A character in Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) can learn up to 2 × Spellcasting and (XL – 1) spell levels at once. Each spell has a spell level, which determines whether a character can learn the spell at all, how difficult a spell is to cast, and how much time it takes to learn it. To cast spells, a wizard must roll a spell check, adding their Intelligence modifier and level as a Wizard. This requires one week per spell level of learning.
A higher Spellcasting level gives a character more spell levels and a minimum of one free hand to cast spells. Wizards can create a personalized DCC spellbook using their spellcaster’s stats and choose from a variety of spells, either selected or generated randomly. If a player has a patron, selecting it will add it to the spellbook.
Wizards can sacrifice points of Strength, Agility, or Stamina to give a one-time bonus on a spell check. The rulebook uses tables 7-1 through 7-3 to determine where and how other spells can be obtained. A 1st level cleric knows 4 1st level spells, while the rest is up to the Judge.
Being a Wizard in DCC RPG is dangerous, as they draw power from demons or gods, ancient black magics, and long forgotten tomes. If a wizard discovers spells during their adventures, they can choose to learn them when able, but if not, the spells are determined.
To learn a spell, a wizard must roll a d100 + their luck modifier times 10 on the Mercurial magic table. Spell duels rely on comparing the casters’ spell checks and using three look-up charts. Both casters must succeed on casting their spell.
📹 Your Session 1 Guide for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG!
This is your beginner guide to Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG! It covers the very basics of how to play DCC, then for game masters: …
How many 1st level spells does a wizard get?
The Wizard table displays the number of spell slots available for casting 1st level and higher spells. To cast a spell, expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. All expended spell slots are regained after a long rest. To prepare a list of available spells, choose a number equal to your Intelligence modifier and your wizard level, with a minimum of one spell. For instance, a 3rd-level wizard with an Intelligence of 16 can have six 1st or 2nd-level spells in any combination from their spellbook. Casting a 1st-level spell doesn’t remove it from the list of prepared spells.
What is the hardest D&D adventure?
Dungeons and Dragons is a fantastic TTTRPG system that allows players to live out their fantasy dreams by role-playing as various races and classes. The system is ripe for home-brewing, and Wizards have released some fantastic pre-written adventures. These adventures cut down on a DM’s work as they don’t have to decide on a story and setting themselves. However, DMs should take care when selecting which campaign to play, as some can be quite deceptively challenging.
One of Wizard’s recent releases is “Rime of the Frost Maiden”, which takes players to the frosty tundra of Icewind Dale, a place fraught with dangers and freezing temperatures. Everlasting night has fallen, and the Ten-Towns are hanging in the balance, waiting for a band of brave adventurers to slay the Frost Maiden and save them all.
Does dungeon crawl classics use the ogl?
Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game (DCC RPG) is a role-playing game published by Goodman Games, compatible with the revised third edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The game is based on an earlier series of module modules for the d20 System, which continued with modules for the 4th edition D and D ruleset before switching to their in-house ruleset, Dungeon Crawl Classics. The series includes over 100 adventures and features game designers such as Michael Mearls, Dave Arneson, Monte Cook, Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Jim Roslof, and Jim Holloway. The DCC series harks back to the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons modules in content and style.
How do you learn master level spells?
In Skyrim, spells can be purchased from the College of Winterhold, but Master Spells require completion of quests. Once Level 90 in each Magic Skill, you can start a Quest for Master Magic Spell from each college of Magic. To acquire master-level spells, talk to Tolfdir at the College of Winterhold when near Mastering the Alteration Skill (around Level 100) and Phinis Gestor at the College of Winterhold when near Mastering Conjuration. They will provide you with the Conjuration Ritual Spell Quest if there’s more to learn.
Is Dungeon Crawl Classics hard to learn?
The YouTube Actual Play series of Dungeon Crawl Classics, featuring major adventure modules from Goodman Games, is designed for ease of use and rapid implementation, offering a comprehensive range of options for role-playing scenarios inspired by the Appendix N approach and the sword and sorcery genre. It is appropriate for both published linear games within the DCC community and open-ended, homebrew sandboxes.
