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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8097254" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/UmCewur.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Velociraptor: You’re a dinosaur! Who is intelligent! And can talk! You use the existing tables (base attack progression, saves, etc) of the Halfling class but you have a d6 hit die and are not trained in any weapons although you can wear custom-fitted armor. You have talons as natural weapons that can be wielded a la two-weapon fighting, can also bite as a third attack (albeit a d14 roll), and can move 40 feet per Action Die and charge without suffering an AC penalty. You also gain a limited Mighty Deed of Arms, but whose die is dependent upon having a predatory advantage against a target: the Deed Die goes one step up the dice chain for various conditions such whether or not the target’s fleeing, surrounded, injured/bleeding, etc). You do have a weakness: you are a carnivore and can only subsist on raw meat, and starve to death from 1d3 hit point damage per day if unable to eat such faire.You’re a mobile melee fighter, although you have a surprisingly small hit point value for such a role. Raw meat isn’t exactly hard to come by in most fantasy games with their uncharted wilderness, but overall the class is a rather weak warrior type.Wolf Girl: You’re a woman who’s a defender of nature. You have a d6 hit die, get a third Action Die at 10th level, cannot use equipment of an “industrialized nature” without suffering hit point damage and so your weapon and armor proficiencies are similarly limited (nothing metal). You also have a wolf animal companion who advances along with you in stats, can detect magic and spirits like how a dwarf can smell gold, and you have a Spirit Die (d3 to d14 depending on level) which you add on damage against opponents who hit you and on the number of feet added when you “jump from one place to another.” This sounds like it applies evenly to both vertical and horizontal jumps, which is pretty sweet. You have the ability to create spirit charms that act like scroll magical items via making sacrifices to mother nature. You also add your spirit die to rolls to cast spells from such “scrolls,” although the specifics of the sacrifices and magic gained is subject to the GM. You can also speak with wolves and learn other animal languages over time, too.This class has some pretty strong druid vibes, albeit with more of a martial focus. I overall like it, but I do feel that the spirit charm class feature could’ve used more specific examples or even a small list of appropriate spells like we get with the Knave or the Puppet Master.Xenocyte: You’re basically the monster from the Alien movies! As is to be expected you are a mobile fighter and are like the velociraptor in more or less being limited to your natural weapons, although you have a sturdier d10 hit die, an excellent Reflex save progression (+1 every level save 4th) and have alien senses which can sense unseen foes via heat patterns. Beyond this, your major class feature is Xeno Morphology, which is a mix-and-match list of abilities keyed to major body parts and all chosen at 1st level. You have a Xeno Die which is relevant to several of them, starting at d4 and increasing to a mighty d20 at 10th level. There’s a lot of good choices here, ranging from armored exoplating which grants +1 AC and reduces melee damage dealt to you by your xeno die, grappling spines which deal xeno die in damage and initiate a free grapple on a 3 or better result, and a stinger tail which can lower a foe’s AC by burning luck. But most notable about this class is that not only does it get a 3rd action die at 10th level, you can gain a d14 action die via the Quad Arms option and a d10 action die with a Prehensile Tail. Said options have other minor features, but you can effectively move and attack 3 times as early as 1st level and get up to 5 actions at 10th! This really makes the Xenocyte a strong ambush predator.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/gDuBzm1.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Youthful Musician: You’re basically the protagonist of a Hannah Barbara Saturday Morning Cartoon show. As a young optimistic believer in peace, love, Law, and music, you are a pacifist. You have a d8 hit die but your base attack progression remains at 0, and you suffer two steps down on all action die rolls when wielding a weapon of any kind but can inflict this very same penalty on anyone who attacks you. But to make up for this you are a great team player: you can force a target on a failed save (doesn’t say but I presume Will) to join you on their adventures as a Boon Companion but are limited to a number of such companions equal to your level. You can burn any of your ability scores to add as a bonus to a fellow PC’s non-combat roll on a 1 for 1 basis, can have the entire party move 1.5 times their normal movement speed when running away from danger, can regain Luck via helping out the downtrodden and oppressed, and can summon instruments into the hands of fellow PCs and Boon Companions which can restore their Luck and redistribute their Luck between each other.I recall a post about how DCC Halflings’ primary feature is to serve as “Luck batteries” for the party, and the Youthful Musician is no different. However they’re worse in the fact that they cannot reliably fight back and are an ill fit for a game