Goodman Games

So I just ran my very first session of DCCRPG (Sailors on the Sunless Sea), and the three players managed to make it out with one 0-level each. They decided to level them up into a Warrior, Wizard, and Halfling.

I wanted to run People of the Pit next, but how do I keep the party alive without a Cleric? They're all quite attached to their characters, so I don't want to FORCE one of them to switch, but it's not like I can just drop a wand of Cure Light Wounds on the party like I would in Pathfinder.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

You have a few options:

(1) Hirelings. Some other guys to act as meat shields.

(2) NPC Cleric. Actually located in the module you are planning to use.

(3) Magic. Give them some potions or other item(s) that allow for limited healing.

(4) Luck. Allow the adventurers to spend Luck to recover some damage. I would suggest 1/2 HD Type per point spent (i.e., a wizard gains 1d2, a thief 1d3, a warrior 1d6). I would not allow a thief or halfling to gain extra healing this way (even though their normal Luck modifier is not 1 to 1), but I would allow a Lucky Halfling to burn Luck in this way on behalf of others.

(5) Rest. Simply rule that half damage, rounded up, is real, and the other half is temporary, going away after the combat for the survivors with a short rest. DCC assumes that combats are rounded up to the nearest whole turn, so you can just assume that whatever leftover time occurs is, in fact, that rest.

Obviously, you can use some combination of the foregoing if you wish. Or come up with something completely different.

Oh, and welcome to the fun and madness that is DCC!

Thanks!

Raven_Crowking wrote:You have a few options:
(2) NPC Cleric. Actually located in the module you are planning to use.

Where is the NPC Cleric in People of the Pit?

uriel222 wrote: Where is the NPC Cleric in People of the Pit?

Area 1-17 "D" (pg 9)

PERFECT!

Thanks! I'm not sure how I missed him (I think I was looking for a stat-block).

He'll work out great, and might keep the body count down a bit...

Transylvanian Adventures supports play without Clerics, even NPC Clerics. In essence, it allows play in worlds where there is no magical healing. The changes in TATG that allow for this would be easily portable to DCC classes. Or the TATG classes could be used in a fantasy setting to allow for Sword & Sorcery DCC. Just use the Occupation table in DCC, instead of the one in TATG, for 0-Levels. Then level up with a TATG class.

More info at: http://landofphantoms.blogspot.com/

This can also be a problem if the Cleric's alignment is diametrically opposed to that of some party members, so he doesn't want to lay hands on them.

I've been running a sword and planet game without clerics for some time now. What I do is this:

Characters have a 'healing pool' equal to their Stamina multiplied by their level. With one nights rest they can subtract any number of hitpoints from this pool to recover lost hitpoints on a 1-1 basis. For example Barri the 1st level Warrior looses 6 hitpoints in a battle with a bandit, but he has a Stamina of 14. That evening he sets up camp binds the gash on his arm, and gets a good nights rest. By subtracting 6 points from his 'healing pool' of 14 he completely restores his health. Alternatively if desperate measures are required the healing pool can be used without resting for the night. If a character spends a turn recuperating he can restore hitpoints from his healing pool on a 2-1 basis. Barri's 6HP of healing would cost 12 hitpoints from his pool. If things are truly desperate then the healing pool can be used in a single round at a 4-1 basis representing a character digging deep into his or her inner strength and pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. In this case Barri could only restore 3 hitpoints, at a cost of 12 but there may be occasions when those 3 hitpoints mean the difference between life and death. This healing pool refreshes upon leveling up, and occasionally more frequently if the character has several weeks worth of rest.

Just make the field dressings that heal 1d4 hp from SotSS fairly readily available in towns.

With these I also allow an optional skill roll where:
1: 1d4 damage plus 1d4 on crit table 1
2 - 4: 1d4 damage
5 - 9: heal 1d4 hp
10 - 14: heal 1d6 hp
15 - 19: heal 1d8 hp
20: heal 1d8 + 4 hp

Of course, the player has to be able to convince me they would be skilled if they want to roll hat d20, otherwise it's the d10 for them. Most of the time they just take the guaranteed 1d4.

EDIT: should add that these can only heal a character once per encounter - they are field dressings not magic potions

For a year or two now I have been running rpg's where I give the characters (2 x their level) + their Stamina (or Constitution) bonus hit points back for the first night's rest after taking damage. This represents replenishing the physical fatigue and psychological exhaustion associated with the day's combats. After the first night, they only heal 1 hp per night as usual. This method allows the number of hit points to increase as they go up in level so that it doesn't gradually lose it's effectiveness as they gain levels, and it usually doesn't heal them up completely every time they stop for a night.

This helped us out of the two night rest syndrome that you get in all versions of D&D. Where the party stops for a night and the cleric casts all his healing spells to get everyone healed back up then the party wants to rest a second night so the cleric can get all his spells back. Later, when I had parties without a cleric I realized it also offset that situation nicely, so I have gradually decided to keep it as my standard house rule.

I say we just leave those innocent monsters alone and just go on our way without fighting.

Another thing I do is a houserule with shields. If you are equipped with a shield and and get struck by a critical hit then you can use your shield to protect against it. You still get hit, but you don't suffer the effects of the crit.

That said, the blow will smash your shield. Now to be fair I've never actually given out a magic shield in DCC so I'm not sure how I would work that but I'll cross that bridge when and if I come to it.

I like it for two reasons, first it makes the shield more useful, something that every edition of D&D has kinda lacked, and second it serves as an easy way to show the relative fragility of shields. They bust up fairly regularly. In the Scandinavian dueling culture with the Holmgang for example each combatant was allowed the use of 3 shields. That suggests that the practical combat life of a shield was pretty darn short.