Goodman Games

finarvyn wrote:I have the opposite story. I know of a mid-level character who was down to one hp, encountered a demon, charged it and died, then blamed me for killing his character.

I had the same problem with a friend of my cousin who decided to fly his ship straight at a star destroyer after I warned him that it was a very bad idea. He had delusions of grandeur I guess.

I'd say he went down in flames, but I'm not sure we'd get any cool flames in the vacuum of space.

No nifty explosion sound, either.

DCCfan wrote:

finarvyn wrote:I have the opposite story. I know of a mid-level character who was down to one hp, encountered a demon, charged it and died, then blamed me for killing his character.

I had the same problem with a friend of my cousin who decided to fly his ship straight at a star destroyer after I warned him that it was a very bad idea. He had delusions of grandeur I guess.

He just does not know how to roll dies. In SW 2e... we did that. Took our light transport and went after a Victory Class star destroyer... rolled a 12 on our damage and the Victory Class SD rolled a 2 for defense... 6x damage = all blow up.

All in all, we were pretty insufferable to the GM the rest of the night with out gloating.

Hamakto wrote:

DCCfan wrote:

finarvyn wrote:I have the opposite story. I know of a mid-level character who was down to one hp, encountered a demon, charged it and died, then blamed me for killing his character.

I had the same problem with a friend of my cousin who decided to fly his ship straight at a star destroyer after I warned him that it was a very bad idea. He had delusions of grandeur I guess.

He just does not know how to roll dies. In SW 2e... we did that. Took our light transport and went after a Victory Class star destroyer... rolled a 12 on our damage and the Victory Class SD rolled a 2 for defense... 6x damage = all blow up.

All in all, we were pretty insufferable to the GM the rest of the night with out gloating.

As a DM I don't mind lucky rolls or beating the odds. What I hate is when the odds beat the players crazy suicidal decisions and they cry about it. I mean even Han solo ran from star destroyers and he had a piloting skill of like 12D6.

Fumbles that can kill you? Can you elaborate because that is rather scary, perhaps higher level characters have a way to mitigate it somewhat? Because even if the chance to die from a fumble is 1in20, that is relatively good odds that a character will die from a fumble based on the number of attack/casting rolls that are made over the lifetime of a character.

It might be fun and amusing when a low level character gets taken out by a fumble, but not as much fun when you have a character you have been playing for months does. Perhaps characters have fumble dice that improve as they level up much like their crit dice?

Death by fumble, Tacticon (or maybe NTRPG? The cons start to merge ... ) 2010:

PCs were engaged in combat at the base of a ruined tower. One of the PCs had managed to scale the tower and decided to start rolling boulders over the edge into combat.

PC rolled a 1 on the attack, missing the target. I called for another attack roll vs. the nearest PC.

Hit! The damage roll was sufficient to off the PC.

I'm sure there was a valuable lesson in there somewhere about missile weapons and melee combat, but it probably was lost in the heat of battle. >:)

//H

Now that is a great example, death by a fumble side effect is great.

Death because you rolled a 1 and the table says you impaled yourself on your weapon are the type I worry about.

Hopefully it is a lot more of the former and none of the later.

For the record, nothing brings a judge more joy than asking a player to roll damage against another PC.

//H

Harley Stroh wrote:For the record, nothing brings a judge more joy than asking a player to roll damage against another PC.

//H

Harley Stroh wrote:For the record, nothing brings a judge more joy than asking a player to roll damage against another PC.

Fundamentally, I agree with you. The only thing is that the players need to have the right mindset in order to pull this off.

I once ran a game where a character had a bow that would never miss. That is, it always hit something and the character used to fire at a foe in the middle of melee hoping for a good roll. On a bad roll she hit a party member.

Loads of fun for a while. I think something bad happened to that player shortly thereafter, however. Characters killing characters is rather ... messy.

finarvyn wrote:

Harley Stroh wrote:For the record, nothing brings a judge more joy than asking a player to roll damage against another PC.

