How many Artifacts do MCC Adventures have? (Designing Adventures)

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Melfast
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How many Artifacts do MCC Adventures have? (Designing Adventures)

Post by Melfast »

Fellow Travelers in the Wastes,

This is the second of three posts on artifacts. The first one introduced the threefold role of artifacts as encounters, treasure, and character class abilities.

This one does a deep dive into how many artifacts of what kind, Tech Level and Complexity modifier will characters typically run into.

This information is perhaps particularly useful to MCC Judges, but is has some use for players, too. It can help calibrate expectations to realize that artifacts are less rare than magic items if you are coming over from DCC.

I analyzed all the currently published official MCC adventures.
• On average, there are 28 artifacts per adventure. For comparison, there are on average 10 magic items that can be found in DCC adventures.
• The average Tech Level is 4.1 (So, at 0-level, you will need a character with a 12+ Intelligence for most artifacts)
• The average Complexity Level is 3.8 (So, at 0-level, the average artifact check to successfully understand an artifact is 15.8. To not have it break and cause you damage, on average the check is 11.8 )

These vary based on the category of item. For analysis purposes, I categorized artifacts (and later magic items) into the following categories: Armor, Battery, Fixed, Medical, Skill, Utility, and Weapons. Most are self-explanatory. Fixed artifacts and magic items are ones that are essentially part of a building, facility, etc., or which cannot function if removed – ex: power generators, main frame AI, or a magic table keyed to a specific tower. Skill artifact and magic items are ones that make a character better at using an ability or skill – ex: temporary ability boosts, improved skill/spell check, etc. Utility is a catch-all category for artifacts and magic items that let you travel, communicate, etc. better – ex: grav clamps, illum rods, com badges, spell scrolls, etc.

The lowest level Tech Level tends to be in artifacts that provide protection of some kind (Armor). The least complex tends to be batteries (which makes sense, since almost everything uses them, and they are pretty basic once you figure them out).

Artifacts are much more plentiful in an MCC adventure than magic items are in a DCC adventure, and are usually much easier to find. Really cool magic items in a DCC adventure are often very difficult to find or obtain. Artifacts are often readily found in the very early parts of an MCC adventure, and are not hard to obtain -- a dazer found on a skeleton of a guard, a lazer pistol taken from a plantient bandit, etc.

Batteries are very important, essentially setting a limit on how often most artifacts can be used and driving the need to keep searching for more.

In an average adventure there will be the following number of items:
• Armor = 2.6 (TL = 3.5, CM = 3.3)
• Batteries = 5.6 (TL = 4.0, CM = 2.2)
• Fixed = 1.9 (TL = 5.1, CM = 6.7)
• Medical = 5.4 (TL = 4.2, CM = 3.7)
• Skill = 1.5 (TL = 4.7, CM = 4.3)
• Utility = 7.6 (TL = 3.6, CM = 3.1)
• Weapons = 6.1 (TL = 4.0, CM = 3.9)
• Total = 28.2 (TL = 4.1, CM = 3.8 ) – [if you add these numbers up, it comes to 30.7, because a couple of items fall in to more than one category]

As a rule of thumb, I would just use TL 4 and CM 4 as my base for trying to figure out if I can make an artifact check, unless it is a fixed artifact, in which case I would use TL 5 and CM 7.

In most cases, characters are best off waiting to do artifact checks for important/highly valued artifacts until they are first level, and then having a PSH do the artifact check with a Plantient around to help with luck if needed.

In a funnel, it may end up being necessary to risk characters to learn artifacts in order to have a better chance for overall success, but it will likely result in a lot of broken artifacts, and injured or dead characters. Level-0 characters will generally need a 12+ Intelligence to meet the Tech Level requirement, and without a 13+ intelligence, they will only succeed 25% of the time, failing badly enough to break the item and take damage 55% of the time. (Without Luck spends.)

Artifacts may also have built-in Personal Assistant AI. These will have their own personalities, and may have their own goals and desires that the player has to consider, similar to intelligent magic items. PSH and PSH-appearing Mutants will have the best chance of interfacing with these AI, which may be important if the AI is adding a level of security controlling the use of the artifact. The rules are not clear on how often artifacts will have AI, but in my campaign I would probably assign a base 10-30% chance, with more complex artifacts having a higher chance of having AI built in.

Judges should probably plan on characters having one class-specific / useful artifact at Level-1, and then roughly gain an additional artifact per level (+/- one). These artifacts will also likely need batteries, so you have a built-in limiter on their use and a built-in motivator to go out and explore ruins.

Happy gaming…

- Melfast
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