Goodman Games

So I really like the DCC RPG system, and have devoured every bit of it I could find since I fisrt found out about the beta last year. Unfortunatly many of the people in my gaming group are brand new to Tabletop, several of them are the significant others of old friends, so our first couple of sessions did not go extremely well. However almost all of them like me grew up playing the final fantasy games on the snes. So I took some inspiration from another game I found on the internet FFD6 and created an unholy combination of the two to woo my players.

First thing I abolished the weird dice from everything except the character creation proccess, because those charts are the core of what drew me in. Then I separated class and race telling my players they could pick their race. Than I made changes to most of the classes, and ended up with 8 playable classes; the Bard(Halfling), The Black Mage(almost unchanged Wizard), the Martial Artist(re-themed Dwarf), The Thief(also almost unchanged), the Shaman(a new idea I am playing with), the Red Mage(Elf), and the White Mage(a combination of Cleric and Wizard). I also simpliefied alot of the rules, which may be too simple for more experienced gamers.

I was wondering if a moderator could tell me if it would be okay to post the new classes to this thread for peer review? So far we have had one session which went fairly well, but I am always up for more review on them.

I have done the same thing, although I have done so in a different fashion - glad to see I'm not the only one, to say the least.

My changes, in summary:

-Removed race as class, replaced with random chance of race by type (Human 79%, Demi-human 12%, Beastman 7%, Other-worldy character type 2%) with each type being split further by actual race (demi-human to Elf, Dark Elf/Goblin, and dwarf, Otherwordly to those out of their own time, dimension, planet, or of in-human origin like android or un-dead characters). Still working on the traits of each race, but so far the assumption is that anything that isn't human will have 1 to 2 traits "balanced" by the fact that you never get to choose your race.

-Removed the Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, and Cleric classes.

-A trio of revised Wizards for Black, White, and Red Mages.

-A Monk class (like a warrior, but tweaked towards being unarmed and unarmored) added

-Mercurial magic effects revised ("no change" range made larger by removing some of the effects from both sides of the chart, mostly things that would make a single spell have too much plot effecting potential [like killing someone every time it is cast], and a 2nd chart for White spells is in the works that doesn't have the ability to turn a White spell into an attack of any kind).

-Revised spellburn rules (mine are a bit more in the player's control, but discourage big burns by being restricted... the best way to get a high bonus requires burning equal amounts of Strength, Stamina, and Agility, for example).

-A dozen Eidolon/Summons from the Final Fantasy series are about 40% through being written as Patrons.

-Revision of the spell lists so that spells are either Black, White, or Gray (instead of Wizard or Cleric).

-Divine aid rule (from cleric class) made into a Luck based roll that any character can attempt, all example DCs raised by 10 (meaning a Luck burn is about the only way to get a good chance at any divine intervention worth asking for).

-Lay on hands used as a baseline for a level 1 White magic spell that restores hit points.

-Revision of weapons so that my players view all weapon options as basically equal while different, and removed the Initiative penalty associated with 2-handed weapons.

-The one I almost forgot: Occupation determined independent of race by way of another d100 roll added to character creation, and the table has been expanded to include more occupations I thought would be nice to have around (fisherman, shipwright, some others).

-Birth Augur rolls modified into Zodiac roll (d14 roll resulting either in 1 of the 13 signs of the zodiac, or the chance to re-roll and then pick either your roll or an "adjacent" sign) This modification actually ties in to the in-setting calender of a year consisting of 13 months with 4 weeks in each... because I prefer the in-setting characters being "wrong" and time easy and uniform to track over almost any other option.

Whew, sounds like you definitly put more work into it than I did. My changes are mostly kludges. I'll go ahead and do a quick summary as well, some of my class charts still use the original level charts so I won't post those without permission.

Character Creation: I have removed the racial part of character creation, although still using the same occupation chart. Aside from that 0th level work the same. The big change comes at the level 1 mark as surviving characters have their "true potential" unlocked. Players get to pick one ability to re-roll as 2d6+6, and they get two "training" rolls at each level up. To train they pick an ability and roll 3d6, if the roll is higher than the ability, the ability goes up by one. I also added in the idea of weapon and non-weapon proficiencies. To get their class attack bonus a character has to use a weapon they are proficient with. Non-weapon proficiencies are sort of everything else, tracking, smithing, under-water basket weaving.

Races:
Human: Humans can either replace another ability score with 2d6+6, or they can add 2 to a
score of their choice. Humans also gain a bonus weapon and non-weapon proficiency.

Light Elf: Light Elves gain a +1 to Int, as well as a +1 to their spell casting rolls if a mage, if not a mage they gain the long bow weapon proficiency free.

Dark Elf: Dark Elves gain a +1 to Stamina, infravision, and the unarmed weapon proficiency
for free.

Giant: Giants gain a +1 to both Strength and Stamina, as well as the Miner and Blacksmith nonweapon proficiency. However they gain a -1 to will saves.

Beastman: Beastmen gain a +1 to agility, also their unarmed damage is a D6(or D8 if a Martial
Artist), Beastmen in the forest also heal twice the normal amount from both magical and
nonmagical healing.

