5 things that Dragonbane does better than D&D

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Originally published at: 5 things that Dragonbane does better than D&D | Boing Boing

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Oh, casting on the fly is a blast, glad to hear that’s something folks are still setting up in their games. A long, long time ago I got heavily into a TTRPG called T.O.R.G., where one of the settings was clearly high/dark fantasy inspired, and they had a really wonderful and delightfully convoluted way of casting spells on the fly. It was genius.

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I love the fortunately doubled spells. If I were DM’ing, I’d be looking at those to create funny combinations.

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One of my players really hated the fact that you could only parry or dodge if you hadn’t used an action in the round yet.

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Indeed, one of the cool things about DCCRPG’s magic system is you don’t pick some of your spells to have prep’ed each day you get them all, until you fail a casting roll badly enough (the casing roll is interesting, you get a big page of results, so a single Fireball spell does everything D&D’s multiple fireballl/improved-fireball/extra-awesome-fireball/more-adjictaves-fireball does, you just have to “roll higher” to get the more interesting effects (I think you get to add half your level or something like that to the casing rolls; plus low rolls lose the spell for the day, a natural 1 wins you corruption (nature depends on your wizard’s patron) or you can “agree” to perform a task for your patron and not lose the spell for the day (“collect the feet of 3 sentient creatures within the next two days”)).

Cleric spells are similar although part of the “disapproval” is the distance between your alignment and the spell’s target alignment (as a penalty or bonus depending on whether you are harming or helping). You don’t get corruption (I think), but you lose the spell until you perform the task (not just a day).

Getting a second casting sounds majorly cool as a crit effect.

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I love the magic system in DCCRPG. To me, magic should always be risky, and miscasting effects should be an ever-present danger.

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Yeah, that bit where “young wizards are to be feared, old wizards are to be pitted” is pretty on point…

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