DCC/Rules Summary

This campaign uses the 8th Edition Dungeon Crawl Classics ruleset with the occupations and classes of the Death Slaves of Eternity module.

Changes from regular DCC that are motivated by the Sword & Sorcery theme of the campaign (as opposed to "regular" house-rules) are noted using this icon.

Races
All characters are humans.

The Dwarf class is renamed Soldier. The Elf class is renamed Cultist. The Halfling class is renamed Raider.

Hit points per level
To minimize (but not eliminate) frustration due to bad die rolls for hit points, you gain one re-roll if you roll lower than the average for your hit die. The re-roll, however, is final.


 * Level-0 characters, Magi and Witches may re-roll their d4 on a 1 or 2.
 * Cultists, Raiders and Thieves may re-roll their d6 on a 1, 2 or 3.
 * Shamans may re-roll their d8 on a 1, 2, 3 or 4.
 * Soldiers may re-roll their d10 on a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
 * Warriors may re-roll their d12 on a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.

The re-roll is final (even if it is a 1). You can only use Luck to modify rolls for actions experienced by your character. Rolling for hit points is happening outside of the game fiction, and cannot be modified by Luck.

Remember to always apply your Stamina modifier to your rolled result. The DCC rule that a character earns a minimum of 1 hit point per character level remains in effect.

Birth Augur
Characters with a starting Luck modifier of zero have no Birth Augur.

Characters with a negative starting Luck modifier are encouraged to consider renaming their Augur to better represent the ill omen they were born under.

Txez0-8tlz6.png Gender

 * See DCC/Character Generation.


 * Strong brawny characters are more likely male than female (but all sizes and shapes do exist).
 * Adventurers are more likely male than female (unless you decide otherwise)
 * Monsters and men alike generally perceive males as bigger threats.
 * Female characters can be influenced through, and inspired by, Strength as well as Personality.

Skills
This summarizes the most common (non-Thief) skill checks used by the game from the section on Ability Scores over at the Character Generation page:


 * Climbing, intimidating, swimming, wrestling: Strength
 * Balancing, escaping, hiding, moving silently, performing, sleight of hand, tumbling: Agility
 * Bluffing, commanding, gossiping, impersonating, performing, persuading: Personality
 * Appraising, deciphering, knowing, spotting: Intelligence
 * Listening: Luck

Strength can be used to influence female characters. Personality may increase unarmored AC and speed up healing.

Equipment
Regular weapons are made out of iron, not steel. Metal armor is unusual and costly. However, for simplicity actual statistics remain unchanged. What this means is: simply reskin a steel longsword as an iron one. Reskin plate mail as shell mail. Etc.

To avoid having to minmax choice of weaponry: Warriors and Shamans may use a d8 damage die even if normally lower. This allows the character to keep using a familiar or thematic weapon without worrying it makes such a bad choice mechanically. Other weapon users such as Soldiers and Cultists do not get this benefit.

Shields
Warriors, Shamans, and Soldiers may sacrifice their shield (if they wield one) to reduce damage from an incoming attack to 1. For particularly massive attacks, the damage reducing is "half" only. The shield is permanently destroyed. If the shield is magical or otherwise indestructible, the player may instead elect to lose the use of the shield (and its AC bonus) for the remainder of the encounter (perhaps it is torn from the character's grip, or it becomes slippery with blood, or it is thoroughly entangled in an enemy's armor etc). After combat ends, the character recovers his shield.

The shield can't modify effects of critical hits.

Mercurial Magic
The core rules make, on average, four out of five spells you learn "mercurial" (=with strange side effects). I suggest casters are ensured to have at least one "standard" unmodified spell to make mercurial magic a bit more special. Also, less book-keeping.

The simplest rules proposal is that you may pick the "No change. The spell manifests as standard" result instead of rolling on the Mercurial Magic table for your very first spell generated as a new level 1 character. For every other spell, roll normally.

Some Mercurial effects fit Magi better than Witches or Cultists, and vice-versa. If your spell gains a random Mercurial effect you feel is a poor fit, you may re-roll. The re-roll is made unmodified by your Intelligence and is final.

Mercurial Shamans
Chaotic Shamans gain one Mercurial spell for each spell level. Roll on the table for the very first spell of each spell level (the Player's Choice spell).

Spellburn is imprecise

 * (rule from the Sheep and Sorcery blog)

You cannot easily control the exact amount of Spellburn. Instead of fine-tuning a precise amount of ability points to lose, assign one or more dice to each ability you wish to spellburn points from. The first die is d3, the next d4, then d5, d6 and so on. Then roll the dice you assigned to Strength, then the dice assigned to Agility, then Stamina.