Classes: In addition to the changes I made to each of the individual classes I also added an upgrade of sorts to each at level 5. They gain a new class title and extra abilities.

Bard: The bard is almost identical to the Halfling. The only changes are the addition of lots of non-weapon proficiences, and I upped the HD to D8. At level 5 they become Paragons and recover twice their level in luck each night.

Black Mage: This is the DCC Wizard, with the addition of proficiencies. At level 5 they become Black Wizard's and gain access to level 4&5 Black Magic.

Martial Artist. This is the Dwarf, just with some abilities renamed. The Shield Bash becomes an offhand attack, the attack die is lowered to D12, but all of the classes unarmed attacks are raised to D6. The HD also became a D12. At level 5 they become Masters and gain an additional off-hand attack, as well as their HD becoming 2D8.

Red Mage: The Red Mage uses the same class chart as the Elf, except for the spells. They gain slightly fewer spells, and never gain level 4 or 5 spells. The HD is upped to a D8. They also gain an ability I call Spellblade, they can make a spellcasting check to attempt to infuse their weapon with magic, the higher the check the better the damage bonus. It will last a number of rounds equal to the red mage's level. They also can use either Black or White Magic.

Shaman: The Shaman is my new class Idea. It uses the same class chart as the cleric, except for spells. They gain a very limited number of spells, which are determined by which of the 4 elements they control. Shamans also start with the Patron Bond and Invoke Patron Spell, although they are re-skinned to be elementals. I shamelessly stole the Earth chart from someone on this forum, I need to look up his name so I can give him credit. That's also where I got the idea for the class. This class also has a special ability called Geomancy, which will be familair to those who have played FF Tactics. Essentially the shaman makes a spellcasting check to control their element to attack enemies or effect a change on the battlefield. At level 5 they become Summoners and can use Geomancy to summon and banish elementals, and open gateways to other planes.

Thief: This is mostly identical to the DCC Thief, until level 5 when they become Ninjas. They gain a few 1st and 2nd level Black magic spells. I also leveled out the luck die to get rid of the weird dice.

Warrior: This is mostly identical to the DCC Warrior until level 5. At level 5 they become Knights and gain a few low-level white magic spells. The other difference is in weapon proficencies. For most classes it is just a list of weapons they can use well. Warriors can take a proficiency twice to get a +1 to attack, and Knights can take a proficency a 3rd time to gain a further +1 to attack, and a +1 to damage with that weapon. I'm actually surprised that with 7 players only one of them chose the warrior class, as this is the one I think I may have gone too far with.

White Mage: The White Mage uses a similar chart to the Black Mage, except they have a slightly higher attack bonus, and a D6 HD. They also have the Cleric's lay on hands ability, although I just used the same alignment chart as I don't really use alignment mechanically in my game. However they don't get the Spellburn ability, and neither do Red Mages which I forgot to put in their breakdown.

The last major thing I did was break down all the spells into Black Magic, White Magic, and Shaman Magic. Almost all of the offensive spells are Black Magic, including some from the cleric list. Most of the support and defensive spells are White Magic. And a few of the spells, such as wizard staff and sword magic I have turned into rituals which require a circle of mages to cast. If anyone wants I will send them the breakdown I came up with. I also simplified spell duels alot, mostly because many of my players were unhappy with the multiple steps. Which is too bad because the spell duels were one of my favorite parts. The other key difference is that I let my players use counter magic with any spell they can convince me makes sense.

Interesting changes, thanks for listing them... some ideas in there I might incorporate even.

I have to ask one thing, though; Why get rid of the funky dice?

I ask because that seems like a lot of work for a gain that I don't perceive, considering the game can be played as written as long you as you 1d8, 1d10, and 1d12 available.

Unfortunatly the weird dice were the biggest turn off for most of the players, as I only had the one set. Many of them were already adjusting to the normal range of RPG dice, and having to them do things like rolls a d6 and a d10 to simulate a d30 was too much for them.

I now have people buying them in my group, because they have decided that the dice chain, and the weird dice, are cool!

Awesome, hopefully down the line I will be able to gradually introduce more complex rules and scenarios, and maybe even get them to invest in a figurine. I may have scared them since the first system I introduced them to was Anime: Beyond Fantasy. It's a fun system, but it is also about as crunchy as crunchy gets, short of the old Role-Master RPGs.

That's all you had to say, I get it now - they are probably in "crunch shock" , the poor fellas.

A buddy of mine bought that game for no reason other than it looking cool, and he has never played it because he doesn't want to Judge it, and neither I or the other competent Judge he knows wanted anything to do with it after reading the rules.

...it was the rule that dictated an absolute cap to the attack modifier one could have with a bow and the reasoning that a projectile is only ever that hard for the target to evade, and that same rule being completely absent from melee combat, that "ruined" it for me.

I actually bought it for the same reason. Loved the art, but the system(and extremely poor editing) had me going in circles for a year before I even attempted to run it. If they hadn't made an ap to run the battle calculations it would probably still be safely hidden on my bookshelf. As it is I have been informed that if I ever try to run a system where character creation takes 5 hours again I will be disembowled with a rusty spoon. Which is why I naturally turned to DCC as the fix. Even with complete newbies we had created characters and completed the sailors of the starless sea within 5 hours.