Can a wizard learn every wizard spell?
A wizard differs from both the “pure” and “trained” extremes in that they may not know all spells on the wizard spell list.
How do spells work in dungeon world?
In casting a wizard spell, it is recommended that the roll be made in conjunction with the intelligence modifier. It is possible that this spell may attract unwanted attention or place the caster in a compromising position. In such instances, the Game Master will duly inform the caster. The spell’s disruptive effect on reality persists for one round, resulting in a penalty of -1 to ongoing effects until the spell’s next activation. Once the spell has been cast, it is then forgotten and cannot be recast until it has been prepared.
How to learn Wizard spells?
Wizards acquire new spells through a process of experimentation and growth, whereby they learn from other wizards, ancient texts, inscriptions, and ancient creatures such as the fey. Nevertheless, the JavaScript functionality is either disabled or obstructed by browser extensions, and the browser in question lacks the capacity to support cookies.
How do you learn spells in dungeon crawl stone soup?
Magic and Spellcasting is a game where players can learn spells by memorizing them with M and training their magical skills. To cast spells, press z and the letter assigned to the spell. The game has a guide available on craw’s official repository. Players can move around using numpad, vi-keys, or clicking with the mouse. Arrow keys work, but cannot move diagonally. Pressing Shift and a direction moves until something is seen or hit. Players can open and close doors, autoexplore by pressing o, and re-view recent messages with Ctrl-p.
What is spell check in Dungeon Crawl Classics?
A spell check is a vital component of the spellcasting process for wizards. It involves rolling a d20, adding a personality modifier, and determining the caster level, which is essential for ensuring the effective casting of spells.
Is dungeon crawl Classic good?
DCC, a classic pencil and paper roleplaying game, has been praised by Goodman Games for its easy-to-read layout and stunning artwork. The game requires a writing utencil, scratch paper, and a DCC character sheet, which can be downloaded from the publisher’s website. The game uses the polyhedral dice set and the unique “Zuccchi Dice” set, which consists of d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. The game also offers options for rolling without the Zucchi Dice, adding flair and more enjoyment to the game. The game can be downloaded from Goodman Game’s website.
📹 DCC Combat Tutorial | What is System Series
Dnd #osr #dcc Today we fight with PCs in Dungeon Crawl Classics. This system has mighty adventurers, crazy magic system, and …
I ran this a while back for my friends. Through random occupations, they had a veritable petting zoo following them around. The chicken was used (and abused) as a trap detector very early on. The donkey refused to go any further after seeing the entry door laser beams in action. The sow was given some left-over chainmail and nearly drowned when the pool collapsed. Their “war-pig” ended up becoming a valued party member. Great times. Great vid!
Love that you are covering DCC again, Bob! It´s so much fun Crazy spells like Ventroliquism that might summon demons? Fighters being the most creative class and describing every attack as a cinematic action piece? Level 1 adventures where you travel to Transdimensional Zoos or are part of a stage play while fighting hordes of cutthroats? So much good stuff!
The actual article content was great, but I really want to praise the amazing production effort. The whole schtick was very entertaining and the “freeze frame” voiceover bits made me laugh out loud. I’ve been subscribed for a while, but am only recently getting into running non-D&D games. This article has me giving DCC a good, long look. 🎉
Great article Bob. Dungeon Crawl Classics has revitalized my passion for running games. It’s just fun. The tables can be a little work to maneuver. The dice chain is so natural and gives an organic way to give a buff or debuff. The grittier game play makes it easier to bring the weird, fantastical, horror you hope for. Here for all your DCC content
Love your articles, your points and the genuine interest that you seem to have in indie games and products from other companies. It’s really awesome, because everything can be a tool to get better in D&D, as a player and as a GM – even games that are not DnD. For example, DCC funnels are crazy fun and really can be imported to D&D (to create the backstory of the players, to do a session in a flashback, or else)
1. Thanks for the walk-through. 2. There were a bunch of these QuickStarts released for FreeRPGDay. A bunch of systems. Many of which had a flaw… So DCC says make quick disposable characters as part of the quickstart. But every other 5e system I saw giving a quickstart away did NOT include Pre-Gen characters. That makes NO SENSE! If they had pregen characters like level 1 or 3 with their new subclasses they always include then people could run the quick start right then, and maybe buy a book or download more!
