A small but vicious dog for DCCRPG

Hi folks,

I'm sorry for the decrepit condition of this Tower. No time to properly update it. That (and my lack of a good job) are the bad news. The good news are that I finally managed to end on January my 3-and-a-half Pathfinder campaign using the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path. It was an amazing experience, helped me to form my current group of players (and friends) and it ended completely unlike the official campaign (the system was kept as "official" as possible only because the table made a social contract in that regard... though the Hero Points rules were abused to such a point that the entire thing started to sound like FATE). Speaking of FATE, I'm trying to run a mini-campaign (5 sessions) of Pacific Rim, but without luck so far due to scheduling problems with the group. I'm also playing a Carrion Crown Adventure Path, powered by FATE Core. But that's not why I'm writing this short post.

My Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG campaign through G+ Hangout is still going. We managed 6 online sessions to finish 'The Portal Under the Stars' and 'Sailors on the Starless Sea' adventures. We're starting now 'Doom of the Savage Kings'. Each player will control 2 1st-level survivor of previous adventures (and 4 new 0-level PCs will be controlled by a new player).

One of the 1st level Warriors is a Herder and thus started the game with a herding dog that managed (somehow) to survive the Funnel. I don't want to track the dog's stats (I already have to control plenty of hirelings and followers), but I wanted the dog to color that Warrior's style. So I came with a - definitely - 'indie' mechanic for it.

Here's my "Small But Vicious Dog" Rule.

Every time the Warrior hits an enemy, he can choose to use his small but vicious dog to deal an additional 1d4 points of damage. If they die comes up with 2, 3 or 4... no problem! Just add to the damage total. However, if the d4 comes with a '1', the Warrior must reroll the d4 and suffer that amount of damage (the small but vicious dog is indeed a terrible beast... very difficult to control).

The idea is to use a simple (but hopefully) fun mechanic, with an element of risk.

What do you think about it?