Playable Dragon Class for DCC

When I first published here at 19 Sided Die, I mentioned on reddit that one of my upcoming posts was something stupid but nobody could stop me doing it anyway. Months later, this is that post.

"There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as, let us say, a 'young' one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee." - Gary Gygax in Men & Magic (1974)

A'ight Gary, bet.

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Design Points

• Minimal balance - not zero balance, because the quote implies they should follow a journey of advancing power as any other character. I do hope for this to be somewhat playable but balance isn't a priority. It's a dragon, it's going to be strong.
• DCC's dragons are really cool so I'll use as much existing material from DCC as possible and make the class feel like it matches the monster. Unfortunately, this necessitates making them relatively complex by loading the class up with a bunch of abilities that they gain as they level. I generally don't like this style of class design for DCC, but that's basically how DCC's dragons work.
• It has to be an actual dragon. Dragonborn are an attempt to appease the player who wants to be a dragon without actually letting them be a dragon. We all know it's just not the same. This also precludes DCC's lowest level dragon, the pseudodragon.

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DRAGON

Art by my good friend, KittyBiscuits.

Dragons are powerful winged reptilian creatures, each unique and rare. Most dragons are covetous, prideful, and solitary. You are not one such dragon, having chosen to accompany a band of adventurers - though likely out of self-interest or necessity. Even as a small dragon, somewhere between the size of a horse and an elephant, it is nigh impossible to do this without attracting significant unwanted attention.

Hit Die: Dragons use a d12 for their Hit Dice.

Movement: 30'. Dragons with wings can fly.

Alignment: A dragon may be of any alignment, and in fact may have an alignment by its very nature instead of by choice.

Weapon Training: A dragon walks into a tavern and quickly notices that the glasses are not ergonomically designed for it to be able to drink from them. What I'm trying to say is, dragons aren't exactly out there using human-designed items. Instead, it has...

Natural Weapons: Using their Action Dice, a dragon can use the following attacks once per round each at the listed Levels:

Level	Weapon	Damage	Note
1+	Claw	1d8
2+	Bite	1d12
4+	2nd claw	1d8	Use claw attacks as two-weapon fighting with 16 AGI (one Action but both claws use -1d).
6+	Tail slap	1d20	If used between two movements (even across two Rounds), movements must be in different directions (at least 90°). Essentially, using this move requires turning.
8+	Wing buffet	2d12	Cannot move and use this attack in the same Round.
10	Crush	3d12	Using this attack forces you prone.

Breath Weapon: Per Table III on p. 407, except damage is d12+2*CL and the Saving Throw is modified by Luck. Using the breath weapon costs an Action Die and can be used a number of times daily equal to the dragon's Level divided by 3 (round up).

Luck: A dragon adds its Luck modifier to the DC of Saving Throws against its breath weapon(s).

Action Dice: A dragon can use its Action Dice for attacking, casting spells, or its breath weapon.

Martial and Unique Powers: At levels 4 and 8, dragons roll on the Martial Powers table and permanently gain the listed power.

At levels 3, 6, and 9, dragons roll on the Unique Powers table and permanently gain the listed power.

Magic: Dragons are able to cast spells as a Wizard, though they do not research them as humans do. Dragons gain only a handful of new spells as they mature rather than discovering them in nature or stealing them from grimoires. In fact, dragons are unable to cast-from-scroll as Wizards, and do not have access to Patron Bond/Invoke Patron. While it is technically possible for a dragon to gain a patron through other means, it would be highly unusual.

Each level up, consult the Dragon Class Table to find the level of the spell learned and determine the spell randomly.

Languages: Dragons can speak Draconic and Common, plus languages randomly determined by their INT modifier (as Wizard).

Lvl	Atk	Crit Die/Table	Action Dice	Spell Learned	Ref	Fort	Will
1	+1	1d4/DR	1d20	none	+0	+0	+0
2	+2	1d5/DR	1d20	Lvl 1	+1	+1	+1
3	+2	1d6/DR	1d20	none	+1	+1	+1
4	+3	1d8/DR	1d20	Lvl 1	+2	+2	+2
5	+4	1d10/DR	1d20+1d14	Lvl 2	+2	+2	+2
6	+5	1d12/DR	1d20+1d16	none	+3	+3	+3
7	+5	1d14/DR	1d20+1d20	Lvl 2	+3	+3	+3
8	+6	1d16/DR	1d20+1d20	Lvl 1	+4	+4	+4
9	+6	1d20/DR	1d20+1d20	none	+4	+4	+4
10	+7	1d24/DR	1d20+1d20+1d14	Lvl 3	+5	+5	+5

Level	Title
1	Whelp
2	Drake
3	Dragonling
4	Wyvern
5	Wyrmling

Fleshbones

Flesh to Stone's reversed counterpart, Stone to Flesh, is well known for being the cure to a Medusa attack. It's a very intelligent spell. It can look at the structures present in stone and infer that it used to be a creature, recreating that creature and all its organs, even preserving the mind and soul. This all seems to be mostly taken for granted but it's very impressive when you think about it.

