Sorcerous Scrutinies: Canine 2.0

 The Canine 2.0

A Player Character Class for DCC RPG

2024 Breaker Press Games

A halfling moneylender poked impatiently at a slowly cooking rabbit on his campfire.  “Soon now, a fine dinner,” he whispered to himself.  

“‘Tis a shame I’ll have to take it from you,” a rough-looking man said from behind him.  

The halfling didn’t turn his head to the brigand.  “No, I don’t think you’ll be wanting to do that, now.”

“Why’s that, knee-high?”

The halfling let loose a whistle, and smiled.  “It’s not my dinner, it’s his.”

A giant, armored guard-dog emerged from the woods, blood stains evident on his snarling maw.  The brigand’s eyes widened in terror, and he fumbled for his weapon.

“Diuc, sic ‘em.”

The 250-pound canine leapt across the camp and felled the brigand in a single brutal pounce.  The halfling moneylender grinned as he removed the cooked rabbit from the flame.

He tossed the meal to Diuc, who caught it in his great snapping jaws.  “Good boy."

What It Is

The Canine 2.0 is a content-rich class pamphlet written by Nick Baran of Breaker Press Games for the DCC system.  Mechanically the Canine is a powerful Warrior/Thief hybrid, commanding both Deed Die and Luck Die mechanics from each parent class, at the expense of a smaller hit die, more limited armor class options, and just a small handful of Thief skills.  Dogs only command the languages ‘Bark and Growl’, adding a wonderful role-playing challenge to players wanting to express themselves in character!

The class leans into physicality and instinct, giving players a fundamentally different combat rhythm than any core class.  It is satisfying to slay a goblin with a rat terrier, or rip a skeleton to pieces with a rottweiler.  The class feels balanced, and fits well in the more low-fantasy grounded milieu of DCC.  We often talk about the gonzo nature of DCC, and this class is an excellent supplemental example.  Rolling up to a climactic encounter with a Level 3 Guard Pooch named Gird Goatwrangler feels right, and quite on brand.

At The Table

Using our base rules and the Canine pamphlet, we have to create opportunities for our players to begin play as a dog in a funnel setting (mentioned below in one of my takeaways).  I would encourage you to use this pamphlet in conjunction with the Stennard Character Creation Guide to create more organic opportunities for players to roll 21-25 and begin play with a 0 Level canine.  The Stennard setting aligns with the Lankhmar setting in excluding demihumans, so perhaps a potential Lankhmar campaign could begin with a Stennard funnel/encounter at your table.

I find the Canine to be particularly resilient at Level 0 due to the higher base AC of 12, often boosted by Agility, and occasionally raised by a starting equipment roll.  As the class advances alongside the core classes, Canines will begin to feel less and less safe on the front lines compared to their heavily armored Warrior companions with their mighty d12 hit die, but still highly offensively effective.  I think the class shines in early levels, and is an excellent choice for a henchman-type role in a party.  

Play Highlights

One Canine player found a niche in a Lankhmar party by creating backstab opportunities for his companions with tandem deeds or Tenacious Grabs from the shadows.  He fit right in with the rogue’s gallery of the party, and enjoyed the challenge of staying involved in social encounters with NPCs.

On a lark, I used a 0 Level Canine in a run of the Hounds of Halthrag Keep on my own, and he wound up escaping!  The armor class wound up being a huge difference maker (though the lack of a ranged weapon was an issue, I rolled hot on physical stats).  

Another player of mine in our Blights campaign had a level 1 Canine serve as the party’s wagon-guard-dog, which was a perfect usage of the henchman concept.  

Art Spotlight

The cover image is perfect, just a lone hound on the track, noble and focused on his task.  The cover hound even looks uncannily like my old dog, Duke; my daughter held up the pamphlet as I was writing this and said, “They made a Dukey book?!”

  I love the collectible feel of these pamphlets, and the uniform design they all share.  It feels great to offer players the stack I’ve collected when their herd of peasants reach level 1.

Judge Takeaways

Lucky Sixty Seven

If a player of yours rolls a lucky 67 on the core occupation table(my middle school students would rejoice), perhaps pause and ask the player if they would like their next 0 level character to be the herding dog, rather than another gongfarmer.  To go further and bend the core rules a bit, consider swapping the dog into the ** table with variant farmer starting animals and offer farmers a similar choice.  I’d replace the goose.

This 0 level dog should require the regular investment of 10xp to become a Canine, beginning with 1d4HP+STA, a 1d4+STR bite attack and a base AC of 12+AGI.  

Visit the Kennels

If your party isn’t using the Stennard setting and doesn’t see a Herder in play, why not let your players buy a level-0 dog after their first adventure?  Though the core book doesn’t offer us specific guidance on what a herding/hunting/guard dog should cost, in keeping with how dogs were valued in medieval times in comparison to donkeys (listed at 8gp in Table 3-5) and following the advice on Archade’s Tower’s Expanded Equipment list (which lists a herding dog at 4gp), I think that player should be able to buy a dog for 4-7gp in most rural villages.  

I would contend that the purchased dog should always begin play at 0 level and have to rise to Canine status through adventure, but that may be too harsh for some.  

Consider Scale

The only design friction I encounter with the Canine is scale.  Given the rules as written, you could hypothetically wind up with a heroic two pound terrier that is a vicious demon in combat with the killer stats you rolled.  This is hilarious, but it challenges my low-fantasy plausibility meter.  I invite the wrath of Crom and offer an alternative to random height/weight generation for the Canine.

What if we scaled height to Strength (jaw size equating to bite damage), and scaled weight to Stamina (the heftier the dog, the more hit points)?  A 3 STR/3 STA dog could translate to a toy poodle, an 18 STR/18 STA could be a generationally large mastiff towering over a goblin at 250lbs.

Conclusion

I value the simplicity and purity of the DCC classes, but I also love options.  I think we are lucky that high quality options are available to us, and the Canine 2.0 is definitely in that camp.

Would I run it again?

Absolutely.  I’m a dog-guy, and love the idea of a canine companion keeping a sword and sorcery hero company on the long and winding road of adventure.  In a long campaign with no access to henchmen, I might caution players on the social challenges and higher level scale issues, but I certainly wouldn’t prohibit it.  

The Canine 2.0 pamphlet is a well-thought addition to the DCC canon of classes, and I highly encourage you to try it at your table.  May your bark be as strong as your bite-