“Robert World Buildert” caught me off guard and cracked me up. Lol. Had to pause the article. Will return to comment on the article. Update: I had to finish the article after work, however, I have no downloaded and printed the DCC quickstart. Gonna give it a shot. At worst, I may add level-0 funnels to my OD&D games. At best, I’ve found a new game to play. Lol
I have both run and played portal under the stars. When playing, the first death was a dwarf at the door messing with the jewels. Then one my characters (a wainwright) and another players character (a lumberjack) fashion wood to the pushcart we had to create shields. It saved us from the statues and the fire shooting statue. It became the holy symbol for my character that lived and this the War Wagon religion began. Tips for running: I would say you can disregard some of the checks it asks for. For instance, just tell the players they see the scotch marks and notice the silver miniatures. But I play by the philosophy of, “Stop hiding everything behind die rolls.”
I ran the Portal Under the Stars once before and it was very chaotic even from the beginning: one of my players killed the dying peasant before he finished his speech, that same player believed he was magical so he tried resurrecting which unfortunately didn’t work the first time but on the second try he had done so bad he thought he was alive again and decided to bring him to the portal… My players died pretty much at every trap because I was not very used to the OSR play style The chaotic player also had access to some cleric magic because a very peculiar patron (Chad) answered his prayer but also punished him by transforming him into a door when he did very bad It’s been a while but it was very fun and I’d love to run it again
Good stuff. However, I am confused by the jeweled pool. The implication is that air from the chamber below is coming up through holes in the pool when a jewel is removed. I know I’m overthinking it, but this means the water is leaking out into the chamber below with each removal. Wouldn’t the pool be more stable once the weight of the water has drained away? Why would it collapse after the wait has been removed by the water draining? Feels to me like it should be a trap with some foreshadowing that forces the players to the final scene and combat with the terracotta army. Which is probably a guaranteed death for the characters that fall into the pit below, but an opportunity to flee with the loot for those that don’t fall.
Bob. This is amazing! After perusal your first articles on DCC I got sooo inspired! Since DCC is not a thing here in my Forgotten realm, I got my self a book from France and had my S.O. To bring me the funky dice from her internship at Smithsonian! I’ve been wanting to play DCC ever since, but we were still mid campaign in 5e. And now THIS!!!😊 Now I will have to set up a game! Thank You! 😌
Love DCC and love Robert THE World Builder. DCC is fantastic stuff. And some of the “hidden” rules, like burning luck which isn’t in the Quickstart or I missed it, are even better. Weird dice kind of bothered me at first but there is something cool about fumling around with dice trying to find the correct one just like we did as noobs.
Thanks for the review! I was able to pick up a digital copy of most of the DCC books on Humble Bundle earlier this year and have been thinking of getting a game (and possibly even a campaign) going this summer, especially with my local game store hosting an event for DCC Day on 7/20. Keep up the great work. Love your content
So glad to see you making DCC articles. Excellent content as always. A super easy way to play this game. My favorite memory of running The Portal Under the Stars was the laughter the group shared when seeing their level 0 characters dying left and right. Also, one of my players made art of our first funnel adventure. In closing, players get attached to their level 0 characters that survive. It is a legendary story of how the cheese maker survived and is now an adventurer. Well done Bob!
