Goodman Games

So I wanted to ask around the boards about how people are handling the roll for wizards to successfully learn a spell.

I have a wizard in my part with a 16 intelligence and including his CL he has a +3 spell check. I was as a first time rule making players roll 10 + spell level to learn a spell. My brilliantly unlucky player failed every spell roll for his starting spells. So while I love the random reality that DCC puts you in it made me wonder if I was being too harsh on the DC to learn a spell.

I am leaning towards "oh well bad luck your mage better learn to study if he lives" but I want to make sure i'm following the DCC spirit of the rules as best as I can. This seems to be a rare circumstance as the two elves in the group only failed to learn 1 or 2 spells.

What you might consider doing is writing an adventure to uncover one or more other possible spells, thus giving him a chance to learn them. Remember that the wizard still has those "slots" open, and if he survives to level 2, he may try to learn the spells he failed to learn this time out, so long as he has an open slot.

Also, consider adding a magical treasure that allows for some limited spellcasting even if he has learned no spells himself. Give the item a suitable drawback to make it less desirable than learning spells, although still useful.

Have fun with it. Give the character rumours and chances to better himself. Let him succeed or fail on the merits of his choices with the opportunities you provide. In DCC, the funnel doesn't really stop at 0-level.


RC

Thanks Raven, it sounds like I was rolling things fairly and the rest can be handled skillfully in the story. Probably good the guy can't cast spells 2 of them got the weatherman mercurial magic, so we'd have an eclipse and hurricane force winds all the time lol.

Have you read much of Appendix N? In Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn, the protagonist can cast some snazzy spells, but they leave him "weaker than his sister" for days afterwards. Having to make these kinds of decisions about spellcasting really makes the game fun, IMHO and IME.

And the weird thing, mercurial magic really does differentiate casters. My son's wizard seems to be drawn toward dark necromantic effects. His friend has received "gender bender" for more than one spell at 1st level. Needless to say, these casters have a very different "feel". No one would mistake one for the other in play!

I haven't read Appendix N unfortunately but I really love that feel. His wizard if he ever learns to cast feels like Storm from the X-men. It's going to be another day of shoddy weather thanks to the adventurers! lol

I've read about half of the Dragonlance series and I always thought Raistlin was really cool especially since the magic would just pound his body and his soul.

Sounds like someone is going to need to make a pact with otherworldly entities for spell knowledge.

What's the worst that could happen?

Note that the mercurial magic roll, by the book, comes when the spell is learned, so that the wizard's luck at that time affects the outcome. Your wizard might have burned luck to learn a spell if his roll was close....but that would also cause a less fortunate mercurial.

I haven't had any luck burning. I admittedly didn't think about mentioning it but part of that is because the highest Luck in the 6 PC party is like 11 so I think at this point they are just happy they aren't being burned by their luck.

11 Luck is entirely useful... can burn several points before incurring a meaningful penalty (and, really, -1 isn't that awful, either).

yeah I honestly forgot about it when I was running. Off-hand because I can't remember does your birth augur roll stay the same or move with your luck?


We also have no thief or Halfling so that's the other problem is that there's not a frequent luck user to overly encourage it's use.

Stays with original Luck.

That's the RAW, but I allow it to float w/ Luck. Time will tell if that's a bad idea or not, right now I have no data to say either way.

I'll probably stay strict with that. Most of my players don't have any bonus anyways so they should be relieved they wont' feel the negativity of it either.