Clerics as Wizards

Ah, it's been a while since I argued we don't need X or Y class. I've defended the Cleric before and while I stand by what I said about Clerics being a distinct and important class unto their own, today I look at it from a different angle. While I personally like the Cleric in DCC, I'm also a big supporter of having as many different ways to run the game as there are people to play the game. Don't think of this as me pooh-poohing the Cleric, but rather exploring different ways to run them.

In the post linked above, I mention having seen other Judges' discussion of Clerics being replaced by Wizards, but never have I seen a proper how-to. So here's how to do it. Each heading below provides both the Cleric concept being converted and the Wizard concept it maps to. The resulting Cleric is one that is more of a pure caster than the hybrid fighter-caster we usually see - more suitable for a priest than a paladin.

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Conventions for Clerics as Wizards

The Cleric class is no longer a distinct class of its own. Instead, the Wizard has broader access to spells and patrons which allow for the flavouring of a Wizard as a servant of a divine power. Many of the features given to Clerics have a lot of functional crossover with those of Wizards even if they do not use the exact same mechanics, so much of the conversion here is fairly direct.

Deities / Patrons

Bobugbubilz and Azi Dahaka are already offered as both Cleric deities and Wizard patrons, both of whom seem more like a powerful entity within the universe than a deific entity from beyond. Incidentally, they are also both demonic (hardly relevant, just interesting). A world with Clerics of slightly more grounded powers than literal Gods might make more sense with patron relationships such as these instead of strictly faithful worship.

The rule here is simple: A Cleric is a Wizard who has taken a godly figure as a patron. All godly figures are now potential patrons. If a player plays their Wizard character as a worshiper of a deity in the world, the Judge should allow an opportunity to gain patronage and treat their power as if it comes from that deity (or through faith itself).

Canticles / Patron Spells

The DCC Annual already gets bloody close to patron spells with the inclusion of canticles for deities. If your Cleric-Wizard chooses a deity from this list, most of the work is already done (although higher level spell checks may need to be written, as many canticles are basic single-level effects). Beyond that, it's no harder for the Judge to create these than it is to create regular patron spells.

A godly patron's patron spells should follow the usual format for patron spells and effectively replace any canticles.

Divine Aid / Invoke Patron

Divine Aid is effectively replaced by Invoke Patron. This doesn't really do the same thing, but it is the result of you calling upon your patron for help in a time of need. An Invoke Patron spell can be written that works thematically for divine aid from a particular god. Spellburn can replace the disapproval as a downside.

Disapproval / Patron Taint

Disapproval tables will need to be shrunk down to create a patron taint table and the more permanent options are the ones that should be retained to achieve the patron taint style. Don't keep the one where you have to pray for 10 minutes, do keep the one where Pelagia gives the character bulbous fishy eyes.

Lay on Hands and Turn Unholy / Spells

Treat these two abilities as spells on the spell list. They essentially already have a spell effect table with simpler formatting. And on the note of accessible spells...

Cleric Spells / Wizard Spells

There is no longer any delineation between Cleric and Wizard spells. Any and all spells of the appropriate levels can be selected from in the usual ways (randomly on advancement, discovered through adventuring, granted by a patron, research).

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And that's it. You know, I didn't expect it to be quite that simple. It's fairly easy to make the argument against Clerics after having written down how each of their mechanics map to each other, one-to-one. Clerics start to feel like alt-Wizards, and it's entirely possible using the conventions above to run them as exactly that.

I'll Run It One Day - [blog100] pt. 9, q. 82

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled an 82.

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82. What Idea or Concept are you "Saving" for a Future Game/Campaign?

It's common advice to use your ideas now rather than saving them for later. Here's the problem: I have more ideas than time to play. I think many of us do. I can't use them all, some things are going to have to wait. Some will be saved for later and some will be saved for never. It's just how it is.

Furthermore, not all things fit into the campaign I'm currently running. This blog is 90% about DCC because that's the campaign I actually do run, but there are a lot of other games I want to run too. Here are three campaigns I want to run that don't gel with my current campaign world, each one totally different.

Guild of Dragonologists (5e)

That's right, a 5e game. I'm not a big 5e fan and I've made that no secret, but it's good at one thing: being the current standard for high-fantasy. You want to run a world that has every fantastical thing you can think of splattered everywhere you can look? 5e can handle it perfectly. I'm talking about wizard high-school shit. Nary a human to be found in the nearest tavern and nobody bats an eye at people casting spells and flying past on broomsticks.

