Carousing 2: Magical Research

Standard Carousing, Religious Sacrifice, and credits are covered here.

These are luck-based results for leveling-up activities that use up gold to make experience points as per the above link. Use the left side of each table if and only if you roll a 1. Use the right side if you make your luck DC. Do nothing but gain experience otherwise.

Magical Research

Intended for mages, wizards, and occultists.

Luck plays a role in all these checks, as we play the DCCRPG. Thus, when you roll a carousing check, you are going to add in your Luck modifier, be it good or bad. If the carousing check comes up as a 15 or better, you get to roll on a good bonus effects table. If you get a 1, you have to roll on a bad side effects table. Each kind of carousing check has it's own table.

If you are carousing with a specific goal in mind, you can skip the table when rolling a 15 or higher and opt for that goal instead (the DM may set a DC of 20 for very hard things, or refuse things beyond your level and background). I'll give some sample goals:

• Research: figuring out the magical properties of an object, researching how to kill a legendary monster, creating a potion, doing a ritual, creating a spell, communicating with demons, overcoming a curse, learning the true name of something, gaining literacy in a supernatural script

Bad results may possibly be negated by doing further magical research.

Luck fumble results:

Successful luck results:

If you roll a 0 (considering modifiers), you are afflicted with corruption as well as a result below. 1: You gain a double shadow (curse). The referee secretly rolls and keeps track of the time in d3months that you have until the shadow merges with your own and subsumes you. 2: You glimpse an arcane secret that drives you mad, and you gain an associated derangement (via the system of the referee's choice) but have reckless non-nonchalance towards anything not associated with your derangement. 3: Your flesh starts to slough off and you need to wear bandages and apply unguents to keep it on. 4: You gain a third eye. It can see in the dark, causes you pain in the presence of the holy, and creeps out common folk. 5: By day you are good or lawful. By night, the opposite. You otherwise are as full of levity as before. 6: You have made enemies with a supernatural being. Expect its agents to attack soon! 7. Roll on the minor spell corruption table. 8. Roll on the major spell corruption table. 9. You are marked as a sinner for consorting with the supernatural. Always treat your alignment as the worst possible when a cleric does a lay on hands check. 10. You create a clone. This clone wants to kill you, and it has escaped from your lab! 11. You attract ghosts like the dickens. Whenever you are in a haunted locale, wandering ghost are twice as likely to show up and primarily target you. 12. You create a hole in space time somewhere on your person. It doesn't hurt, but it is unsettling. 13. Your patron abandons you! If you don't have a patron, casting the spell fails as a fumble the first time you attempt it. 14. Cursed! You cannot gain any XP until you find a legendary tome that has the solution to your predicament. 15. Roll on the Magical Mishaps table. 16: You are afflicted with a mutation or derangement. It makes you ugly or flawed somehow. I suggest looking at the flaws from a Whitewolf RPG book... 17: A bad result from one of the below links. 18: You become obsessed with some kind of mad scientist scheme (creating man-bear-pig, etc.) and must spend every other leveling action trying to do something to realize it.

If you roll a natural 20, you are able to create your own dweomer. Work with the referee to figure out the specifics. 1: You can see the auras of other beings for a month. 2: You have a good lead on where to find an ancient artifact, scroll, or weapon. 3: You gain insights concerning a ritual, and know how to cast it. 4: You gain a familiar, or, if you already have one, you current familiar pokevolves. 5: You are on friendly terms with a supernatural entity that you can call on for information once per adventure. It may ask you for favors back from time to time. 6: You gain a secret vulnerability, and can only truly be killed when it is employed. Someone must engage in Magical Study to guess what it is. From now on, you must engage in Magical Study once per level at no experience gained if you want to keep this ability. 7. You gain the audience of a being that can answer one yes-no question. You can try to do fairly cheap magical research with this goal in mind again... 8. Gain incites into the shadow dimension: You take only half damage from shadowy sources. 9. Eureka! You gain an extra spell slot. If rolled again, you get +1 to spell checks with one spell. 10. You gain a psionic power. It gives you a nose bleed each time you use it, which costs 1hp. 11. You can see in between dimensions when they are being disturbed. This makes you able to see certain crazy things... 12. You craft an awesome wand. It adds +1 to your cantrips (you get cantrips) and rituals. 13. You learn a PG-13 Carcosa ritual. 14. You fashion a gate to a magical place where you can adventure if you so please, such as the Isle of the Unknown. 15. Choose a spell of your level or lower from another OSR book. Swap it for a spell you know if you'd like. 16: You gain a mutation. If the game judge agrees that it is not beneficial, they will let you reroll until you get something good. 17: A good result from one of the below links.

