C&C for New Schoolers

[TheFailedSave]

Hello!

I have two reliable players who are looking for an old school play experience but are only familiar with newer games. Castles and Crusades came to mind quickly as a good choice for them as it supports the play style sought without some of the old cruft the actual older game possess.

The issue is that I only have those two players for this campaign. I was wondering if anybody saw any issues with me using Sine Nomine's one player rules with C&C. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114 ... olo-Heroes. They are designed for B/X but I can't find any logical reason why they shouldn't work here also. They are designed for one player, but I could easily increase the monster count to handle two I suspect. Do you see any snags I missed?

Unrelated question: I was wondering in instead of setting prime attribute difficulty number at 12 if instead you could just roll two dice like in 5th edition D&D "advantage"? I think that rolling 2d20 and keeping the best works out kind of like a soft +5 bonus. It seems like this would provide similar results but offer the newer game feel my players are used to. I could be completely wrong, though. Any insight?

Thanks!

[joneshoward]

I'm a big fan of Sine Nomine. Kevin Crawford puts amazing products together. Unfortunately, I'm away from home so I can't refer to the direct page, but somewhere near the front in Scarlet Heroes it says that yes, two players can be used in the system without having to change anything about the way it runs. If you have more than that, though, the solo heroes rules don't work as well.

I've never played 5th Edition, though I got to review the books. I'd suggest that if they're already open to trying a new system that you simply use the system as designed. Might be easier for you and them both. Good luck!

[Buttmonkey]

I used the solo play rules from Scarlet Heroes (I believe the Solo Heroes rules you linked to are an abbreviated version of the Scarlet Heroes rulebook) for a session when only one of my players could make it. He played a barbarian. The rules worked really, really well with C&C. I'm not sure how effective they would be if the PC were a wizard, but it's fantastic with fighter-types. If you play with 2 PCs, you're going to need to throw a lot of monsters at them to keep up with their combined power.

I've played a lot of C&C sessions with 2 PCs and some lower-level NPC hirelings quite successfully.

Using 5E's advantage mechanic would not adequately substitute for a lower challenge base for primes. The problem comes when the challenge level is high relative to the PC's level. For example, if a 1st level PC with no attribute bonuses attempts something with a 5 challenge level, the PC is going to need to roll a 22 (18 +5 -1) to succeed. That can't happen if the PC is taking the higher of 2 d20 rolls. On the other hand, if the PC gets a challenge base of 12 instead of taking advantage, the PC has to roll a 16 or better. The PC may only get one d20 roll, but at least there is a mathematical chance of success.