Quick question guys. Is the ‘Directly Engaging a Threat’ move the only way to impose a Condition on an NPC villain?

Quick question guys. Is the ‘Directly Engaging a Threat’ move the only way to impose a Condition on an NPC villain?

Quick question guys. Is the ‘Directly Engaging a Threat’ move the only way to impose a Condition on an NPC villain?

9 thoughts on “Quick question guys. Is the ‘Directly Engaging a Threat’ move the only way to impose a Condition on an NPC villain?”

  2. If you have Influence, you can spend it to inflict a Condition. If the fiction suggests a Villain would affected by something, you can place a Condition on them as necessary (ie, the building explodes and the PCs jump out a window, leaving the super-tough villain to be engulfed. You might figure, he’s super tough but he’s not that super-tough, so you give him a Condition).

  3. No. The GM sheet says, “When a villain gets hit hard, by trading blows or in other situations, they mark a condition as appropriate”. Plus, the GM can always use their “Inflict A Condition” move to give an NPC a condition.

  5. Thanks for all the guidance! I guess I’m wondering if the Provoke move for example could impose a Condition. The answer seems to be yes, especially after you gain Inlfluence!

  6. If you think something could inflict a condition then just inflict it. For example I had a game last night where a villain pulled a gun on one of the team, and so another team member used a defend move to telekenetically dismantle the gun in his hand while he held it.

    Given how the fight had been going for the villain up until that point, and the reason that he even brought out his gun, I gave the villain his hopeless condition as a result.

  7. Just to add to my previous comment, and to explain a little more why I did this…. the game I had was one where I presumed (as I’m running it for 7 people) that I’d need to do a lot to prevent the heroes from being able to directly engage, because in reality if all 7 had just bum-rushed the guy then he’d probably have all of his conditions marked in no time and the fight would be over. So I had lots of distractions, putting civilians in danger, requiring intervention…

    …turns out the team were very good at making sure everything was safe and that no-one was hurt, but completely at the detriment of actually directly attacking the enemy at hand! And so, it became clear that if this guy was going to be “beaten” it wasn’t going to be physically, it was going to be morally, having all of his attempts to get what he wanted just brushed aside and defused quickly.

    In those situations you have to feel free, IMO, to give conditions to help move the story along for your villain, and to give the heroes a prospect of beating the villain without the fight taking hours to resolve!

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