Goodman Games

The rules for death on p. 93 specify that if you come to the body of a fallen comrad who has officially died (reached 0 HP and failed to be healed for more rounds than their level), they can attempt a Luck save to actually be alive but badly hurt. That's cool; any sword and sorcery campaign should often have this sort of thing happen to its protagonists. But, it seems odd to apply this rule only when player characters are recovering a comrad's body (as seems to be implied). Surely, the character was alive before his friends rolled him over. And, he would have still been alive if an NPC had rolled him over. Or, like aragorn in the Two Towers movie, if his horse had poked him in the eye. So, it seems to me this rule should apply any time a non-0 level character 'dies' in some way that could have been survived (i.e., not including decapitation, boiling in acid, etc.). Thoughts?

I like the thought of a beloved character getting a second chance via the luck roll no matter who or what rolls him over. I would allow this in my game.

Am I correct in thinking the Luck check is just "roll under your luck"? It seems like a character with a high luck could "die" so many times that the physical stat loss eventually kills them before they miss a luck roll. They might wish they were dead at some point, being so scarred... Maybe I just need to kill off some more characters and see how this plays out.

DCCfan wrote:I like the thought of a beloved character getting a second chance via the luck roll no matter who or what rolls him over. I would allow this in my game.

Its your game. You can always "house rule " it. It could be an adventure in itself getting back to safety. Imagine if your character was left for dead in the dungeon, now alone, badly injured, perhaps stripped of his equipment. Now he has to get back.....

Only a friendly can roll the body over. If something other than the party finds the body first, well... dinner time!

yeah, why not 0 level? The rules don't say anything about the Recovery being level limited. Bring back the 0 level dork!

That misses the point of the funnel, which is to winnow down the herd through player choices.

I've also been allowing the bad guys to use "recovering the body". My party has been going through a slightly modified version of Atarin's Delve, and retreated back to their home town after making particularly heavy going of it.
Upon their return, the bandits had swelled in number from what the party believed were left, because the bandits had rolled over a few of their own comrade's bodies.

Recovering the body die rolls, which one do you guys use?

#1 D20 vs. current Luck Stat at time of Death, roll equal to or less and you've been recovered.

#2 Beat a DC21 on a D20 roll plus or minus your current Luck modifier to be recovered.

I ask because I currently use #1 and I allow a "natural 1" to always succeed.

On page 19 the book states: "Characters can make Luck checks to attempt feats that succeed based on Luck alone. The judge will provide the specifics of any attempt, but the attempt is usually resolved by rolling equal to or less than the character's Luck score on a 1d20."

That alone leads me to believe that #1 is the correct way to do this, but somewhere I found #2 also. I can't remember where I got that from. I guess in the long of it this really doesn't matter as I like #1 and that is what we do, but it has been nagging at me and I thought I would see what everyone else is actually "rolling".

Thanks!

I use #1. I don't remember option #2 at all. If you find the page number post it for me please.

I home ruled it to this. Make a only luck modified roll against DC 12.

First of all Players HATE to roll a nat 20 to save there characters and fail.

Second of all I'm a softy and figured a base chance of like 40% was big enough for death to still sting but give the guys a break from time to time.

Third of all Luck in my games seems to hang around the toilet. The players eat tons of badness for this already. Perhaps im a little too miserly with the luck points.

Even with a -2 penalty to the roll it lets them save there character with a 14 or higher. I can live with that.

Gameogre wrote:I home ruled it to this. Make a only luck modified roll against DC 12.

First of all Players HATE to roll a nat 20 to save there characters and fail.

Second of all I'm a softy and figured a base chance of like 40% was big enough for death to still sting but give the guys a break from time to time.

Third of all Luck in my games seems to hang around the toilet. The players eat tons of badness for this already. Perhaps im a little too miserly with the luck points.

Even with a -2 penalty to the roll it lets them save there character with a 14 or higher. I can live with that.

I was being a grinch with the Luck points at first. But I've made myself aware of when to hand them out. It really seems to equate (for me) to the more Luck you give, the more they spend, the more fun we have.

As far as "recovering the body", that's one of those rules I always forgot at the worst moment. I use the Death/Dying rules I wrote up for TATG now. They only come up every once in a while. They solve a couple of issues I'd had with the default rules while keeping the game pretty doggone lethal. Earlier passes at the rules were a good deal less lethal. The latest rules are a good upgrade.

I am seriously thinking about having players (and NPCs) make a second successful attack roll to confirm critical hits.

I am also interested in the best ways to make rolls be high=good like with a DC. I guess you could do luck check DC = 20-luck score.

Clangador wrote:I am seriously thinking about having players (and NPCs) make a second successful attack roll to confirm critical hits.

