The Gaming Den

I've run about a half dozen one-shot d20 CoC games, and they've always gone over well; the exceedingly high casualty rate (avg 50%) is considered a plus for my players, especially compared to my usual M.O. of zero unless the player is tired of their character. Someone's planning on running Chaosium's latest d% edition (edition 5.6 from what I can tell). Does anyone have any experience with this system and what I should expect/do in preparation?

http://www.chaosium.com/forms/coc_quick_start_color.pdf

1. When creating character, your highest score goes into POW.

2. High INT also helps, but beware, for you will have to make many more sanity checks during game, since you'll be able to realize what is actually going on.

3. Death is a most natural occurance when dealing with the horrors from beyound the madness.

I actually own a copy of an at least semi recent if not the latest edition around here.

I have never actually gotten around to reading it since the hacky d20 edition is easier and more familiar to my players.

If you like I could read it and give you some vaguely informed opinion tomorrow some time.

Basically CoC is fairly rules light and very deadly, so there's not an awful lot of min-maxing you can do if that's your goal.

However, if you want to build a survivable character, POW and the Dodge skill are quite important. POW affects both Sanity and the dreaded Luck Roll, however the RAW don't allow stat trading so you may not get a choice here. Spot Hidden is often used for noticing vital clues, so I'd suggest getting this pretty high.

The character creation rules as written don't have any kind of limit on starting skills, so you can start with a 95% Dodge and Spot Hidden if you want.

If playing in a campaign rather than a one shot then there are a few tricks you can use to increase survivability. The Psychoanalysis skill allows you to raise the other investigators Sanity scores which can help a lot. Also, you gain a Sanity boost for raising a skill to 90% with experience, so starting your skills at 89% is a cheesy way to ensure you get this boost as often as possible.

Weapons wise Shotguns have the highest base hit chance and the highest damage at short range, so carrying a double barrelled sawn-off shotgun "for close encounters" never disappoints. For pure damage a Tommy gun can empty its 50 round drum in a single attack for (D100/2)*D10+2 damage, however as per RAW they are unavailable to civilians.

However, most monsters are tough enough that your only real defence is escape or plot-related. Always read any books you find, spells of Binding or Dismissing are the best way to deal with most of the bigger beasties.

However, I would check with your GM for any house rules he plays with. Because the CoC rules are so simple a lot of people change bits they don't like which could render any of this null and void.