Healing Hands - A DCC Spell for Wizards

Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Crawl Classics and most other systems that follow in (A)DnD's footsteps have a strong cut between arcane and divine magic. For most players, especially early on, the biggest difference will be:"wizards can't heal. Clerics can". 

Arcane healing has been a stable of fantasy literature, but is still amiss in many of my favorite role playing games. While there are many good reasons to keep wizards from healing their allies, i have changed this for my DCC games. I wanted to give the wizard a way of healing his comrades and reworked the lay on hands ability from the cleric into a level 1 spell. Go have a look at

Healing Touch

The Reasoning behind this is quite simple. I am not fond of the game feel the cleric provides. Healing is too easy and i strongly dislike how most Fantasy games deal with the restoration of hit points. This version of lay on hands discourages wizards from constantly healing their allies up to max hp and the fear of loosing the spell makes it more of a helpful tool and less of a character defining core ability

I don't want to go too deep into the details of why i dislike the clerical healing ability in it's current state. It has been in so many games and there is a good reason. It's not objectively bad, just not befitting of my personal taste. Yes. There are changes to lay on hands. The alignment reliability is gone and it gets worse with every attempt. Those are all intentional designs to better fit a more scholarly approach to healing spells.

So the final question is: "who will be interested in such a spell?". Not everyone likes the cleric and the concept of divine magic. I can't recall which episode of Spellburn discussed this topic, but a suggestion was to drop the cleric class in it's entirety and treat gods as patrons. This spell makes it easier to adapt this kind of play.

I am in the process of completely reworking my current campaign setting for DCC and i want to get rid of clerics in the process and replace them with a completely new class. Both, the rework and the class will soon make their way to this blog. Roleplaying currently takes a backseat. While i run many convention games i am not playing much within my home group. 

Not fantasy wise at least. I recently started a semi-open Traveller campaign for my local gaming meet up and am in the preparation for running the dark of hot spring island. Not sure if any of those will find their way onto this blog. 

Furthermore i got back into tabletop gaming within the last half year. I just love the system and setting of infinity and starting over with it has been a blast. This blog has never been designed to be a exclusive DCC or role playing blog, so maybe some things will find their way here. But i will keep to the style of this blog and won't post any pictures of miniatures. Maybe scenarios or the rule set i work on for a upcoming campaign (that might or might not happen). If you like miniatures though, check out A butterfly's hobby tally. This blog belongs to a close friend of mine who is one of my infinity colleagues and has been roleplaying with me since more than ten years ago.

This post has kind of dissolved into banter, but don't worry. I won't post until i have something to show for it.

Connecting your Characters

At the core of most roleplaying experiences are the characters. When playing, the characters not only bond with the world and the story they are involved in, but with each other. Those bonds form the dynamics between the group and influence most of the experience. Not all of these connections have to be of positive nature. Tension within the group can lead to great roleplaying.

But there is not always enough time to forge those connections. In a small con-game or your typical one-shot session you normally don't have any relationships between the characters. While many players will forge them quite fast or might try to impose them upon their characters and the GM to make play more intriguing. All you need is a good idea.

When starting out running DCC i was looking for a way to easily connect 0-level characters, as a simple relationship between those peasants will help players forge more roleplaying opportunities, especially if they are not comfortable with the Funnel concept. I came up with a random Table to determine relationships and i have used it many times since. Not only for DCC but for many of my one shot sessions.

Now, over a year later, i reforged this table and turned it from a d66 into a d50 Table. I also translated it from German into English and cleaned up some entries that just didn't work out. So here i present to you. Character connections.

If the link is not working try this one: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DwxvXadzhIrC4bGIE0g8e0c9CPdM8AGo

This Table will not only help to inspire one shot parties but can also  be used in the creative process of forging new places and connecting the characters that live there. Just give it a try!

I'm working on many things currently. I posted a second elf class and will soon give the dwarf and halfling a similar treatment. Also i am currently working on two DCC adventures one of which i will try to release on this blog, maybe as a new year present. Look out for it. I might manage to make two posts a month for a while.

So far and thanks for reading.

The Elven Strider - A DCC Character Class

You are an outsider to most. Growing up as an elf, a long living demi-human, whose ancient civilization indulges in crafts and arts, magic and mundane, your lack of connection to the arcane world ensured, that you never quite felt at home. Traversing the thick elven forests you found your fulfillment in the martial ways, training in combat and patience alike.

