Deck of Heroes is a very simple project with a specific purpose. Provide a deck of pregenerated first level characters for D&D5e. Of course, not everyone needs to have two dozen prêt-à-porter adventurers. But to those who need it, this is an offer to be taken seriously. The author, Adrian Sanjuan, is on his first project, but he shows clear ideas as a crowdfunding veteran. The funding threshold is a bit high, but we must not be discouraged if we want to make the project a reality. Is it the deck for you? Let’s find out!
Flip the card and play!
The conditions of use are simple: do you want to set up a session on the fly to make D&D known to interested friends? Is there an adventure to try and you need heroes on the fly to start playing without wasting time? Are you already late in preparing a one-shot for an event and you have no time to generate characters?
These are all examples in which a bunch of pregenerated characters would be very convenient.
But how is this Deck of Heroes made?
These are tarot-sized cards, 70mm by 120mm, 320 gsm. On one side there is an illustration and a quote from the character to give an idea of the characterization, on the back all the basic information and statistics are clearly printed with the addition of a distinctive feature that can stimulate interpretation and storytelling. On the bottom there are the figures of the necessary dice to keep them close at hand.
Not only statistics!
It is a very nice idea to slide a bunch of illustrations in your hands and choose who you will play in the following hours. If you need to advance the characters or transport them in a real campaign for each card there is the official character sheet in digital format.
In addition, there are six double-sided cards in the deck with the list of cantrips of all the six basic classes that cast spells at the first level on one side and the spells of the first level on the other. Moreover there are two cards that summarize D&D5e main terms and rules.
The choice on which races and classes to insert in the deck was decided based on statistics on what is most commonly played (we took a cue to talk about it a short time ago in one of our post) and, for legal issues, the choice was limited to races, classes and spells included in the SRD5 (the Open Game Lycense).
How much is a Deck of Heroes?
Pledges are simple. The digital version costs £ 10 (around € 12) and it is expected to be delivered by the end of the year. A physical copy instead costs £ 15 (about € 18) and would be expected (at least) for June 2021. Any strech goals would unlock a greater number of cards. Shipping costs are excluded but cheap: £ 5 (around € 6) for the European Union and £ 8 (around € 10) for the rest of the world.