Revisiting Gold for XP

In my games, I don't like the idea of characters leveling up on the spot. They need to take some time somewhere and do something productive towards their idiom. I call such actions Carousing Checks for simplicity, but they are actually quite disparate actions. They cost money to do properly. Thus, in my campaigns, experience points comes only from gold spent on Carousing Checks.
Basically, there are a few different Carousing Checks I have come up with:

• Carousing as in epic partying (Conan, Fafhrd, etc. idiom)
• Researching arcane, esoteric, or alchemical mysteries (wizard, librarian, etc. idiom)
• Martial Training (ninja, fighter, ranger, specialist etc. idiom)
• Sacrificing gold towards a god, ancestor, spirit, or demi-human clan hoard (cleric, demi-human, anybody idiom)
• Establishing a keep (anyone)
• Vision quests (psions, shamans)

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 for each kind of carousing:

• Carousing via parties: gain the eye of a fair lady, get some crucial gossip, case a joint, get rumors for a quest of your design
• 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, get rumors for a quest of your design
• Martial Training: learning the quivering palm technique, gaining knowledge of poisons, building resistance to something, get rumors for a quest of your design, get some martial followers
• Sacrifice: Appeasing a ghost, establishing a congregation, cleansing a tainted site, ascertaining the will of the gods (get a quest), find a magic steed
• Establishing: Building a new wing, gaining a library, ensorcelling/creating/hiring guardians
• Visions: Learning a mystery, communing with spirits, unlocking a riddle, get rumors for a quest of your design 

How does one distinguish a carousing goal from a regular goal? By resources (gold) and time spent to do so. Each of the carousing actions takes hours if not days to accomplish, and time is another factor the GM can use to curb abuse of the system. Of course, the more frequently one carouses, the more frequently they may roll a 1, so a player who carouses every day is living on the edge...

Fighters get 10% again on training actions, and Thieves and halflings get 15% again on carousing. If you invite your leveled team-mates to a carousing action, they get 10% the experience you do, but they have to roll a Luck check to see if they fumble (no good results are possible if you are a hanger-on).

Another 10% to any PCs who've completed a quest or slain a boss-monster since they last caroused. So this is another reason to save up between parties.

Gold needed to be spent to level:

1st lvl @ 100 gill	2nd lvl @ 900 gill	3rd lvl @ 4,000 gill
4th lvl @ 6000 gill	5th lvl @ 10,000 gill	6th lvl @ 15,000 gill
7th lvl @ 21,000 gill	8th lvl @ 28,000 gill	9th lvl @ 36,000 gill
10th lvl @ 45,000 gill plus a quest to placate or overthrow the ever-jealous gods

New DCCRPG Cleric Toy: Invoking Gods With Worship Spells

A Worship Spell is the cleric's answer to the patron spell. One difference is that merely casting it invokes a wider range of cleric failure for the day, inverse of how good the cleric rolled. If you can't get the job done with what your god sent you, what good are you to that god? In addition, if you are casting a Worship Spell in a situation that doesn't seem to concern the god (you trying to live is an okay excuse though), that disapproval die is going to get a step worse.

Another difference: If you have already gotten a certain result for the day, go one step higher and take double disapproval. 

If your spellcheck result is 1, the spell fails, roll on the diety disapproval table, and you increase your daily disapproval range by 1d3.
If it is 2-11, the spell fails and your disapproval range increases by 1d4 for the day.
If it is 12-13, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d5 for the day.
If it is 14-17, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d6 for the day.
If it is 18-21, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d7 for the day.
If it is 22-25, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d8 for the day.
If it is 26-29, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d10 for the day.
If it is 30 or higher, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d12 for the day.

Sample Worship Spell for clerics of Cthulhu
1          Failure. Roll on the Deity disapproval table.
2-11     Mere failure. Cthulhu is sleeping.
12-13  Cthulhu snores! A psionic wave erupts from your position, making the area filled with shin-deep water and disorienting everyone, save yourself, who get a -d to attacks until the end of your next turn or as long as the player can keep up snoring sounds. The water never seems to recede...
14-17  Cthulhu stirs! All psionic creatures in the area take 1d5 damage. A tentacle grows on your back and gives you +2 AC for one turn.
18-21  Cthulhu has the munchies. All your foes make a DC 10 Reflex save. Those that fail get a bite taken out of them by unseen beings for 1d4+CL damage and must make a morale check. You can make this happen again each round for a turn if you make DC 10 Will save.
22-25   Cthulhu is drunk dialing. All portals, gates, and doors within 100' are flung open for 1 turn and strange apparations start to seep out of them. If anyone goes through such a portal, they will be transported to a random plane. Your enemies must make a moral check at -1d.
26-29   Cthulhu is dead, but even death may die. Every dead body in a ten-foot sphere centered around you comes back to a semblance of life as an intelligent, corporeal undead. They treat you as a friend and Cthulhu as a god who's will they now heed, but otherwise are the same being they once were.
30+      Cthuluu is awakening?! The ground cracks open and waters rush out, distracting everyone for at least one round as they suddenly find themselves swimming. 1d3+CL Innsmouthian fish-men pop out of the depths and fight your enemies. Roll a d%, and compare it against your disapproval range for the day. If you roll within that range, Cthulhu is really awake. An apocalypse is coming...

