New Ranger Move Idea
Favourite Enemy (this is maybe better then familiar prey?)
Choose 1 type of creature. They are now considered your Favourite Enemy.
When you take a moment to study your favourite enemy in the flesh, ask the GM one of these questions, they will answer them truthfully
– Where is this things weak spot?
– How will this thing go about hunting me?
– For what special trick should i be on the lookout for?
And then you can have other moves that interact with the favourite enemy tag. Like CCs about hunting special kinds of prey that give you extra moves to deal with them.
For a Dragon Hunter could automatically know when a Dragon will use it’s mighty breath weapon and has a chance to react to that.
What do you think?
Not sure, but this makes not a lot of sense to me. So.. the rager chooses the move without having seen this enemy before? Because if it is is favorite enemy, he should have known all the questions?
No. The Ranger knows this, but not the player. This is a way to bring character and player knowledge together. (in my mind)
So you want to make a move to give the player information the character knows? Oo
That is what Spout Lore does yes.
The favoured enemy rules in pathfinder etc always had a weird disconnect from fiction for me. My approach to the concept for a ranger:
Expert Hunter
There is a particular type of creature you are a expert of hunting. When you take this move, choose a species or social group. (Eg bandits, bears, goblins, the hill Orc tribe, giants, vampires, etc) describe what makes you an expert at hunting them; a vendetta, years of training, a career hunting them, etc.
“I am an expert in hunting __________, because __________.”
Master Hunter
When you *discern realities about something you are an expert at hunting, in addition to any other questions you ask, you may ask “what weakness do they have that I can exploit?”
Much better, you could even add additional questions and you use a mechanic allready in place.
I’ve no problem with the move giving players character info, and the move itself is fine (it’s favoured, not favourite, if we’re being sticklers for D&D).
The main problem I have with the favoured enemy mechanic is that it encourages the player to pick things like dragons or illithids or beholders, i.e. enemies where the weak spot isn’t 100% obvious, rather than picking something like orcs or kobolds that have an obvious weak spot.
I think an easy way to fix this would be to offer a specific list of “enemy types” that the player picks from, like the Druid gets a list of Lands – this means the move will be useful against broad categories of enemies rather than a single enemy type.
e.g.:
“Monstrous humanoids”
“Aberrations”
“Dragons and their servants”
“Wizards and their creations”
“The undead”
etc.
that’s a good idea in general yes.
Favored Enemy always misses the point, for me. Like, sure, you get +4 damage against them, but why exactly? What the hell makes you so good at murder when it comes to this particular species. That’s the shit I was always weirded out by, in a good way, that I never felt was addressed.
Adam Koebel: yeah, that’s one of the reasons it made no sense in D&D – but Tim’s move actually does a good job of addressing that, since it’s giving you ways to be good at killing the monster instead of just more damage.
This was kind of what i wanted to address. It’s not about extra damage, it’s about getting them where it hurts and finding a way were you don’t get hurt by them. (see also my giant killer cc)
I just always imagine a scene where a Ranger catches up to his Dark Elf quarry and just murders them to death with this gleam of pleasure in his eyes and the rest of the party is like “WHAT THE HELL, MAN”
It’s great, full of interesting stuff, but I feel like the original material doesn’t address that.
It falls to us, then!