Goodman Games

DivineWannabe wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2020 7:29 pm I am saying that with a result of 41-60, it is a very small margin for someone to learn a spell with no extra MM effects.

DivineWannabe wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:36 pm I agree with both of you.

I agree that MM is one of the awesomely unique things about DCC.

As is often said about DCC, it's about RULINGS, not RULES.
I have just found that, playing the MM rules as written, a wizard may find himself with a lot of spells he really doesn't want to use, due to all of the MM effects (mostly bad effects, for this particular character.)

With my idea, a first level wizard is not left with a bunch of spells that he is afraid to cast, thus rendering him nearly useless to the party.

GnomeBoy wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 6:56 am I ran a couple games once for a group, and one guy playing a Wizard was very disappointed in his spells, primarily because of MM.

Then in the first encounter, he realized he could cast the force wall thingy and get a shower of frogs (centered on himself) that fell so hard they did damage.... When he cast the barriers horizontally in sequence so climbing the tower would be easier for everyone, and that the barriers protected the party from the frog-rain, and completely pounded the guards at the top of the tower to death with frogs, he began to see things differently.

Part and parcel of the game is pushing the players to be creative to make the best of a bad lot. Sometimes, they come up with genius ideas that other games would not have inspired them to create. That's what makes DCC fun.

Judge_Yossarian wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:12 am If you want to do this there's an easier way. It seems like most people ignore this rule, but in the judges' section on magic, it describes how characters have to prepare a week and then make a spell check against DC10+spell level any time they attempt to learn any spell, including their starting spells. I like this rule a lot and it worked in my campaign, really making my wizards value the few spells they have (no spell is useless. They just require creativity, and the player will find ways to use a spell if it's all they have).

Anyway, for your purposes, you could just change the mercurial percentage based on how characters roll against that DC to learn the spell. Roll a may 20? Congrats, clean spell. Roll a 3? You can still learn it but you have to roll 3 mercurial effects. This method would be story-consistent and take into account INT and LUCK mods.

Each level, you could give characters a chance to re-learn an existing spell without mercurial (or with different effects) by prepping a week and trying for a higher roll.