Examples for NPC Corruption

I don't know if my original posts about how to do this are clear enough, so here's a few walk-throughs.

I'm making a level 8 wizard as the main villain for an adventure.  I have no strong theme for him that would suggest a series of linked mutations, so I'm going to corrupt him randomly.  His spell list is as follows: Runic Alphabet, Mortal; Sleep; Color Spray; Patron Bond (King of Elfland), and therefore Invoke Patron (King of Elfland); Choking Cloud; Nythuul's Porcupine Coat; ESP; Breathe Life; Dispel Magic; Lokerimon's Orderly Assistance; and Control Ice.  I roll an 86 on Table I, resulting in 22 failed rolls. 

The first failed casting I roll up is Control Ice.  At this point it's obvious that if you wanted more accurate detail you could develop the system so that the first few failures are 1st level spells, with the 4th level failures only coming in towards the end of the list, but this is good enough to suit me.  At any rate, rolling on the results for a spell check of 1 for Control Ice, I get a 4, which is a misfire.  Nothing of lasting interest.

Next, I roll up Sleep, and roll a 3 on Sleep's chart, resulting in another misfire.

Next is Patron Bond.  This results in automatic patron taint, so rolling on that table I get a 3.  This wizard becomes aloof and indifferent to mortal concerns.  This is no big deal, so I'll let it ride.  The wizard loses 1 Personality and I move on.

The next roll turns out to be a misfire, but after that a failed Color Spray leads to the caster having his skin changed to a rainbow pattern.  That attracts a little too much attention, so I use one of my (8/2) 4 bonus Luck points to ignore that.  The very next roll is a failed Lokerimon's Orderly Assistance, resulting in the caster becoming overly helpful to anyone who asks unless he passes a Will check.  That makes for a very poor villain, so I use another bonus Luck point to nix that.

Twenty two failures is a lot to detail, but I go on in this manner, throwing out a good many of the failures because they were simple misfires, spending bonus Luck to eliminate a few particularly bad corruptions/taints, and having to deal with the rest.  At the end of it all, this wizard has an aloof and indifferent manner (-1 Personality), horrid pustules on his face (-1 Personality), becomes withdrawn from mortal concerns (the same patron taint a second time, and another -1 Personality), shimmery sheen to his skin which has a green tone (two separate results), painful lesions and sores, flesh that flows and reforms on his legs, and a longing for Elfland.  Now he's nicely weird, as a level 8 wizard should be.


Later, the characters are looking for a wizard in town to sell some weird magic reagents to, and he seems like he'll be a recurring NPC, so I stat him up quickly.  Using the quicker method from part 2 of this series of posts, I roll a 78 for a level 5 wizard, giving this guy 5 failures.  Since I'm using Table II, these are all corruption or patron taint, and I don't have to deal with misfires. 

This guy's spell list is Charm Person, Magic Shield, Ekim's Mystical Mask, Flaming Hands, Ventriloquism, Shatter, Detect Invisible, and Write Magic.

The first failure is Ekim's Mystical Mask.  I roll a 3 on the corruption table (this guy has no patron, so no patron taint), and find that he's taken to wearing hoods or masks in order to not reveal his true face.

The second failure is the same.  No point worrying about it now...even if I had spent Luck on it before, he'd have to deal with it again.

Next is a failed Flaming Hands, resulting in a -2 on spell checks for any cold based magic.  Since he has no cold based magic, this is nothing to worry about.

I still have two more failures to roll, and two bonus Luck points to spend, so I'm done. 


Lastly, the PCs encounter a group of bandits with a wizard among the leadership.  This is another 5th level guy, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on detailing him, so using the quickest method, I roll a 95, or 7 failures.  I'm spending my two bonus Luck points to knock this right down to five failures.

First failure is 1 Minor, with a result of 7, chills.  Next is 6 Greater with a result of 3, bull head.  Next is Minor, painful lesions; Major, deep blue skin; and lastly Minor, hair falls out.  Quick and dirty, but done in about a minute. 

NPC Wizard Corruption, Part II

That last method of determining wizard corruption can take a while, especially as the wizard's level goes up.  That can take way too long to do at the table for those wizards who are rolled up as a random encounter.  Here is a couple of quicker methods.

Table II is used for these methods.  It is similar to Table I except that it excludes misfires from the results (I estimated that about half of failures result in a misfire...this may not be 100% accurate, but it's eyeball close.)

Table II

#failures	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6	Level 7	#failures	Level 8	Level 9	Level 10
0	01-60	01-28	01-10	01-03	01		0
1	61-91	29-64	11-34	04-13	02-04	01	1
2	92-99	65-87	35-61	14-32	05-12	02-03	2	01
3	00	88-96	62-81	33-54	13-26	04-09	3	02
4		97-99	82-92	55-73	27-44	10-19	4	03-06	01
5		00	93-97	74-86	45-62	20-33	5	07-13	02-04	01
6			98-99	87-94	63-76	34-49	6	14-23	05-08	02
7			00	95-98	77-87	50-64	7	24-35	09-14	03-04
8				99	88-93	65-76	8	36-49	15-23	05-08
9				00	94-97	77-86	9	50-62	24-34	09-13
10					98-99	87-92	10	63-74	35-46	14-21
11					00	93-96	11	75-83	47-57	22-30
12						97-98	12	84-90	58-69	31-41
13						99	13	91-94	70-78	42-52
14						00	14	95-97	79-86	53-62
15							15	98	87-91	63-72
16							16	99	92-95	73-80
17							17	00	96-97	81-86
18							18		98	87-91
19							19		99	92-94
20							20		00	95-97
							21			98
							22			99
							23			00

Quicker Method:

• Roll on Table II for the number of spell failures that resulted in corruption or patron taint.
• Subtract the wizard's Luck bonus from the number of spell failures (negative Luck bonus results in more corruptions).
•  Approximately 1/3 of the remaining failures will be patron taint.  Randomly determine a spell from the wizard's spell list and roll on its corruption results table (or use the appropriate patron taint table).
• Luck can be burned to avoid corruption effects as usual.  As an option, the Judge can allow up to 1/2 the wizard's level in bonus Luck to avoid corruption.

