Test Generator

The Village: Prayers

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it." 

In our uncaring, hyperborean waste, divine healing doesn’t exist. However, characters can cry out for a blessing prior to a battle, offering up sacrifices in the hopes of currying a god’s favor. With a successful spellcheck the character is granted bonus hit dice to distribute to amongst allies as they choose. 

Actual bonus hit points are not determined until battle is joined. The hit points are temporary and any remaining points are lost at the end of the battle.      

	The whims of the god & the PCs' goals ...
Spell check	Aligned	Indifferent	Opposed
1-11	Failure	Failure	Failure and worse!
12-14	3 dice	Failure	Failure
15-18	5 dice	1 die	Failure
19-23	7 dice	2 dice	1 die
24-29	10 dice	4 dice	2 dice
30+	15 dice	8 dice	3 dice

Any character can beseech a god, rolling a 1d10 + Personality modifier. War bands can improve their odds by offering up sacrifices, which can be in blood, treasure, or both.

Sacrifice bonus	Offering	Item value
+1	Sheep or cow	50 gp
+2	Enemy warrior	500 gp
+3	Enemy warlord or champion	5,000 gp
+4	Enemy king	10,000 gp
+5	Enemy emperor or god-king	100,000 gp

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So far this is all arbitrary and needs to be sussed out at the table. 

Clerics, as we know them, aren't a class at character creation. But my plan is for a custom Luck Auger table, where some of the results are having been chosen or blessed by a specific god. 

Thanks for letting me daydream out loud, friends! 

The Village: Thieving Skills

Many characters learn certain illicit skills that serve them well as reavers. What you favor is initially determined by what you are good at. At 0-level, pick one skill for each point of ability score modifier in Agility, Personality, or Intelligence. 

Agility

Climb sheer surfaces

Sneak silently 

Hide in shadows 

Pick Pocket

Pick Lock 

Disable / Set Trap 

Int 

Read Lost Languages

Find Trap 

Personality

Ambush (formerly Backstab)

Bluff (formerly Disguise self)

Skill Bonus by level

0	1	2	3	4	5
+1	+3	+5	+7	+9	+11

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The trickiest sell is Ambush subbing in for DCC's Backstab. Here's my thought process --- ambushing something (a deer, person, or fiend) requires enormous force of will. You spot the target, sit and sit and sit and wait, until it presents the perfect opportunity. 

Strike early and it's just an attack. But if you have the patience and willpower to wait for just the right moment ... that's the DCC backstab crit.  

Another change would be to reframe Hide in Shadows / Sneak Silently as things anyone can attempt, but with two tracks, with one strongly favoring those that chose it as a skill.

The Village

 

The conceit of the DCC game is that the PCs are liberated by their 0-level adventure. They shake free of the shackles of their former, humble lives, and set out for the wider world as Adventurers. 

This presupposes a certain sort of world, where survival is viable for small groups of wanderers, I.e. our usual RPG settings. But DCC is home to thousand insane worlds, some less welcoming than others. 

The Village falls in with the latter. A place where rival bands hope to enslave you, unknown monsters lurk in the dark forests and mist-shrouded moors, and magic is baleful and strange.

The size of the village is finite, and every member of the hamlet is a potential PC. And so, when you lose three characters to your 0-level adventure, your pitiful hamlet is now bereft of its baker, gong farmer, and armorer. 

Rather than abandoning kith and kin when you hit first level, you return home in the hopes of using those bloodied treasures to some advantage. We root our PCs in a sense of place, with the shared goal of survival. 

Cap the levels at 5, start off every PC as a warrior with handful of thief skills, and hide magic in the ruins crushed beneath a hyperborean glacier. Beowulf meets Viking Crawl, and the first 10 pages of every Conan comic reboot. We'll see if I can get anyone to play. 

You’re no hero. 

You’re are a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen, 

a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets ...

… and your Village's only hope for survival.