In our last session our Nova (Nicola Urbinati) took a powerful blow, rolled 10+ and chose to lose control of his powers in a terrible way; this meant an NPC was in danger’s way, so the Outsider (Steve DeCarli) decided to defend them… which leads to the questions: how does this work?
Successfully defend against a PC means the defender can give -2 to the attacker, but in this case there wasn’t any roll; the Nova could roll to unleash his powers (this was our on the moment solution), but this makes little sense, since (1) he wasn’t trying to overcome an obstacle, reshape his enviroment or extend his sense; and (2) if he hit the roll… he has a success, yet he still lost control of his powers.
Maybe it just isn’t possible to defend, like it was a hard move?
Other players: Mario Bolzoni Fabio Succi Cimentini
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My two cents: The Nova has lost control of his powers – it’s not him attacking. It’s not a PC attack, hence you use NPC rules.
I know that if you follow this line of reasoning it sounds awkward, because “wild powers” does not really classify as an NPC, in that it’s not a character. But, would you have doubts on rolling that move to defend someone from an explosion, or falling debris? The move’s trigger only says “an immediate threat”, and that definitely counts as such.
My instinct says to generally treat it like a hard move, but if someone has a really solid case for being able to interfere & defend people from the result (as can happen with any hard move), Alberto Muti has my same line of thought: the result is about totally losing control of yourself, so it’s easy enough to say that it’s not really the PC’s action you’re defending against, it’s an event that a PC happens to be at the center of.
It’s in that weird design space where Take A Powerful Blow has its outcomes reversed, with 6- being the best you can do and 10+ being terrible. Which makes my mind translate the 10+ results into basically a list of applicable hard moves (like a 6- result would be on any other move) — likewise, I wouldn’t be making a GM hard move when someone “misses” a Powerful Blow roll on a 6-. But that could just be me.
Even if it were a hard move, I’d still treat is as such. I mean, you do your hard move on a bad consequence resulting from a move, then ask, “what do you do?”. At this point, if anyone has the correct fictional positioning to interfere, they can, and if they do so by shielding innocent bystanders (or anyone else really) from the damage, then you’re triggering Defend.
That’s interesting, thanks!
Matt Morton: yeah, I agree on the 6- thing, we came to the same conclusion in our last session.
Yeah, I’d think treating it like an NPC would be the way to go.