NOTE: If this is your first time reading a Dungeon Crawl Classics post of mine, turn right around and go here to start the journey. If you’re well versed in my Portal Under the Stars play-through and finished up my reflections on Level 0, welcome!

Today it’s time to level up some PCs! Woo! I’m going to start with the most obvious class choice, which is taking our dwarven stonemason peasant Umur Pearlhammer and making him… a Level 1… wait for it… Dwarf! I know, I know: Shocking. DCC provides “race as class” options for characters, so this is sort of a no-brainer. While Umur could have become a Cleric or Thief or whatever, the most obvious choice is Dwarf. In addition, rolling a demihuman Level 0 character is rare, and having one survive to Level 1 is even rarer, so it’s a missed opportunity if I don’t embrace Umur as a Dwarf.

A warning: These character level-up posts are going to be mechanics and game-terms heavy, but I’ll add a fiction blurb at the end to give them some soul.

Let’s remind ourselves of Umur’s Level 0 character sheet:

Umur Pearlhammer. Level 0 Dwarven Stonesmith. STR 9, AGL 9, STA 9, PER 14, INT 13, LCK 9. Init +0; Atk hammer +0 melee (1d3); AC 10; HP 3; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +1; LNG Common, Dwarven, Giantish; AL Lawful; Equipment: fine stone, lantern, 26cp. Infravision.

While playing Portal, I ignored him having a lantern (in favor of magical stones and orbs for everyone), and he was able to obtain scale mail, Mythey’s shortsword, and Leda’s longsword, plus a fair amount of wealth. I’m going to start the Level 1 adventure as happening some time (maybe a year? a season? not sure yet) after the events of Portal, so I don’t need to be constrained by his current weapon and armor choices. Still, it’s good to remember where he started.

Let’s go through the Dwarf section in the core rulebook and see what choices I need to make.

Hit points: Dwarves get a d10 of hit points each level. It may not be a purist approach, but I want my PCs to min out at half of their possible hit points each level, something that Tale of the Manticore does that I like. Let’s roll… 7! That’s terrific. Adding his original 3 hp, that makes his new hit point total 10.

Mighty Deed of Arms: Like Warriors, the Dwarf class expresses their martial prowess by adding a die (for Level 1, a d3) to all attack and damage rolls. Umur can declare a “Mighty Deed” when he attacks each turn, which is a combat maneuver that can do special effects like knock a foe down, blind them, disarm them, or really any cool effect that seems to fit the situation. If his “deed die,” the aforementioned d3, rolls a “3” that turn, he gets to perform his Deed. Think of Mighty Deeds as the Warrior and Dwarf equivalent of spellcasting, replacing feat trees and such to accomplish almost anything the player can imagine. It’s one of the coolest innovations of DCC relative to melee classes in other systems and looks to make playing a martial class super fun. I’ll say a lot more about Mighty Deeds if and when Umur finds himself in combat.

Weapons and Armor: I’m not going to overthink the time in Graymoor that Umur spends after his foray into the magical portal that fateful night. He will have modified the black scale mail to suit his frame. He will keep Leda’s ancestral longsword and wield it sentimentally. As a career stonemason he will have a hammer (using stats for mace) on his belt. And, finally, the Dwarf class seems to want me to use a shield, so he’ll have one of those. With his shield, Umur gets an automatic second attack, using a d14 (yay for new DCC dice!) instead of the usual d20 to roll attacks, and he gets to add his deed die (d3) to this attack just like his first one. The shield does 1d3 damage currently, which isn’t much but then again, it’s a free second attack. With any of these weapons, if Umur scores a critical hit on a roll of natural 20, he will roll 1d10 on Crit Table III, which basically means he will do cooler things than the average adventurer when he crits.

Other Abilities: As a Dwarf, he still has Infravision to see in the dark, and now Umur gains some new racial abilities: First, when he’s underground, Umur receives a +1 (his level) bonus to detect traps, secret doors, slanting passages, shifting walls, etc. Second, he can smell gold and gems within 100’ for large concentrations (40’ for smaller concentrations), which is just fun. Third, he would be able to add his Luck bonus to a single weapon, although he sadly doesn’t have a Luck bonus. Finally, his saves all increase by +1.

Title: Finally, one of the things I like about level advancement in DCC is the old-school way of paying attention to titles and honorifics. It’s something I do as a GM in my PF2E games, ensuring that every so often a PC gains a distinctive title. The core rulebook’s suggestion for a Lawful Dwarf in terms of title is “Agent,” which assumes that the PC is from a dwarven nation. Umur hailed from a dwarven settlement at some point in his life, but I’ve established that he is one of Graymoor’s oldest living residents, which means his title is bestowed upon him by human locals. What could that title be, given his relative celebrity in Graymoor? Hm. Well, something I established in the fiction is that people call him “master stonemason” or “Master Pearlhammer.” I think he came to them as a master craftsman, and now that he’s a local hero the village residents are more often using it as a title. For now, I’ll say he’s officially a Master. This title may feel a little high falootin’ for a Level 1 character, but DCC puts a lot more oomph into each level than most d20 games. To put it in perspective, in Pathfinder PCs can reach level 20. In DCC, the top level is pretty much 6, which is just as rarified air as PF2E’s 20^th level.