The original concept came from a joke among friends that rarely in D&D do we ever go into dungeons, let alone encounter dragons. I thought I'd lean right into that and make it all about dragons from the very first level. Enter, The Guild of Dragonologists.

The Guild is, as it says right in the name, dedicated to the study of dragons, which in 5e are very categorized and classified. They're territorial and the chromatics are at odds with the metallics. The Guild began early on as cartographers, mapping the territories of the dragons. They found that if one overlays a map of chromatic territories on a map of metallic territories, the lands of 4 chromatic and 4 metallic dragons converge at a single point. This is where the Guildhall was built, with immediate access to 8 common varieties to study, and plenty of chromatic/metallic crossover to observe.

The players play as new recruits who've joined the Guild as Hunters - think Monster Hunter style, where the Hunters are sent on missions to "control the population" for conservation efforts or whatever. You're not there to eradicate dragonkind, just keep them in check and protect the Guild. There's also some mystery going on with the convergence of territories and probably the Platinum Dragon.

As It Was Written (OD&D with Chainmail)

I've been diving into the Little Brown Books recently and I'm finding myself fascinated. There is so much in here that appears bizarre and arcane from a modern perspective but actually makes a lot of sense when you consider what they were doing and what they were trying to do. I've found myself wanting to give OD&D a go on its own terms, right down as close to RAW as I can do.

Those of you who are familiar with the original edition know that this isn't exactly a straightforward task - I've found myself comparing and rewriting parts of the various books to organize it in a way that works better for me. There are rewrites out there, but none of them do it my way while simultaneously remaining purely vanilla (which, to be fair, is a big ask).

What's become even more fascinating to me is the implied setting of OD&D. Reading through the encounter tables alone I noticed that the world it expects you to play in is absolute bizarre - by standards both modern and contemporary. It is a pseudo-Arthurian post-civilization frontier centered upon a megadungeon that defies the laws of physics simply to spite the adventurers who are propping up the economy around it. This frontier is horribly infested with lycanthropes (for some reason) and peppered with lost-world swamps and alien deserts (the little green man kind of alien - seriously!).

On top of that, the use of Chainmail's multiple combat systems (rather than the "alternate" that became the default) to resolve different kinds of battles with varying tactical depth is very cool and a topic I'll be revisiting.

I don't know what it was like to play in Gygax's games but it sure as hell sounds like a blast to try and recreate it from his writings. What'll be hard is stopping myself from houseruling!

Paleolithic Campaign (DCC Homebrew)

And we're back to DCC - kind of. This one is a Dinosaur Crawl Classics inspired stone-age campaign featuring low tech, less magic, and prehistoric monsters. Thieves, Wizards and Clerics won't be present, at least in the same form - magic will be the domain of an animist Shaman class with ancestral patrons. Hunters might take a combined warrior-thief role for a third class. All classes will get wilderness skills, hailing from tribal communities that live off the land.

The tricky part here is figuring out any kind of long-term story. This is one setting where I don't want to have advanced tech showing up from aliens or ancient civilizations. From a stone age perspective, even a castle is advanced. Dungeons will probably be lairs rather than old human structures (a perfect excuse to use another thing I've been saving - a humanoid ant race in an ant-mound dungeon). I can only take a campaign so far with a big bad being a particularly disruptive T-Rex.

A possible theme to wrestle with in this campaign is the discovery of agriculture, with a nearby developing civilization threatening to permanently disrupt the PCs' way of life. But again, I can only take that arc so far before it simply runs its course and there is no more story left to tell. I'd still like to give this setting a go for a short campaign run at least.

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Here is where I'll link your blog if you join me on this 100-post journey through 100 questions.

Arbitrary Half-Races

This has been on my list of mechanics to work out for quite a while now. Recently, I realized I essentially already did the legwork when I split race and class. The whole idea there was to use races as a sort of half-class and mix-and-match. This post builds on that. Using that as a baseline, you can create half-races of any playable races by allowing a race/race combination instead of a race/class one.

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Skip my rambling and get to the rules.

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Why do this?

In short: it's just like, my opinion, man.

