#FighterWeek

#FighterWeek

#FighterWeek  

The fighter is the class I’ve most considered revising, as Signature Weapon has gotten some interesting responses. I came across this bit in Playing At The World that actually made me appreciate our break from D&D tradition here:

“While Conan looms so large and is so self-sufficient that his swords are all anonymous and interchangeable, the tradition of pedigreed swords stretches far back into mythology and permeates the literature that influenced Dungeons & Dragons. Without unearthing ancient celebrity couples such as Roland and Durendal or Arthur and Excalibur, nearly every fantasy hero worth his salt comes paired with an exceptional weapon.”

27 thoughts on “#FighterWeek”

  1. I have seen a demon in the form of a blade, hungry for blood. (Somehow, the player had never actually read the Elric books.)

    I have also seen a fighter wielding a giant’s meat tenderizer. (Literally. He chose “hammer” and added “hooks or spikes”. When I said “so like a giant meat tenderizer” he agreed, and when I asked him how he got it, he said “killed a giant cook.”)

  4. My only criticism has been that it could be a choice- choose the Signature Weapon move or something else, each of which heavily defines your character. Same for the Ranger companion.

  6. I’m sure you’ve heard it, but a downside of the signature weapon is less inclination to be the kind of warrior that effectively uses whatever’s at hand.

  9. I love the signature weapon. In fiction, some signature weapons are not clearly unique, just special. Mouser’s “Scalpel” comes to mind. In some stories, Scalpel is a curved blade, and in others the blade is straight, suggesting that he got a new sword.

  11. I think converting Signature Weapon to Signature Style is the best idea. You could easily build anything from a monk to an archer to a barbarian. In a sense you already can, but it just seems to make more sense that a SPECIFIC weapon isn’t required.

  12. Pete French well, I don’t think we actually want it to be that vague. I’d rather we make a monk, an archer, and a barbarian as specific classes/compendium classes. We want each DW class to be a strong clear starting point, not a general set of abilities.

  13. Sage LaTorra , my contribution to #FighterWeek will be a suite of compendium classes that involve bladed weapon maneuvers or stances (whatever you’d like to call them). Originally I intended them only to work with the Battlemind but they could be taken by anyone who picks up and takes a bladed weapon as an extension of him/her/itself.

  14. If you do revise the Fighter, it definitely needs:

    – to ditch Scent of Blood (probably the worst move in the book, since if you hit something twice with d10 damage, an extra 1d4 won’t matter nearly all the time).

    – give the Fighter an extra starting move that does something social.

    – replace some of the “take +1” moves with some more narratively-oriented, more interesting ones.

    The “Fighters get an army and a castle” angle is basically absent from the DW Fighter!

  15. Deep Six Delver Fafhrd and the Mouser are explicitly said to replace Graywand and Scalpel, but they always give their new swords the same names, which I think is a perfectly fair interpretation of signature Weapon as she’s writ.

  19. I once ran a game with a fighter who had Signature Weapon: My Body.

    We used the Fighter playbook stuff as written and put all the fighting style into the fiction. Worked great.

    I think the fighter took the perk where the weapon could attack at multiple distances, which we interpreted as a Mortal Kombat style shadow kick.

  20. Signature Weapon also counters something I always hated in D&D: fighter types switching weapons and fighting styles depending on last week’s loot. I even wrote a feat for our d20 line that was basically SW.

    That said, I like the idea of a technique based fighter variant. What about the Duellist or the Gladiator?

  21. There’s been a lot of talk about The Fighter over on the SA forums, even leading to a pair of re-writes of the class made by different people. The general gist of it is that it is kind of boring compared to everything else – it only has three moves, and Armored and Signature Warrior are passive moves. The only move they have to affect the world around them is BBLG, which is a really good move, but it’s just… boring, that that is all they get. The Paladin gets Lay on Hands and I Am The Law and their Quests, for comparison. A signature style could be neat, but The Initiate basically solves that already: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108404/The-Initiate—A-Dungeon-World-compatible-class

    So I’m not sure what else a Signature Style would add that isn’t already available to The Initiate.

    For those who are curious, here’s the two re-writes of The Fighter that got produced by the SA forums:

    http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15337665/The%20Peerless%20Fighter.pdf

    http://www.mediafire.com/view/?lc8500fbkzp35a5

  22. I really like the signature weapon. I always thought that upgrading your equipment for stuff with better bonuses was really, really not iconic.

    Would I also like a class with styles/stances/special attacks? of course! 

  25. Please don’t give more stuff to the fighter… All games has one, and that makes the class move palette a bit bland for the 2-player one-shots I’m running…

    That said; the Fighter is awesome. I think the signature weapon really draws people in.

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