Generic Dungeon Crawl update

Generic Dungeon Crawl v2.0
Jumpchain compliant

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So here’s the deal.  There’s a massive underground complex formed by the inexplicable combination of hell dimensions, ancient ruins, natural caverns, and treasure-filled vaults.  All the way at the bottom is the macguffin – some ancient mystical thing you need to grab for whatever reason.

All arrivals in this jump are effectively drop-ins, as the nature and history of the world above isn’t all that important.  Instead, you'll be choosing a race and class.

Since there are an innumerable number of fantasy races to choose from, you'll instead select an archetype that determines your traits in broad strokes.  You're free to customize your appearance, but any non-human features you give yourself will be purely cosmetic and offer no benefit unless you purchase certain options.  You may also pick your age and gender for free.

Build your character with 1000cp…

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Races

Baseline (0cp) – No special strengths, weaknesses, or special abilities.

Smart (100cp) – Intelligent but frail, you are a natural magic-user.

Tough (100cp) – Slow on your feet, but very sturdy.  You are about 10% resistant to everything from poison to hostile enchantments.

Big (200cp) – Your name is huge.  Tall (8’+) and very strong, you are a natural at close combat, but dumb as the bag of rocks you carry.
Take 200cp of Traits for free.

Little (200cp) – Small and fast, dexterity is your forte but you are extremely fragile.  You have a natural talent with sneaking and ranged weapons.
Take 200cp of Traits for free.

Exotic (400cp) – Exceptional in all areas, you may not even be alive in the traditional sense, having otherworldly or artificial origins.  Regardless, you require no sleep, air, or conventional sustenance, and are immune to all poison and disease.  All Exotic races have a theme, and have a 100% resistance to attacks and environmental effects dependent upon this theme.  However, they also receive 200% damage from, and can never have more than a 50% effective resistance against the attacks of suitably opposing theme.  Some examples would be fire/water, holy/unholy, plant/poison, etc.

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Classes

Classes are free, and you may only take one.

Fighter – Your great strength and stamina allows you to fight in heavy armor with ease, and you have a decent level of proficiency with all but the most unusual melee weapons.  You are the only class that begins knowing how to use a shield.

Archer – Sharp senses and quick reflexes makes you lethal at range.  You are skilled with all things thrown, fired, and launched.

Thief – You’ve got a knife in your hand and an irrational hatred of kidneys.  With skills in noticing and disarming traps, sneaking, and aiming for the soft spots, you don’t do well in a stand-up fight, but choosing your battlefield carefully can even the odds.

Sorcerer – Your magic involves different favors of blowing stuff up, the holy trinity of fire, ice, and lightning.  You can manage a few tricks like creating walls of flame, wide waves of frost, or lightning that arcs between multiple targets at higher levels, but otherwise it’s all just point-and-shoot.

Enchanter – You cast spells to boost various traits, making you stronger, faster, more resilient, etc.  You’re inferior to trained fighters when it comes to raw skill, but mastery would let a Smart species fight on par with all but the toughest monsters in the dungeon through sheer physical ability.

Summoner – Be they creatures from beyond, enslaved minions, or not-quite-illusionary troops, you park your fat wizard ass at the back of the room and drown your enemies in disposable mooks.  There are few problems in the dungeon you can’t solve by throwing enough bodies at it.

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Talents

While your class receives its matching talent for free, you may purchase additional talents for 100cp to represent a hybrid playstyle.  There are no teachers in the dungeon, and developing new class skills without such a starting point will be a very difficult process.

Fighter – You deftly wield one category of melee weapons, such as swords, axes, flails, or polearms.  You are also more healthy, with greater strength and endurance.

Archer – You have sharper senses and faster reflexes, and skill with a single type of ranged weapon, such as knives, slings, bows, or even spell projectiles.

Thief – Lighter and faster on your feet, you have a bit of a sixth sense for danger.  This won’t conveniently highlight traps or tell you which pillar the demon is hiding behind, but you’ll know when you’re stepping into a bad situation.

Sorcerer – You have a larger-than-average pool of magical energy to draw on, and you can channel larger amounts of destructive energy with a greater degree of safety.  You begin with knowledge of a low-damage but reliable offensive spell.

Enchanter – Your spells are slightly more efficient, faster to cast and lasting longer on average.  You start with a simple spell that makes your weapon hit a little harder.

Summoner – Your spells are somewhat harder to resist and dispel, holding strong even at long ranges.  You can summon a trio of common wolves capable of following simple commands.

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Traits

Where concerned, the details of a trait’s appearance and how it might shape your anatomy are your choice.

