Premise
A standard, OSR fantasy game, with a great deal of character customization.
Core Mechanics
Rolls use 1d20, aiming to go above a target number.
Difficulty follows a general scale of increments of three for scaling difficulty. (1, 3, 6, 9, etc)
If a character has Expertise in a particular action, they gain a 50% bonus from the relevant attribute. (Multiply it by 1.5)
In combat, damage taken accumulates, making Death Saving throws much harder. EP can be used to negate incoming damage, and prevent it from increasing the value of the death save that character needs to make.
Character Creation
Pick your species, gain its stats. Pick a background. Gain Attributes (special abilities) based on your stats. You gain one Attribute for every stat point above 2 your have. (e.g. a Constitution of 4 will give you 2 Constitution based Attributes)
Your EP is equal to [(Con x 5) + (Str x 2) + (Dex x 2)]
What It Does Interestingly
In addition to the standard fantasy fare, it has a few more outlandish species to choose from. Two such examples are the Demor and Neurocite. Demor are beings that exist between both life and death, and the Neurocite are literal brain parasites.
Experience is gained by succeeding on rolls, and improves the relevant stat to that roll. Meaning a character can improve simply by doing what they normally would, without needing to resort to becoming a murderous vagrant.
Potential Pitfalls
There's quite a few unusual design choices, such as how Awareness, the skill of noticing things, is based on a character's Constitution.
EP scales much faster than damage output, so fights to the death are unlikely, or will take an immense amount of time. It may be worthwhile to design encounters so that characters who face imminent danger (i.e. low EP) would be able to retreat and fight another day.
Sections to Pay Attention To
The Attribute List has some wild entries at high levels; such as Constitution allowing a character to literally become a god. Also, as an OSR game, it has some very specific, detailed rulings. (E.g. starvation.)
Final Thoughts
A low frills take on swords and sorcery fantasy. It at once doesn't deviate too much from familiar territory, but takes meaningful steps when it does. Conflict need not be to the death, and there's several statistics that contribute to survivability. Most importantly, killing is not necessary for character improvement.
