Mutant Crawl Classics could do with a good edit and some more playtesting. The solution to that is to embrace the death of the author or hire a better editor.
The text is unstable. It shares a clear heritage with Dungeon Crawl Classics with similar mechanics and the same ethos of embracing the chaos. Dungeon Crawl Classics has had over a decade, eleven printings and hundreds of modules to stabilise its text and culture. Mutant Crawl Classics was effectively birthed by Kickstarter in 2018 and feels much less settled. It also suffers from player expectations that are not borne out in the rules as written. I am no German Legal Positivist but I agree with Disraeli, with words we govern men.
Case in point. It is clear from reading Mutant Crawl Classics 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th edition that not enough attention has been paid to the Physical Mutation UltraVision. Across editions UltraVision appears to oscillate between being an Active Mutation and a Passive Mutation, without ever being fully rewritten to support either interpretation
When interacting with a Mutation you roll a dice, usually 1d20, add modifiers and consult a banded table of outcomes that runs from 1 (a harmful outcome,) through a bell-curve of null and beneficial outcomes with your odds improving as you gain levels. They become not reliable but plannable around.
Mechanically Active Mutations are those you need to switch on to use and they operate for a short period of time before switching off again. There is risk to switching mutations on. Telekinesis lasts one or two or three rounds. You can move things with your mind a finite number of times before you can’t. If you try again you risk not being able to do that again that day. Likewise Molecular Integration which allows you to heal or repair a thing, one time per use.
Passive Mutations are always on. If you have Heightened Intelligence or Heightened Speed, you always have a big brain or swift feet.
UltraVision appears to have been drafted as either Active or Passive, then changed to the other, then changed back. The drafting is still unsatisfactory. It has outcomes in the banding that are clearly drafted for an Active Mutation and outcomes that are clearly drafted for Passive Mutations. It always has. The formal classification has switched between 4th and 4th edition from Passive to Active. It ends up being neither one thing nor the other.
Is it harming my game that the quality of the editing and drafting is not great? It is not harming my game, much. We’ll need to rely on some in-game homebrew and Rulings, not Rules. We’ll need to be gentle about outcomes whilst we work out what we are actually doing. It would harm my game less if I were a Barnstormer and not a Staff Officer and therefore wasn’t trying to over plan how to operate this Mutation instead of embracing the chaos engine.
Second case in point, Natural 1s and Mutation Rolls. Mutant Crawl Classics, rules as written, does not, in fact have a rule that Natural 1s are an automatic fail when rolling a Mutation check. If the outcome of your roll is a 1 i.e. you roll a 1 at Level Zero or you have negative modifiers and end up with a 1 then you fail and gain a defect. The rulebook talks about Natural 1s and Fumbles explicitly in a number of places but declines to express this rule in any of the places that the rulebook discusses rolling Mutation checks. It is probably the case that the author did not intend for Mutation checks to have a Fumble rule. This is different from the Dungeon Crawl Classics equivalent system of magic. It’s different from the Crawl Classics general theme. But it’s not there and I’m reading it like a constitution lawyer not a rules lawyer.
Should it be there? Is it an authorial oversight? Poor editing? Perhaps, see UltraVision for the lack of authorial and editorial credibility. But there is it is not.
And presumably whatever playtesting was done on this system was done with the rules as written. Presumably, holistically and not just one sub-system by sub-system. Play tested by people who are presumed to be trying to break the game.
Presumably.
Which brings us to Shallow Power Curves and Breaking the Game. I think Mutant Crawl Classics’ power curve with Mutation Powers make sense if you assume two design priorities
Firstly, doing cool crazy stuff at random is fun, fun, fun.
Secondly, characters are expected to die often, to die randomly and to die frequently as well.
If the characters are expected, nay encouraged, to die randomly, frequently and in hilariously chaotic ways don’t gate your most powerful most fun stuff behind levelling up. Let the Mutant see the Radioactive Rabbit. Therefore, it is possible to hit the top band of your mutation at level 1. Hard but not impossible. You use can use a mechanic called Glowburn. Trade temporary reductions in ability scores for higher rolls. This allows playstyles other than the Barnstormer to function well. The Operator has some situational fluidity in which to innovate with player skill. The Staff Officer can build in some contingency and redundancy so that hitting the top bands is not essential to make progress. Both playstyles can bring their skill set to bear on the problem.
You can also use Luck but for Mutants as a class Luck is not renewable. Plantients can renew Luck and lend it to other characters. A Level 1 party can just about reliably hit the top band in a mutation. If one of them has Molecular Integration the top bands allows them to reset any object back to how it was some time before. Including ability scores and Luck. Including, I say, ability scores and Luck. That’s an infinite power loop.
Did the author intend this? Who knows, like most Crawl Classics characters the Author died.
But we’re left trying to home brew some sort of response to that. With a playtesting sample of one.
The Misadventures of Hareng Rouge 
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