Using a 200 yen copy of a 1980 guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to allot random treasure

How to Curry the Favor of the Neutral Gods, Including Cthulhu (DCCRPG)

This is an epistolary extract from an email I sent to my players a while back.

I have been thinking about how neutrals can gain luck. Let me first clarify though that the gods of chaos, the only gods thus far to have had much reason to award luck points in our sessions, don't generally care whether you are good or evil. They don't reward acts of depravity, but rather acts of insanity and creativity. The gods of other alignments will similarly award crowning moments of awesome if they happen. Some gods are good or evil, of course, but that pales in comparison to their stance on cosmic order.

Healing your team-mate or loved-one is not awesome, its nice to a degree, but ultimately just something in the group-interest (or worse yet, self-interest to have another meat-bag around taking hits for you) and not really something the gods care too much about. Saving an important NPC may be a different story... Let me also state that partrons are usually not to have a hand in luck, though exceptions have occurred. If you don't have a god and your patron isn't helping you with alignment, you should really consider getting an interesting god.

Anyways, what can neutrals do to please their gods? First off, being neutral is to choose to straddle the line between stasis (law, order, codes) and entropy (chaos, anarchy, disorder). It is not easy to role-play, though it does provide the security of the middle-path. It could be expressed by not taking a stance (easy to play, but hard to be awesome while doing that) and trying to strike a balance (very tough, but with more possibilities for awesomeness than the former). Neutrals may quest to return an area from the brink of either extreme chaos or stasis, or they may try to take out champions of extreme ideals that seem poised to tip the balance to one side or the other. 

Next, neutrals can seek to overtly please the gods of neutrality. It is quite possible. Usually this done by keeping natural areas natural, but unfortunately dungeons have not brought much opportunity to be all-hippy-like. In the days before my philosophy about all this started to congeal, I fear I may have missed opportunities to give out luck (to the people that convinced the group to not take a giant gold plate from a druid shrine and other such things). Its a little late now to dole out rewards for that, but hindsight will hopefully make me a better DM. However, you could always try to convince the group to go back to the woods; plenty of things there were never discovered.

It may work best if we have goals and ethos defined for our gods (and remember, a patron is not a substitute for a god, though patrons often help you to please your gods), so we can more proactively seek to please said gods. 

For instance, if you worship Cthulhu, you may try to define his ethos as: 

• Return civilization to nature, as it is not for the organization of lesser races.
• Seek out forbidden tomes, to better know my will.
• Seek out pieces of The Great Ritual that will bring about my re-awakening.
• Destroy and combat aberrations of nature, for natural selection is the only means to preserve the balance.
• Lead cults of the faithful, and make lottery-sacrifices of blood.
• Destroy the works of devils and demons, for they would seek to impose their will on nature.
• Avoid stagnation and stasis, for the march of time dictates my return
• Avoid wanton destruction, for the world is mine to reclaim and not anyone's to destroy
• Breed true with my chosen races (Innsmouth fish-men etc.)
• etc. etc.

My DCCRPG Setting/Houserules

House rules

Shields shall be splintered.

If someone is healing you (lay-on hands or first aid check), you may spend your own luck to increase their roll. You may also spend a luck point to re-roll a hit die when healing.

To level up, one needs to engage in some sort of activity that speaks to their character as an adventurer or specialist. This can be as simple as having a crazy tavern party, or as specialized as Training, Sacrifice, or Research. I want to make rules for creating buildings too...

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Fluff to keep your character sane

The world according to learnéd wizards: The world was once one of super-science. Man traveled freely among the stars, and had dominion over demons, who whispered the words of power to man who in turn perfected it into formulæ. However, there was one who tested the limits of hubris and brought ruin to the world. In the last days, he or she will return to finish the job.

 The world according to common man: The world is the plaything of the gods, who are terrible personages that one can only hope to but placate. Much more amiable, though fickle, are the spirits of the world, genis loci, faeries, and magic beasts. The world is in its last days, and the giant ruddy sun will eat us soon in an apocalyptic event. Then everything will start again.

 The world according to clerics of law: Perfection was achieved in the past; particularly in the last two empires of man. Miracles are the provenance of the gods and magic is folly. Creatures that do not bow to the might of the gods are to be shunned and driven back to the darkness from whence they spawn. The gods will perfect the world's flaws soon, bringing about the fabled latter days.