100cp

Living weapon – Even naked and unarmed, you are far from helpless.  Your race bears a combination of natural weapons and armor - claws, horns, bone-ridged striking surfaces, leathery hide, shaggy fur, a layer of scales, etc.  These traits can't compare to real armor and are only as damaging and durable as your biology permits, but can be very handy if you are disarmed.

Expectoration – You can spit a small glob of something - poison, acid, flame, etc.  This is a purely biological ability that can’t be magically suppressed, but rapid use can be exhausting.

Iron stomach – You can digest and subsist on things a human would normally find inedible, and most poisons will have little effect on you.  This mutation does nothing to help with the taste of whatever you eat.

Fast healing – You heal at an accelerated rate, and you need not worry about common diseases or infections unless you’re in a truly filthy environment.  You cannot regenerate lost limbs and organs.

Nighteye - You can see in darkness as plainly as daylight, though the total absence of light prevents you from seeing color.  Magical darkness is no impediment, but obstructions or magically-induced blindness affect you normally.

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200cp

Elemental resistance – You are 50% resistant to a common source of damage like fire, acid or electricity.  This only mitigates damage, not environmental effects, so having resistance to gravity does not allow you to jump higher.

Esoteric resistance – You can resist unusual forces like hellfire, the negative forces that power the undead, or insanity-inducing mental assaults.  25% resistance per purchase, and you may purchase this multiple times, but only twice for a particular resistance.

Monastic – You need about 50% less of sleep, food, air, and water to survive.  You can dull your sense of pain, and ignore minor irritations and distractions.

Sturdy - It is nearly impossible to physically trip, push back or move you around if you do not wish it.  You'll also find moving on shaking, shifting, slippery or otherwise rough terrain much easier.

Aquatic - Besides breathing in water, you are much more agile while submerged.  Unless angered or starved, aquatic predators will ignore your presence.

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300cp

Overcharge – At the cost of extra MP and less fine control, your magic can become much stronger, having a larger range and area-of-effect, and being much more likely to punch through defenses.

Sadist – Killing a living creature (or destroying something animated by magic) fills you with energy.  You get a small return to your health proportionate to the slain creature’s power.  Stomping on small animals provide tiny returns, while killing potent monsters and powerful individuals can close major wounds and get you back on your feet after debilitating injuries.

Masochist – When seriously harmed, your own pain fuels your magic, allowing you to repay injuries with reflexive magical outbursts.  You can injure yourself if you wish, but this power requires you to suffer real injury.  Superficial damage and artificially induced pain does nothing for you.

Magic resistance - You resist magic that tries to impair your body and mind.  While this mutation won't protect you from external threats such as magically-conjured fireballs or minions, hostile magics that attempt to directly target your being will flatly fail 25% of the time.

HUD – Your mind is now shared with a non-sapient entity that acts as a PDA.  It is able to sort through your memories and senses to perfectly recall anything you know or have experienced.  The HUD cannot use any of your powers, relies upon your senses and has no initiative or willpower of its own, but can be easily ‘programmed’ with complex instructions, providing reminders or pop-ups in your field of view.  Besides acting as an excellent mapping tool, it also gives you a perfect internal clock.

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Perks

Premium Pack (100cp) – Be it a broken piece of ancient machinery, a chipped blade, or an empty magazine, you can perform repairs and recharge items simply by touching genuine currency items to the object in question.  The money vanishes as the effect takes hold, and this will cost you about 300% more than if you’d bought the needed services normally, and that’s just for commonplace items.  Truly priceless items will require staggering amounts of money to restore even to a small degree, but the effect is instantaneous and perfect.

Loot table (100cp) – While loot is scattered around the dungeon, having this perk means that future Jumps will have supplies and equipment just lying around in out-of-the-way corners, and anything you kill will inexplicably have a few coins on their body, or rarely (1%) drop something unusual or valuable.  While the value of what you find varies wildly, careful searching or random luck ensures that you’ll eventually come across top-of-the-line items appropriate to the Jump every so often.

Mudcrab school of finance (200cp) – Any shop or merchant willing to buy items from you will not discriminate, no matter what you try to sell him.  Drugs, bits of corpses, weapons, toxic waste…you might need to offer a ton of ‘junk’ items just to get a penny in return, but if you toss something valuable on top of the pile, the merchant will somehow produce enough money to buy your ten dead police officers and pair of stinger missiles.

Safe house (200cp) – In this Jump there are places, usually the size of an average bedroom, that you will immediately recognize as a safe place to rest.  Taking this Perk places places similar rooms in future Jumps.  Once you close the door behind you, regardless of the methods used to search for you, the safe house and its occupants will never be found…until 8 hours have elapsed, after which time the room loses its protective qualities.  There are many such locations in each jump, but each is at least a half-a-day’s walk apart from each other.