Of course, any apprentice learning this spell begins to wonder about the effects of casting Stone to Flesh on actual stone - rocks that were never alive to begin with, inanimate objects and castle walls. The results are almost universally unpleasant as the spell attempts to reconstruct tissue, organs, and other functional structures where there were none to begin with. If it manages to create something alive then it won't live long, though there are some notable exceptions such as the Necrolith and Mortimer's Throbbing Castle.

The more material you give the spell to work with, the more it can achieve. On the flip side, the spell can also make good use of high levels of detail. A few talented gastronomancers have carved beautifully marbled steaks out of actual marble. Some particularly foolish mages have attempted to use the spell on carved statues to create an artificial human; the results of that are far worse than "unpleasant".

Bone really muddies the waters (don't get me started on Stone to Mud) when it comes to being made of stone or flesh, which I'm sure you can imagine is very confusing if you are a spell and your goal is to turn one into the other. Bones are made up of stuff you can find in rocks and crystals but they have a cellular structure like living flesh. Sometimes there's even a little bit of residual soul-stuff. And yet, there isn't the macro-structure a spell would usually study to recreate a functioning organism - no sinews, no muscles, no blood vessels, no nerves, no organs.

Flesh to Stone has the expected effect on skeletal remains: it turns them to stone. Stone to Flesh usually fails, but under the right circumstances - when all other organic matter is decomposed or removed and the bones are dry - the spell can mistake bone for stone. If a detectable amount of soul essence lingers, the spell might even take that as a sign that this was once a living organism that turned to stone. And to be fair, it isn't entirely wrong.

The way it tries to "reconstruct" this creature, however, is absolutely wrong.

Not finding any structures from which to reform muscles and organs, the spell can sometimes set to work on creating its own. The spell cannot add any matter, only convert what is there. The end result is a monstrosity that is superficially similar to the common necromantic skeleton found in tombs, in that it walks mindlessly and attacks intruders - yet this skeleton is entirely made of soft flesh, coated with skin and filled with blood as you'd expect from any fleshy creature. It can barely hold up its own weight.

The residual soul essence occupies the new body, so for all intents and purposes this is a true undead like any wight or ghoul.

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AI-generated, I am not an artist.

Fleshbones

Initiative: +0

Attack: punch +0 melee (1d3) or by weapon +0 melee

AC: 8; HD: 2d4 (5 HP);

Movement: 20'; Action Dice: 1d20;

Special: undead, half damage from blunt weapons, horrific, confused biology

Alignment: Chaotic

Saves: Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +0;

Horrific: When injured, the gory reveal of the monster's composition causes psychological trauma to anyone who was not expecting the bones to be fleshy. Bring your own sanity system, here's a good one.

Confused Biology: When killed, there is a 50% chance it is cut/broken where it is hit and the separate parts survive independently due to unusual organ arrangements (treat as two new Fleshbones). Once these parts are killed, they stay dead. All broken parts have 5' speed, except a complete pair of legs which has 30'. d4: (1) decapitated, (2) arm severed, (3) legs separated from torso, (4) leg severed.

Gonzo versus Kitchen Sink

In which I pretend I can define terms that are older than I am, in a niche I haven't been part of for that long.

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The terms "gonzo" and "kitchen sink" are both used to describe fantasy settings with a mishmash of incongruous elements, but the two terms feel very different. DCC is often referred to as gonzo. It's not often referred to as kitchen sink. I feel like there's a reason for that, but it's hard to find much discussion about the distinction between the two. Sometimes, the words even appear to be used interchangeably.

A kitchen sink setting is, fairly obviously, one that includes everything (and the kitchen sink). There's cowboys and there's also aliens.

A gonzo setting is one that includes mismatched genres. There's cowboys and there's also aliens... wait a minute, how is that different?

Some games provide a setting with dozens of races to choose from and large distant regions with different themes and levels of technology. People argue about whether guns belong in D&D all the time but you can totally do it in a way that doesn't even feel slightly out of place. Easily, even. You can have a full tavern of adventurers where every character is a different species. How is that sustainable, anyway? There's not enough people of any one species to even reproduce reliably, let alone maintain a diverse genepool! My point is that the half-fish-half-goat-half-man tap-dancing in the middle of the room might as well just be a regular dude. The kitchen sink allows you to justify almost anything. That's the point.

Contrast this with a setting where 90% of the population is human. Just regular medieval peasants. One day they're all sitting in the tavern with like one dwarf, and this fishmangoat cartwheels through the doorway and starts tapdancing in the middle of the room. That's pretty weird, so the townspeople all pull out their shotguns and start asking who he works for.

That one is getting a little closer to gonzo. In this case, the incongruity is the whole point. It's bizarre but nobody seems to care. It's not a given that the fishmangoat or shotguns exist, but you can't definitively say they don't, so when one rocks up it might as well just be Tuesday.

The kitchen sink appears to be created with the goal of allowing anyone to do anything, to be anyone, to have full customizability. Some games try to give you everything to prove that you can do anything.

