Yesterday’s DCC session left me thinking. I like the game a lot, but as I’ve said before I also find it full of flaws. Now, these flaws might be the exact reason someone else digs it, but for me some of the design gets in the way of enjoyment.
First, there’s the skill inflation that i’ve grown to hate during long d20 campaigns. To me, any bonus that’s larger than say +5 or -5 bereaves the game of its random-induced fun. Also, large bonuses also pave the road to increasing DCs i.e. that the DC/AC/target number is set so high, in order to provide a challenge for the fighter/specialist, that none of the other characters stand a chance.
Second, there’s the charts. Now I love charts as much as the next guy, but to me some of them are just downright dumb whereas others aren’t fully thought through. Like the mercurial magic: you roll a d% and add Luck modifier times 10 (so, if you have a luck modifier of +1 you’d roll d%+10). This, you do for all your spells. Now the problem is that at first level you get like four spells, so you roll the chart four times, but the chart has “only” a hundred entries. Meaning, of course, that a wizard with a modifier of two or more will be very likely to roll 100 producing the bland outcome “roll again twice, but with 4d20+(luck*10)”. Which, just as much of course, will trend heavily around 40 – 60 producing the thought provocing “nothing special happens” in doubles.
I am also not a big fan of the disapproval chart. Don’t get me twisted, i love the idea of disapproval just as i love the idea of mercurial magic. But once again, there’re problems with the variation that makes the chart significantly less fun to use the third time on.
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So, yea. Yesterday. What was I thinking?
Well, let me first say that I’m not in anyway from an OS-environment. Most swedes aren’t. So the ideas that seem neat to me, might be absurd to you. It’s the circle of life kind of stuff.
But what i really was thinking of was this: crits and magics.
As for crits, it occurred to me that the idea of the crit-chart is to provide graphic detail, damage and make the scene change. You knock someone prone, they get dizzy and ATK is halved. Stuff like that. Problem is, many of these results feel underwhelming or irrelevant. Your dolm pudding is beyond the concept of “prone”, the skeleton wouldn’t get dizzy. So you roll, get a result that’s no good, and have to wing it anyway.
Idea:
– The crit die is not a die you roll on a chart, it’s a die for extra damage. Adjust appropriately.
– Special effects (such as prone, blinded, whatever) are properties of the monster. Like a quick time-event in a videogame. This way, your monster could read something like this “Ratkan the Giantess. Atk +2 (1d8) AC 13/7 HP 43, Fort +2. crit: Tendon! Falls over, dealing d4 damage (ref saves).”
– So the logic would be this: the creature loses one of it’s advantages, temporarily or permanently, but something potentially bad happens. For the dolm pudding, it could become visible (a bonus) but it’s terrible appearance could force everyone to check for paralysis.
– OR, if the special effects-concept seem dumb, just let the player describe a deed of arms.
As for magic, I’m very much in favor of the whole “the effects may vary”-business. But, if you’re a magician, it’s also a bit absurd when you have no idea what your spell is gonna do.
Idea:
-Each spell has five degrees of success.
– For a normal spell, they would be like this.
21+ You fucking nailed it. You do it, and THEN SOME. Apart from the effect, you may narrate some other boon thats related to the spell, e.g. your fireball becomes a wall of fire.
16+ Good job. Your spell does what it as suppsed to do, no more, no less. Eg. your fireball does 1d6 damage.
11+ Ok, but wait a minute. You do it, but your spell has some unforseen adverse effect. The GM gets to narrate some ill or bizarre side effect. E.g. your fireball does 1d6 damage, but now your robe’s on fire.
10- Failure, lost. Some quirk may appear e.g. a fire bug instead of a fireball.
So that’s four. The fifth is the disaster, misfire & corruption. But it has to do with the raise.
– The raise is how much your wizard is willing to risk. You must always raise at least one to cast a spell. You add your raise to the die roll, so if you’d raise 1 you’d roll a d20+1. If you raise 15, you’d roll a d20+15.
– The disaster happens if your unmodified die roll is less than, or equal to, your raise. So if your raise is 1, disaster strikes on a natural 1. If you raise 15, you suffer disasterous side effects on a natural 1 through 15.
Now, remember i wrote that for a normal spell the thresholds would be 11/16/21. You may subtract your personality mod from those target numbers. So with a personality of +2, your thresholds would instead be 9/14/19. Calculate the numbers and write them down on your sheet for further reference.