Character Class: Lug

Here's a character class I wrote up one day just before GaryCon. I handed out printed copies to folks and finally, just this past Friday, saw the class in action. The guy playing the Lug (who he named Lug) was having a bad night, rolling less than 10 on all his attacks. But he did manage to smack the bejeezus out of the party's Medusa (another class I'll post) to snap her out of a monstrous daze.

Note: Made a correction to a typo...pay no heed to it.

LUG XP TABLE
Level	Title	Experience	Hit Dice
1	Goon	0	1d10
2	Ruffian	2,100	2d10
3	Brute	4,200	3d10
4	Charger	8,400	4d10
5	Roughneck	16,800	5d10
6	Clocker	36,960	6d10
7	Bopper	81,300	7d10
8	Smasher	178,800	8d10
9	Lug	390,000	9d10
10	10th level Lug	790,000	9d10 +2*
11	11th level Lug	1,190,000	9d10 +4*
12	12th level Lug	1,390,000	9d10 +6*
13	13th level Lug	1,590,000	9d10 +8*
14**	14th level Lug	1,790,000	9d10 +10*
*Con bonus no longer applies. **No lug has ever exceeded this level.

LUG

Requirements: Str 16

Prime Requisite: Str

Hit Dice: d10

Lugs are big. Really big. And often clumsy. They may be taller than anyone they know, and they can definitely out-eat them. When a lug enters a shop full of delicate wares the shopkeeper usually has a heart attack. A lug may have grown up pulling grain carts or wrestling cows or perhaps mother nature just saw fit to give them five times the mass of any normal person. Either way, the lug's great strength serves them well.

RESTRICTIONS

A lug must eat twice as much food per day as a normal adventurer.

When faced with a riddle, puzzle, or other mental challenge the lug must pass a saving throw vs. spells or be dazed and confused. Only passing the save will snap them out of this stupor. The save can be attempted once per round.

Lugs are off-putting in their awkwardness and invoke a penalty of 1 on all reaction rolls. Oddly, the lug receives a bonus of 1 to reaction rolls from ogres and hill giants.

Lugs may use any weapon, though small weapons such as daggers feel too small in their hands and they have a -1 penalty when using them. They can wear any armor if it fits them. As a rule of thumb, any randomly-discovered armor has a 2-in-6 chance of fitting (with some tender modifications that take 1d4 turns). Lugs use the saving throws and attack values of a fighter.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Bop!: Lugs tend to be tall and may use their height advantage to bop targets on the head. Lugs have become so skilled at this that when making a bop attack with their clenched fist against a target that is shorter than the lug they get +2 to hit. If the modified attack roll is 16 or higher and hits, the target must save vs. paralysis or be knocked out for 1d6 rounds. If the modified roll is 20 or higher and the save is failed the target is bopped out for 1d6 turns.

Charge!: A lug can charge, like a monster or mounted rider, dealing double damage on a hit. But the lug is so adept at using their mass that the charge only requires 30' of room. However, if the lug fails the attack roll they are off-balance and suffer a -2 to hit on the following round. Targets hit by a lug's charge must pass a saving throw vs. paralysis or be knocked prone and must use their action on the following round to stand up.

Hefting the Blade: A lug can wield any two-handed weapon with one hand, dealing the two-handed damage rating for the weapon.

Intimidator: A lug may use their great size to intimidate foes, forcing a morale check under the right circumstances. The lug's Strength modifier may be applied as a penalty to the morale check, per GM discretion.

Juggernaut: When a lug is hit with any effect that would knock them down or move them out of the way they may make a Strength check to remain standing. Where applicable, the lug's Strength check may be modified by the Strength modifier of the attacker.

Smack!: A lug can open-palm smack the catoblepas poo out of a target if they can reach the target's face. This attack has a +1 to hit and causes 1d4 points of damage if the lug chooses to cause damage. The target must then pass a saving throw vs. paralysis or be dazed for 1d4 rounds, unable to take any actions other than staggering away at half their movement rate.

There is a chance that a lug's smack can free a target from certain conditions caused by magic spells or other magical sources. A target under the effect of charm or hold spells or very similar spells may make a saving throw vs. spells upon being smacked by a lug. If successful, the spell is instantly broken...but the character still suffers 1d4 rounds of being dazed.