Other mishaps here. And the metal! mutations here are pretty good for messing up a wizard.

The Crypts and Things RPG

Crypts and Things was one of the recent RPGs that inspired me to put together the Kill It With Fire rules. Specifically, I heard that they were going with the d6 standard for weapon damage. I love the simplicity of a d6.  From the PDF preview, it seems that they either abandoned that rule or went with the option of different classes doing different damage rules which is  one I found at the associated Arkratic Wizardry, and am still thinking of in terms of how to integrate them as an optional rule in KIWF.

Anyways, Crypts deserves props for filling my head with lots of ideas just by existing, so consider visiting their page and purchasing it if you like the Swords and Magic genre and name drops of authors like C.A. Smith.

Carousing, orgies, and their alternatives

When the DCCRPG beta was first being played, how to gain experience and level up was a mystery. So I went with gold-spent equaling experience points. Then it kind of mutated into Carousing rules much like those that others before me have proposed. 

First, Jeff Rients came up with this famous table for carousing mishaps. Then I found the old article on orgies from Dragon Magazine (warning NSFW cartoonage). Ideas were gained.

Your character doesn't like to level up by partying like Conan? Not a problem. Check out Martial training, holy Sacrifice, and Esoteric research. But if wine and wenches is your bag, check out the system below.

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When you perform this leveling action, you must roll a Carousing check (1d20+ luck mod, DC 15 for success), spend your gold (which becomes XP), then role-play through the results (though the DM can just tell you what happened). Success nets you a roll on the right side of the following table as a kind of bonus to the joy of getting XP. 

Failure means nothing special, but rolling a 1 means you have to roll on the left side of the table!

Due to the limitations of the local economy, you may carouse (throw a raucous party with many attendants and lots of food) every d3 weeks in a berg or d3 days in a city unless below half hit points in which case you need to rest. If your stamina is under 3, you need to roll a save or die...

1. Gain reputation as a lecherous lush. Social interactions in this town are *raises tone* awkward. 2. Get in a fight, lose 1d2 teeth, get a black eye, or break your nose and you'll be sore (-1d3 hp) in the morning. 3. Wake up next to someone ugly or crazy (50-50 chance) or both (5% chance). Lose reputation. 4. Alcohol poisoning. Constitution/stamina lowered by 1. 5. Things got a little crazy. Did we kill the stripper?! Move you alignment one step towards evil/chaos. Can be undone by Sacrifice carousing. 6. Insulted someone important, and challenged to a duel if you are equals or charged with a quest if you are the inferior. 7. Someone takes your bag by mistake, but leaves theirs, which has an interesting item... 8. A couple days after the party, someone claims you are the father. Even if you are a woman. Cause fantasy setting, that's why. 9. You are mistaken for someone else, and charged with their tab. Pay 30% more money (no xp for it) or wake up in the slammer. 10. You expose one of your important guests as a reptilian! Have a fight with our scaly secret masters. 11. You are inducted into a cult. It takes your friends a week to deprogram you. -10% XP from this leveling action. 12. You wake up in stocks. -1 luck. Authorities let you out after a day. 13. You were robbed whilst unawares. Was it that saucy wench that you swear came to your room? You lose everything of value that you are carrying. 14. You break some knuckles punching a dude. No two-handed weapons/shields for 6 weeks. 15. Nobody comes to your party. -1 personality/charisma until you throw at least 500 gold into one party. 16. You are challenged to a duel, but cannot remember with who. At the most inconvenient time they show up. 17. If you are a halfling or a dwarf, you are tossed (if not, reroll). -3 Intelligence from hitting your head. +1 Charisma.  18. Your boasts have gotten you into trouble. You can't gain experience until you do something really awesome designated by the judge, like killing a legendary monster or stealing a legendary treasure.  19. You upset the mercantile guild. Everything is 20% more expensive for you and your associates in this town, unless you go to the black market, where things are 10% cheaper. 20. An evil magic user has some of your hair and flesh... you wake up with a gash and covered in strange runes. 21. Parlor trick hypnotised. It would seem that whenever someone says the words "my, its drafty in here" you feel the urge to do something embarrassing...