I don't like this rule. This is a party pooper. It's like: crit! Oh no, I need to roll. Oh noooo, I miss the crit

Crits are fun. Let'em have'em!

Skyscraper wrote:

Clangador wrote:I am seriously thinking about having players (and NPCs) make a second successful attack roll to confirm critical hits.

I don't like this rule. This is a party pooper. It's like: crit! Oh no, I need to roll. Oh noooo, I miss the crit

Crits are fun. Let'em have'em!

They are not that fun when a PC suffers them.

Clangador wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

Clangador wrote:I am seriously thinking about having players (and NPCs) make a second successful attack roll to confirm critical hits.

I don't like this rule. This is a party pooper. It's like: crit! Oh no, I need to roll. Oh noooo, I miss the crit

Crits are fun. Let'em have'em!

They are not that fun when a PC suffers them.

My players find them fun even when they suffer. I have the kind of players who would choose the clumsy dwarf over the powerful one because the former had a memorable encounter where the Hound of Hirot wounded his throat making him silent forever, which made it a more interesting character than the latter.

+1.

In our last session, the warrior fumbled and attacked his ally thief instead of his opponent, taking him down. Fumbles and crits spice things up!

This being said, I can see the argument for not wanting them, as they do not promote PC longevity.

Criticals are fantastic in DCC.

...matter of fact, just the last session of DCC I ran the party ran across a critical that not one player at the table is going to ever forget: They were facing off against an evil priest as their two ships drew into a naval battle, a great storm had rolled in and frogs were raining from the sky. The party readied their weapons, commanded the crew... and then every last one of them melted into nothingness!

Evil priest rolled a critical on casting affliction of the gods and not one of the PCs could pass their save because the critical rules for spells (add caster level into the result again) and the rule that saves against spells are always at the check result of the caster do not really mix well in practice.

Unfortunately, that TPK put us at a narrative "well... guess the antagonists win," spot for the campaign, which means I need to spend some time thinking of the ramifications and move the setting forward a touch before having other characters begin a campaign of their own.

Hard to believe that all but 2 of the people on the party's roster of allies, connections, and playable characters went down from one lucky die roll.

Though I do count myself blessed: not one of the players said "looks like I am never playing DCC again" in response to the sudden campaign kill.

You could always take a page from the rules, open the next session with the same characters in Hell, and let them fight their way out. Imagine the surprised look on the cleric's face when they come back? Imagine how funny it would be if the encounter concluded in the same way it previously did........

A question about how to check luck for rolling over the body came up today. It seems that the beta rules say this is a Luck test versus DC 10, but the final rules just say "Luck check" which is roll under Luck on a d20. This is an important difference in that a character making a test with low luck still gets a decent chance, but roll-under for that same character could be very hard.

Which is it?

I can't recall why things were changed here, but I think the final rules trump the Beta rules on things like this.

On the other hand, if you like the Beta rule better, go with it. It's your campaign.

Konig wrote:A question about how to check luck for rolling over the body came up today. It seems that the beta rules say this is a Luck test versus DC 10, but the final rules just say "Luck check" which is roll under Luck on a d20. This is an important difference in that a character making a test with low luck still gets a decent chance, but roll-under for that same character could be very hard.

Which is it?

We do it as the final rules say. A luck check for recovering the body is the character rolling under their luck score. And yep, be careful how you spend your luck as you might not be as easily able to make a luck check when recovering the body!

Raven_Crowking wrote:You could always take a page from the rules, open the next session with the same characters in Hell, and let them fight their way out. Imagine the surprised look on the cleric's face when they come back? Imagine how funny it would be if the encounter concluded in the same way it previously did........

That's a great idea.

Although... I'd have them all suffer an affliction of some sort. Nothing too nasty, just a little something to remember the guy by.

Skyscraper wrote:

Raven_Crowking wrote:You could always take a page from the rules, open the next session with the same characters in Hell, and let them fight their way out. Imagine the surprised look on the cleric's face when they come back? Imagine how funny it would be if the encounter concluded in the same way it previously did........

That's a great idea.

Although... I'd have them all suffer an affliction of some sort. Nothing too nasty, just a little something to remember the guy by.

The only reason I am not doing that very thing is that life and schedule changes amongst the group playing the campaign have put a kind of hard limit on how much time we have to finish up the campaign... which has already been running steady for nearly a year (we are about 5 or 6 weeks short, specifically) and has only gotten through 5 of 15 modules combined to create it.

We are all just in a place where switching systems and having a "do over" so that our chance of seeing the campaign through to the end was greater ended up being more appealing than the alternative.

I think really it is just that the campaign I wanted to run doesn't mesh well with DCC's style - too linear, too many goals, too many moving parts in one giant conspiracy, and too much forced urgency in the plot because of it.