Goodman Games

All other classes gain some interesting stuff out of their cosmic allegiances: clerics, wizards, elves... even thieves vary their skills and job descriptions depending on their alignment. Halflings are kind of an exception in that they seem to not care for alignment much in the first place, so eh (halfling discussion is over there in another thread).

But what of warriors and dwarves? A paladin or a chaos knight, a paragon or a rebel, their alignment defines their characters greatly, yet mechanically speaking it does not seem to make much of a difference. Should I not be the only one who would find some variety interesting, shall we suggest some solutions in this thread?

For warriors, I'm looking at the old D&D for thoughts, as DCC in general does, and the solution presents itself just fine: like in the days of old, they could split their class depending on their alignment, once they become high enough level - probably 6, where they enter the legend. Lawful warriors may become paladins, capable of smiting the forces of evil and minor healing and clerical powers. Neutrals could become barbarians, uncivilized wild warriors with some thieving skills and great rage in their hearts. Chaotics would rise as the champions of their dark gods, gathering other chaos warriors and cultists and even demons into a vast unstoppable host.

I dunno about the dwarves, though. Any ideas?

Actually warriors have the most flexible, diverse ability set, and they aren't even tied by alignment. I did have some elite training packages to the four base classes in my campaign though that PCs could gain by completing quests (tying it simply to level is so un-DCC), and I also dropped racial classes. We had a warrior who became paladin, and a thief who became acrobat, and I think that was all, the rest of the players were fine with the base classes and didn't want to tie themselves to guilds and churches.

For dwarves you can actually use this approach to include abilities from other classes - they could become engineers with thief skills, runesmiths with some spells, and so on.

That does sound pretty much like what I had in mind, when I think about it: paladins add a bit of cleric to their warrior abilities, barbarians take in some thief, now just give chaos champions some arcane magic and you're set.

Tokage wrote:now just give chaos champions some arcane magic and you're set.

They should be also forced into the service of a patron by default and have invoke patron.

If having a Patron or worshiping a God is all benefit and no drawbacks, then you aren't doing it right.

Blood Axe wrote:If having a Patron or worshiping a God is all benefit and no drawbacks, then you aren't doing it right.

I don't think anyone ever implied such.

Blood Axe wrote:If having a Patron or worshiping a God is all benefit and no drawbacks, then you aren't doing it right.

I'm pretty sure you can't worship a god or have a patron without drawbacks. They are pretty much built into DCC RPG.

For my elite classes I wasn't heavy handed with drawbacks because following DCC RPG's "quest for it!" princible I made it sure the players had a pretty hard time to earn them.

I was just musing over paladins the other day. Firstly I think they must prove themselves as a warrior, maybe l3 or 4. Then a good way to make a paladin is a sort of combination game play / quest for it that culminates in being indected in ceremony magic granting high result (30?) patron bond and bless spell combo. Maybe more of the target is caster effects from bless.