Casting unknown spells?

[Jobe Bittman]

DCC RPG pg 106 says: "A novice wizard cannot cast magic beyond his comprehension, but he may attempt to cast a spell of any level he has learned. This means he may attempt to cast spells where he suffers a significant chance of failure, based on his spell check modifier. If he judges the attempt worthwhile, so be it; but there are consequences to failure."

What it the intent of this rule? Can a wizard class character cast any spell of a known level? Elfs are excluded I would gather. What would the "significant chance of failure" be? Is the judge supposed to inflict a penalty to the role?

[Doug Kovacs]

I think the intent of the rule is that you can try anything but there will be costs and it won't be easy. Maybe auto corruption with failures? Certainly very high rolls required depending on the situation as called by the GM.

If a player tried to use it in a cool way I would give them a chance, but if they tried to abuse it by doing it all the time I would give a warning and then <b>f*ck</b> them if they continued.


I tried something similar as a player in Adam's Metal Gods game, although I was playing a cleric. I tried one of those" calling generally " on my god for aid. This was while I thought I was falling to my death. I failed, but wasn't really falling to my death so he judged I would bump up a die roll worth of disapproval. We moved through it seamlessly .

[Doug Kovacs]

For anyone who might want to know.
I came across the actual rule for Divine Aid in the book : its on p.31 of cleric class

It invokes at least +10 disapproval …

I know how to role role play my character and I would have done it anyway regardless of the rules ,but I guess I accidentally got away with something…
I'll inform on myself to the DM the first chance I get.

Later in that same adventure I actually converted the Grand Vizier, the top official of a huge city, so I might have recovered a bunch of that disapproval anyway.