Question about some moves in Deck of Villainy, the answers to which might be extrapolated to other such Villain moves.
Satin has “Evade an attack with uncanny grace”. Is this suggesting that Satin can turn a successful directly engage (with a physical attack) into an unsuccessful one, that Satin can make it impossible to even use directly engage on them, or something else?
Blood Opal can Instantly heal a deadly wound. Does that mean she can erase a condition if the narrative reason for the condition is that she has been wounded?
Helldrake can turn into a titanic, nearly invulnerable dragon. Does that transformation make it impossible to physically harm her, so directly engage a foe is useless unless the intent is a non-physical wound?
There are other references to evasion and invulnerability in the deck.
Again, I think I am getting snagged on where the mechanics (marking conditions) meet the narrative, and understanding the intent of these moves will help me with making my own!
No, they don’t erase the effect of rolls.
Fundamentally, if you decided to showcase satins uncanny agility, what you would do, IMO, is have the next attack someone tosses at her, in the fiction, not even get a roll. They don’t fail, the story doesn’t progress – they get to do their Vegeta Big Bang attack but the fiction declares they can’t directly engage… so you don’t ask them to roll
Basically – You don’t have to have someone trigger a dice roll to have these things happen. You can still directly engage hell drake (they still trade blows), you just can’t HURT him.
Remember that the villain move are triggered when heros miss. Then Satin move have sense if you are “directly engaging a treath” and miss. She “Evade an attack with uncanny grace”
Interesting. And it makes sense I guess. Except for Satin evading after the hero already misses. That’s not super dramatic and seems kind of out of order.
I just noticed that on p. 147 under Follow the Fiction it says “If the villain would be largely immune to some kind of threat or attack from the PCs, let them know—the villain just shrugs it off.”
This will be pretty useful to keep in mind when the character with normal human strength and no appreciable fighting skill attempts to punch out Ferro, the Living Block of Iron.
Yeah, pretty much.
Fundamentally, as long as whatever you decide to go with is Fair and Consistant, I don’t think anyone is going to give you shit over it.