Supported skills (300cp) – As you practice a skill, you find that related skills also improve by a tiny degree – swing a sword for a month, and you won’t have to worry about injuring yourself with that flail you’ve never used before.  Spend a jump as a cook and find that chemistry makes a little more sense to you.  You cannot master a new skill through this method, but it will greatly accelerate the learning process when you do start fighting with that flail or working with chemistry.

Paragon Reputation (300cp) - You've gotten on good terms with one of the factions within this dungeon, and that friendship endures in future jumps.  Name a species, such as human, elf, dwarf, or even something exotic like construct, undead, angel or demon.  By default, members of that race are friendly towards you, treating you as one of their own, offering preferential treatment and relaxed punishments.  Not enough to let you rummage through their home or treasure vaults and take things, mind you.

Save scumming (400cp) – Once per jump you may turn back time, anywhere up to a maximum of 24 hours, returning you to whatever location and condition you were in at that moment.  This ability will activate automatically to save you upon dying, but Jump-chan has set a condition – when this ability is triggered, consciously or by your death, you will lose all memories and records of the intervening period.  You will only know that the ability was activated, and the time in the 'future' that you did so.

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Items

Starting gear (Free) – You begin with excellent, high-quality gear suited to a class you have chosen.  While not indestructible, this equipment will never naturally wear out, and will slowly self-repair as long as it is not totally destroyed.

Magical equipment (100cp) – A single item that possesses a simple enchantment.  Better weapons and armor, jewellery that provides a rank of Elemental or Esoteric Resistance, a floating, hands-free torch.  A handy but minor item.

Artefact (200cp) – A potent item that provides several benefits, these are not damaged by mundane phenomena up to and including being dropped in lava - it requires serious effort to destroy one of these.  An artefact weapon is potent and includes elemental attacks, a ring might make you all-but-immune to a single element or slightly resistant to every common source of damage in the dungeon…but being made with a dungeon crawl in mind, the enchantments they carry are all rather simple in design.

Beginner’s spellbooks (Free with a spellcasting class) - You receive a satchel of books that hold the simplest spells for each of the three spellcasting classes.  They are very straightforward in application and offer little outside combat applications.

Advanced spellbooks (100cp) – These books offer stronger spells with more varied effects, and even a small degree of utility.  These are a necessity for spellcasters to survive the mid-dungeon.

Master spellbooks (200cp) – Crackling with energy, these disturbing tomes hold the mightiest spells known.  The damaging-dealing spells can can bypass resistances.  Singularly powerful creatures or hordes of lesser creatures can be summoned.  Enchantments offer incredible power, unmatched speed or nigh-invulnerability for a short time.

Supplies (Free) – You get a backpack that’s larger on the inside and weighs little no matter what you put in it.  It comes with a month’s rations, some climbing gear, spare clothes, torches, chalk, and other miscellaneous stuff appropriate to underground exploration.

Consumable (100cp) – You receive a wand, book, horn or similar that has about fifty uses before being exhausted.  It produces a single simple effect, summoning a medium-weight creature or firing off a spell of low to moderate level.

Reusable (100cp) – This item of any sort needs about 24 hours to recharge after each use, and offers a handy mid-high level effect of general utility.

Potion belt (200cp) – This snazzy belt holds six potions.  Each is clearly labelled, and the belt protects the potions from most attacks.  Each potion has a useful effect.  There will always be at least one healing potions on the belt, while the others provide temporary stat boosts or effects like flight and invisibility.  An hour after a potion is drunk, destroyed, or lost, a new randomized potion will appear on the belt.

Familiar (300cp) – You have the service of a custom-crafted creature, one totally loyal to you.  You must design its appearance and nature, which defines how its abilities develop.  Its power increases as yours does, but its growth will slow as you approach the endpoint of the dungeon.  After leaving this jump, its development will slow to a crawl.  It is completely immune to any effect that would usurp control of it or cause it to attack you.  If slain or crippled, the familiar will reappear at your side or be fully healed after 24 hours.  A familiar does not count as a companion.

Macguffin* (800cp) - By retrieving the macguffin, you have acquired an item of immense yet non-determinate power.  Its appearance shifts constantly, even while in your hands, and technological or magical observation returns conflicting results.  That uncertainty is where the macguffin's true power lies...

The macguffin is your get-out-of-jail card, the missing equation, a cure to the plague.  Ask the macguffin a question and it will transform into something to provide a solution.  Ask something direct, like 'how do I infiltrate this base' and the macguffin is now a dossier of blueprints, patrol schedules, and command codes.  Ask something vague, like 'how do I acquire ultimate magical power' and it will become a series of insanely complex arcane equations that will take millennia to solve.  Ask something ridiculous, and it will turn into a tiny Jump-chan doll and punch you in the dick.  Even if you don't have one.

