Expiring Deck for Casting Effects

Your party has been tasked with destroying a small camp of goblins that has been spotted near the town. Scouts have been keeping a careful eye on the camp, lacking the resources to take out the camp themselves, but have reported back some peculiarities to the king:

1. They believe three or four goblins have been spotted from a distance.
2. They can confirm one goblin has magical capabilities and carries around what looks like a cane.
3. Occasionally, in the dead of night, they've heard the sounds of creatures crying inside the camp. Not animal sounds, no, no, no. Creature sounds. Zombie groans, a screech that may have sounded like a graugr, and one terrified new recruit returned in tears warning of a lich inside.

Surely, these stories are merely the spell of a densly-packed forest casting nightmares and dreamscapes on them, right? Nothing for the party to be concerned with.

When the players arrive at the camp, they are quick to get into battle positions. A Nat 20 on an observation check confirms that, while there are some suspicious markings in the dirt in the goblin camp, there isn't actually any sign of any living creatures living in this camp other than the goblins.

Roll initiative.

If the players fail to stop the spellcasting goblin from casting a spell...

Let's peak behind the GM screen...

The Expiring Deck for Casting Effects is a custom deck built for any enchanted item the GM creates. In the case of our unfortunate hypothetical party, they are facing against no normal goblin with magical abilities. They are weilding a special staff with a unique ability, one that no goblin could have enchanted on their own. Where could this goblin have gotten such a staff? That's a mystery for another time, though; our druid doesn't have the time to think about it as a summoning circle manifests on the field.

This magical artifact is tied to a random effect table. However, instead of rolling a numbered die and consulting a chart, you instead shuffle your deck of cards and pull a card from the top. Once the card has been drawn, that charge has been burned up and the card disappears.

Let's say the GM pulled the 3 of Clubs. Consulting the chart, the 3 of Clubs summons a simple zombie the players have to defeat as well. Phew! Imagine if that story that one recruit said about a lich was true. Now the GM puts that 3 of Clubs into a discard pile and forgets about the card. It's gone. Doesn't exist. Lost in a void.

If that same goblin — or, with any luck, your rogue who was able to stealth their way over and swipe it — were to try to use another charge, your deck is just slightly thinner and that card can never be used again.

Here's what the chart looked like behind the DM screen, using Dungeon World stats as an exmaple:

Yikes that could have been bad. Nothing our party of five couldn't handle if they play their cards right (pun most certainly intended), but still a good chance of a challenge depending on how Fate fares on them that night. Let's cut back to the session.

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