Toss 'Em: Lugs are very good at grabbing things and throwing them. A lug may throw any object within reach that is less than half their height and weighs no more than 150 lbs. Treat this as a thrown hand axe for range. The thrown object deals 1d6 damage plus Strength modifier. If the object weighs more than 100 lbs the damage is increased to 2d6. Objects used in this manner have a tendency to be broken...so the party halfling should beware.

COMMON LUG NAMES
Roll	Name	Roll	Name
1	Bok	11	Gook
2	Bookie	12	Goon
3	Bubba	13	Grum
4	Cagey	14	Heff
5	Dooder	15	Hoit
6	Duds	16	Nubber
7	Festo	17	Nukks
8	Finny	18	Tonk
9	Fok	19	Tooter
10	Gobber	20	Zig

LUG BACKGROUND STUFF
Roll	Background Element
1	Raised in carnival as oddity. Self-esteem low.
2	Kept in cellar as child. Excellent night vision.
3	Slept in stables as child. Good with animals.
4	Was revered as holy by local cult. Possible delusions of grandeur.
5	In love with beautiful noble or rich person, afraid to act upon it.
6	Brutal childhood makes lug quick to anger and slow to trust.
7	Witch cursed lug as infant, has hump on back.
8	Raised in loving family with supportive community.
9	Brothers and sisters hated lug and tried to kill them.
10	Local ruler wants lug as bodyguard.
11	Old wizard pays lug to gather spell components.
12	Lug's siblings were even bigger. Feels inadequate.
13	Loves books...even if they can't read.
14	Worked in theater as stage hand, often as a prop such as a tree or wall.
15	Has 6 toes on one foot. Considers it sign from gods.
16	Can eat two chickens in five minutes.
17	Is cross-eyed but doesn't affect eyesight.
18	Speaks eloquently, as if of high birth.
19	Laughs so loud rattles windows.
20	Loves baby animals and will defend them to the death.

DCC #...um...

Yeah, so the Labyrinth Lord campaign I ran I did this weekly episode notes thingie. I'm not doing that with DCC. I started out that way but rolled a 1 on my spellcheck.

Here's what's going on in the campaign in a nutshell:

The PCs are working for a devil woman named Hella Nor. One PC, named Oryx, has taken Hella as a patron to his wizardly ways. Hella has sent the PCs on a couple of missions to reclaim her lost crystal balls.

In the second mission to retrieve a ball they ended up on a magical ship that dropped them on a purple planet. Trapped in a prison beneath an arena of warring kith the PCs freed a witch named Irene and piloted another ship off the purple planet. Things went awry and now they have crashed and are stranded on a hostile jungle island in an unknown world.

The meta plot seems to be unraveling the doings of the War Wizard, who seems to have more tombs and ruined fortresses than you can shake a lightning spear at. And the few PCs who survive from the funnel know that their entire memories prior to that first adventure are somewhat suspect. It seems they lived in a bottle city, possibly because of the machinations of the War Wizard or a mysterious figure known as the Mind Master.

Current roster of characters:

Artifus (level 2 botten): Once a brave squire named Ammet, Artifus died in the War Wizard's tomb and was brought back to life through sorcerous science as a cyborg...a botten!

Oryx (level 2 wizard): The son of the ill-fated heavy drinking monk Voss, Oryx has become a fanatical devotee of Hella Nor and...unfortunately...a terrible wizard whose spellchecks never seem to break 7. He is the PC most likely to die, by all reasonable measures. Yet he lives on...

Parsley (level 2 cleric): This happy-go-lucky girl doesn't have an ability score higher than her shoe size but she was chosen by Shul, god of the moon, to be his earthly troubadour. Hey...she killed the Master of Eyes almost by herself.

Jo Bobbius (level 2 ranger): Not too bright, not too strong...this ranger's arrows strike true.

Billy Bobbius (level 2 druid): Nearly as smart as his brother, the druid feels nature in his veins and possibly other body parts.

Bishop (level 2 warrior): This sea-faring salty dog hitched a ride on the ship that carried the PCs away from the destruction of the underground ziggurat of the Master of Eyes. He's tough and has a way with the ladies (ships).

