Mystical Tag
Why the hell can the Lantern H&S AND Volley with Int? What is the downside? Is there no skill required in using those weapons? I could understand giving the melee weapons the precise tag but making it all go on INT?
Why? Please tell me why this is needed? I feel strongy in removing that from my game if a player takes this class.
Yes they are scholars but they don’t need to be awesome fighters without paying a bit for it…
The Lantern can then care about INT, WIS and CHA and put the rest into CON to not die so easily and completly forget about the other two stats…
Most of the classes in DW focus on just two stats or so?
But they still care about the other Stats on the basic moves.
There is very little Stat Substitution in DW Proper. I can only think of the Ranger and the Wizard right now and their moves are still conditional (it’s a broad condition but anyway)
They aren’t awesome fighters, though. They only deal 1d6 damage. This is needed for the same reason the Wizard rolls +INT to deal damage with Magic Missile, or the Witch rolls +INT to use Black Magic to hurt people. However, shooting people with arrows of light doesn’t necessarily differ enough from using a bow to require a different move. A stat replacement is enough to cover it.
Also: The Fighter can care about STR and CON, or maybe DEX and CON, and then forget about the other four stats. The Ranger can dump it all in DEX, WIS, and STR and then forget the rest. Ideally, a class only wants to care about one or two stats. That is ideal, that is functioning as intended. If a class needs to rely on 4 stats to do the things it’s good at, like the Lantern initially did between having core moves reliant on all of CHA, INT, DEX, and STR, then it is really muddled and bad at what it does. By consolidating the magical attack moves under the same stat, it means the Lantern can go “oh, I want to be good at using cool magical attacks” and pump his INT. Previously, wanting to be good at the Twilight Blade meant doing so at the exclusion to almost every other stat.
And it’s not like ignoring the physical stats won’t cost you. Defy Danger is usually a +DEX roll, ignoring DEX has never ended well for anybody. It’s not like being able to use the cool magical attacks with +INT suddenly means the Lantern can lift boulders in his way, or fight off deadly poisons if his CON sucks. Consolidating the attacks under a single stat makes the Lantern effective. Not doing so makes it muddled. It was a clear decision.
okay, they have a d6 damage dice i give you this. I just want to understand why you remove stats from the game like this. They are still in Defy Danger of course (but a clever player can circumvent that – i know i would) but otherwise they are no longer there. I think it was a conscious decision to not have that many stat substitution moves in the core game.
I also don’t want to come in here and badmouth your stuff. You taught me a lot about design and made me more conscious on including options and moves in my design that focus more on exploration.
But the Fighter cares about all the Stats. He can’t Discern realitites or Spout Lore with his muscles.
To be fair though, anyone can pull a stat substitution for general combat if they can somehow grab a weapon with the precise tag. That’s not super uncommon in my experience.
But i understand the MAD Problem…
And i will try the Class with the INT substitutions, we will see what happens.
It’s also worth mentioning that, as you brought up in another conversation, when the Lantern rolls a miss while using Light Weaponry, no matter what the roll was and in addition to all other miss effects, they lose their Light Weapon. The little light goes away for a little while.
In that situation, a Lantern is suddenly defenseless. STR and DEX didn’t stop being important, they’re just less important for The Lantern specifically. But if that fails and he has to use his staff to stop that spider gopher from eating his face off, he might have to put that 8 STR to use.
Besides, while it may be true that the Fighter can’t Spout Lore without +INT, does he need to? He is still capable of making the move even with 8 INT, if he needs to, but if there’s the Bard, the Wizard, or the Lantern around to Spout Lore, will he? Probably not.
Every class inherently wants you to focus on one or two stats. Throughout my experience with Dungeon World, the only time a class really has problems during play is when it focuses on multiple different stats, muddling the focus. I would rather a character be very good at what they want to do, no matter what that thing may be.
Without the stat replacement options of the Mystical tag like in the previous build, it is very possible that you might not find out Fist of Dawn requires +STR to do anything worthwhile until you decide you wanted to take it at level 4. Up until that point, you didn’t need +STR at all: it was a useful stat but not required for anything you did. Suddenly, it is, and Fist of Dawn might become a worthless advance for you. The Mystical tag exists entirely to circumvent this exact situation, which did show up during playtesting twice, in two different groups.
I agree that stat replacement moves are generally lazy design, but they exist for a reason, and they have their place. Ignoring that design space entirely is not the way to go about it – instead, it should be used to support character concepts that otherwise wouldn’t work all that well, like a tiny guy being able to lift houses with his giant robot or a frail slow dude being able to calculate exactly how to use a magical lasersword for maximal destruction.
Sorry I only seem able to speak in Walls Of Text, I have a lot to say about game design.
Thank you, that was really enlightening
I agree: the Lantern had me excited to play it since I first saw it, but i kep thinking “Man, even if i decide never to use the light arrows, I’ll need three stats to be quite high… that’s gonna be tough!”
The earlier version of Illuminated Warrior (is that the right name? not sure!) put it under Charisma, which was very good, but also made it change shape every turn, which could prove problematic. The tag is not 100% elegant, but it does its job. And the new Illuminated Warrior allows me to use two Light Weapons at once… meaning that I can have both a sword and a shield active at the same time, which is not only mechanically useful, but visually cool.
I can’t wait to be a Lantern!