One thing I feel you forgot to tell are the core assumptions of the game. 5e players might brazenly kick in the door and start fighting everything and everyone; safely assuming everything is balanced so they will win. I’d definitely want to clarify the core assumptions of this DCC game and how they differ from 5e D&D play.
My main complaint with 3e and 5e has always been that they virtually completely devalue the +/-1 modifier, in favor of +/-2 (and advantage), and my point is that if you do that, you may as well just roll 1d10 and use +/-1 instead, because it’s exactly the same thing. Every increment matters or you’re using the wrong dice. That said, this dice chain, while cool, seems a bit too fiddly imo, a little too micro, and you could probably do just as well with a d100 system. But this is a lot cooler, I suppose. And I love DCC’s aesthetic and its approach, as well as many of its mechanics. I’d play it any time, as GM or PC(s).
I enjoyed the article, and as usual Bob’s tips for tweaking the situation sound cool. But, for this adventure it seemed like these slid more toward “fixing problems” rather than “enhancing or customizing”. By the end I was less interested in the quick start than I was at the beginning. Am I overreacting?
The front door can be opened if a character have a occupation that can meet the stars, like tarot reader and such. The area with the statues after the door gona attack when the judge want, he can show how luck works here and attack the lowest luck of the group. I didnt use the checks find the scorch in area 3, they are on the floor, look at it and you find it. What is gona come from there is other thing. Much of this checks can be avoided if the players look, search, move, describe what they are doing and mach the realization requirement. Besides that, great article, keep coming Buildert.
Nice! Welp, the stars have aligned and the gods have sort of shrugged and said ‘yeah, like, i guess or whatever’; time to start a new gaming group. Also dang it but that ‘how to start a game’ section is really good; I’m legit envious of how well-distilled those ideas are. 40 seconds and it’s not only covered the essentials but also fit in the standard (yet vital) safety disclaimers about meeting new people through niche interests. 🤘That’s impressive writing🤘
I may take the switching around the consellation gems puzzle from this because when I simplified the dungeon for kids I was baby sitting I had them find another secret passage to a different room and give them a one up for the final room if they god rid those undead right away. But that was me thinking of different ways to encourage them to explore more than just barrel through everything and resulting in a TPK. I also had them roll an agility check for the fire ball statue room. (though I think what they ended up doing was using an animal to walk through the room to figure out the room? It was my first time judging DCC as well so I didn’t realize that the statue stopped firing after the first shot for a while, so whenever they went into the room I had them do an agilty check because it also got one of the kids just enjoy rolling the dice for the fun of it.) I did read a story online of someone running Portal under the Stars and literally had one of his players strap the horn on a cow and had that cow piece the main statue with it in that final room. That’s what had me really wanted to try out the dungeon because I thought that was super cool. Much like how I had my Cornfarmer take a holy signal he had…. and tied it to the chain and used it as a grabbling hook to pull a bloated body in a lake to the shore so we could look and not get sick for Attack of the Frawgs.
The free Quick Start rules are pretty nice, but there is some stuff missing, like what ability modifiers apply to. I know because I played 3E, but nowhere is it written that the Stamina modifier applies to Fortitude saves, etc. Also, why not use 5E innovations like advantage & disadvantage to replace the combat modifier table?
Yeah, after seeing this, I think I’m more cemented in my position that the funnel style of opening is not for me. I’m more of the “backstory -> character motivation -> going for an adventure as a consequence” guy that’s utterly contradictory to this approach. Might make a fun oneshot starting with “how TF did we even get here?” though.
I think a big key to DCC is to have the GM and players on the same page. With looser rules and a culture that combines go-with-the-flow rulings, a ton of GM leeway, and (let’s be real) a sort of pride in the occurrence of character deaths, it can be very easy to go from the fun kind of wild and unfair to the “I guess I have to read the GM’s mind” kind.