Today's post is about a new character class for DCC RPG

The elven Strider

[If the link does not work try this one: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZzOxw1JOwTl2vDziYnAUycg0GN_hKXzC]

Character classes are a stable of fantasy role playing games, ever since D&D introduced them into their game along with them. DCC uses a old school line-up of character classes and with those, classes and races are indistinguishable. Being a dwarf apparently is a full time job.

This system has many perks and one of them is streamlining characters and play as well as setting expectations to judges and other players. Character and personality in DCC are not about what is written on your character sheet, but what the character experiences and how the player expresses him, anyway.

I am normally not a fan of elves. I just don't want to play them most of the time. But DCC made quite interesting elves by combining them with patrons and making them into long living vessels for some of the most powerful entities out there. While i liked that concept i felt like i wanted to give elves another option. 

In the long run i am planning on giving all races (elves, dwarfs, halflings) a second class option, just to give their players some choice and make them compensate for the "wrong" stats better. I have not settled for a second dwarven and halfling class yet, especially as there are some amazing ones out there on the Internet and in Fanzines.

The elven strider is a elf whose focus lies more on physical and martial combat and who has only small arcane capabilities, granted through his patron. His defining class feature, the Aim Die came from a Discussion on G+ on a similar class. The Outlier by Nick Baran. Check it out. It's quite cool. I just wanted to have a combat capable class who does not use the deed die in the typical fashion and wanted to give it a unique spin. 

This is not the first character class i ever created. For this years Gongfarmers Almanach i wrote a Lycanthrope class. Feel free to check it out. I am quite proud of it. It can be found in 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac Volume #1. Huge thanks to my friend Maike Gerstenkorn who contributed the amazing Werewolf Artwork for the Front page of this class. 

Did you know that the consolidated Version is out? No? Go buy it! Its only printing and shipping costs. Literally the cheapest option possible. Gongfarmers Almanach 2018

Please feel free to leave any feedback for the classes, along with fun anecdotes that arise from playing them. I plan on writing a more general post on class systems and am even working on some exciting alternatives to use with DCC. Until then. Have a good time

 

When Magic goes critical - DCC Rules

Magic in Dungeon Crawl Classics is awesome. It really is. And one of the most fun aspects of magic is never knowing exactly what happens. Therefore DCC wizards are among the most fun classes to play in all of fantasy roleplaying. There is just one thing that has always bothered me.

One of the most important things about d20 Systems is, that when the dice come up with a 20, then something awesome happens. This is true for Wizards in DCC to some extent. The rules say that when rolling a natural 20 you get a even higher spell bonus than you already got. So you are incredibly likely to cast the best spell of your life. That's good. But not as fun as rolling a 20 for any other class can be.

To make this more fun for myself and my group i did the most DCC thing i could think off and crafted a new set of random table to roll on. Critical Tables for spells. All spell casting classes can use these tables to determine more awesome results should a natural 20 come up. The tables work incredibly similar to the way mundane critical hit tables work. 

Critical Magic

[If this link is not working try this one: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cLvLnwdeSFyaCSfz6qPVC2nTYe57vgDb]

Those tables have not yet been playtested extensively, but my players like them this far. Feel free to leave Feedback as a comment or on G+

I can't guarantee that I'll keep a bi-weekly update schedule for the next few weeks but I'll try my best. I am definitely not running out of ideas. Just out of time.

The obligatory house rule post.

As i started this blog i made a post about why i enjoy Dungeon Crawl Classics as much as i do. One of the points i made there was how easy it is to modify the DCC ruleset. I and many other judges out there made house rules to adjust the game to their personal preferences. I wanted to present some of my house rules for a long time and now i finally found the inspiration to do so.

This week the awesome Spellburn Podcast made an episode in which they talked about House rules in great depth and presented many suggestions. Go and listen to the episode if you have not done so already. It's a great one.

Two of the house rules presented here are already featured in the Spellburn episode but were heavily modified since then. I will discuss the reasoning behind every house rule and implications here. If you only want the crunch, then don't worry. I also posted all house rules as a PDF

OOC-DCC-Houserules

Attribute Checks

Instead of rolling 1d20 and adding the modifier of the corresponding attribute, players roll 1d20 and add the entire value of the attribute when making Skill and Attribute checks. All difficulties have to be adjusted by adding 10 to the DC.