You gain +1 to your spell check for each point lost. When you reach 0 in an ability you can't lose any more points. With 0 Strength or Agility you become incapable of movement. With 0 Stamina you fall unconscious (after resolving the spell).

So instead of being able to precisely lose 4 points from Agility, say, you would have to assign the d3 and d4 dice, perhaps. You could end up losing as much as 7 points, or only lose 2 points.

Exceptions
In some cases, imprecise Spellburn does not fit the relation between caster and Patron. Neutral Cultists and Shamans are the most likely to be given precise control over their Spellburn (making it work like in the rulebook). Few if any Magi or Witches ever gain that amount of control, however, and a Chaotic caster never can.

Spells Known
The way Spells Known work is changed for arcane casters (Magi, Witches, Cultists). These characters are limited by the number of spells they can memorize at the same time. This limit is what the rulebook names "Spells Known".

Characters can master more spells than they are able to memorize and use at any given time. Additional spells will have to be written down in some way (not limited to spellbooks - the specifics are left up to each character and magical tradition). These extra spells are generally not available for use during any given adventure.

Understand a Spell
The "learn a spell" check of the rulebook (page 315) is reused to be a general Spell Understanding check.

Whenever a character comes across a new spell (such as by finding a grimoire or enemy mage spellbook etc, defeating any protections or encryptions and so on) he may attempt to understand the spell.

The check consists of 1d20 plus his caster level plus his Intelligence modifier. The DC is 10 + spell level. If he succeeds, he understands the spell. This means he's able to reproduce it, write it down, cast it and so on. Roll for Mercurial to individualize the spell since no two mages understand each other's work exactly. If he fails, he cannot understand or use the spell. If the Judge is lenient, he can try again after gaining a level or after a year (etc). A character might want to try again even if he did understand the spell, if the Mercurial effect was particularly harsh.

The time needed to understand a spell (including the time to write down a copy in your spellbook or other spell storage medium) is one week per spell level. The Judge may still require additional effort, such as "a price paid" or similar per the rulebook. Otherwise this process is automatic.

Exceptions

 * Magi count Invoke Patron and Patron Bond as two spells for purposes of spells memorized.
 * Witches count Invoke Patron and Patron Bond as one spell for purposes of spells memorized.
 * Cultists count Invoke Patron and Patron Bond as zero spells for purposes of spells memorized.

Patron-specific spells can be cast through Invoke Patron. This usage does not count towards the limit on spells memorized. These spells can still be memorized normally and will count towards the limit in that case.

Any character (even warriors and thieves) can be granted knowledge of a spell by various means (supernatural gifts, magical effects, even curses). These gifts generally do not count towards the limit of spells memorized.

Casting spells from scrolls do not count towards the limit on spells memorized. This is consistent with the rules on page 373.

Txez0-8tlz6.png Non-magical healing

 * (these rules are adapted from the DCC Lankhmar setting to work without its 'fleeting luck' rule)

"Pure" Sword & Sorcery would not have easy access to any form of healing, and instead simply assume characters start each adventure at full hit points. This campaign is a "hybrid" approach, that does not change the original DCC ruleset too much. The Lay on Hands ability of Shamans (the DCC Cleric class) therefore remains, but new ways to heal "naturally" are introduced, hopefully freeing up the Shaman to do other things beside just heal their friends!

When this section refers to healing a hit die; roll your class hit die, add your level and apply your Stamina modifier. You heal that many hit points (minimum 1), up to your maximum.

The DCC rules for Bleeding Out, Recovering the Body, and Healing applies as normal (pages 93-94); the following three rules adds to the core rules. These additions only helps you heal hit point damage, not ability point damage.

Examine your wounds
Once per encounter in which you have suffered damage, you may spend your action to examine yourself and find your wounds weren't as bad as you feared. You heal a hit die.

You cannot examine your wounds before taking damage in an encounter. Once you have examined your wounds, you cannot do it again in that encounter, even if you suffer further damage.

The Judge is discouraged from penalizing a player who "forgets" to examine their character's wounds before an encounter ends. Assuming the player do remember their character is wounded before the next encounter begins, simply heal the hit die.

Recuperate
If you are able to complete a full turn just resting, you may spend 1 Stamina point or Luck point. You heal a hit die.

Thief and Raider abilities have no effect on the Recuperate activity.

This activity is repeatable (until you run out of ability points...)

Personality is good for morale
Any character with a positive modifier to Personality can inspire another character to regain their fighting spirit. This requires the pair to spend an evening in each other's company. For instance, carousing together.

The inspired character heals one d4 for every point of the inspiring character's Personality bonus in addition to the regular 1 hp for a good night's rest.

''Example: Lydia decides to spend the evening with Thrullgar, so that he can better protect her tomorrow. Her Personality 16 (+2) means Thrullgar heals 2d4+1 for that good night's rest.''

