Knave

Overview

Knave is a stripped-down fantasy chassis for running old-school adventures without classes. Its strongest design move is that almost everything important is routed through the six abilities: attacks, saves, defenses, inventory capacity, henchmen limits, and spellcasting opposition. The result is a rules-light game that stays compatible with OSR content while making character identity primarily a matter of equipment and carried magic.

Core Chassis

No classes: every PC is a generic adventurer whose party role comes from gear loadout rather than locked advancement tracks.
Abilities as unified engine: each ability has a bonus and a defense, with the defense always equal to bonus plus 10.
Save-first resolution: risky actions are handled by adding the relevant bonus to a d20 and trying to beat 15, or an opposing defense in contests.
Slot inventory: Constitution defense is also inventory capacity, which makes encumbrance and character build the same system.
Copper standard: pricing assumes copper pennies as baseline currency, useful when you want finer-grained economy play.

This makes Knave useful as a reference point for classless OSR design because it preserves familiar fantasy procedures while collapsing a lot of subsystem sprawl into a single consistent framework.

Character Creation

Ability Generation

For each ability, roll 3d6 in order. The lowest die becomes the ability bonus, then add 10 to get the ability defense. After rolling, the player may swap one pair of abilities.

This produces a clean ten-point bonus scale over time. On level-up, three chosen abilities improve by 1 point each, up to 20 or +10.

Starting Package

Every PC starts with:

2 days of rations
1 chosen weapon
Random armor and helmet or shield
2 rolls on dungeoneering gear
1 roll each on two general gear tables

The gear tables are not decorative. They are the main way the game gets new characters into play quickly while still producing distinct capability profiles.

Traits And Background

Knave includes d20 tables for physique, face, skin, hair, clothing, virtue, vice, speech, and background, plus a d20 misfortune list and a simple Law or Neutrality or Chaos alignment table. These tables do two jobs well:

They accelerate replacement character generation in high-lethality play.
They create weird combinations that feel more like discovered adventurers than carefully optimized builds.

Inventory And Loadout Identity

Inventory is central rather than auxiliary.

Item slots equal Constitution defense.
Most items take 1 slot.
Bulky items such as heavier weapons and armor take more.
100 coins fit in 1 slot.
A slot is roughly 5 pounds as a guideline.

Because spellbooks, armor, tools, rations, and loot all compete for the same limited space, Knave turns inventory into build choice. A caster is literally someone who carries more books. A front-liner is someone who gives up flexibility for armor and heavier weapons. This is one of the main reasons the classless chassis works.

Resolution Model

Ability Uses

Knave assigns clear jobs to each stat:

Strength: melee attacks and raw force.
Dexterity: agility, balance, climbing, sneaking.
Constitution: poison, sickness, endurance, healing support, carrying capacity.
Intelligence: magic use, lore, crafting, precise manual work.
Wisdom: ranged attacks, perception, tracking, navigation.
Charisma: persuasion, deception, intimidation, social leverage, and henchmen count.

This broad stat coverage matters because it prevents the mental stats from becoming dead weight in a low-complexity game.

Saves And Opposed Saves

The standard save is:

$$d20 + ability\ bonus > 15$$

Opposed actions instead target the relevant defense score. That means one side rolls and tries to exceed the other side's defense rather than both sides rolling.

This supports two play styles equally well:

traditional mixed rolling
player-facing-only resolution

Advantage And Disadvantage

Knave uses the standard 2d20 keep best or worst model. The rules explicitly position this as a convenience layer over direct modifiers.

Combat Procedure

Round Structure

Roll group initiative each round on d6.
1-3: enemies act first.
4-6: PCs act first.
On a turn, a character may move and take one action.

The round-by-round reroll is important. It keeps combat unstable and preserves the possibility of one side acting twice in succession, which increases danger without extra rules.

Attacks

Melee attacks use Strength bonus.
Ranged attacks use Wisdom bonus.
Roll d20 plus bonus and beat armor defense.
Alternatively, the defender may roll armor bonus against the attacker's relevant ability defense.

Weapon choice matters through damage die and situational fit. The rules explicitly suggest granting an extra damage die when a weapon is ideal against a target, such as blunt weapons against skeletons.