 The world according to clerics of neutrality: The gods set the worlds in motion and peopled them with their tools, and so it is hubris to try to conquer them, but also a failing to not protect them. The role of man is to maintain a balance between the stagnation of law and the entropy of chaos, between civilization and survival. In the last ages, which draw ever closer, the gods will return to guarantee their inscrutable goals.

 The world according to clerics of chaos: The world is a failed experiment. Only by breaking it down and denying its strictures can one hope to build a better world. True power comes from the dark gods and demons, who reward their servants' boldness.

 The world according to psions: This world is an illusion populated by mental constructs, sensations, and allusions to true reality. By exercising one's will on reality, we make it our own. The world will be ripped apart by nightmares if we don't manage to achieve enlightenment.
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Further Campaign Quirks

Creatures: Boring monsters such as bugs and beasts that are only remarkable in that they are bigger than normal don't appear in my campaign. In their place are horrors. Many creatures are fey in my setting. Kobolds, for instance, are not dog-men nor little dragon men, but cave and mine fey. They share the fey tongue from which dialects are made. Many favorite monsters from D&D make an appearance, but don't take their looks, history, or stats for granted. Think of dungeons as connections to the underworld of ancient mythologies. They provide many of their own monsters.

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OLD RULES THAT HAVE BEEN ABANDONED FOR A REFINED SYSTEM

Gold spent on the above activities translates to XP. The level to XP settings that my campaign currently uses is thus:

Gold spent/XP needed to level:

1st lvl @ 100 gill	2nd lvl @ 900 gill	3rd lvl @ 4,000 gill
4th lvl @ 6000 gill	5th lvl @ 10,000 gill	6th lvl @ 15,000 gill
7th lvl @ 21,000 gill	8th lvl @ 28,000 gill	9th lvl @ 36,000 gill
10th lvl @ 45,000 gill plus a quest to placate or overthrow the ever jealous gods

*gill is just a joke word for gold I picked up at http://youtu.be/AVZczLuoJoU

Carousing: Sacrifice to Gods or Spirits

Ancestors only accept the best beer.

You can see my original take on carousing rules for leveling up here. This time we tackle something a little more pious: Sacrifice check leveling.

Sacrifice is giving wealth or offerings to gods, ancestors, clan hoards etc. If you are not a cleric or member of some other appropriate group (a dwarf donating to his clan hoard, for instance), your action die for this roll is only a d16. As with carousing, sacrifice nets you experience equivalent to the gold you spent. You may spend 300 gold per level per week towards sacrifices, but relevant entities will give you +1 to your check for every 10% you increase your sacrifice, where 10% is calculated on your need to reach the next level. This extra gold only nets half experience though.

If you need to repent (as DCCRPG clerics may have to), you  should use the rules in the book for that. You can't gain XP that way.

Sacrifices need to be made at a temple, shrine, demi-human clan hoard, or somewhere else appropriate. You can establish such a holy place as an initial sacrifice.

You choose how much gold to donate. Evil gods demand lucre for themselves (they supernaturally take it), but good gods may require that alms be payed out to the poor via donation boxes etc. If you happen to worship them, the ghosts of your ancestors demand extravagant tombs and gifts. Dwarves, elves, and halflings that have ties to their clan can donate to the clan hoard and its defenses, and the gods/spirits of such demi-humans judge them.

When you engage in Sacrifice, roll a d20+Luck Mod, aim for DC15 to get extra bonuses beyond XP,  and hope you don't roll a 1!

Sacrificing a chosen foe of your deities or enshrining a religious artifact or relic will net you your Personality bonus to your Sacrifice roll.

1. Thou dost displease me! Your face shows a mark of shame. Holy men will abhor you until you remove this mark with a successful Sacrifice check. 2. Thou art too proud! Your stature is lessened until you level up twice. People take pity on you now. 3. I am wagering with the adversary, and so... You lose something precious to you, such as land, your cows, or a loved one. 4.  Thou dost amuse me so. People don't take you seriously until you complete an adventure, but you gain 1d5 luck points. 5. Only thou canst handle the following mission. You are charged with a difficult quest. 6. Who art thou again? You gain a complex, driving you to prove your worth to your gods. Role-play it well or risk losing luck. 7. Thou must suffer the sins of my peoples! You are covered in painful boils for a while. -1 to agility baring a successful Fortitude save after morning prayers. 8. Thou must feed my sheeple. 3 Idiots join you. They fight as henchmen, but they are bumbling fools and will constantly give away your position. Killing or turning them away is bad luck. 9. Thou must give alms. You are compelled to give away all of your rations. Except for a meal you are currently eating, you can't stop giving away your food until an adventure or quest ends. Eating food you once gave away will net you 1 Luck loss. 10. Suffer the children. 1d16 orphans show up during your next adventure. Get them to safety and see to their needs lest you get bad luck. 11. Thou deservest to know that my chosen people are... You realize that a race chosen by the game judge is the chosen race and all others are to be derided and ignored. This may cause you great cognitive dissonance if you are not of the chosen race. 12. What hast thou done?! If you are a cleric, roll on the clerical mishaps table. If not, you are kicked out of the holy grounds and can no longer make donations at this site. -2 luck. 13. Thou must slay the mightiest beast in the land! You cannot gain any experience until you slay an infamous monster named by the judge. 14. Thou art marked with my curse.  You get a bad result from this list.  15. Thou art a prat.  An applicable result from this list.

