Old-School Essentials Reference Booklet

A quick reference for the most commonly used Old-School Essentials rules and tables.

• Game procedures: Summaries of the core rules of the game, including the procedures for dungeon, wilderness, and waterborne adventuring, and combat.
• Player characters: All tables pertaining to PCs, including ability score modifiers, saving throws, class skills, spell progression, and native languages.
• Downtime and equipment: Common PC activities between adventures, plus full equipment lists, including mounts, dogs, and vehicles.
• Monsters: Complete dungeon and wilderness encounter tables and monsters listed by Hit Dice.
  

Requires the Old-School Essentials core books.

2026 Update Printing

This updated 2026 printing has the following changes from the previous edition of the Reference Booklet:

• New cover art by Peter Mullen.
• Now includes full wilderness encounter tables.
• Minor rules errata for greater fidelity with the B/X core rules. (e.g. attacks from behind gain a +2 bonus.)
• Additional notes on weapon specialisation and multi-classing optional rules.
• Minor updates in line with the upcoming 2026 Update OSE core books. (e.g. revised secondary skills list closer to AD&D.)