Saturday, July 20, 2013

Body Recovery in DCC

I was persuing the DCC Rules sub-forum over at the Goodman Games Forums and I saw a thread there on "Recovering the Body". For those not familiar with the ins and outs of DCC, there is a rule that goes someting like this: If a character goes down in battle, if after siad battle allies can get to the body and roll it over, the character gets to make a Luck check and, if successful, actually not be dead. There are, of course, some pretty serious consequences to surviving in this manner - you lose a point of Strength, Agility, or Stamina and you're at -4 to all rolls for the next hour (6 turns) due to being groggy. You're also only at 1 HP unless some healing can be applied.

As is pretty usual on the DCC forums, answers were wide ranging and usually helpful/positive. One even suggested you could open the next game session with the character(s) in Hell looking for a way to get out. This got me to thinking...what about a Recovering the Body table?

The first thougiht was how fun it would be if instead of being in hell, the character brought a little piece of hell back with them.

The second thing I thought was that I wouldn't want another roll. So the table is based on the difference between the target number of the roll, and the actual roll. This also has the benefit of being applicable whether you like the Roll-Under-Your-Luck check or the Roll-Over-Target check.

So this was my first pass at the table:


But then I realized that it was a bit haphazard, and it didn't incorporate any of the current rules for Recovering the Body - like loss of Stamina or Strength, or grogginess. So I did a little editing and came up with this:


So there's the first and second pass. I'd love to hear your input. Hit me with your best shot, I'm sure my ego can recover....

2 comments:

  1. Heard about this on Spellburn the first time it came out and forgot to check it out then. Just listened to episode 7 again and was reminded. This looks great, and I will see what my group thinks about using it.

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  2. I love the idea of this (it was linked from issue 12 of Crawl fanzine) and I did my own version. I prefer a shorter table with sub-rolls to determine the specifics and I also wanted a secondary effect for the possession so the option of keeping the ghost a secret is there

    0
    Returned from the afterlife. Possessed by a spirit; Roll 1d3: Evil, Questing, Good. Also suffer a head injury. Permanently lose 1d3 points to an ability. Roll 1d3: PER, INT, LUCK.
    Groggy: -4 to all rolls for 1d3 days"

    1
    Crippling injury. Permanently lose 1d3 points to an ability. Roll 1d3: STR, AGI, STA. Add a note detailing an appropriate effect to the character. For example, "Lame in one leg", "Laboured breathing", etc
    Groggy: -4 to all rolls for 2d10 hours

    2-6
    Serious injury. Permanently lose 1 point to an ability. Roll 1d3: STR, AGI, STA. Add a note detailing an appropriate scar.
    Groggy: -4 to all rolls for 1d6 hours

    7-9
    Concussion: -4 to all rolls for 1d6 hours but otherwise no ill affect.

    10
    Not a scratch on you! Were you just playing dead?

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