The way half-races are handled in fantasy has always bothered me a little bit. Half-elves and half-orcs are the common ones, almost to the point of being an iconic inclusion in and of themselves. As far as I can tell, half-elves grew out of a misunderstanding of Tolkein and half-orcs came out of a desire to play as orcs in a setting where orcs were a monster or always evil - the latter has implications that I'd personally like to avoid discussing over the gaming table. Either way, these two half-races have stuck around and one of the first questions that comes to my mind is why aren't there elf-orcs? Is it just humans who can interbreed, and for some reason the races they can interbreed with can't also interbreed among themselves?

Furthermore, given it's a fantasy setting, why aren't there half-dwarves, half-gnomes and half-halflings? If cross-species procreation is something you're going to say is possible in your world, there's suddenly a lot of variation you have to account for. In a game with distinct, discrete races (or even more problematically, race-as-class) you have a lot of work to do. Unless you're going to say these specific half-human hybrids are possible but not other combinations. You can do that, I just always find myself wondering - why just elves? Even then, if elves and half-elves are distinct races/classes... what happens to their offspring? Is it a spectrum, or are they all half-elves from that point onward? Why haven't half-elves taken over?

You can, of course, handwave this by saying "genetic similarity" but that just doesn't quite jive with me. Most worlds seem to have things like chimeras which are made up of combined creatures dramatically different from each other. There are probably half-demons or half-elementals of some kind - they're not even from the same universe! In a fantasy setting where interspecies stuff clearly exists I find it more believable that it'd happen in all sorts of combinations. Especially if you consider your world "gonzo". Why does genetics suddenly matter now? Don't even ask about centaurs.

All in all it's just kind of weird to allow some specific half-races but not any others. Either humans and demihumans can interbreed or they can't. Go all or nothing.

Half-races from core races

Lineage	Human	Dwarf	Elf	Halfling
Human	Human	Half-dwarf	Half-elf	Quarterling*
Dwarf	Half-dwarf	Dwarf	Dwelf	Dwarfling
Elf	Half-elf	Dwelf	Elf	Elfling
Halfling	Quarterling*	Dwarfling	Elfling	Halfling

*Quarterling may sound incorrect, but it comes from the Halfling culture where your Halfling-half is the important half.

Rules for Mixed Ancestries

This is fairly straightforward if you are already using my split race and class rules. The process is as follows:

1. Choose (or rather, roll: 1-in-10 demihumans have a random second ancestry*) your two races. You get all abilities and bonuses from each, including both Ability Score re-rolls.
2. You do not choose a class. Your mixed ancestry is your class (for now).
3. When determining Hit Dice, use the largest-die race for odd levels and the smallest-die race for even levels. In the case of half-humans, this means always using your other race's Hit Die.
4. When determining saving throws, use the race with the largest Hit Die. In the case of half-humans, this means simply using the other race's saving throws.
5. It is recommended to allow multi-classing rules to give mixed ancestry characters the option to gain a true class, but be aware this means only reaching 1st-level in a class at character level 3. This lack of specialization is the trade-off to having multiple racial advantages.

*A character can (and realistically, probably does, somewhere in their long ancestry) have more than just two lineages but only the two majority lines are significant enough to grant class abilities. If you want to play a human-dwarf-elf-halfling that is fine, but your parents only passed down their dominant features.

Blog100 Master Post

This post is for keeping my blog100 posts organized and navigable. The challenge is based on this table of 100 topics to inspire burgeoning blogs.

Here's how the challenge works:

1. Roll a d100 on the table linked above.
2. Blog about that question.
3. Set your own schedule. Post once a week, once a month, whatever. Don't fret if this slows down later either.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you've written 100 posts about all 100 topics. Reroll repeated results, you may want to use smaller dice toward the tail end of the challenge.
5. Tell me about it! I'll link to your post at the bottom of the next one.

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All my posts, in chronological order:

To search for a specific question on the table, ctrl-F "q. X" where X is the question number.