If you role a natural 20 on your Carouse check, you gain double experience and a luck point, then check for results in this column. 1. Gain a reputation as the life of the party. You will be invited to a fancy one soon. 2. Humiliate that one jerk/bitch you hate. Gain one to your luck or charisma. 3. Get on the good side of the local government representative. They will help you out when you need them. 4. Someone dies from too much partying at your party. Pity, but you are offered their job! 5.  A comely lass or lad falls for you. 6. One of your guests is actually a supernatural entity that wants to be your bud, familiar or patron. 7. Your body adapts to all the partying. You get +1 to stamina checks versus alcohol and poisons until you fail a carousing check. 8. You run into a long-lost relative. Maybe they want to go adventuring with you?! (henchman) 9. You win a bar bet and gain the services of two henchmen with low morale for a month. They may stay on if you pay them. 10. You gain 3 rumors about the next adventure. 11. You are mistaken for an important figure and the party gets really going. +25% experience. 12. You make buds with a master and get a free training session worth 300 gold (roll on the martial training luck table now!). 13. The drunken friar joins your party! Get a friar as a NPC companion till he loses a morale save or you carouse again. 14. You totally see through Sir Bearington's disguise, but are cool about it, and he will show up when you need him most. 15. You gain a jester minion. He constantly grabs treasure from others (not you). You like him, but others may not... 16. You have a good gambling session. Get some booty and +1 luck. Your game judge determines the booty by their own system. 17. You judge some kind of bar event, and everyone praises your decisions! Gain +1 Personality. 18. You wake up next to a master spy that night. They mumble state secrets in their sleep that could be very lucrative for you. 19. You have an enlightening jape with some amazing adventurer! It nets you knowledge that gives you the saves (if better), hit die, or basic abilities of a random class different to your own. 20. Wake up with a random wand, potion, or magical version of a weapon from the weapons table.

Orgies and trips to the cat-house are also possible, but if you roll a fumble on your luck, we might have to check on the Dungeon Funk tables to see your fate.

Creature Ability: Vicious

A little ability to make some monsters all that much more deadly. Remember, in the KIWF system, all hit dice are rolled each combat and either stay on the table or are recorded somewhere.

Vicious: If this creature's attack causes someone to lose a hit die, roll another damage die and apply that against the next hit die (apply damage to armor first, as usual). If the monster is extra awesome, you may let it continue with the Unending Viciousness ability.

Unending Viciousness: As above, but it repeats again if another hit die was lost by the extra damage roll, and again until these extra rolls have repeated as many times as this creature's current HD.

Example: Grolluck the barbarianoid gets rammed by an umber worm with Unending Viciouness. It's attack is so brutal, it goes through three of his hit dice before he is mercifully knocked out of the way. If the worm had rolled high enough, it could have chewed of up to 7 of Grolluck's hit dice, so he should count his lucky stars, as well as his remaining hit dice.

Creature Ability: Tactical

Want to give your creature a devious flavor when it fights? I suggest the following monster ability.

Tactical: When damage would be applied to one of this creature's hit dice or armor dice, if the damage does not match the pips on that die, it is ignored. Critical hits ignore the limitations of this ability.

I might consider this as a hi-level PC ability too. In any case, though this monster ability is intended for KIWF, it will work in any system where actual dice are used to track hit points. You could even convert D&D monsters with hit dice listings.

Our First Weapon: Kabuto

As I am envisioning it now, the Kill It With Fire system will have d6s for all damage (barring a optional rules expressed by tables in the addendum). They will also be usable by any class and all get the job done at the same speed. What will set weapons apart from each other is how they crit, their abilities (if any) and how they can be used by a lateral-thinker. Daggers, for instance, can be concealed easier than other weapons and can be used by most anyone for a sneak-attack. A clever player may use a sword buried into the earth as a place to jump from (ala ninja tricks of old).

And then we have this thing.


Kabutos make for surprisingly competent weapons. And I don't even like One Piece before you complain.

Let's stat it! Keep in mind abilities are just suggestions for things to do with weapons. Unlike class abilities, you can negotiate these with your referee at any time.

Kabuto
Heavy Ranged (when thrown as a spear)*/Light Ranged (when the sling section is used)†/Melee
A Kabuto is a combination of javeline and slingshot. It is favored by those who fight mindless corporeal undead.

Zombie Killer: As long as you are not hampered by melee threats from other creatures, you may make a Prowess vs Toughness attack to pin down a creature. If it has the appropriate anatomy, you can make an automatic critical hit on your turn next round.
Stab and Pin: Prowess vs Dodge and Toughness. Hit on Dodge: Damage. Hit on Toughness: Knock the creature down and it is pinned in place, in no position to threaten you until it beats your Prowess to escape. You may make sling attacks with the kabuto while pinning.

Critical hit‡:
If it has the appropriate anatomy, the creature now has a missile right in the brain pan, and should die.

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*:Heavy Ranged weapons are effective up to your Prowess in meters.
†:Light Ranged weapons are effective up to your Prowess in meters doubled.
‡:Crit text often mentions anatomy. When all else fails, go with a class ability crit. If you don't have an appropriate one to draw on, the default crit is +1 die per level, but no more than currently remaining hit dice.