Castles & Crusades Spell Actions

In the C&C ruleset, actions can be defined to help deal with the results of a spell. These actions include a save request, spell attack, damage, healing, and effects. If actions have been defined for a spell, a magnifying glass will appear next to its description on the character sheet’s Spells tab. Clicking the icon expands a spell’s entry to show all available actions. All actions include an icon next to their description, which can be triggered with a click or drag.

Most actions are defined by entering them into the Actions tab of a Spell window. Saves are an exception, as they are defined in the save field on the Main tab. For information on how to enter or use a specific spell action type, see the corresponding section below.

Save Request Action

The Save Request Action is mostly a utility to clarify targeting for the GM. When triggered, the targets are listed in the chat window. The GM view includes links for each target to ease rolling Saving throws from the NPC character sheet. Alternatively, the GM can use the list as a reference to roll saves directly from the combat tracker.

A save action is defined by entering the save text into the save field on the Spell window’s Main tab. The text should follow the same formatting as used for published spells. This is typically a description of the save, “No”, or “None”.

Spell Attack Action

Spell attacks are configured using three controls appearing from left to right as: attack type, attack attribute, and attack modifier. There are no visible labels distinguishing these fields, but they are easily identified by their possible values and tooltips that will appear while hovering over each field. Attack type can be set to melee, ranged, touch, range touch, special, and dash which indicates no attack. The attack type determines the attribute bonus is considered “Base” as well as which AC formula is used for the target. Special attacks are different from the rest because they have no base ability modifier and do not assume the use of the character’s bonus to hit. This type is used to define spell attacks that don’t scale to your character’s stats.

The attack ability control is typically set to “base”, which will use strength for melee attacks and dexterity for ranged attacks. This base value can be overridden by selecting any other value, which can be any attribute or character level.

Finally, the attack modifier is used for additional bonuses not included in the default attack modifier formula, such as spells that include an attack bonus or magic items that influence spell attacks.

Damage Action

Spell damage is defined using die formulas like those used with the “/die” chat command. However, the damage die formula can include a variable number of dice per level. When defined in this way, the damage dice listed on the Spell tab will be computed using the caster level for the corresponding spell block. Such variable die formulas include a “/level” tag after each value or die. For example: “1d6/level”. The level can be abbreviated, plural, or even include a number of levels: “1d6 / 2 lvls”. Damage die strings can include multiple grouping separated by an addition or subtraction operator (+ or -). However, be aware that the level tag is applied per group of text. For example, “1d2 + 2/lvl” will become “1d2 + 6” for caster level 3, but “1d2/lvl + 2/lvl” will result in 3d2 + 6.

Healing Action

For the most part, defining healing works exactly as defining damage, so see the previous section for details. However, healing can also accept a “temp” tag, which makes the healing apply as temporary hp.

Effect Actions

Any number of effects can be added to the spell by clicking the green add button. All effect formulas supported by the C&C ruleset will work. For more about effects, see C&C Effects.

Like damage and healing, effect durations can use “/level” tags for variable durations, but there are a couple of difference: 1) currently the duration must be expressed without using dice. “1 rd/level” will work as expected, but “1d4 rds/level” will not. 2) a unit tag must be applied to the numbers to correctly convert to rounds. Typically, this will be round, rounds, or one of its abbreviations. However, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months are all supported as are their abbreviations whether singular or plural. The resulting duration will be converted to a number of rounds in the Spells tab regardless of the unit used in the action definition. For example: “5 rds + 2 rds/lvl” will become 7 for a 1^st level caster.