If used creatively, it can even overcome a drawback in another Jump.  Afterwards, the macguffin's non-specific nature is lost, locked into whatever fixed form was required of it.  Entities or phenomena not on the level of Jump-chan or those with a Spark cannot replicate or reverse-engineer macguffins.

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Companions

There’s no party like a dungeon party.  You may import up to 8 companions for 100cp, granting them 600cp to spend in any way they please.  Every additional 100cp you spend here doubles the numbers of companions you can import.  (200cp-16, 300cp-32, 400cp-64, etc.)

Beloved familiar (Free) - If you have purchased the familiar, you may choose to make it into a companion.  Its strength is no longer a percentage of your own, but retains the absolute immunity to control effects...for as long as the familiar wishes to keep it.  While it begins its new life absolutely loyal to you, it will develop its own personality and opinions in time.

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Drawbacks

Artificial stupidity (+100cp) – Anything not considered a companion is rather robotic in behavior, unable to comprehend anything more complex than ‘wait here’ or ‘kill that’ and will only attack others if attacked first.

Goddamn bats (+100cp) - The dungeon is infested with obnoxious little creatures that will never fail to irritate you when they appear.  They're weak, unable to take more than a single good hit or inflict more damage than a scratch on you.  But there are a lot of them, and they'll inexplicably dodge most of your attacks.

You need the red key (+200cp) - Gates litter the dungeon that can only be opened by a specific key, and cannot be bypassed by any method.  The keys are in the same general area, but always hidden or guarded.  The keys are hidden from technological and magical searches, so check all the pockets and flip all the rocks.

Ghosts of raids past (+200cp) – Enhanced duplicates of creatures you've slain now wander the dungeon.  These versions have a variety of themed benefits, from ghostly terminators to robotic dragons, making them tougher in many ways and shoring up old weaknesses.  They and all their equipment dissipate into nothing after defeat.

Bane of Jumper (+300cp) - As if a member of an Exotic race, you and all of your companions now suffer a vulnerability to a particular theme.  Without gaining any of the benefits, of course.  You must all also choose the same weakness.

Random Number God (+300cp) – The success of your actions are now determined by numbers as much as skill.  Even a veteran jumper may find his attacks leaving only scratches, or missing at point-blank when targeting a paralyzed enemy.  You have a flat 5% chance of failing at even simple tasks.

Everything wants to kill you (+400cp) – All factions within the dungeon are now hostile to you.  You cannot make friends or improve relations with any of them.  On top of that, they will set aside previous conflicts when you come into view, angels and demons and everything in between teaming up to bring you down.  Your Companions are your only sure allies here.  Even dominated minions or mechanical creations will turn on you if you harm them, even accidentally.  If you purchase 'Paragon Reputation' the chosen faction will be the sole exception.

Speedrun (+400cp) – This jump doesn’t last ten years.  It lasts three months, giving you very little time to develop your skills and gather the necessary equipment to survive.  Even if the dungeon was completely empty of obstructions and enemies, it would still take you at least two weeks to reach the bottom, find the macguffin, and another two to get back to the exit.  Except that all the handy waypoints and shortcuts are gone, teleportation drops you in random locations, super-speed perks are disabled, vehicles can't leave the Warehouse, and the dungeon is impervious to any method to dig, destroy, or bypass its structure.

Hell couldn't hold him (+600cp) - You remember that guy?  The guy you really, really hated?  That pushed you to your limits and took so much blood, sweat, and tears to put down?  Yeah, he's back, and he remembers you.  Like Ghosts of Raids Past, he's been upgraded, old powers boosted and exploitable weaknesses reduced.  He's guarding the Macguffin.  Chained to it, actually.  You can't finish the jump without killing him.  He remains locked in the dungeon's last level, so he can't just ambush you the moment you enter the jump.  But when you open that final door, all bets are off.  Be ready for a hell of a fight.

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So you survived?  Raided the tombs, plundered the booty, etc. etc?  Then you have a choice.

Small town hero - Go back to Earth, taking whatever treasure you managed to collect here.

Back into the light - Since this generic dungeon could exist anywhere, you may choose for it to exist in whichever world you please.  Upon leaving the dungeon, the entrance collapses and the structure vanishes as if it never was, leaving you to live out your life in the world of your choice.

New Game+ - Why stop now?  Continue through the Jumpchain, looting, slaying, and whatever-ing to your heart's content.