''If Thrullgar wants to inspire Lydia's morale, he would not be effective using Personality, since his Personality is only 6 (-1). However, since Lydia is female, Strength can be used in place of Personality. Thrullgar has 18 Strength (+3) and so Lydia would gain 3d4+1 hit points for a good night's rest after spending the evening in Thrullgar's company.''

''Note that or any given night, one character cannot both be inspiring and inspired at the same time. Either Thrullgar heals extra hit points, or Lydia does, but not both the same night.''

This activity is entirely voluntary (for both parties involved). In fact, coaxing or pestering a character into helping you pretty much ruins the mood (consider their modifier to be zero for that evening)...

Restoratives
There exists special or exotic draughts that effectively act as if they have a Personality score. You can quite literally spend your evening in the company of a bottle to heal your wounds!

Starting Potion
Each player (not character) is given a magic Potion by the Judge. As you might expect, it is single-use only. Do not expect to ever be given more.

Until the player decides to determine which character holds the potion, this remains undetermined. One character holds the Potion, you just don't need to determine who just yet. This way you cannot easily lose the Potion when you unexpectedly lose your characters to accidents.

Note: you are free to give it away to another player's character, or even a NPC if you want. The Potion is enchanted to appear worthless, so you can never sell it for more than 5d12 copper pieces.

Each player gets one out of three Potions, determined randomly. Roll 1d3:
 * 1) Vigor Potion: restore all ability damage (heal all temporarily lost ability points).
 * Luck: Only Thief and Raider characters keep track of current and maximum Luck separately, so this potion has no effect on Luck for other characters.
 * 1) Vitality Potion: increase imbiber's maximum hit points by 1d6, then restore his or her current hit points to this new maximum.
 * 2) Fate Potion: reset imbiber's Luck score: roll 3d6 to determine his or her new Luck score.
 * If your new Luck modifier is non-zero, remove your old Birth Augur (if you have one); then randomize a new one.
 * If you are a Thief or Raider, the new score is your new maximum and current score.

Movement and Positioning in Combat
It is important to realize that simple, quick combat rules deserve simple, quick movement and positioning rules.

As far as possible, try to resist the temptation to mandate exact placement on combat maps, and exact counting of feet during movement. The game flows much smoother if situations where "you're 5 ft too far away" are avoided. The game will have enemies pop up to attack male characters and unlucky characters, and you are encouraged to accept this natural order.

Marching Order
In low-level play with hordes of 0-level and 1st-level characters, DCC recommends the "table center" method of determining marching order. At the very least, always appoint one of your characters to "take the lead". Your remaining characters are assumed to belong to the main group trailing just behind the lead characters.

If a threat arrives clearly from the front, only the lead characters are considered when choosing targets. For other types of situations, all characters might be targeted. In all cases, Luck and gender plays a larger role than tactical placement.

All players should normally contribute one character each to take the lead. While this is a matter for the players and not the Judge, all players should agree to any exceptions made.

Movement
Your Speed should be considered approximate. You are encouraged to ask the Judge "can I get there" or "can I reach it", and the Judge might simply say yes, or ask for an Agility or Luck Check, rather than to measure distance on a map.

Movement modes
Normal: Each round, you can move up to your Speed and do one of the following things: draw or sheathe a weapon, equip or drop a shield, or open a door. You can also attack (or reposition, see below). Remaining stationary confers no particular benefit.

Running: You can move further than your Speed by giving up all your actions for the round (in other words, you don't attack). If so you can move up to three times your Speed, provides you're not forced to make many sharp turns and twists.

Repositioning vs Disengaging
The core Withdrawal stipulates that if you leave combat, your melee opponents get to make one free attack each. If they hit, they stop you from pushing past them. Therefore, you can retreat or flee (move "backwards") regardless of whether the free attacks hit or miss. But if you attempt to run past a guard (move "forward"), he can stop you by hitting with his free attack.

You can negate these free attacks by accomplishing a Mighty Deed. For example: trying to lead your foe over to your allies, or swinging in a chandelier, or jumping onto a ledge from where you later hope to push your enemy are all Deeds. And so is getting past a guard that is actively trying to prevent access somewhere.

Every character class can accomplish Deeds such as these, not just Warriors and Soldiers. However, you need to give up your attack to do so.
 * make an attack roll and roll a d3.
 * If the attack hits, you deal no damage
 * If the attack hits and you roll a 3 on the d3, you have effectively accomplished a Deed despite not being a Warrior or Soldier

Retainers, Hirelings & Followers
The DCC rulebook assumes henchmen are temporary and transitory, and goes into detail into a copper economy that a Sword & Sorcery campaign just does not care for. I suggest a closer relationship between the player characters and their henchmen, focusing on their potential as new recruits and otherwise valuable members of the team. This better matches the opportunities given by many adventure modules. These rules do not apply during introductory adventures and level 0 funnels. They only apply once the initial party has formed out of classed heroes.