Quickest Method (use for minor characters):

• Roll on Table II for the  number of spell failures that resulted in corruption or patron taint.
•  Subtract the wizard's Luck bonus from the number of spell failures (negative Luck bonus results in more corruptions).  
•  Luck can be burned to avoid corruption effects as usual.  As an option, the Judge can allow up to 1/2 the wizard's level in bonus Luck to avoid corruption.
•  Roll remaining corruption results on the the generic tables (1-3 Minor; 4-5 Major; 6 Greater).

NPC Wizard Corruption in DCC

Well, I won't be winning any awards for regularity in posting...

It occurred to me that there is no system in place for determining corruption for NPC wizards in DCC.  Judges running a hexcrawl with wandering monster checks could roll up an NPC wizard in any of several ways (master of a random castle, member of a bandit gang or pirate crew, etc), and whether that wizard has any lingering corruption from his dealings in magic depends largely on how creative (or lazy) the Judge is on the fly.  But that's just not good enough for me...if there are numbers to crunch, I have to crunch them.

So, it seems to me that the average number of XP gained in an encounter is 2, not simply because the possible outcomes range from 0-4, but also due the dangers involved.  A character who only ever deals with 0XP encounters won't gain any levels, but those who only ever deal with 4XP encounters (generally involving fatalities) are unlikely to live long enough to gain many. 

I further estimate that a wizard will cast about one spell per encounter.  Easy encounters might not need any spellcasting, and desperately dangerous ones might require more than one, but given that, in many cases, spell effects from one casting can carry over into multiple encounters, one spell per encounter doesn't sound too far off.  Summoned creatures can hang around for quite a while, charmed characters will stay charmed for at least a day with a spell check of 14+, etc.  Also, wizards can use magic items without gaining corruption (usually).

Given these estimates, a wizard who goes from level 1 to level 2 has had on average (50-10)/2=20 encounters and cast 20 spells, each with a 1 in 20 chance of a spell fumble.  There's a good chance that he'll get away without any corruption, and a vanishingly small chance that he'll end up with 20 corruptions.  Without going into all the mathematical details, this is a pretty standard binomial distribution, and working out the percentages isn't all that difficult.  Table I shows the range of possible spell fumbles experienced by wizards of different levels, expressed in percentile terms.

 Table I

#failures	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6	Level 7	Level 8	Level 9	Level 10	#failures
0	01-36	01-08	01							0
1	37-74	09-28	02-06	01						1
2	75-93	29-54	07-17	02-03						2
3	94-99	55-76	18-34	04-08	01					3
4	00	77-90	35-53	09-17	02-03					4
5		91-96	54-71	18-30	04-07	01				5
6		97-99	72-84	31-45	08-13	02				6
7		00	85-92	46-60	14-22	03-04				7
8			93-97	61-73	23-33	05-08	01			8
9			98-99	74-83	34-46	09-14	02			9
10			00	84-90	47-59	15-22	03-04			10
11				91-94	60-71	23-31	05-07	01		11
12				95-97	72-81	32-42	08-11	02		12
13				98-99	82-88	43-53	12-17	03		13
14				00	89-93	54-64	18-21	04-05		14
15					94-96	65-74	22-30	06-08	01	15
16					97-98	75-82	31-40	09-12	02	16
17					99	83-88	41-50	13-17	03	17
18					00	89-93	51-60	18-23	04-05	18
19						94-96	61-69	24-30	06-07	19
20						97-98	70-77	31-38	08-10	20
						99	78-83	39-47	11-14	21
						00	84-88	48-56	15-19	22
							89-92	57-64	20-25	23
							93-95	65-72	26-32	24
							96-97	73-79	33-40	25
							98	80-85	41-48	26
							99	86-90	49-56	27
							00	91-94	57-64	28
								95-96	65-72	29
								97	73-78	30
								98	79-84	31
								99	85-87	32
								00	88-90	33
									91-92	34
									93-94	35
									95-96	36
									97	37
									98	38
									99	39
									00	40

 At this point, you need to randomly determine which spell from the caster's spell list was being cast when the failure occurred.  Roll on that spell's table for a spellcheck of 1 to figure out whether that failure ended up with corruption, patron taint, a misfire, or all three.  (Misfires are so fleeting in effect that we're not generally concerned with them here.)  Don't forget the effects of Luck, not only on the chances of a misfire instead of corruption, but also burning a point of Luck to avoid a corruption effect.  As an option, the Judge can allow the NPC wizard a few points of additional Luck only for the purposes of avoiding corruption and patron taint; this should probably not be more than about half the wizard's level, or only the highest level wizards will ever be corrupted.  At any rate, the Judge must decide for the wizard whether to burn Luck to avoid this corruption before moving on to the next corruption roll.