Post	Question
The d4 Caltrops Blog Challenge - [blog100] pt. 1, q. 92	What was one Major Conflict/War that has occurred within Recent Memory?
What happens to you when you die? - [blog100] pt. 2, q. 80	What Happens when a Character Dies in your Setting?
The Cost of Living - [blog100] pt. 3, q. 40	How much are Lifestyle Expenses for your PCs "Between Adventures?"
Gaming Snacks - [blog100] pt. 4, q. 73	What are the best Snacks you've found that work during a Game?
Are Clerical Holy Symbols Required? - [blog100] pt. 5, q. 77	What do your Cleric's Holy Symbols Look like? Are they needed for Turning?
The Lantern Tree - [blog100] pt. 6, q. 95	Where does Lamp Oil come from/how is it made?
Types of Undead and How they Work - [blog100] pt. 7, q. 23	How are Skeletons Made? Ghouls? Why haven't Wraiths/Vampires taken over?
It's okay to be underprepared - [blog100] pt. 8, q. 84	What is a Ruling you Regret or wish you would have handled differently?
I'll Run It One Day - [blog100] pt. 9, q. 82	What Idea or Concept are you "Saving" for a Future Game/Campaign?

It's okay to be underprepared - [blog100] pt. 8, q. 84

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled an 84.

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84. What is a Ruling you Regret or wish you would have handled differently?

The first game I ran was The Portal Under the Stars. I don't just mean the first game of DCC, I mean the first I ever ran at all. I was incredibly nervous (not just for running the game, but I only really knew one of the players!), but I thought hey, I've gone over the module twice and re-written it as my own notes - surely by this point I could just run the module as is and it'll be fine. I did have one question though: what will the players do when they figure out that the solution to the entrance puzzle is to wait?

Well, I predicted they'd want to go to town for a couple of hours to kill time... and yet I did not prepare for that. The end result was me deciding, on the fly, that the town was just slightly too far away from the dungeon location for them to get there and back in time. I admitted to them that I wasn't prepared to run the town, but now I wish I'd let them do it.

What stopped me from prepping a town, if I had predicted they'd try to go there? You'd be right to think that was pretty foolish of me. To be honest, the prep just felt like too big of a task.

That's where I went wrong. Perhaps now that I've got experience under my belt I'm looking at this in a way that is unrealistic to expect of my first-time-Judge self, but it would have been totally fine to just wing it. Even the stuff that I later prepared for the town, I really could have just handwaved in the moment and fleshed the details out as necessary later.

Prepping a town wasn't too big of a task - I was expecting too much of myself. I could have done minimal prep. One tavern. That's probably the only place that's open at night anyway. Player characters' homes? They're all peasants, they're already carrying their best gear anyway. Your home has like, a straw bed and one chair. You brought all the good gear with you. Just answer the questions the players ask, there was no need to build the entire town.

All the prep I did later for the town? I made that up too. I could've done it at the table. Instead, I said no.

Saying yes can be nerve-wracking when the question was something you weren't prepared for, and yet I've found Judging to be a much easier task since I committed to doing that. That's not to say I don't still prep, I don't still feel underprepared, and I don't still feel the compulsive need to over-prep. I do. I just know now that it'll be fine if I wing it. The goal is a fun night, not a perfect game.

You'll be fine.

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Here is where I'll link your blog if you join me on this 100-post journey through 100 questions.

Extended Dice Chain

d3 – d4 – d5 – d6 – d7 – d8 – d10 – d12 – d14 – d16 – d20 – d24 – d30

I've been thinking a lot about Mercurial Magic lately (and there's certainly more where this post came from - watch this space) and something struck me about a handful of the results, namely 96 and 98 which improve the die used to cast the spell. The Dice Chain is an awesome way to give DCC's equivalent of "advantage" and "disadvantage" and can theoretically stack bonuses, but there is an explicit limit of d30, "the largest die that can be used" -p. 17.

Well, that's kind of a bummer for those with Mercurial Magic result 98 who are already using a d30. Why would they bother using extra spell components, ritual casting, or some other method of improving their cast? This inadvertently locks out (or at least makes less meaningful) some roleplay options for Wizards in the games of those Judges who like to give out +1d bonuses for this sort of extra creativity and preparation. It even stunts Arcane Affinity, which also works on the Dice Chain.

Here's an extended version, and you don't need additional dice beyond the DCC funky dice. The math shouldn't come up frequently enough to significantly slow down your game. Note that I've also included additions to the lower end for stacking penalties - I can't see either extreme coming up often if ever, but hey, that's perfectly on brand here.