In short, "hireling" here refers to members of the party that help and assist without taking a full share of the dangers or the rewards. Hirelings are essentially full player characters that fill supporting roles. Whether they stay low-level is up to each player.

Heroes & Hirelings: Characters that actively gain XP are "heroes". Characters that don't are "hirelings".

Hirelings are useful for many purposes. They can carry extra equipment. They can act as torchbearers for heroes that wish to use both hands for weapons or shields. They can safeguard camping sites or horses while the heroes explore cramped dungeons. They can act as retainers whenever the heroes purchase long-term lodgings. Act as guards to valuable laboratories or temples acquired by the heroes. Etc

Hirelings are afforded certain protections while used in a passive role (such as torchbearer or guard). They are usually not targeted whenever there is a hero available for the monster or effect to attack instead. This means that the hireling's gender or Luck is of lesser import than for heroes. However! Hirelings are certainly not invulnerable. They do suffer from area or mass attacks just like heroes. For example: if the floor collapses, they too fall into the rubble. If a mass of tribesmen swarm the party, hirelings might have to defend against a small share of the attacks. And a Fireball spell can wipe them all out in an instant.

Each player may control one or two heroes during any given adventure, but not more. More characters may be brought along, but they don't gain XP; they are hirelings, not heroes.

Heroes gain XP for surviving encounters as normal. In addition, a player with a lone hero gains 50% extra XP that can only be transferred to hirelings (see below) and is otherwise lost. A player with two heroes gains full normal XP for both heroes, but gain no such extra transfer XP.

So, hirelings gain no XP by themselves. If and when the player desires to have them advance in level, he may transfer XP to them from his "main" hero or heroes. To cut down on administration, do this during major breaks in the action; most easily between scenarios. ''Example: Conan and Valeria each gain 25 XP from a scenario. Their player decides to transfer 10 XP from Valeria to their torchbearer, Raynan. This means Conan gains +25 XP, Valeria gains +15 XP, and Raynan gains +10 XP. Raynan levels up from a zero-level character to a much more capable level 1 retainer.''

Hirelings are not NPCs - they remain controlled by the player and can be used for any purposes. Do remember that if and when used actively like this, hirelings are afforded no special protection and they may fall victim to traps and monsters in exactly the same ways as heroes. Whether they gain any XP for surviving these encounters is a decision left up to the player.

A hireling can be "upgraded" to become a hero at any time the player controls fewer than two heroes. Most commonly this happens when a hero just met his gruesome end, and someone needs to pick up his fallen mantle!

Administration
The rulebook's guidelines on payment and morale is not used for this type of hireling.

Instead, make a single Morale check at major breaks in the action, such as the conclusion of an adventure. This is a DC 15 Will saving throw modified by 1) the hireling's employer's Personality modifier and 2) a special -4 to +4 modifier where the Judge takes into account the hireling's wounds, his treatment at the hands of the entire party, his share of treasure, possible personal reasons for leaving, and the party's general success. On a success, there are no problems. On a failure, the only way to keep the hireling is to take active control by playing him or her as a hero in the next adventure (or part thereof). Otherwise, the hireling will part ways with the party permanently, striking out on his own. The hireling might still remain on good terms with the party, as determined by the Judge.

However, assuming a natural 1 is not rolled on this Morale check the player can, after the roll is made, modify the result by +1 for each bonus gold piece his heroes pay the hireling, up to 10 gp. Each treasure (small item valued in tens of gold, a magic item, ostentatious property, fancy title and job, or similar) the hireling is awarded will modify the result by a further +10. If a natural 1 is rolled, the roll cannot be modified.

Txez0-8tlz6.png Love At First Sight
When you meet a princess (prince, queen, etc) you can declare "love at first sight". This grants you a +1d motivational bonus to all rolls made to court, impress, help or save that princess.

If more than one character competes for the favor of the same princess, they are all obsessed and all gain this bonus, and additionally gains it to rolls made to compete with, or work against, your rivals.

Whether the princess reciprocates your feelings is determined by a series of Personality checks, the first of which is made "at first sight", and subsequent ones when the Judge deems you have suitably impressed her. Typically, after making three successful checks in a row, the Princess will declare her love for you. At this point the contest is over and all your rivals lose their obsession and bonuses.

If the object of your devotion gets captured or otherwise is separated from you, rivals lose 1d3 Luck each. If you manage to reunite with the Princess, you gain 3 Luck. Repeating this has diminishing returns.