Fundamentally, I agree with you. The only thing is that the players need to have the right mindset in order to pull this off.

I once ran a game where a character had a bow that would never miss. That is, it always hit something and the character used to fire at a foe in the middle of melee hoping for a good roll. On a bad roll she hit a party member.

Loads of fun for a while. I think something bad happened to that player shortly thereafter, however. Characters killing characters is rather ... messy.

Again...

finarvyn wrote:Loads of fun for a while. I think something bad happened to that player shortly thereafter, however. Characters killing characters is rather ... messy.

Something bad happened to the player? Yikes. Remind me not to piss off your group.

But yes, you are absolutely right. The shock of one PC killing another is best when accidental, but resulting from player choice. How many of our PCs have weathered the friendly fire of a poorly placed fireball?

//H

I sit corrected. Something happened to the character. The player got a lot of bad looks, but she was my wife and so I couldn't let them kill her for real.

And she was having so much fun with the magic bow. They couldn't stay mad at her for too long.

I had a great game this past weekend running one of Harley's wicked modules. It has this scene where the PCs get entranced by strange carvings, which subsequently induce them to go mad and try to sacrifice fellow party members to the Great Leviathan which they later encounter. Worked out great...one PC failed the save...nothing happened immediately...but a half hour later when she was in combat, she felt compelled to pick up a fellow PC and hurl them in sacrifice to the Great Leviathan. What's better than combat rolls against a fellow PC? Opposed Strength check PC vs. PC -- and loser goes into the belly of the Great Leviathan!

goodmangames wrote:If somebody loses his past PC, another player "donates" his extra.

I tried that as the referee of my playtest and it generated the best quip of the night.

Me: What don't you play one of the extras?

Player: I pass. I am OK with just watching. It would be like wearing another person's underwear."

I haven't seen how initiative is handled. Has anything been posted?

muherd wrote:I haven't seen how initiative is handled. Has anything been posted?

Well, in the rules as written, you roll 1d20 and add your Init modifier, which is usually equal to your Agility modifier. I've gone back and forth on how to integrate two-handed weapons and/or heavy armor (should they operate on a second band of initiative?), and how to deal with players controlling more than one PC (it gets tedious with 20+ low-level PCs so I have them roll once per player at low levels). I'm not sure I want to mess too much with initiative. It's a fairly straightforward mechanic which is easily modified by a DM with a strong preference for a different system, and it doesn't directly tie with any Appendix N / sword & sorcery concepts (at least not that I really see) so I will probably leave it very "vanilla" and assume some DMs will just change it to their preferred method.

Harley Stroh wrote:For the record, nothing brings a judge more joy than asking a player to roll damage against another PC.

//H

Harley, you are a cruel man!

Keeping initiative "vanilla" in the core book makes a lot of sense, given the "keep it simple" mantra and the number of PCs (at 0 level anyway). I can see our group utilizing the Zocchi dice, though, by lowering "die type" for initiative based on armor/weapon type. Bring on the playtest

In the DCC rpg, will higher Armour Class equate to D&D style 'harder to hit' or is it more like greater damage reduction/absorption ?

geordie racer wrote:In the DCC rpg, will higher Armour Class equate to D&D style 'harder to hit' or is it more like greater damage reduction/absorption ?

The former.

I understand that each class will have its own crit chart to roll on, but will the crit descriptions on each chart vary based on weapon type, i.e. piercing/slashing/blunt?

My guess would be no, just for space. Because then Magic Users would have to have one for each type of spell damage. Also if the crits are worded right, they can be easily narrated to fit the weapon/spell that does the damage. The mechanical effects stay the same... e.g. description = head destroyed and mechanical effect = you die. DM can use Edged = decapitation; blunt = skull crushed in; piercing = weapon through the eye socket into brain; fire = head immolated and brain cooked; ice = head frozen in a block of ice etc etc.

Machpants is right, the tables are more about WHO is doing the damage than the weapon that is doing the damage.