Castles & Crusades Effects

Using Effect Features in Your Game

Effects are a built-in way to provide or modify automation in the C&C ruleset. There are many pre-written effects included in official C&C releases, but you may at times desire to create custom effects on your own to simplify tasks and computations you would usually handle manually. As effects can be complex, it is recommended that you slowly incorporate them into your campaign, so that you and your players can become familiar and comfortable with their use.

Campaign Effects

Open

The campaign effects list can be accessed via a button in the upper right corner of the tabletop. The initial list may be empty or include a few examples depending on the modules you have loaded. Either way, you can add effects to the custom list as needed, which will save them for future use. To add an effect, either click the green Add button, or right click on the list and select the Create Item radial menu option. Each effect has these fields:

Open

• Label: See the Effect Label section below.

• Duration: The duration indicates the number of rounds that an effect will last once applied. If the value is zero, then the effect will not expire.

• Visibility: The eye icon can be toggle between visible and invisible, which will change the initial visibility when applied to an actor. Invisible effects can be viewed by the GM only, while visible effects can be viewed by everyone.

Combat Tracker

Effects can be applied to a combatant in the combat tracker by either clicking on the effect icon in the effects list (applies to current combatant) or dragging the effect icon to the desired combatant. You may also add a blank effect using the add button under the effects section. When an effect is applied to an actor in the combat tracker, a few additional fields are available.

1. Active State: By default, an effect is set to always be active (i.e. On). The active state can be toggled to Skip or Off. If set to Skip, the next application of the effect will be skipped, and then the effect will be set to On again. If set to Off, the effect will no longer be applied to rolls, but will remain in the CT.

2. Applied By: The active actor will be used as the source actor of an effect and shown in the lower right of the effect entry. If no actor is active, then this field is hidden. To set the source actor of an effect, drag the name field of a CT actor onto the label field of a CT effect entry. The source is usually just informational but may occasionally be used to support advanced effects (such as Marked). Click on the Applied By field to clear the source actor.

3. Targets: By default, effects are applied to relevant rolls for all targets. However, some effect components can be targeted (such as attack and damage modifiers). A targeting button is shown next to each effect entry. It can be dragged onto a CT entry or CT-linked token to specify that the effect is targeted to a specific actor or set of actors. Additional options to target all allies or enemies are available by right-clicking on the targeting button. The Targets field is hidden unless targets are defined. Click on the Targets field to clear the targets.

Effect Label Features

In the C&C ruleset, conditions and modifiers can be embedded into the effect label to modify rolls made by the actor.

Each effect component (description, condition, or modifier) needs to be separated by a semi-colon. Effect components that do not start with a modifier tag or a condition tag are treated as descriptive text only.

Conditions

• Conditions are usually available as single effects via buttons in the campaign effects list; but can also be added to other effects.

• The modifiers applied by the condition are listed in the condition table below. Some conditions have been excluded from the table below because they do not have automated modifiers.

• Condition names are not case-sensitive.

• Multiple instances of the same condition do not stack.

(T) = Effects can be targeted to only apply to conditions against certain opponents

Modifiers

• Modifiers are used to specify adjustments to different types of rolls.

• Format: [tag]: [dice/number] [descriptors]

• Modifiers are case-sensitive

• If colon missing, modifiers assume no dice, numerical modifier, or descriptors.

• Modifiers stack so long as their bonus type is blank or unique. If two modifiers have the same bonus type, only the larger value will be used.

• When applying effects from PC sheet powers, bracketed ability tags ([STR],[DEX], etc.) can be added to the modifier dice and numerical portion to adjust by current PC attribute modifiers. The ability tags can be set to negative ([–INT]), half ([HWIS]) or double ([2CHA]). Additional bracketed tags include [LVL] for character level, [HLVL] for half-level and [2LVL] for double-level. (Note: for monster NPCs, level equates to hit dice.)

(D) = Dice and numbers supported for value attribute
(N) = Only numbers supported for value attribute
(-) = Neither number nor dice supported for value attribute
(T) = Effects can be targeted to only apply to modifiers against certain opponents

[range] = melee, ranged
[damage type] = acid, cold, electricity, fire, poison, sonic, adamantine, bludgeoning, cold iron, epic, magic, mithral, piercing, silver, slashing, nonlethal
[ability name] = strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma

• = Multiple entries of this descriptor type allowed.

Examples

IF and IFT: Conditional Effects

The IF and IFT modifiers do not directly modify rolls or statistics. Instead, they allow other modifiers within the same label to be conditionally applied. IF/IFT work as gatekeepers in an effect label. When processed, their conditionals evaluate to true or false. If a conditional evaluates to false, processing of the effect label stops. Order is important. The contents of an effect label are processed from left to right, and each modifier is applied immediately. For this reason, the most strait forward way to create conditional effects is to start the effect label with the IF/IFT modifier(s) to control everything that comes after. However, it is also possible to create more complex and layered automation within a single effect label by chaining multiple IF/IFT and other modifiers. The trick is to always remember everything to the right of a IF/IFT tag will only be processed if the conditional is true.

IF and IFT modifiers work in the same way, except they check their conditionals against different targets. IF checks the actor which has the effect placed on it. These are always checked regardless of how an action is triggered. However, IFT (aka If Target) tests its conditional against the other actor in an action. Therefore, IFT conditionals will only be checked for targeted actions. A common occurrence of this are the bonuses verse specific creature types gained by Rangers and Gnomes. For example, “IFT: Specific Type (Goblin, Kobold); ATK: 1 melee;” placed on a gnome would automate their Combat Expertise ability. However, “IF: Specific Type (Goblin, Kobold); ATK: 1 melee;” placed on the same gnome would do nothing, because they are not a goblin or kobold.

IF/IFT conditionals can be expressed as a condition or a conditional operator. Use conditions with the pattern “[IF/IFT]: [Condition];”. For example, “IF: Prone;” is true when the effect is on an actor with the Prone condition. Many conditions can be found in the table above, but any condition defined in the ruleset’s Effects window will work: bleeding, blinded, confused, cowering, dazed, dead, deafened, defenseless, entangled, frightened, grappled, incorporeal, invisible, paralyzed, prone, slowed, stunned, unconscious.

Conditional operators work the same way, except many of them require parameters. Use those with the pattern “[IF/IFT]:[Operator] ([parameters]);”. The operator defines what type of data the conditional will check, and the parameters define what values will evaluate to true. The earlier gnome combat expertise example used the “Specific Type” operator, which will check against the name of a monster NPC or the race of a PC/NPC. The parameters were “Goblin, Kobold”, meaning the conditional is true if the specific type was found to be either goblin or kobold. Note that multiple parameters can be included as a comma separated list. When more than one parameter is provided, only one of them must be true for the entire conditional to be true.

Conditional Operators:

Condition Effect Examples: