Goodman Games

And this post will be going up on my blog (http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/) tomorrow. Posted for the same obvious reasons.

I know everyone has moved on to ACKS, but we're still thoroughly play-testing DCC over here, so here are my observations of actual play, along with player comments.

What follows is a long list of thoughts coming up during play and play-testing:

Major Issues:

[*]Fumbles! Apparently if you are a fighter, who's job is fighting and killing things in armor, then not only will you fumble much more then the other classes (because you are attacking more) but your fumbles are more severe because you are in heavy armor.
[*] The thought of a fifth level fighter rolling a 1 on his attack die, bothers me even with the addition of damage. The fact that average on a d7 is 4 with the chance of it being 1 for a fifth level fighter still seems low. Also, what happens at level 8? 10? Is the fighter capping out rolling a d12? That's some pretty wild variance for the guy who's supposedly best at fighting.
[*] Why would you *ever* *ever* spend luck before a roll.
[*] As cool as I think this system is, the extreme randomness of character creation + funnel, and the lack of player control over their character (from corruptions, etc.) make for fun one-offs, but cause serious misgivings about using the system for campaign play. Is anyone running a six month campaign with this? How is that working out? Did you have any spell-casters reach mid levels that used spells?
[*] Characters are effectively invulnerable after hitting level 1. First, they have to be reduced to 0 hit points. Then they have to be ignored by every party member for a number of rounds equal to their level. Then, they *still* have a better than average chance of being alive. It makes it feel a little cartoonish at times - the opposite of old school/deadly.
[*] The "Be creative with deeds" and "Here are a list of specific effects for specific kind of deeds" are directly at odds. One reason I enjoy old school games is that I'm not going to get into rules arguments with players about the 'rules' and I'm certainly not going to reference an effects table for a character ability during play. Should I just photocopy this section and hand it out to the player, so they can tell me the effect of the deed?

Things that are Confusing:

[*] Why would you ever not declare a deed?
[*] Spells in the beta document make no sense. Can you learn a spell between levels? How many can you prepare? Each once?
[*] Luck? So having the birth-sign makes you bad at something? Until you earn enough luck to be good at it? If thieves and halflings always regenerate luck and they gain 1 or 2 per session, how do they not end up with luck totals in the 30+
[*] Why are there no options for druid ranger types? No animal friendship? No animal companions? I play with a lot of girls, so these things are deal-breakers.
[*] The character sheets are not labeled as to class
[*] There is a discrepancy between the cleric turn unholy and character sheet regarding the application of the luck modifier.
[*] The differences between weapons (mace? warhammer?) seem pointless. Either make them all do 1d6, or do some pathfinder style weapon balancing.
[*] There are a ton of edge case, specific rules, that are interesting but difficult to keep straight after years of playing Dungeons & Dragons. Some clarification or collection of these would be useful. I am referring to Strength less than 5, 2-handers having an initiative penalty.

Minor Issues:

[*] It's unclear from the beta how experience points are acquired.
[*] Over a campaign you will see a lot of repetition in the mercurial magic table.
[*] How can the spell fumble table options for 'rain' not include frogs?

Typos:

"Chapter: FIve"
"suffering a. -1" (Page 98, result 0)
"Attack" on the fighter character sheet should read "attack die" or some such to indicate that it's a variable amount.

Again, I know the above seems negative, but we did have a lot of fun playing.

Good observations, nexusphere. Glad playtesting is still happening. BTW, what is ACKS?



Using armor to figure out what someone rolled on a fumble seemed tacked on to our group. We straight up forgot a couple of times. Seems like it would make more sense to have a fumble table and not factor the armor into it. But it wasn't a huge issue for us. Might be once we roll more fumbles, though.



See, the attack die was a huge hit at our table. It is wild variance. But our group found it a lot more fun than remembering bonus after bonus.



We didn't. Conveniently, that part of luck spend was ignored. We only ever spend it after the roll.