Stunts And Tactical Edge

Stunts such as shoves, trips, disarms, and sunders are resolved as opposed saves. This keeps the combat layer light while still allowing tactical play.

If a combatant has a meaningful advantage because the target is unaware, unbalanced, or otherwise compromised, they may either:

take advantage on the attack or stunt roll, or
make both an attack and a stunt in the same round

That tradeoff is one of the better small rules in the game because it turns tactical setup into real action economy.

Criticals And Gear Degradation

Critical results do two things:

deal an extra damage die
reduce weapon or armor quality by 1

At 0 quality the item is destroyed, and each quality point costs 10% of the item's value to repair. This folds equipment wear into the normal pressure loop alongside torches, hit points, and spellbooks.

Morale

Monsters and NPCs usually have morale 5 to 9 and test on 2d6 when the fight turns worse than expected. Triggers include half the group going down, losing a leader, or a lone monster dropping below half HP.

This is important because Knave stays compatible with classic OSR assumptions rather than drifting into last-hitpoint combat.

Healing, Monsters, And Advancement

Recovery

After a meal and full night's rest, recover d8 plus Constitution bonus HP.
Resting at a safe haven restores all lost HP.

Constitution does not inflate maximum HP directly, so its recovery bonus matters more over expedition time.

Monster Conversion

Knave is intentionally conversion-light:

treat monster HD as d8s
ascending AC becomes armor defense directly
descending AC converts via 19 or 20 minus AC depending on source edition
attack bonus is retained, or defaults to HD if absent
morale remains as written
monster ability bonuses default to level or HD

This makes Knave a strong adapter system when you want to run existing modules without spending time re-statting.

Advancement

1000 XP per level
default objective guidance: 50 low-risk, 100 moderate-risk, 200 high-risk accomplishments
on level-up, reroll total HP by rolling a number of d8s equal to the new level, with a minimum increase of 1 if the result is worse than the old maximum
raise three different abilities by 1

The raw text also explicitly endorses swapping in milestone or XP-for-coin advancement, which reinforces Knave's role as toolkit rather than doctrine.

Magic Model

Knave's spellcasting is built around physical books rather than abstract spell slots.

PCs may cast spells of their level or lower.
Each spellbook contains exactly one spell.
Each spellbook may be used once per day.
Spellbooks take item slots and must be held in both hands and read aloud.
PCs cannot create or copy spellbooks by default; they must find or steal them.

This does several things at once:

ties magical breadth directly to inventory pressure
turns spells into treasure rather than only class progression
makes high-level books visible high-value contraband in the fiction

When a spell allows a save, the usual approach is opposed Intelligence versus the defender's relevant stat, such as Dexterity for attack evasion or Intelligence for mind-affecting magic.

Level-Less Spell Option

Knave also includes a 100-spell level-less list where spell effects scale with caster level. The list ranges from utility effects such as Adhere, Knock, and Telekinesis to reality-warping options such as Gate, Time Rush, and Body Swap.

The practical value of this list is not just its size. It demonstrates a strong design pattern for open-ended magic:

broad verbs instead of tightly bounded spell templates
scaling via level variable L
concise but high-improvisation effect text

Why It Is Useful

It is one of the clearest examples of classless OSR design that still feels recognizably D&D-adjacent.
It provides a clean reference for slot encumbrance as both logistics layer and character-expression layer.
It is easy to hack because the rules are internally consistent and the raw text includes designer commentary.
It is a strong baseline for comparing other minimalist fantasy systems against more traditional B/X structures.

Focus

This article covers the raw Knave rules text added to this wiki.

Core Takeaways

Classless chassis where party role is largely defined by carried equipment.
Six standard abilities are retained and used as the core resolution backbone.
Character setup is intentionally fast, with random starting gear support.
Slot-based encumbrance is central rather than optional.
Magic support is broad (including a 100-spell list) without locking play into fixed class structures.

Mechanical Profile

Ability model: STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA.
Durability model: HP plus armor defense.
Character differentiation: no classes; inventory and equipment choices create specialization.
Logistics pressure: inventory slots tied to Constitution defense.
OSR interoperability intent: source explicitly emphasizes compatibility with existing OSR adventures and bestiaries.

Design Use

Useful as a baseline for classless OSR comparisons when evaluating whether D&D-like features are preserved through equipment and procedure rather than class scaffolding.