Smoke (level 2 thief): She's tough as nails and silent as a mouse. She's thick and smokey and badass...can she keep these other guys alive on the island of certain death?

Cezra (level 2 paladin): He's got a strange and storied past and a zealous devotion to the ways of mighty Cthulhu. His paladin's blade strikes true against the enemies of his god!

Castles & Crusades

I had heard of Castles & Crusades for years and ignored it. I didn't really love the title and the fact that it was based on the OGL and had 3.5e based mechanics was a turn off for me as I was returning to my gaming roots and discovering this wonderful thing called the OSR and Labyrinth Lord.

When I was at GaryCon this year I played in a game of C&C at the behest of my travelling pals. It was late and the DM (well, Castle Keeper...) was tired. The table wasn't terribly focused or respectful. So the game suffered.

But I could see immediately that I liked the game. I took a gander at the book (6th printing) and quite liked it. Then, as chance would have it, I encountered a copy of the Players Handbook, 6th printing, at our local Book & CD Hut for $14. Bam! Bought.

And I'm so glad I did. This book is awesome. It's succinct, tightly written, focused on exactly what it needs to focused on, useful, clearly laid out, and beautifully illustrated (Peter Bradley rocks).

Someone had told me earlier that the game is a nice marriage between old and new. It is a sort of modern-age AD&D. I agree completely. If I was going to create a game like AD&D using the 3.5 OGL I would like it to turn out like C&C.

Here are some highlights I love about the game:

♦ 3.5 did away with the classic saving throws and reduced them down to three saves. C&C takes them back to a list - actually six categories instead of the classic five. But they are each linked to an attribute. So, for example, if you save vs. dragon breath you are using Dexterity as a base. A save vs. spells is based on Intelligence, and so on. It is a nice way to avoid the clunky old tables (which I personally love, BTW) and make attribute scores more important while still having the shadow of the old table present right on your character sheet (look...there's "petrification"!).

♦ All the basic classes are represented. There are in fact 13 of them. And each makes sense and is based on one ability score, which is called "Prime". Likewise all the classic races are there, including the gnome. Good job.

♦ Classes are structured like the classic game. Instead of the single table for XP you have different XP requirements for each class. I love that. I am well versed in that language and I love to invent classes. It feels like I could easily slip into C&C and create or convert classes without having to learn a new RPG language. I appreciate the simplicity of the single-table method (DCC uses that too) but I do not like the way it forces all classes to be "balanced" against each other. I prefer to have the freedom to create weaker or more powerful classes and balance them by means of XP required per level.

♦ All skill rolls are attribute checks. Good. No more clunky percentile rolls mixed with d6 rolls. I love the flavor of those old mechanics but frankly using a d20 attribute roll is much smoother and easier. In C&C you have an elegant Primary vs. Secondary system by which difficulties are determined. It is intuitive and fast in play. Nicely done.

I'm sure there are things I don't like about this game. I just haven't encountered them yet. I hope to play or run the game sooner than later!

Offering

Revisiting some old art to bring it more in line with my current thinking.

DCC #4.5

The B Team

As a spur-of-the-moment thing I ran a short DCC adventure funnel for some 0-level nobodies. I used a severely truncated version of Purple Sorcerer's Perils of the Sunken City, specifically Madazkan's dungeon. But instead of Madazkan, I used the War Wizard alluded to in Portal Under the Stars.

The PCs wake up in a dungeon, chains lying all around. Skeletons lying about. They remember being captured by the War Wizard to be used in sport. They do not remember falling asleep. And things look different...much time has passed. What happened?

Exploring the dungeon they battle chain-toting skeletons and eventually come into the chamber of Malloc. Razz Snagglesnatch the lizard man is pulled into the tree and ripped apart...blood satisfies Malloc and he offers his blessing. Only one PC refuses...Jera Syn's loyalties lie with other gods!

This was a very short crawl for 8 PCs. 5 characters made it out alive, thanks in part to some healing waters.

Fun times. Now we have some B-listers that might come into the main game as needed.

Also: I decided that gnomes of the city of Seapath (where this campaign is focused) take great pride in their pointy hats. Those with a hat: +1 to Luck. Those without a hat: -1 to Luck. One player refused the hat for his gnome...she ain't a team player and ain't wearing no stinking pointy hat!