Yeah. This is one of my concerns as well. It's extremely fun in a one-off fashion, similar to how Paranoia is extremely fun in small doses. But I don't know how much the rules-as-written encourage/inspire long-term play. Seems like PCs would be near cripple by 8th level.



Yeah. I liked the Recovery rules initially. But your point is valid. When recovery was used it killed the tension demonstrably. I think something similar could be employed that wasn't so overt.



Yeah, those charts are suggestions. It seems a number of people are interpreting them as hard/fast rules, though. Maybe it should be clarified better in the final rules.



I had the opposite problem. The player with the Dwarf was addicted to his attack die. Never wanted to declare a deed because he loved that bonus.



Agreed. Lucky Roll should just be a flat +1, IMO. Too fidgety otherwise, especially with the assumption that Luck will fluctuate.



I'd prefer how Lamentations of the Flame Princess handles it. Small weapons do 1d6, Medium weapons 1d8, Large weapons 1d10. You figure out what type of weapon it is. Weapons with special properties, like Whips, get their own entry.



We saw a lot of repetition over just one game.

Adventurer Conqueror King System - check out the Kickstarter page. I'm a big fan of what the designers are trying to achieve. Still playtesting DCC though - having a blast with our 'fighters and thieves only' sessions.

Some really good observations here! I hope GG and team can look up from the final release and double check that these are addressed in SOME way at least! Being an inveterate nit picker the following wall of text includes my counter comments..
No you will fumble as often as anybody else. IE on a 1. Only if ALL the other players of any class somehow kick back and just watch during a fight could this be ever true! The severity due to armor is a fair point I agree. But there had to be some reason Conan never used any significant armor!

One mans bug is another "feature" I guess. Even if you get a 1 on your d12 (or whatever) thats 1 more than anybody else of the same level is getting in combat


Beats me! Now if you got DOUBLE value for a luck point spent before the fact then I could see it happening rarely. But as it is now this rule needs a LOT more work or it will only ever be used post action.

As the beta aint been out 6 months yet I guess only the in house playtest has been going on 6+ months. My games been going for a month just about and so far the novelty of the unlikely hero hasn't worn off yet for us. Folks are quite attached to their "misfits" that several of them openly state they would NEVER have played had the dice not dropped them as they did. A low stat has forced my players into greater RP and creativity to get around or mitigate this disability. So I think its a great game feature!

I agree on this one, however I can't actually see a reference to the Roll over the body rule NOT applying to 0 Level Characters. Yes they have no bleed out time but could somebody (at last!) show me where they can't be revived (possibly) by a roll over...?

Amen and AMEN to this one! If they had left it at just the brief examples in the warriors section then we would have been OK I guess as it stands. The whole section on examles? Nah just an extra set of rules to be looked up and abused. The Concept is great the execution (pun intended) failed.

I have yet to see my play test group warrior EVER declare a deed ROFLMAO! I dunno if he keeps forgetting or is just not good at creatively picturing a warrior move but so far..!?

They make enough sense to me. Yes you can learn them between levels but you have a maximum in memory each day, but you can only prepare one copy of each per day. At least it seems that is what the rules say to me? Opinions please?

Great point! Though it has been thrashed out somewhat at length elsewhere on these forums. What Mr G's final take will be on it I dunno but he's had a lot of weighty feedback on this subject! Personally I hope Thieves and Halflings CANNOT get added luck so they do not become uber luck monsters. Other classes should get the 1-2 points per adventure but only upto 18 IMOHO

I have a neo Ranger in my group right now! Basically its a creativly played Animal herder that became a cleric. The ranger like quality of this character is superior to most class based rangers I have seen in 20+ years of ROle playing!!

Totally agree with this one. Bows and especially crossbows are waaay underpowered. The melee weapons need seperating out a bit somehow but how? I have an idea but thats not applicable here.

Yep! Much streamlining to do here!

I would have loved a few guides on whats a good XP handout per level of an adventure myself as well! So far the Xp table seem to be about half those of AD&D so thats how I am trying to do it. Take XP values from the MM or DMG and halve them...?

