on a character sheet or piece of notebook paper.
*Disclaimer: Free League Publishing did not pay me to write this article. Honestly, I’m not sure if they know I exist. I just love Dragonbane RPG that freakin much! I’ll talk about it any day of the week for free. It’s so darn good.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
Check this out:
I’m going to put together a character step by step on a regular piece of notebook character using my dice, hardcover rulebook, and a piece of notebook paper just to show how easy it can be.
I’m going to jump around slightly only because I’ve done this so many times and I have my preferences. The order of the steps don’t matter nearly as much as just getting the character down on the sheet.
I’ve chosen Elf as my character’s Kin. My dice did the typical Jeff’s Game Box thing and rolled a pretty low average. Nothing higher than 15 and my lowest is a 7. I swapped WIL and AGL around because I really don’t feel like playing a caster.
I chose Hunter for my character’s profession. I rolled Adult for my Age. That gives me 6+4 Trained Skills to work with. It actually took me longer to write down my skills than it did to distribute points. I’ve only written down the ones I know I’ll use/came with my Profession. Acrobatics and Slings are stuck at their base chance. Oh well.
After skills, equipment and derived stats, all that was left was the little things. I rolled Gullible as my Weakness. (Best time for a Dragon is obviously not during a game… LOL!) I got a strangely shaped stone as my Memento, and excessive body hair under Appearance which I translated to really long red hair. Tyrendelia sounds a bit like a female name to me, so we’re rolling with that plan.
Conclusions about character creation:
If I had written everything on an official character sheet, I’d have been done in half the time, probably less if I had been using the bookmarked PDF instead of a physical book. Meh. I’m not in that much of a hurry. All in all the process took about 15 minutes doing it the slightly harder way. If this was a new character for an upcoming game session, I don’t think what would slow us down much.
The 2024 version of the Ampersand game 5E character creation takes probably ten times as long, and even with the fancy website it tends to drag with the hundreds of options. Then you have a superheroic character who’s likely not to die… ever. All those cool abilities and powers make it so high fantasy that it’s basically a matter of choosing which class feature, spell, feat, or item will zap the bad guys hardest.
But that’s not all.
Okay, Dragonbane characters are fast to build and easy to play compared to a lot of other fantasy RPGs. The Ampersand Game 2024 5E character that took an hour to make and requires either an online database or flipping through a 400+ page rulebook is only going to see maybe a dozen play sessions before the campaign ends.
The Dragonbane character might die. The game’s action economy and combat can be pretty brutal. Tyrendelia only has 13 Hit Points. A lot of weapons do two dice worth of damage. The same can be said for monster attacks. In-character decisions are meaningful in and out of combat because one “oops” and a couple of failed death saves might mean returning to character generation. Resurrection is possible, but highly unlikely.
We’ll get more into the Dragonbane combat rules elsewhere. It makes a game more exhilarating when character death is on the table. It’s more exciting when the decisions mean something. It’s also cool knowing that if the character survives they can learn new skills, add to existing ones, or even gain a Heroic Ability for their trouble.
My goal in life is to have as many sessions of Dragonbane as humanly possible. I never have to worry as a GM that my campaign is going to fizzle out because the characters are too powerful. One advantage Dragonbane has over almost every other system is that the character’s hit points are probably not going up or not going up by much.
Waitaminute! Whaddya mean my character could die?
Dragonbane combat can be a bit gritty, crunchy, and sometimes squishy. It’s usually pretty fast and sometimes deadly for characters and even beloved NPCs. That would almost be enough to scare some players away from the game. That’s kinda the opposite message we want to send, right?
That’s actually a hidden advantage of games such as Dragonbane. Think of the epic stories that will be told if Tyrendelia the Forest Fox and her erstwhile companions not only survive but save the forest from a rampaging Manticore or Fire Demon. Our huntress might have been brought to the very brink of death more than once and recovered to save the day.
I find this sort of gameplay preferable to being nigh invulnerable at Level 1 and slaying full on dragons, if one is lucky enough to encounter them in that game, by Level 3 or so. Yes, it’s fun at first, but then it starts to get kinda boring.
Call me old fashioned, but I like it when my tabletop roleplaying experience at least presents a challenge. If I want to play a game with superheroes, I’ll pull out ICONS, Marvel, or Power Rangers RPG. If the characters don’t have stakes in the game, wagering their lives vs a stack of loot and glory, what are we doing? Why are we playing these games?
It’s your style of play that matters most.
Me, I like my games a little crunchy and slightly dangerous for the characters. Some people prefer a cozy game about baristas and best friends hanging out in a coffee shop together. Still others prefer gritty realism and excruciating record keeping in their games. It’s all relative.
Long time followers of this blog know that I’m overwhelmingly in favor of whatever works best for you and your group. It’s not up to me or any other random old dude on the Internet. Whatever game you find to be most fun- run with it. Fun is always the best way to go.
If you want a campaign that trudges to an eventual early conclusion at Level 7 or 10, out of 20, that’s cool. I’ve been in several. Heck, I’ve run more than a few.
However, if you want a game that continues to put forth value for your time and player dollar, please believe me when I say Dragonbane is the way to go. Feel free to explore around. There are literally dozens of fantasy RPGs coming out in the next couple of years. They’ve all got their merits and flaws. I just happened to have found one, (actually five or six,) that make me extremely happy. So many games, so little time.
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 