Sunday, September 25, 2016

A new DCC class for dwarfs: The Rune Priest

I tried do something interesting for the dwarf...well, I tried to do something interesting for all of them, but I like how the Rune Priest turned out.  He's mostly a cleric, with a couple of tweaks.

If you can one-hand a hammer that big, you need no other skills

  • They get one arcane spell per level!
  • Unlike their warrior brethren, they are two-handed weapon specialists
  • They can't turn undead or ask for divine aid
  • Dwarves are a bit racist; non-dwarves can only be healed as "adjacent" at best, and elves always heal as if "hostile"

I used to post the text for the class here, but since I keep tweaking my local copy, it makes way more sense to just link to the Google doc.  Enjoy!


  1. Does a Rune Priest roll on the Mercurial Magic table for Wizard Spells, and can the use Spellburn as a Wizard, rather than the more limited form used by Clerics?

  2. To be honest I hadn't considered mercurial magic, although I was assuming that there's no spellburn. The impact of mercurial magic is, on average, pretty small, so I'd say that you could use that if you like.

    Spellburn is a bit trickier, because it essentially gives Wizards the "glass cannon" option. Allowing it would make the Rune Priest a little more powerful, but on second thought, I'd be inclined to do so, because it's fun and flavorful. After all, DCC isn't a stickler for balance. One of my players is running a Rune Priest in our current campaign, and he chose Enlarge for his first Wizard spell. It could be a lot of fun to see him spellburn that!

    Of course, these are just my homebrew ideas, so if you use them, you can do whatever you like.

  3. What a cool alt Class option! Well done!

  4. Glad you like it! I love DCC but since backgrounds are rolled, getting a demi-human is so much more limiting once you pass the funnel. I wanted to give each non-human race an alternate class.