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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/Bitter-Masterpiece71 on 2025-06-29 17:20:26+00:00.

While tinkering w/ my own game- or just a character creation system, at this point- I’ve discovered what I think is the ideal trio of basic archetypes for old-school games (I’ve seen this discussion and wanted to thro my hat into the ring). They are:

Barbarian

Ranger

Mage

Barbarians- namely traditional Conans- are just plainly what they are. On paper, they’ve no business adventuring- at least not in High(er) Fantasy. And yet, here he is, manhandling the Lich like he’s got plot armor. This is because he’s not just a dumb brute- Hel, even the movie version of Conan made him worlds more intelligent than the average 5E Barb- but I digress

Rangers, are a bit more at home on an adventurer. Your Aragorns, Geralts, and insert-Belmont-here. If there’s any lengthy Outdoor Survival on your journey, you’ll need one or two of these. They hunt monsters, tame wild horses/horse-analogues for free mounts, and probably also make the food and potions

Mages are the bread-and-butter of Fantasy, in most cases. If you want to gauge how High the Fantasy is, see what the Wizard does. If you want them to have more verstility or belong in a Lower Fantasy world, you could swap in some language skills and call them the Scholar, instead. But there’s almost always some version of them

Yeah, idk where else to go w/ this- it’s just my thoughts on the matter