If you rolled a natural 20 when making your Sacrifice roll, you get 1d5 luck points and then check for other results. 1. Divine luck is granted to you. +1d4 luck. 2. You know the general location of a relic of your faith (holy classes can use them, others can sell them). 3. Choose a spell you know (or learn one at next level if you have no spells). Luck burned when casting it comes back as if you were a thief. 4. You may call on the favor of a divine agent, such as an angel, one time if your goals are aligned with your gods. 5. You may burn a luck point any time something from a divine source would harm you, or when enemies of your god would seek to harm you for your beliefs. This protection lasts one scene per use and goes away if you are currently not in good standing. 6. Your faith is strong enough to perform most any bog-standard miracle during the next adventure. Look to real life holy books for examples. 7.  You gain a vision of the future. The next time you would be knocked to 0 HP, you can make a DC 10 intelligence check to avoid that damage. 8. You have gained a bit of divine favor. You gain an extra 1d4 hit die. 9. You get an extra 1d4 added to your turn unholy checks if the natural roll for such checks is an 18 or higher. 10. Until the next level, you are watched over. Once per fight you can use an action to regain one hit die of health. 11. Whenever you seem to be out of food, roll your luck and if you succeed you miraculously have food. 12. You may remove one mutation, spell corruption, or deformation from yourself or one companion. 13. The next time you would have to roll on the deity disapproval table, you may forgo that roll. 14. A supernatural being makes your association, and puts you on the fast track to sainthood, demigod-status, etc. You still have to earn your way into the position though. 15. A good result from this list.

DCC Psion Power Draft: Pyrokinesis

With this draft, I am keen to know if anything seems off about material melting points. By the way, the going-nuclear ability is inspired by Firestarter.

Pyrokinesis

Pyrokinesis is the ability to speed up the vibrations of matter on a molecular level, giving rise to heat. Psions minus their ML from any fire damage they would take while manifesting this power.

Check Success: You can start to heat material, which is affected based on the number of rounds you concentrate. If you want to concentrate for a number of beyond your ML, you need to make another power check.

You may use Mind Burn to speed up the process; ability points spent reduce the number of rounds needed to achieve an effect on a 1 for 1 ratio.

Rounds	Effect on non-living targets	Effect on targeted creatures
1	Paper, dry grass,wool, and similar materials ignite.	Creatures feel mild pain. Fire-based entities disrupted (Will save to move).
2	Wood darkened, kindling ignited	1d4 damage. Mild blistering.
3	Logs ignited, metals are dropped unless their holder endures 1d4 damage.	1d6 damage.
4	Metals scorch for 1d7 damage. Water boils (1 cubic foot per ML). Leather ignites.	1d8 damage.
5	Logs reduced to embers and scorch for 1d8 damage, as does metal. Concrete grows brittle.	1d10 damage. Roll luck or be scarred.
6	Steel grows soft and scorches for 1d16 damage. Gold melts.	1d12 damage. Creature’s touch now does your ML in damage.
7	Materials scorch for 2d16. Adjacent creatures take 1d12 damage. Glass melts.	1d16 damage. Roll luck or be scarred. Creatures of HD lower than you can’t save.
8	Materials scorch for 3d12 damage. Steel melts.	1d20 damage.
9	Anyone within 20 feet will take 2d12 fire damage.	1d30 damage. Still receive half damage  if they save.
10	Molecules so excited that there is a chance of localized nuclear explosion (roll luck).	Atomized. Still receive 1d16 damage on a save.

Roll 1: Reduce the number of rounds needed to achieve an effect by up to 1d5. Creatures of HD less than your ML can’t save.

Roll 20: Roll 1d6. (1)You are feverish for the next 2 turns (1d4 stamina damage); (2) Success, but you ignite in supernatural flame (no damage to you or possessions) and scortch things for 1d5 damage per round; (3) Your clothes ignite (1d4 damage per round, full round action to put out the flames) ; (4) One of your possessions must make a save or explode (1d8 damage to adjacent creatures); (5) You accidentally summon a fire elemental that is angry at you; (6) Your insides boil for 1d14 damage, but a FORT save will reduce it by half.