I’m really intrigued by DCC and the adventures for it. One hesitation I have is that the adventures seem to have a lot of perception and knolwedge checks or traps that boil down to a die roll or two. I’d really prefer to have situations where the players can notice something if they investigate it or find or figure something out. The concept behind DCC adventures are so wacky and amazing, but I’m a little worried that players could feel like they are rolling checks but not making decisions. I’d love to hear if you use these kind of checks as written or if there is a way to run them or think about them that I should consider.
I have only ran DCC twice. The first one was portal under the stars and the second was one I homebrewed. Everyone enjoyed the portal under the stars and they bypassed parts of it. I just has the statue shoot spears at people as they entered, but after the second person went down the party go creative, though I can’t remember how they did that. I think they stuffed the shooter up with something and caused it to explode or something. Regardless it was lots of fun and this was just with level 0 characters. 🙂
I ran Portal Under The Stars this past spring. The party beat the snake to death within moments of first encountering it, disabled the statue by jogging around it and wasting its fuel, and kept trying to use the invoke patron from the horn to gain otherworldly powers to defeat the warlord. It’s a great introductory dungeon, but I agree that Tssisssurag shouldn’t be so quick to attack as they are the only real social opportunity in the dungeon
I do love dcc, but I would not call it easier than d&d. The rules are more confusing to new players because of the dice chain and every spell being a look up table. I would recommend new players have 4 characters for the “Death Funnel” experiance. That is why there are so many traps and monsters in the module that are a bit “unfair” it is to encourage reckless play as you as you can get killed by a trap or fight a lot easier than 5e. The statues with spears are meant to throw spears if anyone enters and probably kill a character or two, for example, as most new players expect the dm to tell them to make a perception check or rely on passive perception to save you from forgetting to say you check for traps.
what do you do if your judge always decides that you die every chance he gets we played a funnel and our guys were dropping like flies i mean we didnt even finish it because even if i poked at something with a stick it would just grab me and crush me are the rules supposed to just torture the players to death? because that does NOT seem like a fun game to me at all
I tried running DCC a couple of times. The players didn’t like the funnel aspect, as they are used to really detailed character backgrounds and reasons for adventuring. They didn’t take the characters serious in any way, some didn’t even bother giving them names as they would die anyways. During the game they did not try to keep the characters alive (except the special one they actually liked and gave a name) and where miffed when that character died. I tried this three or four times (not all in a row but as in between one-shots) until they politely asked me to never bother them again with that game. Oh well, time to sell off the game on the secondary market, I guess. And I gotta say I really hate the adventures that I found online etc. They are mostly weird, goofy adventures that make it very hard for me to take them serious. And if I can’t take them serious how can my players? So I tried writing my own but there really was no reason to have a barber, a farmhand, an alchemist etc go off running into a dungeon – unless it was because of some external threat – which my players thought was too railroady for them. So all in all unfortunately not a fun experience. Gosh, do I sound bitter.
When I ran this one of players used his goat as a shield from the fire attack. Later when they find the crystal with goat demon in it. I describe it start to talk but the player says “my goat” and I just role play the demon as his goat. Later he like can I become like monter so I use the mutant crawl classics book to make him a goat mutant. Fun times…can’t wait to play again.
One of the main reasons we play DCC is to get away from the predictability of Old School Essentials. In fact I’ve even added a few of the DCC mechanics to our OSE games like action dice, spell failures etc., though we haven’t ported the whole spell system over. And I love how the alignment affects clerics’ and thieves’ abilities in particular. Simple tweak that adds lots of flavor.
I don’t really understand your rolls. Why do you roll (2d20+2) for two bandit attacks? Shouldn’t each one get resolved separately? Since the first bandit hit and killed Gary, why does the second bandit attack him at all? It just seems strange to have them attack together. Later on, the Wizard used his turn to enlarge the Warrior. He won’t go again until after the zombies – although this didn’t matter, because you had him do nothing on his (mistaken) turn. Does the thief do 1d8 damage with his “first strike” backstab, PLUS another attack due to the crit table? Or does the crit mean he doesn’t get any damage, just knocked the zombie prone and getting another attack?