Rolling the body is the only exception to this rule. You still need to roll under your luck attribute in order to succeed.

Reasoning

I never enjoyed rolling for attributes in d20 games. Big dice and small modifiers make your character and his stats feel irrelevant to the outcome of the roll. While DCC fixes this by rewarding creativity over dice rolling i still felt an urge to change the rulings.
My first attempt was, inspired by some AD&D and Cthulhu games i played in, making attribute checks by rolling under the attribute. While i liked it and still think it works fine this ruling had two major problems. First: Calculating Difficulties and factoring in modifiers is a mess. Second (as discussed in Spellburn): Rolling low is not fun. While i might disagree on the second one, the first one always bugged me.
This solution is mathematically equivalent to rolling under the attributes when it comes to probabilities of success. Also you don't have to house rule modifications. They apply per normal rules. Its still not that great to have a result of a 15 be "not that good", but i prefer it widely over a success difference of 15% between the weak wizard and the mighty warrior when it comes to strength checks.

Blocking with Shields

In addition to granting a AC Bonus shields can also be used to block any one melee attacks, which the character is aware of, even critical hits. The blocking of an attack has to be announced after the attack is rolled but before any damage or  critical rolls are made. The shield is destroyed by the attack and no damage is applied to the character.
Magical shields are not destroyed, they are knocked away, cut loose, stuck or otherwise made useless for the remaining encounter.

Shields can be used to attack, which uses the normal dual wielding rules except for dwarves.

New Equipment
Shield	Cost*	Damage**	AC Bonus	Check Penalty	Fumble †
Wooden Shield	20gp	1d3	+1	-2	+1d
Steel Shield	35gp	1d4	+2	-4	+1d
Tower Shield	80gp	1d6	+4	-6	+2d

* for use with base DCC. My Campaign Setting "Thireila" converts all costs from GP to SP
** If used to attack (f.e. by a dwarf using board and sword)
† In addition to any armor worn. 1d equals a step on the dice chain for armored fumbles d4-d8-d12-d16-d20-d24

Reasoning

 As i read through the hubris setting i found this rule and wanted to imply it into my game. The rule as i present were originally found in Crawl Issue 2 , which originally took them from the Trollsmyth blog. I made a way more complicated draft out of this, which allowed to block multiple attacks and tracked shield hit points. Damage overflow from shields could be applied to characters. It was a quite nice system i think. It just did not work for DCC. DCC is focused on actions and reactions, not on bookkeeping. Its inspiration is in heroic fantasy, where taking a hit to the shield is not a tactical choice but an act of desperation. This current draft encourages this epic style of play without complicating gameplay and the new shield types i included offer more choice for player characters.

Combat Actions

Charging grants a +2 bonus to damage (if the attack is successful) instead of the attack roll. As usual it also grants a -2 malus to the charging characters AC

A character may perform a reckless attack. This grants a +2 bonus to the attack roll and reduces the attacking characters AC by 2. This maneuver can be combined with a charge to get +2 to attack and damage at the cost of a -4 AC malus.

Reasoning

An attack performed with high momentum should be impactful. Charging should be awesome. In basic DnD and DCC a charge is just a way to get more reliable damage instead of a maneuver to get one hit of high damage. So i changed this around. But even in a normal fight one can recklessly go all out on the enemy. It won't put more force to your strike, but it will make it more likely to hit someone.
This grants more options in combat which are not hard to explain, don't need any specifications and help create more high risk situations initialized by players. The impact of this additional action will drop off towards higher levels as characters get more reliable results out of their class abilities so it will only increase choice for 0 or low levels characters. I have not yet play tested this enough to see if it makes it too easy for the characters, but mightier characters can easily be countered by mightier foes, right?

No Corruption and Fumble avoidance

Wizards can't burn luck to avoid corruption, Warriors can't burn luck to avoid fumbles.

Reasoning

Corruption is awesome but rare. And avoiding it with one single point of luck makes corruption so rare that its not even worth checking. But as i mentioned, corruption is awesome. So it should happen. Therefore should not be avoidable.
I gave the warrior the same treatment and made them not able to avoid fumbles. I just like rolling on tables okay? Maybe the warrior thing will get kicked out soon, who knows.