Gonzo is a bit harder to pin down, but to me it appears to be about subverting expectations, surprising the players (or audience, depending on medium). The contrast between cowboys and aliens is what makes it interesting when aliens show up in your wild west campaign. This isn't achievable in a kitchen sink, where everyone knows aliens are part of the setting because you can choose to be one during character creation.

Ability Score Increase Questing Table

	d3→	1	2	3
d6↓		Goal	Descriptor	Target
1	Strength	slay	colossal	giant
2	Agility	capture	cunning	fae
3	Stamina	escort	immortal	dragon
4	Personality	convert	tyrannical	royal
5	Intelligence	investigate	extraplanar	wizard
6	Luck	locate	long-lost	construct

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How to use this table

This is essentially a prompt generator for "quest for it".

1. Choose which Ability Score you wish to increase. Roll a d3 on that row to get either a Goal, Descriptor or Target related to the Ability.
2. Roll a d6 on the two remaining columns (Goal, Descriptor and Target) so that you have one of each.
3. Combine the results to find your quest.

The idea here is to have a varied array of combinations but for your result to be guaranteed to have something to do with the Ability Score you seek to increase. Not every character seeking Intelligence will need to "investigate an extraplanar wizard", but they will all need to either "investigate" something, or seek out something that is "extraplanar" or "wizard".

Example

Lord Swordsalot wants to increase his Strength. He seeks a guru in the mountains who gives him a quest. He rolls a d3 on the Strength row and gets a 2, so the Descriptor is "colossal". He doesn't yet have a Goal or Target, so he rolls a d6 for each and gets a 4 and 5, "convert" and "wizard". Thus it is deemed that in order to increase his Strength, Lord Swordsalot must "convert a colossal wizard". From here, the Judge figures out who this colossal wizard is and why the mountain guru wants him converted.

This table could be further expanded by including two possibilities per cell and using d6/d12 instead of d3/d6, but I couldn't come up with enough meaningfully distinct entries. Might be worth a revisit.

6 more Kinds of Dark

Read part 1. The same general rules from Goblin Punch apply: dark must surround a light source before snuffing it and takes at least one Round per light source to do so (more for larger sources like campfires).  Fires aren't extinguished, just darkened. Lights can be "healed" by another light. Being swallowed by the dark deals damage per Round and escalating odds of random table effects occurring.

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Seven

Description: This dark feels like a faint, prickly, stinging sensation on your skin. While you are in it, you can smell blood.

Properties: This dark deals only 1 point of damage per Round, but standing in it attracts nearby carnivores.

Eight

Description: As this dark enters a room, the floors, walls and objects it touches are coated by a thin, black film. The film peels and flakes easily if disturbed. The film persists after the dark is gone.

Properties: You must have a hand free to frequently scrub the thin layer of dark forming over your eyes, nose, and mouth, or you lose sight and the ability to breathe. If you let the film cover your nose and mouth, use drowning rules to determine how long you can hold your breath. The film preserves things it coats as if they are vacuum-sealed.

Nine

Description: The dark extends as a thick black cloud that pools toward the ceiling like smoke in a burning building. It stings the eyes and scratches the throat.

Properties: It deals 1d6 Stamina damage per Round while you are in it. Getting close to the ground makes it take twice as long to snuff your lights, and instead deals only 1d3 Stamina damage.

Ten

Description: This dark appears coarse and powdery, and crunches uncomfortably underneath your feet. It sounds like softly falling sand as it fills the room. Some might recognise the smell of brimstone as it approaches.

Properties: It can be difficult to make a flame touch the dark directly, as darkness has a habit of rushing away from flames. If you light a spark while you are within the dark, however, it will rapidly ignite in a flash. A Reflex save is required to avoid catching fire, but the darkness will burn away almost instantly. An explosive or Fireball will also do the trick.

Eleven

Description: The shadows cast by your compatriots are pitch black - not just on the floor on which the shadow is cast, but the full volume and length of the shadow. Passing an object by the torch casts a pure black wall of shadow which cannot be seen through. Even an upright pole is enough to cast a black curtain across a room. It could be mistaken for an actual black wall.

Properties: Easier to draw than describe.

Because of the shadow cast by the Red Adventurer, the Blue Adventurer cannot see the goblin and vice versa. The Green Adventurer is totally blinded and cannot be seen.

If there are multiple light sources in the room, the shadows are cast based on the brightest light source. If there are multiple contenders for brightest light, the dark gets to choose which light it is cast by and can move once during a Round.

Twelve

Description: The torch in your hand appears small and distant, so far away that it no longer illuminates your body. Your torch-bearing compatriot is now at the other end of the hall. You shout at him to wait for you, but as you jog to catch up you don't seem to get any closer, despite the fact that he is panickedly running toward you too.

Properties: Attempting to move toward a light source causes the world to distort such that, despite moving, you never get closer - like a dream where a hallway stretches out forever in front of you. Closing and covering your eyes is enough to prevent this - if you close your eyes, the light that penetrates your eyelids is enough for the dark to find you.