Yes indeedy! But I got the impression that the rules are to inspire you to make up your own Mercurials as your game developes..

Absolutly! This is an unforgivable error! (Totally serious here) If you gonna include this stuff lets hit all the buttons at least!!!

No you were not negative unduly you had thought about your reactions and articulated your impressions in a mature detailed matter. Thank God for folks ACTUALLY Play TESTING like this Sir! My hats off to you!

I'm sorry, but it appears that you're confused.



I'm not sure if it's the math and probabilities you are unclear on, or if you just don't understand what I'm saying.. Yes. The fighter will fumble when they roll a 1 on the die. but fighters make many more attacks then the other classes, therefore the person that specializes in fighting will roll more attacks, and 5% of 100 is 5, versus 5% of 10 which is 1.

In an evening the fighter will fumble five times, and the non-combat classes (like the wizard) will fumble less.
Did you spend all that time practicing with the sword just to fall on it?



Well, last time I checked, fifth level clerics have an attack bonus of +3. Fighters just use the die. So every time they attack, Clerics roll 1d20 and add 3.

Fighters get no attack bonus whatsoever outside of that added by the die. So if they roll a 1 on their d12 (or whatever) then that will be many many many numbers less of a bonus then a 10th level cleric gets.

How is a +1 on a bad roll at fifth level more than a +3 for clerics?

I understand the bonus is to damage also, but it doesn't seem statistically worth it - again, fighters being worse off then the other classes at fighting.



Well, that's the point, isn't it. The rules should explicitly say something, not require an interpretation.

While it is certainly true that Warriors will make many more attack roles than other classes, I think your being a triful narrow in your thinking Sir.
Wizards & Clerics can fumble spells.. Thieves that fail or worse fumble a Trap disarm with potentially disaterous consequences.. NONE of which by definition a Warrior is ever going to be subject to. So yes the Warrior probaly will get more combat fumbles but they will never get any other kind that other classes are by their very nature vulnerable to.

That sounds actually like Balance to me? Warriors fight and get the lions share of Fighting goofs. Wizards and CLeric spell cast as well as fight so... You all get where I am going I am sure

Using your example a 5th Lvl Cleric has a +3 you say? On average (as you brought up probabilities) the warrior will be getting slightly more than that each round AND gets a damage bonus AND gets the potential to MDoA each hit so the small chance they will "underperform" is acceptable I feel to me and I suspect most.

Oh and you didn't seem to mention that the "worse than other classes at fighting" fighter will be attacking TWICE at that level while the Cleric hits but once...? (Please don't say "ah hah! twice the chance to fumble!")
Oh Ok if the Cleric has an 18 Dex and is dual wielding its as you said but that is a really good cleric I think! Do we also need to point out the expanded Critical chance for fighters that Clerics etc don't seem to get?

In short while you are technically correct that in some very limited situations a Fighter could do worse than say a Cleric of the same level with their bonuses. They have several other advantages that it is obvious the Designers hope will balance out this occasional statistical anomaly.

If this becomes an issue in actual play then yes your correct then it must be addressed as nobody wants a warrior that's useless everyone will play Clerics instead.
All I can say with certainty is that this has not been the case in the few weeks my play test group has been running. The parties 1st Level Warrior dominates nearly every single combat when it comes to damage done by weapons. One party Wizard comes occasionally close when his spells go off correctly a few times in a row. But the Warrior SHINES all the time..

Re: not declaring deed:
I thought that on my first read. wow nifty effects every attack?
Then I re read.
If your class die (1d3 at first level) is less than 3, you miss, no damage at all. Seems a bit risky at level 1 with do few hp
Re: ranger class:
This isn't d&d.this isn't going to appeal to everyone who plays d&d. There may be one in the future, but even in a funnel playtest I found myself constantly reminding folks this isn't d&d and you're not heroes yet.

Re spells:
I read it as you can prepare every spell you know, and cast it until you roll low enough to lose it, walking the line between 3e's limited casting and 4e's walking magic explosion machine