Bunch of ghouls coming at the party. Cleric rolls 7-9 on Turn Undead.

Bunch of ghouls coming at the party. Cleric rolls 7-9 on Turn Undead.

Bunch of ghouls coming at the party. Cleric rolls 7-9 on Turn Undead.

Aggression breaks the turn. Wizard blasts Ghoul A. Turn effect is broken on Ghoul A, what about on the other ghouls? Are they still turned?

32 thoughts on “Bunch of ghouls coming at the party. Cleric rolls 7-9 on Turn Undead.”

  1. Idea 1: ask the cleric

    Idea 2: make a GM move

    Idea 3: Looking at the tags, there is no inteligence so they probarbly won’t colaborate as much. 

  6. What Tim Franzke started with, and what I had intended on was this: work with the fiction. I love some of the quirks my players give for their spells. You haven’t lived until magic missile is described as resembling a missile launch from Macross, the volley coming from all around to impact the target. I read a session once where dwarves were actually severely dwarven mountain giants. It changes nothing mechanically, but makes for fun fiction.

    So I lean toward option 1 often, but that depends on my player too. And sometimes you need to involve other people in a fight.

    But that’s why I cursed Tim Franzke for beating me to it! 😉

    Also Tim Franzke , curse you with typos. All posts will contain at least one typo. This can be undone by spell checking (lol) or waiting for the next full moon. 😉

  8. Try to remember that generally you want to treat a group of creatures as a single entity with lots of health. In this case all the ghouls in that horde become normal again after an aggressive action is taken.

    The key point is that as long as the cleric continues to pray and brandish his holy symbol then the undead stay at bay. The daze is temporary as it says, it basically give the team a chance to have a free success on hack & Slash.

    Hope that helps.

  10. It says that in the book “The principle of think dangerous sums up that philosophy—think of every monster like an arrow fired at the characters. The monsters are ammunition of the danger you’re presenting. Some may be smarter, faster, or more dangerous than others but until a monster warrants a name, a personality, or some other special consideration, it’s an arrow. Take aim and shoot. Don’t worry if you miss.”

    Hoards of monster are just ammunition of Danger! Which is why you treat them as a single entity, they all share the same health. A dead monster is just an expended use.

  11. Tim Franzke, the move doesn’t say that the daze is temporary. It can be indefinite as long as the Cleric maintains the spell and no aggression occurs.

  12. This is a weird reading of the rules. I’d like to counter with: 

    Give every monster life

    Monsters are fantastic creatures with their own motivations (simple or complex). Give each monster details that bring it to life: smells, sights, sounds. Give each one enough to make it real, but don’t cry when it gets beat up or overthrown. That’s what player characters do!

    Every monster is it’s own thing. It’s own moves, its own hitpoints etc. You don’t just add them up to 34 HP and run then like that. This is nowhere in the rules.

    One could run the game like that but it suffers i think from this treatment. 

  13. I am only referring to the “Hoard” of Ghouls. Not all monsters. I don’t think each ghoul is special, they are just ammunition of danger to throw at the party! If a Necromancer all of a sudden shows up, that different.

  14. Patrick Smith 

    “When you hold your holy symbol aloft and call on your deity for protection, roll+Wis. ✴On a 7+, so long as you continue to pray and brandish your holy symbol, no undead may come within reach of you. ✴On a 10+, you also momentarily daze intelligent undead and cause mindless undead to flee. Aggression breaks the effects and they are able to act as normal. Intelligent undead may still find ways to harry you from afar. They’re clever like that.”

    A few things. The turn effect (the 7+ effect) is still active. The daze however is broken (it’s only momentarily) on that monster. 

    No effect on the other undead from the wizard blast, they are still dazed (for a moment anyway). However other moves and stuff happening can change that. 

  16. http://codex.dungeon-world.com/monster/38017 

    The Ghoul has the Group tag. 

    Group tag: Group: Usually seen in small numbers, 3–6 or so. 

    So there shouldn’t really be a “hoard” of ghouls anyway. A horde of ghouls would also be it’s own monster probably

    (but i don’t like doing “swarm-monster” in dungeon world. Every monster is it’s own problem. That’s why a Horde of Zombies is such a problem. There are more then 10 and each one has 11 hitpoints. Each one of them can hurt and bite you)

  18. Tim Franzke Well the group is the immediate threat, but I would let the players be capable of killing off the whole group from the cleric’s daze, it temporary, but let the players characters act as if they are capable of killing them off quickly.

    Someone is probably going to roll something that lets me add more, maybe a necromancer comes and it can raise them back up. Crap now what? The group/hoard is my AMMO to make them role for moves. Hence the single entity idea. Let them be bad ass, because someone going to miss at some point 🙂 Now if the group are really tough enemies, than I would probably split the group of monsters up. 

  20. I don’t want to have to track each individual monster HP in that group, because I have near infinite set of more things to throw at the party. There is no need to be super descriptive with a group of monsters, it’s just a group that keeps the whole party in danger. I want them to roll for something, that way I can make a move and present more danger. 

    If they want to try and tangle with 2 at once in 1 move, let them. They roll and usually I get to make a soft/hard move. I don’t nor need to treat a group as each being unique and pretty, they a mindless mob of undead after all.

  22. The game doesn’t actually do “Group Enemies” like the guide describes; the guide even says that! I’ve done it too, though. But to me, it seems fine if it’s bunch of things that are killed in one hit, and doesn’t seem right for things that each have lots of hit points.

  23. I can argue grouping their attacks, as I can cite a page that they show that option. But I’m using Aid to resolve multiple attacks for the sake of not having the damage be xd6. It’s 1d6+3 or however many are attacking. Bandits for example, if five corner and attack, I can pretty much decide that one is really attacking and the other three are just increasing the damage by aiding. Max damage is 9, not 24

  26. Yeah. You roll the highest dice of group and add +1 damage for each helper. So 1d10+3. That is damage though.

    I am talking more about them taking hits. As said Ghoul are a group monster. When you have 6 ghouls you can keep track of that. They have what, 10hp right? When 2 are engaging the fighter he has to know if he can kill the first one in one strike. This thing will still attack when it has only 3hp left. The fighter still has to engage 2 enemies at once.

    That’s why it is important for me to keep track of HP individually. It lets you get more in the details in an action scene.

  28. My point was I can see grouping the attack, but not the HP.

    And since the attack landing depends on the fiction, and the lack of GM needing to roll, usually if the player is being attacked, I consider the attack an auto-success and just let the player roll the damage.

  30. It’s ok. It happens. I think I just got grouped together with some of the others… and when you attacked with a verbal thrust, I just proved you can dodge in a group. 😉

  32. I think that I’m just arguing semantics at this point. Lol Even assuming I meant mooks and not gangs, I would still keep track of hp individually. I was thinking of mooks like in 13th Age, where, for each x damage you do, one dies. This way, it’s more to do with how many can be reasonably attacked in one move than anything else. I understand what you’re saying now though, and I agree.

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