I’ll leave any other equipment blank until Umur knows what sort of adventure he’s undertaking. For now, here is how his sheet looks:

Stepping back, Master Umur Pearlhammer has become the melee, sword-and-board fighter of the party. I’m choosing to keep him melee only, as it doesn’t make sense to me yet that he would equip himself for ranged combat (if he survives a fight where he needs a ranged weapon, that will be the catalyst). He only has 10 hit points and doesn’t really have the stats for a melee fighter, since his only ability bonuses are in Personality and Intelligence, but that’s the fun of Dungeon Crawl Classics – there’s no real opportunity to optimize or game the system. I’ve rationalized his stats by deciding that Umur was a capable fighter long ago in his younger years. Now his bones are creaky and old, and he’s nowhere near as spry as he used to be (in fact, he’s slow as molasses when wearing his armor). He’s retained his wit and charm, though, and he’s hoping that those might help keep him alive when his sword arm fails him.

That’s my new Dwarf! Now some fiction to help deepen his character and bridge to the next adventure…

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Fire crackled and Umur Pearlhammer regarded it silently, unblinking. His dwelling differed from most Graymoor residences, with its stone construction, arched doorways, large entry hall, and sizeable hearth. To Umur, the house reminded him nostalgically of his youth spent below the earth. Never mind the cramped bedroom and kitchen, or the lack of windows that made it seem more cave than house. The space suited him.

It had been a week since Old Bert’s blasted portal, with its treasure and mysteries and death everywhere. Each day since, late in the afternoon he’d gruffly fled the constant chatter, the mourning and marveling, the requests to tell the “story of that night” for the hundredth time. Insistently alone, he would quest about the Graymoor outskirts for dry wood. By nightfall he would begin the fire, larger and hotter than necessary for the season. Then Umur would spend the long, dark hours watching the flames in contemplation, orange light dancing across his grim, sweating face.

Arrayed across the floor between the hearth and his feet were several items that he had not touched in a week. A full suit of ebon mail lay in pieces, its scales matte and unlike anything he’d seen forged below ground or above. The helmet looked to Umur like the top half of a charred demon’s skull, a single piece of black metal with horns curving from either side and a fluted nose guard. Scattered amidst the armor were jewels, gleaming white in the firelight. And there, nearest Umur’s touch, the cruciform hilt and pommel of the Allford family’s ancestral sword, the blade sheathed in a worn, leather-strapped scabbard. Leda had no living family to whom he could return the weapon. It was his now, everyone insisted, like the other items splayed out before him.

Anyone looking at the white-haired, gnarled dwarf would conclude that he was grieving Leda and the others in his own way. No doubt that’s what his neighbors believed, and why they gave him unmolested privacy each night and greeted him so tenderly the next morning when he emerged from his stony refuge.

They could not know that in truth a war was being waged within Umur Pealhammer’s heart. On one side of the war were awful memories, memories of chopping the softened heads from clay warriors in desperation, of friends’ death rattles as they choked on their own blood, of the ripe smell of fear all around him, and of the sharp pain as a black spear protruded from his shoulder. These memories, all recent, mixed with older ones, of men with the heads of beasts dying on the ends of dwarven halberds, of cleaving a tentacle the color of a bruise with his axe as it squeezed the breath from him, and of the awful, keening screams of his family as they burned from magical fire.

Warring with these memories within Umur’s heart were visions, and the unrelenting pull of his calloused hand towards the hilt of Leda’s sword. He saw himself caked in iron and gore as he drove Leda’s blade through the last, vanquished beast man. He heard his own voice, raw with passion, singing a dwarven battle hymn as he mowed the forces of Chaos down before a castle wall. He smelled gold and ale in staggering amounts as his allies deafened him with their cheers. And the vision he returned to again and again, like a thread weaving together the tapestry, was of returning to Arenor, the Republic of the Sapphire Throne, to restore his family’s name.

So it raged, the war between traumatic, painful memories of what had been, and bold, glorious visions of what could be. Umur had thought the war over, that he had long settled on his path. He had been content, in a way, hadn’t he? And then came that blasted portal, stirring every dream he’d thought forgotten. Blast Old Bert and blast himself for joining Leda’s flight of fancy. Surely he was too old now to wield a sword, wasn’t he? Except that he’d survived the portal, and the others credited him for his clear head and leadership, saying that he was a key reason any of them had lived. Perhaps, then, he wasn’t too old for those visions to become real. Perhaps.

Umur watched the flames dance in his eyes. His face was as impassive as stone, his eyes unwavering.

It was his hand that betrayed him, clenching and unclenching, eventually reaching for the sword.

DCC Character Level 1: Ethys Haffoot