0 – 1 – d2 – d3 – d4 – d5 – d6 – d7 – d8 – d10 – d12 – d14 – d16 – d20 – d24 – d30 – d36 – d42 – d50 – d60 – d70 – d80 – d100 – d120

How to roll the other dice:

0, 1: Flat results with no roll. Modifiers still apply.

d2: Three methods, pick your favourite.

1. Coin flip: tails is 1 and heads is 2.

2. Any even-sided die: odds are 1 and evens are 2.

3. Any even-sided die: lower half is 1 and upper half is 2.

d36: Two methods, pick your favourite. It's also worth noting that this die really exists and that inspired this extension.

1. Two d6, what some call the "d66" roll. Acts kind of like a percentile roll, in that the first die counts for multiples of six instead of multiples of ten. 1=0, 2=6, 3=12, 4=18, 5=24, 6=30.

2. A d3 and a d12, where the d3 counts for multiples of 12. 1=0, 2=12, 3=24

d42: A d7 and a d6, where the d7 counts for multiples of six. See the first d36 method, except 7=36.

d50: Two methods, pick your favourite.
1. d100 but subtract 50 if the result is in the upper half.

2. d100 divided by two, round down.

d60 - d80 and d120: A d6/d7/d8/d12 and a d10, the same way you'd roll percentile but with the lower die being the tens digit. It's also worth noting that this die really exists and that's actually the only reason I extended the chain past d100 (but you don't need it).

Types of Undead and How they Work - [blog100] pt. 7, q. 23

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled a 23.

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23. How are Skeletons Made? Ghouls? Why haven't Wraiths/Vampires taken over?

Skeletons are not just one thing. There are a variety of different undead which look like a skeleton and play the xylophone like a skeleton. Some of these are no more than a pile of bones which has been animated to look like a humanoid again. Some are the remains of a corpse with a soul still attached - either through usual ghostly means or being bound by a wizard. This variety may even be sentient or able to speak (despite the lack of requisite mouthflaps). Some are simply summoned out of the earth and nobody knows where they came from or who they were. And finally, some skeletons simply exist because of the unexplainable and magickal way the mythic underworld works. Skeletons are simply a fact of life (or death).

A variant of skeleton which does have a specific method of creation is Fleshbones, which happens when a wizard gets too big for his britches and uses spells in ways they weren't intended. It arguably isn't a skeleton?

Ghouls are cursed while they are still alive. The curse makes them unnaturally resistant to death, and they become ghouls when they are injured enough that a normal man should be killed (or simply by age). Death refusing to arrive when it should drives the curse-bearer insane. They lose most of their mental faculties, sometimes to the point of no longer feeling pain or fear. They haven't taken over because of two factors: they don't wander much and they eat most of their kills, so the curse doesn't spread far. They are ravenously hungry and will eat to the point of physically distending themselves to injury. They don't care, they are basically dead anyway.

The aforementioned ghoul-by-old-age is the most common cause of ghoul plagues - a curse-bearer surviving to insanity and then mauling their neighbours and loved ones is a sinister threat from within that is hard to predict or prevent. Towns have fallen and districts have been quarantined to ghoul plagues.

My world's vampires are based on Into the Wyrd and Wild's Vampylfs and Archade's DCC Vampires. In short, vampirism is a bastardization of a curse spread by an immortal bat-like beast, and each strain of the curse comes with unique advantages and disadvantages. A logical conclusion of this is that different vampire clans are not compatible with each other, so there is competition between them. This drives them into hiding and limits the population, as other vampire clans would surely collaborate to drive them out if one power become too great a threat. The larger a clan becomes, the harder it is to hide their secrets, including their weaknesses. In extreme cases vampire clans might rat out larger vampire clans to humanity, and they cannot win that fight on all fronts - this is the vampire's equivalent of the nuclear option.

Wraiths haven't been touched upon in my games yet, but I imagine them as spirits of decay. Decay is something with which the universe is in eternal struggle. Wraiths are a ghost that is an agent of chaos, looking to drag you down with it. One might think of them as the ghouls of the Ethereal world, with their soul damaged and unable to pass over.

Undeath is a complicated thing. I wrote a little about ghosts in a previous part of this series: What happens when you die?

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This week, Scrolls from the Toaster talked about snacks at the table and ended up with a very different, more meaningful post than my own on that topic.