Dungeons & Delvers: Getting to the Good Stuff

In Dungeons & Delvers you can gain access to a number of spells and abilities very early on, sometimes even right away, that would normally require you to be 5th-level or even higher in Dungeons & Dragons.

For example, thanks to their bonus talent human wizards can pick up Fireball or Lightning bolt at 1st-level (everyone else needs to wait until 2nd), and human barbarians can use their bonus talent and swap out their Damage Bonus to turn into a bear (or they can wait until 2nd-level without having to exchange anything at all).

More generally, at 1st-level bards can use their music to animate objects, fly, transform creatures into animals, and walk on and control water (not all at once of course). From the get-go monks can teleport (as can warlocks at 2nd-level), druids can petrify creatures, draconic sorcerers can fly, and by 2nd-level clerics can raise the dead.

By 6th- or 7th-level, monks can pick up a talent called Kirin Races Across the Heavens, which not only allows you to teleport, but inflict lightning damage when you vanish and reappear (lighting strikes both places).

All of this is possible without "breaking" anything, because of how the talents are designed: they start small, and are set up so that they do more if you funnel more resources into them (as opposed to having big, grand effects with a high cost that you can't reduce).

Take Fireball: costs 1d6 Willpower, has a range of 50 feet, and deals 2d6+Intelligence fire damage to every creature in a 10-foot radius. Wizards start out with 4+Intelligence Willpower, which means there's a good chance you can eat through all of your Willpower with a single casting, after which you're going to start burning through Vitality Points and even Wound Points.

Even so, some players might like the risk, and there could easily be an instance where you really need a sizable ranged explosion: maybe you need to take out a bunch of enemies (or heavily damage them), burn away a bunch of vegetation or webbing, or just want to intimidate creatures into thinking you have more firepower than you actually do.

Now, after a few levels the damage is going to start lagging a bit, but that's okay because you can suffer another 1d6 Drain to up the damage by 1d6, and you can keep doing this so long as the damage dice don't exceed your level (ie, at 5th-level the dice cannot exceed 5d6).

Even better, you can suffer 1d6 Drain to increase the range to 100 feet and area of effect to a 20-foot radius, and if you instead suffer 2d6 the range gets upped to 150 feet, with the area of effect expanding to a 30-foot radius. These kicker effects can all be combined, so you can suffer a total of 6d6 Drain to drop a 30-foot radius, 5d6+Intelligence fireball somewhere within a 150 feet of you.

The druid's Petrifaction miracle works a bit differently. It costs a minimum of 3 Favor, which is likely most if not all of a 1st-level druid's Favor allotment (sans sacrifices). Affected creatures can attempt a few Constitution saves to shake it off, but if they fail both then they're Petrified...but only for 1 round per druid level. If you want it to last longer (or even be permanent), you'll need to spend more Favor.

The bard's Uplifting Crescendo operates in a similar manner: you can spend 1 Rhythm to float, or cause another Medium creature to float. Larger creatures require more Rhythm, and if you want to actually fly it's going to cost you at least 4 (which is the maximum a 1st-level bard has). You can also spend a bunch of Rhythm to affect more than one creature at once. Entirely up to you and what you have available.

Raising the dead will cost your cleric 3 Favor, but it only restores the absolute minimum for the creature to be alive: if you're missing eyes and limbs (possible due to critical hits and lingering injuries), they're still gone. They also cannot have been dead for more than 1 round per cleric level, so you need to act fast. After a few levels you can afford to spend the extra 2 Favor to up the duration to 10 minutes per cleric level.

Resurrection is doable by level 3, but that's assuming that you're not focusing on the Healing tree (so no Healing Word, Hymn of Healing, or Healing Circle), and the Favor cost is really steep: we're talking a minimum of 9 for 1 week per cleric level, up to a whopping 19 for someone that's been dead for up to 200 years (and that's assuming you have their body on hand, if you don't that's going to add even more to your bill).

I'm really happy with the end result (and so is everyone else I'm guessing, since no one's complained about it). You don't need to wait as long to get to the good stuff, and while some traditionally "end game" spells and abilities won't be as impressive right away, you're not always going to need, say, a 24d6 damage die meteor swarm, anyway.

This setup also achieved a few other things that I hadn't intended, or even really considered at the time.

The first is that you don't need to make a spell or ability that does one thing, and then another that's basically a souped up version of the first one.

For example, you don't need Teleport and then Greater Teleport. You just need the one, and players can spend more resources to increase the range and number of creatures teleported: 2d6 Drain gets you somewhere within 1 mile per wizard level, 3d6 gets you somewhere within 10 miles per wizard level, and 4d6 up to 100 miles per wizard level away.

You can also go all in with 5d6 Drain to teleport anywhere on the plane you currently inhabit, regardless of distance.

The other is that you're more likely going to be able to use most if not all abilities at some point, without having to wait until mid- to high-level play. I know that personally I've never gotten a single character above 14th-level, and that was only one time: we usually don't even break 10th, which means by the book there's a whole lot of content we never got to use (and likely never will, unless we just start out at high-level).

Here, with how the talent structure and progression works, by 10th-level you can feasibly acquire any given talent you wish. Might need to focus on a specific tree, or focusing will get you there even sooner, but the main point is there's going to be less unused content.

I think this approach would also work in Dungeons & Dragons. Just reduce the power of higher level spells, so they're more appropriate for the 1st- to 3rd-level range, and give spellcasters a number of universal spell slots (instead of dividing them by level, which doesn't make any sense). By default spells would occupy a number of slots based on their new level, and you can boost their effects by letting them take up more head space.

So, burning hands would do what it normally does (since it's already 1st-level), but if you let it use up two or more slots its damage would go up. You could also let it take up more slots to boost the area of effect, maybe add an effect like lighting creatures on fire if they fail their save.

Announcements

You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want! We've also released the first big supplement for it, Appendix D, so pick that up if you want more of everything.

The first issue of The Delver, a magazine featuring fungal-themed content for both players and GMs (including an adventure in which myconids find religion), is available!

Our latest Dungeon World class, The Ranger, is now available.

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).