Watching the heroes try to fight Darth Vader in Star Wars: Rebels (good show by the way) I came up with this custom move:
When you fight someone WAY out of your league, roll+Hard. On a 10+, you keep them busy long enough for your allies to act, and come away with only minor injuries.
On a 7-9, choose 1:
-You keep them busy for seconds, at most
-You come away severely wounded
On a 6-, choose 1:
-You keep them busy for seconds at most, and come away severely wounded
-You buy time for your allies to act, but at the cost of your own life
I’d be hesitant to use this at all in action games like AW or DW, and if I did I’d reserve it for enemies who were either legitimately invincible or freaking hugemongeous monsters. But in more horror-styled games, or in MotW when the hunters haven’t found the monster’s weakness yet, I could see using it more frequently. Your thoughts?
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I have something similar in City of Judas: it’s called Face Death and it’s a move to roll (i.e. with Steel – that is similar to Hard in AW) when you face a large monster or a much stronger opponent.
You must roll to Face Death as long as you remain engaged with such stronger opponent. Unless you roll pretty good, basically you will need to “pay” with an MC move against your or your allies, every time you roll for other moves…
The text was like this:
On a 10+ take one from this list or one from the 7-9 list:
› You create a good, safe opening for one of your allies, to attempt a valid attack without rolling Face Death themselves; and avoid for now harm directed to you
› You have a chance to escape unharmed, but leaving everybody else behind
On a 7-9 take one, but the GM will make a move contemporary to yours and harm will probably come your way, although the GM cannot contradict your choice.
› You hold the enemy back with your sacrifice, giving others time to escape
› You can fight with a Combat Move of your choice, but the GM makes a move against you first, typically an opponent custom Move or inflicting some harm
On a 6-, embrace the pain, and your move is interrupted.
I feel like the triggering fiction is such a picture-perfect example of acting under fire that It’s hard for that move to justify itself in a game where the “act under fire” basic move exists. Like, if being able to survive Darth Vader isn’t an opportunity to roll +cool what is?
Otoh, I could see a lot more room for this move in games that don’t already have a move that’s about keeping it together in the face of danger.
In our AW hack (we are using it for Star Wars atm) we experienced the same problem: PCs could kill the most impressive foes in one shot.
We did the following
1) Subtract the foe’s appropriate skill from the PCs roll.
2) Add armor. In our hack you pay 1 Armor to negate one hit, as opposed to armor as damage reduction as in AW. So we basically use Armor as hitpoints.
3) We use the principles of The 16 Hitpoint Dragon, which states that Numbers dont make monsters awesome, the fiction does.
1 and 2 does not make foes invincible but prolongs combat so that it is not just one roll but typically 3 or 4, so that you can emulate the combat sequences in Star Wars in the fiction. (In the Cowboy iteration of the hack combat is often just one roll, which fits the genre very well). #3 has the potential to make monsters invincible.
Lastly, if you want to play AW mostly as is one can simply define success on your hard roll as “You don’t get killed” instead of slicing the NPC in two.
Player: I attack him with my machete.” Rolls 11. “I guess he is dead!”
MC: “You realize this guy is way out of your league. He steps back out of your reach. Success against this guy means you survive.”
When you’re outgunned, the players become reactive rather than active, or that’s how I do it.
When Vader throws you aside, roll+sharp.
You’ll be grabbing a ledge on a good roll, falling on a bad.
I really like it. I agree it works better for MotW as its such a key element of the kinds of shows MotW emulates. Buffy/Sam and Dean often have to fight something that is at present invulnerable, only so they can protect others or buy time or simply survive, so this works really well for that.
On that note I think I’d add in an option to “learn something about your foe” as a pick for either the 10+ or the 7-9 (not sure which would work best) as that would seem to fit the flavour, where sometimes you fight the invulnerable monster just to survive, but you notice some detail which may pay off later after research.
Either way, I think its a cool move 🙂
so they establish the stakes after they’ve engaged with them or when they use the learn something about your foe?