DCC #4

In our fourth session the PCs make their way deeper into the war wizard's tomb, discovering a strange shallow pool of water. The floor of the pool is dotted with small gems arranged in the pattern of the night sky they saw outside. A shattered robot lies in the pool. Brave (or stupid?) Jo Bobbius climbs into the pool to test the gems and discovers the robot's bronze spear. Messing around with it he gets lucky and figures out the spear can issue a blast of energy to strike distant targets.

Soon a procession of weird men of metal come into the room. In the lead are two broken and busted up robots. They are followed by what can only be described as men half of metal and half of flesh. The PCs realize suddenly that they are looking at their former allies...now dead...now walking around again!

A few of the re-animated have a flash of awareness and memory upon seeing the faces of their allies. They shake off the strange magic working to assimilate them into the robot matrix. Battle ensues as the other bots realize what has happened.

The PCs are victorious against the bots and in the end Ammet, Aiken, and Arble rejoin the party...albeit with robot parts. Can the day get any stranger for these poor schmucks?

A door is opened and down they go to discover weird treasures. Oryx, opening an arcane looking book, is blinded by it. His father Voss, considering Oryx to be a weakling, essentially abandons his son for dead. Only a fool would let himself get blinded. And where is the booze around here?

They discover an army of over 60 robots standing in silence in the lower chamber. Leading them is a giant figure similar to the war wizard's statue upstairs that burned so many of them to a crisp! Previous battles with bots demonstrated that water causes them serious harm. And wait...what is that sparkling on the ceiling? The gems from the pool above!

Voss shoves his blind son into the room in anger, then rushes up the stairs to pluck the gems from the floor, hoping to flood the chamber with water. The robots awaken! They begin to ambulate.

The team rush up to help with the gems, poking and prying at them furiously. Soon they have removed dozens and the floor begins to crack. They run, though it is too late for Voss, Einstenius, Wandius, and Calliope. They fall through the floor helplessly to their doom.

The flood of water takes it toll on the ancient robots and they begin to pop and crack and explode. The army is defeated! And Voss, tough old bastard that he is, climbs out of the wreckage and up upon the throne of the war wizard at the head of the room...there is the crystal ball Hella Nor sent them to fetch!

Upstairs the team faces a few robots that made it out of the pool and defeat them with surprise and force.

Voss rubs the ball and Hella Nor's face appears in it.

"Nice work, losers. But see I only need to bring out the guy holding the ball. Why would I waste energy on the rest of you?"

Oh no. But wait, these poor bastards can offer something surely. They agree to help Hella with a future project and she then whisks them all out of the tomb and plops them down on the roof of the Four Winds Bar in the great city of Seapath...a place as alien to them as anything can be.

What will become of these disparate bandits? What of their fields of corn back home? What is home? Hella said their home city was a sham, an illusion, a "city in a bottle"...what does that mean?

No time to think about it. That crazy devil girl will return in a few months and expects them to do something even crazier. Best get ready...

DCC #3

The party of newbs, having found their way into the war wizard's tomb, faced spear-throwing statues and a fire-spurting statue of the great wizard himself.

They discovered a room which appeared to be a workshop with piles of metal and wire and half-finished men of metal. Along the walls in 7 alcoves were colorful buttons...some flashing. Naturally some buttons were pressed. Soon a group of 3 metal men entered threateningly and cut down one of the PCs after a valiant battle. One lone hero named Calliope bested two of the robots on her own.

Enter: the Surgeon. This tall robot, named Sararug, was the war wizard's surgeon. He lead the PCs to his chamber and assured them that he would "transform their frail bodies into perfection". No one accepted his invitation to become immortal men of metal and the Surgeon grew angry. A very well placed spear by big-boned Wandius took the Surgeon down and Einstenius the sage discovered an alien weapon in Sasarug's possession. Could this device be usable?

Ammet, Aiken, Yosemite, and Harry all met their makers in this week's episode. Mostly by fire.

DCC #2

In the second session we were joined by a fifth player. Luckily, 4 more characters were alive in that foul pantry and made their escape as well.

