DCC House Rule - Critical Spell Failure

I could write until I'm blue in the face about my critiques of Lev Grossman's The Magicians, but there are a couple of things I like about it.

First, the descriptions of what it's like to learn magic and cast spells feel right, and are possibly the best descriptions of really outré magic since Jack Vance. Like, to an extent where I think maybe some RPG publisher should consider paying him the royalties necessary to quote those sections at length in their rulebook.

Second, in The Magicians, casting more difficult spells isn't just harder to do, it's also more dangerous. (Actually, I believe Grossman goes so far as to imply that the general difficulty of casting a spell is only loosely correlated with the danger of casting it incorrectly. If I recall correctly, there are some fairly simple spells that are surprisingly easy to mess up with some truly horrifying consequences for failure.)

DCC already models this somewhat. The effect of a critical failure definitely gets worse as the spell level increases. Corruption becomes more corrupting, misfires miss more spectacularly. But while higher level spells are more likely to have a simple failure, they're not any more likely to have critical failure. The Magicians makes a pretty persuasive case though, that they should be.

So, here's my house rule. When casting an arcane spell, the risk of a critical failure is equal to the spell level. 1st level spells still fumble only on a natural 1. 2nd level spells fumble on a roll of 1-2, 3rd level spells fumble on 1-3, and so on. As usual, only burning Luck, not spellburn, can avoid the corrupting and tainting effects of a critical failure, and misfires cannot be avoided. However, only a single point of Luck needs to be spent to avoid corruption, regardless of the critical range. Furthermore, for casters with an arcane affinity for a spell, regardless of the spell's level, the critical failure range is always only natural 1.

DCC House Rule - Lucky Weapon

I'm planning to add a house-rule to the Dungeon Crawl Classics games I referee to modify the DCC Warrior's "lucky weapon."  In the rules as written, Warriors permanently add their starting 1st level Luck modifier to attack rolls for a weapon of their choice.

On the one hand, I like that this is a new take on older mechanic's like the Ranger's "favored weapon" or the Fighter's "weapon specialization."  On the other hand, I have the same objections to it that I have to DCC's "lucky roll" - only about a quarter of Warriors get an actually-lucky weapon, while half get no modifier at all, and another quarter get an un-lucky weapon.

The rules as written also mention that Warriors should be able to perform weapon-specific Mighty Deeds of Arms with each type of weapon.  No weapon-specific Deeds are given in the rules; instead it's recommended that each referee write their own weapon-specific Deed for each weapon.  My objection to that is that it's a lot of extra writing before you can even get started.

So, my house rule is that at 1st level, each Warrior chooses a lucky weapon.  Warriors receive a permanent +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls with their lucky weapon, regardless of their starting Luck score.  In addition, a Warrior automatically knows one weapon-specific Deed for their lucky weapon.  (A warrior might be able to learn additional weapon-specific Deeds, but only if they "quest for it.")

As with my house-rule on "lucky rolls," if a referee felt that Warriors with very high Luck scores deserved a larger bonus, that would probably work fine, although in that case, I would probably recommend returning to modifying only the attack roll, since a +2 or +3 damage bonus, in addition to the bonus for exceptional Strength, is quite a lot for the few characters it would affect.

DCC House Rule - Lucky Roll

In the Dungeon Crawl Classics games I referee, I've been playing with a house-rule that modifies DCC's "lucky roll."  In the rules as written, characters permanently add their starting Luck modifier to one randomly selected type of roll.

My objection to the rule as written is that for most characters, their supposedly-lucky roll is either going to be unmodified, or it's actually going to be an un-lucky roll because they have a negative modifier.  Nearly half of all starting characters, 48%, have no Luck modifiers because their Luck scores are between 9-12. Another quarter, about 26%, have negative Luck modifiers because their Luck scores are 3-8.  Using the rule as written, only about 1 in 4 starting characters have a "lucky roll" that's actually lucky.

So, my house rule is that all characters receive a permanent +1 bonus to their "lucky roll," regardless of their starting Luck score.

If a referee felt that this rule deprived characters with extremely high Luck scores of the larger bonus they'd receive under the original rule, she could choose to let those characters receive the superior bonus granted by their higher Luck modifier.  That change would only affect about 5% of starting characters though, because only about 1 in 20 would begin with Luck scores 16-18.