The Chosen One
2021-01-21An optional game mod for D&D 5e, in which you run exactly 1 character, but can deal with a normal party’s worth of encounter.
y tho
Some of us folks play #ttrpgs one on one, for example with our significant otters.
Overview
Pick 4 classes and build a character who has the abilities from all 4.
Lore
You’re ✨The Fucking Chosen One✨. That probably has some consequences for the way the story will be structured.
You’ll also want to figure out what chose you. There are 3 basic directions here. As with everything else here, it’ll be up to both you and the DM to figure out how best this’ll work.
- chosen by a single god
- chosen by multiple gods
- chosen by the cosmos
Try to make sure the classes make sense for the thing that chose you. Don’t build a conquest paladin for a god of peace and nature. use ya 🧠.
Rules
- Pick 4 classes
- all classes level up at the same time
- One set of stats
- roll 4 stat brackets, or otherwise optimize the stats
- One set of skills
- First, figure out what skills are available to you from all 4 classes.
- Second, total up how many skill proficiencies you get for all 4 classes.
- Pick ya skills.
- All class abilities
- Basically as per the gestalt rules from 3.5
- You get the best version of any given overlapped feature.
- Spells are all tallied separately, and you’ll have separate saves & attack bonuses for each spellcasting class
- All ASIs
- yes, you get to pick 4 ASIs every 4 levels, lol.
- your DM may want to decide that it’s ok for you to break the 20 glass ceiling.
- feats also viable as replacements, but be careful of making things to complex
- yes, you get to pick 4 ASIs every 4 levels, lol.
- One background1
- All proficiencies for each class
- One sub-turn per class
- You pick the order of the turns
- You can only use actions from that class on that turn
- includes movement2 & bonus actions
- preserves action economy
- All equipment, but sell anything you don’t need or want
- Build encounters & select mons as usual
Tips
- use color-coded turn tokens
- Avoid mixed-type paths, like Eldritch Knight & Arcane Trickster, because they make things more complicated.
- instead, try to find 4 focused classes.
- Use a notebook. Write your own CS. Draw lines with pen, write stats with pencil. Stay organized.
- Write down your actions by action type.
- Write out plausile combos ahead of time
- figure out all the ins and outs of this shit ahead of time. Don’t wait for later to have an argument3
Notes
will be edited as our test campaign goes
- The action economy isn’t exactly preserved: if the single Chosen One takes enough damage to KO the weakest class, they don’t actually lose those actions the way the party would with 4 PCs.
- Some hysterical combos are possible, and encouraged.
- Taking rogue is a riot. Move Move Move Move, bonus action to dash. Bye yall.
- You’ll probably find that some combos don’t quite work the way you’d want. You can’t Smite+Sneak Attack, for example, because those both happen on separate sub-turns.4
- Also remember that some things have extraneous limits on them: Sneak Attack for example can ONLY happen once per turn, for example.
Um
So I don’t really know what else to say about this thing yet. We haven’t run it much, and we’ll probably revise this post when we encounter more problems, but for now, I guess, like, try it?
And tell us how it went on Discord