Hi all; I’m new to MotW and am looking to clarify a few things before I start my sessions next week. If I’m asking in the wrong place, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll get my first question out of the way:
One aspect of combat has me a bit puzzled: It seems when a PC Kicks Some Ass on a monster, the monster more or less is able to inflict its normal damage right back at the PC, no “answering” roll necessary. So, in the most basic, or crudest sense we’d be looking at a situation like this: Theoretically, a monster with 14 harm and +2 harm per hit vs. a hunter with 7 harm and +2 harm per hit would always end up killing the hunters.
I’ve got to be missing something. Do monsters ALWAYS do their damage when a PC is Kicking Some Ass, or is it only during certain circumstances? Certainly the PC’s can’t have to rely on their Luck ALL the time…?
Yes, if the hunters just rely on charging up to very dangerous monsters and attacking them one on one, they will probably die.
In other words, try to forget the idea of “combat rounds” and don’t think that “kick some ass” is the same as a D&D attack roll. Sometimes hunters will be able to inflict harm on monsters without triggering that move, and they probably should.
As an example of what Michael is saying: If you’re on an overpass with a sniper rifle, and you’ve got someone on the ground of the adjacent gravel quarry keeping the monster busy by heckling it… you will just deal Harm (presuming the monster isnt omniscient or a mind reader or have eyes in the back of its head or isn’t the spirit of sniper rifles or blahblahblahblah fiction first etc). Meanwhile, whoever is on the ground is now definitely in the line of danger because of this little stunt, which will snowball into all of its own rolls, of course, but that’s where the fun comes in.
Depending on your Keeper, it can be worse than this. When I run games, the big bad can often only be hurt by certain kinds of attacks. If you charge into combat without knowing how to hurt a creature, I don’t even allow the KSA move. You just get spanked. Monster hunters need to be smart. It’s not D&D.
I love the MOTW system, because monsters are actually bad ass. Every KSA move is actually an exchange of blows so these monsters never whiff, as often happened in D&D. The threat is real and no monster is going to end up looking like a punk… until you come at them with the right kind of attack. The choices at 10+ of reduce harm or add harm are crucial to survival.
Something else worth noting is that hunters usually get armored up. 1-2 points of armor can make them virtually unkillable. In the campaign I’m running now, monsters that do less than 3 harm are not even worth presenting as a threat.
I don’t have experience real-world yet, probably will next weekend, but in my mind, it makes a lot more sense to think of this as how you would read a big fight in a novel rather than how it would play out in a miniatures tactical war game style. Every ‘kick some ass’ roll is just the end result of a mutual exchange between that hunter and the monster… in the math, a lone hunter relying on his physical capabilities should almost always lose to a monster doing the same, which is modeled great by the ‘kick some ass’ move… on the flip side, enough hunters picking away at one monster could beat it (since each one is doing damage and taking damage, but that damage is split across 2-4 individuals while the monster is aggregating all of it from them), but they’d be hurt… however, if you apply it to, say, The Witcher’s style monster hunter, there are some ‘kick some ass’ moves in there where he takes some pain from the exchange, but Geralt spends a lot of time on setup ahead of time to exploit environment, potions, magic, and other elements to get an advantage over the monster, and is able to do a lot of damage inflicting without having to rely on mutual combat exchanges.
Also, even if you just build the fight around KSA moves, when you throw in protect somebody, help out moves to help improve success and soak and spread monster damage in a more controlled way, even the KSA move can start turning in the hunter’s favor. Basically, for MotW to be fun, the monster really SHOULD be overpowered, and if hunters just charge in movie-ninja-style, they should always be rewarded for their efforts by being mercilessly slaughtered (ok, if the Keeper is playing his role of fan of the hunters, maybe he’ll TRY to find some way to keep them from taking this approach, but if they bull-headedly charge forward regardless, they should definitely pay dearly for it, maybe the keeper can find an out that doesn’t end in a full party wipe that still teaches a strong lesson, but that’s up to him). When you add in armor, abilities the allow Protect Someone to absorb additional damage, magic abilities that create armor barriers, etc, the hunters, with proper planning, should be able to use their intelligence and planning to make an impossible battle turn in their favor… of course, it shouldn’t ever go flawlessly, what fun is that! Maybe sometimes it will, usually things will find a point to just turn bad, but that’s great! Adds drama and is more entertaining, and finally winning feels that much more fulfilling. For the Keeper, the fun part is trying to balance them feeling like things went horribly wrong with still rewarding them for strong prep (even if it falls apart), making the whole experience feel like a ‘by the skin of their teeth’ situation… desperate tension is the best part of MotW, in my opinion. 🙂
I’ll echo what everyone else said. Monsters do deal their damage to the hunter on a Kick Some Ass move. So if hunters just wade in and start trading blows, they are going to get hurt. If they all work together they might be able to take down monsters this way because the harm they take will be spread around.
But it’s a much better idea to find ways to harm monsters without triggering KSA. Like the sniper rifle example Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock mentions. Remember, the hunters are (very often) professionals, or at least have previous monster-hunting experience, so their characters should know this.
In my first mystery, the crew was hunting a gargoyle. Their guns were pretty shit at hurting a chimaera of Stone, but the Expert found the home of the guardian’s master and went about shattering the mystic life-giving seals painted on the windows. The Expert just got to deal harm over distance uninhibited, while everyone else was scurrying around like mice trying not to get grabbed and gutted. You gotta fight smart!
James Meyer That was an amazing answer, and as a new Keeper, I also appreciate these things. Can I ask a follow up? Can monsters have rage or berserk tendencies? For example, maybe it has a low hit until it reaches half of its health and then it hits harder, or it looks puny but when it gets down to 1 health point, it has a burst of energy that shields it from high damage? I’m doing something along the lines of Angel and I feel like they can find out these facts in their research so it’s not a complete shock.
Sa Sa as the Keeper, once you take the reins really whatever you want goes, even if it goes against the framework… it’s best to have fairly consistent rules so the players feel like they have some semblance of control, but it’s often fun to have monsters break the rules.
In the case you mentioned, yeah, seems like making a custom move whose trigger is ‘when reduced to half harm track (or advanced to half, however you look at it), then do xxxxxxxx’. Moves can change the rules/mechanics for monsters in interesting ways, in the same way player playbook moves help them break the established base rules.
Giving them a chance to learn this ahead of time with research makes it even better, as knowledge gives them a form of control even over chaos.