In this session the PCs discovered that a beautiful horned woman named Velma Nor was trapped inside the blue gem necklace of the man-bat leader. Her sister, Hella Nor, was trapped in the scepter on the man-bat altar. First they must free Hella, then Hella would free Velma. Sure, they said.

Hella was freed and the red, naked, devil woman was not really happy about it. Right off the bat Han the outlaw, feeling plucky, hit on Hella Nor and lost his head in the process.

So Hella, rather than killing all the fools, sets them to a mission. Retrieve her crystal ball from a tomb of one of her old lovers.

Entering the tomb was not easy. Arble the butcher was burned to ashes as a result

of tampering with the door. But Atticus cleverly figured a way in and the team of hooligans now stands before four statues threatening them with spears.

During this session we also say goodbye to Bowteesta the woodworker and Jethro Cobblepot the parsnip farmer, who were lost to the 2000 foot drop from the aerie of the man-bats.

It is too early for me to give this campaign an official name, so I won't do it. I'm gonna wait and see what happens next. The players may take me into areas I didn't anticipate. Who knows?

DCC #1

The new DCC campaign kicked off a few weeks ago. Started with 4 players, the crew from the Frimmsreach Labyrinth Lord campaign, each with 4 PCs of fabulous zero level.

In the first session the PCs awaken to find themselves caught in some sort of sticky, tough webbing inside a weird sphere composed mostly of tree branches and hides. Many bodies are strung up on the ceiling in a similar fashion. It appears to be some kind of storage area for live meat.

The captors are man-bats! And the monsters are engaged in a battle of their own against little metal men with strange blasting weapons.

Escape and investigation ensues. Poor Moloch the rutabega farmer was eaten by a flying worm before he could make his escape. And the exotic Xaius Fe, outlaw, was blasted by a man of metal's zapping spear.

The 2-hour session ended with the party being held by the men of metal.

Top Ballista

I recently scored a very nice copy of PC2 Creature Crucible: Top Ballista by Carl Sargent. This book came out in 1989 just as AD&D 2nd Edition was hitting the racks.

Top Ballista is a resource book for the D&D line ("basic" or BECMI), not AD&D. I got started with the BECMI red box in 1984 and played with a mix of that + B/X + AD&D materials. To me it was all just D&D, though I vaguely recognized that the two lines were slightly different.

I remember seeing Top Ballista on the shelf of the local book store. It was shrink-wrapped so I couldn't flip through it. I saw a plane on the cover and some whacky looking goblins. There was a sort of quasi-military vibe to it...and even though Iron Maiden's "Aces High" was probably going through my head I just didn't feel like it was a justified purchase. "Meh." I may have said.

Boy was I wrong. This book is awesome. It is full of awesome.

First, it is a module complete with disconnected cover and maps. It includes a large poster map of the flying city of Serraine, the city of gnomes.

More importantly it is a source book for playing a bunch of cool new classes: faenare, gnomes, gremlins, harpies, nagpa, pegataurs, sphinxes, and tabi. Remember, in classic D&D race and class are the same thing. That seemed perfectly natural to me when I was gaming on my own with my red box and blue BX Expert books. But once I hooked up with a proper group of hooligans playing AD&D I suddenly wanted race and class separated. Makes more sense right?

Balls to that. Race-as-class is awesome. The degree of color and style you can put into a class based on a race far surpasses the separated races of AD&D. I mean...gremlins.

Gremlins are friggin' great. They get to hide in crannies. They get a Murphy's Law aura. They can tumble and jump and cast natural spells. And perhaps coolest of all is their "foe fumbles". When an enemy attacks a gremlin and misses they must make a second attack roll...against themselves! And as the gremlin levels up there is a bonus to that second attack roll.

Ah, the chaos.

The other classes look cool too. I'd play a gnome any day. And there is the possibility with some classes of playing a spellcasting version like a shaman. That essentially means some race-classes are actually two different classes, broadening the possibilities even more.

Add to all this the wonderful artwork by John Lakey and this book is 100% cool. It has gnomish airplanes for pete's sake.

Now I have to score the other Creature Crucible books, which I have never had the pleasure of even seeing in person: PC1: Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, PC3: The Sea People, and PC4: Night Howlers.