Olde Swords Reign: The Complete Walkthrough

Want to know exactly what’s in Olde Swords Reign before you commit? Here’s the full walkthrough.

What Makes OSWR Different

Olde Swords Reign is built on the 5e SRD, so if you know 5e, you’ll know where everything is. But it plays completely differently. It’s faster, deadlier, and less about character sheet optimisation.

The key changes:

• Subclasses are gone. Four base classes with feats let you build anything.
• Stops at level 12. This is a game of adventurers, not superheroes.
• Skills are gone. Your background actually matters - apply proficiency to anything that makes sense.
• DCs are words. Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard. You speak in language, not numbers.
• All monsters use d8 hit dice. Creating and running them becomes trivially easy.

Character Creation

Roll 3d6 for stats. Down the line if you’re brave - your first roll is Strength, second is Dexterity, and so on. Take that option and I’ll give you a feat to start.

Four races. Four classes: Cleric (d6 hit die), Fighter, Expert (replaces Thief), and Magic User (d4 hit die).

The average hit point change is sneaky important. In standard 5e, taking the average is statistically better than rolling. I changed that. The average is now the actual average - not rounded up. So a Magic User can take 2 HP or roll their d4. Suddenly rolling feels worth the risk.

The Expert Class

This replaced the Thief. When we played, assassins and thieves had so much overlap it felt redundant. The Expert lets you build anything - traditional thief, assassin, con artist, bard-type characters.

Combined with multiclassing, you can create literally any character concept. Players love that they’re not locked into a predetermined path.

Feats and Hindrances

Feats are optional, but we always use them. Fighters and Experts get new feats at the same levels casters get new spells - so martial characters don’t feel like they’re stagnating.

Hindrances are where it gets fun. Players were unsure at first, but now they love them. Roll a hindrance at character creation? Take a free feat.

We’ve had an assassin who was a coward - every combat he had to roll, and on a fail he’d hide for several rounds. The other players had no idea. We’ve had a magic user librarian addicted to book binding glue. These broken characters are infinitely more interesting to play.

Backgrounds Over Skills

Twenty backgrounds replace the skill system. If you’re a Barbarian, you’re proficient in wilderness exploration, hunting, tracking - anything you can reasonably argue fits your background.

Your background suddenly matters. Who your character was before adventuring affects what they can do now. Players engage with their backstory because it has mechanical weight.

Combat and Resting

No bonus actions. Combat moves fast.

The rest system is different:

• Breather (1 turn after combat): Use a provision, roll d4 + CON for HP. This lets you push deep into dungeons.
• Short Rest (8 hours): Roll hit dice twice, regain spells.
• Long Rest (1d4+1 days in safety): Full recovery.

Provisions replace rations, water, and bandages in one abstracted resource. It’s simple and it works.

Wilderness Exploration

A complete system using “watches” - 4-hour blocks that make hex crawling actually interesting. There’s a full example in Appendix B walking through a 24-hour period.

Navigation, foraging, hunting, getting lost - all based on the same Easy/Normal/Hard DC system. Players make meaningful choices about how to spend their time.

Monsters and XP

Every monster uses d8 hit dice. The hit die tells you everything: to-hit bonus, saving throw DCs, proficiency bonus. A 2 HD monster is +2 to hit. Simple.

A white dragon has 53-74 hit points. Your players have fewer hit points too. Everything is killable - and everything can kill you. Strategy matters.

XP comes from treasure, not murder. You can kill stuff for XP, but finding treasure and getting it to safety is worth more. This pushes creative problem-solving over combat.

The Bottom Line

OSWR takes the familiarity of 5e and strips it back to what makes old-school play sing. Fast combat, meaningful choices, dangerous adventures, interesting characters.

It’s a toolkit. Use what you want, ignore what you don’t. Nearly everything here is compatible with 5e if you want to cherry-pick.

Get it. Olde Swords Reign