A few rules questions...
Posted: Thu May 01, 2014 10:56 am
I am new to DCC and have been going through the book in preparation for running a game soon. Hoping to get a few clarifications on items I noticed during the readings I have made so far.
1) Spells....For mercurial magic systems we roll when they learn the spell to see how it manifests. Each spell also has a manifestation listed as well. How do those two systems work? Are they used in conjunction with each other? Or is that for cases in which there are no blatant effects on the mercurial magic charts?
2) Spells again....I probably missed it but what is the roll used to see if you can learn a spell? And I assume that is used at the start of the research time but that even if it comes out you can't learn it you still have to spend the time.
3) Crit tables. All of the tables have a listing for '0 or less.' Again, I probably missed it, but when you crit you roll a die ( 0 lvls rolling a d4) to see what you get. So how do you roll a 0 or less?
Those are the main rules questions I have. I also have a few questions on a few issues that will most likely come up and thought I might see if anyone has had these issues and how they were dealing with them.
4) HP's. The current campaign I have been playing in we roll hit points. One of the other players who is also a really great DM always ran with max hit points but it was known that if you get max then the people/creatures you fight will have max as well. From looking through a couple modules that I have picked up, Savage Kings and Sailors....is that a viable option to run that way if the players would prefer that? Or am I going to need to scale back the HD of creatures to give them even a base chance?
5) Limits on mighty feats...I honestly don't think this may come up but I did read on the boards here that a few people placed limits on these....why and what type of limit?
6) Rolling in front of the players....this is something that I have never done before but I am going to do now. I am all about letting me live or die by the dice as a player and would honestly feel cheated if I found out my DM was fudging rolls for me. I don't want that to even come up. With that being said, are there any roles that need to be hidden? Since this uses a DC I can't imagine even a thieves skills needing to be hidden so as to keep the tension up as to whether they are hiding well or not. I know the first issue of Crawl had an option for random DC checks and I kinda like that but I am assuming I should roll those checks prior to us playing so they don't know what they are....
And one last thing of note...something that I have never done before but am thinking of doing is multiple random encounter rolls. I like random encounter rolls to break up the we go here and then here and then here routine that happens from time to time. I don't always make these encounters bad. Sometimes it's just a fellow traveler on the road that wants to share a meal and a little gossip. With that being said, as a player I hate knowing I rolled an encounter. It takes me out of the game. So I am thinking about having the players all roll three different colored dice with me selecting the color (writing it down on my notepad) prior to rolling so that they have no idea which die is "magic." Has anyone else tried something like this and did it work effectively enough?
Anyway, thanks for any feedback. I have been trolling the forums for a couple of weeks now and really enjoy the community that is going on here.
-Stretch
1) Spells....For mercurial magic systems we roll when they learn the spell to see how it manifests. Each spell also has a manifestation listed as well. How do those two systems work? Are they used in conjunction with each other? Or is that for cases in which there are no blatant effects on the mercurial magic charts?
2) Spells again....I probably missed it but what is the roll used to see if you can learn a spell? And I assume that is used at the start of the research time but that even if it comes out you can't learn it you still have to spend the time.
3) Crit tables. All of the tables have a listing for '0 or less.' Again, I probably missed it, but when you crit you roll a die ( 0 lvls rolling a d4) to see what you get. So how do you roll a 0 or less?
Those are the main rules questions I have. I also have a few questions on a few issues that will most likely come up and thought I might see if anyone has had these issues and how they were dealing with them.
4) HP's. The current campaign I have been playing in we roll hit points. One of the other players who is also a really great DM always ran with max hit points but it was known that if you get max then the people/creatures you fight will have max as well. From looking through a couple modules that I have picked up, Savage Kings and Sailors....is that a viable option to run that way if the players would prefer that? Or am I going to need to scale back the HD of creatures to give them even a base chance?
5) Limits on mighty feats...I honestly don't think this may come up but I did read on the boards here that a few people placed limits on these....why and what type of limit?
6) Rolling in front of the players....this is something that I have never done before but I am going to do now. I am all about letting me live or die by the dice as a player and would honestly feel cheated if I found out my DM was fudging rolls for me. I don't want that to even come up. With that being said, are there any roles that need to be hidden? Since this uses a DC I can't imagine even a thieves skills needing to be hidden so as to keep the tension up as to whether they are hiding well or not. I know the first issue of Crawl had an option for random DC checks and I kinda like that but I am assuming I should roll those checks prior to us playing so they don't know what they are....
And one last thing of note...something that I have never done before but am thinking of doing is multiple random encounter rolls. I like random encounter rolls to break up the we go here and then here and then here routine that happens from time to time. I don't always make these encounters bad. Sometimes it's just a fellow traveler on the road that wants to share a meal and a little gossip. With that being said, as a player I hate knowing I rolled an encounter. It takes me out of the game. So I am thinking about having the players all roll three different colored dice with me selecting the color (writing it down on my notepad) prior to rolling so that they have no idea which die is "magic." Has anyone else tried something like this and did it work effectively enough?
Anyway, thanks for any feedback. I have been trolling the forums for a couple of weeks now and really enjoy the community that is going on here.
-Stretch