whose majority of modules involve violent dungeon crawls. They’re kind of like a video game Healer class in that they’re beneficial to have for the party but can’t really do much on their own. The Boon Companion ability may be potentially overpowered in that it’s a means of turning just about anyone into a long-term hireling. The book even says that an entire party of this class “will often be very lucky, and frequently running from combat to friendlier places,” which...sounds better suited for an entirely different game system.Zealot: The final class of the book is strangely...ordinary in comparison to the earlier gonzo options. You may not be a Cleric, but that doesn’t stop your enthusiasm. You have a d8 hit die, are proficient in the favored weapons of your god, add your Luck modifier to damage rolls with said weapons, and your Base Attack Bonus, critical hit table, and saving throws are all appropriately martial. Your major class feature is Fervor, which is a spendable resource you gain via performing significant actions in line with your deity’s ethos or via sacrificing material wealth. You typically cannot gain Fervor more than once per appropriate action per day, but gaining more than 1 Fervor for a single action is possible. You spend Fervor to add as a Fervor Die bonus to any attack, damage, or skill roll, or can turn said Die into a Deed Die for Mighty Deeds of Arms. The Fervor Die can range from a d3 (1 Fervor spent) to as much as a d16 (21 Fervor spent). This is a rather simple yet versatile mechanic, although it’s limited in that the amount of Fervor you gain is capped at a relatively slow rate by the examples provided: killing 10 undead for a Lawful deity grants 1 Fervor, while sacrificing wealth grants 1 Fervor per 100 gold pieces worth.As such, the Zealot feels like a more restricted Warrior. Although they can theoretically save up enough Fervor to “go nova” on a single roll, it’s not something that they can consistently do on a frequent basis. Most of the time you’ll feel like a Warrior with less hit points, less weapon proficiencies, and without a Deed Die. Or in 3rd Edition D&D parlance, about as powerful as a Fighter without Bonus Feats.Our book ends with a small selection of notes and appendices. They range from inspirational material (mostly OSR blogs) to suggestions on how to “remix” the classes by swapping features from others here and there, although two entries jump out at me. The first asks for how to justify taking a level in some of the classes if you’re a level 0 human, with rather silly suggestions: the peasant was an ogre wearing a human skin-suit all along, or said peasant was eaten offscreen by an ogre who later befriended the party.Finally, there’s a table which groups the classes by roles. Said roles are both thematic (Beast, Robot, Undead) and class-specific (Skilled, Warrior-type, Spellcaster) with the Musician category as the odd man out. The Editor doesn’t belong to any entry, and 12 of the 26 classes fall under Warrior-type. The other roles range from 2-3 (Musician, Robot) to as much as 6 or 8 (Beast, Spellcaster). In a book with so many odd and gonzo classes, a table like this can be useful for those groups that want to retain a sense of consistency and role division even when your party looks like something out of a RIFTS session. If it were up to me, I’d also add one more entry of commonalities I noticed: six of the classes in this book are Alignment-Restricted. As Alignment in DCC is more the classic “cosmic allegiance” option for determining team players and less of a personality type, it can still lead to a different kind of inter-party conflict. The Goblin Gang, Hellfont, Intelligent Weapon, Ninja Vampire, Wolf Girl, Youthful Musician, and Zealot all have alignment restrictions. Zealot is a bit versatile in that their alignment must match their god so technically can be ‘any,’ although the Hellfont and Wolf Girl must be non-neutral. Youthful Musician is the only Lawful only class, with the remaining three of Goblin Gang, Intelligent Weapon, and Ninja Vampire being always Chaotic.Finally, none of the classes by default have versatile healing in the same manner as a Cleric. A few of the classes such as Ninja Vampire have means of restoring hit points, although in their cases are situational either to themselves or their minions like the Monster Trainer or Puppet Master. Others are unreliable like rolling one of the two human options for the Flesh-Forged’s original race, the Knave’s Moon Major Arcana which only triggers on a specific favorable result.Final Thoughts: I enjoyed this book, to the point that it reignited my interest in trying out a Dungeon Crawl Classics session albeit with everyone having a class from this book. Or perhaps the allowance of a single core class PC serving as the “straight man” to an oddball group. A lot of the classes lean quite heavily towards a more light-hearted campaign style, although quite a number of them such as the Lemurian and Zealot fit quite well in a traditional swords and sorcery or medieval setting. Although the classes vary in quality, they are extremely distinctive from each other in a way that can only come with a collaborative group effort.I’d like to thank everyone who read this far. For my next review I’m going to cover Magical Industrial Revolution, an OSR setting that has been sitting on my review backlog for quite some time. See you all then!</blockquote>

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