As I mentioned in the recent discussion on the fighter, I have been working on my own DW hacking of all the core…

As I mentioned in the recent discussion on the fighter, I have been working on my own DW hacking of all the core…

As I mentioned in the recent discussion on the fighter, I have been working on my own DW hacking of all the core classes plus several new classes. 

I have made a lot of progress, and wanted to share The Slayer, based off of +andrey barsky’s Witcher based class. I worked on this with my friend David in real life, and we are pretty happy with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nurw7zdojtdzi9t/SlayerHack.pdf

Any feedback is appreciated. 

All of my hacks have switched to simplifying the stats down to just the modifiers and not using the attributes themselves. I know that Adam and Sage mainly left them in for nostalgia and hackability. But at least for playing Dungeon World itself, removing the attributes is I think almost strictly an improvement. 

I thought I would go into a little bit of why I made those decisions. 

It makes character creation that much simpler and easier to explain for new roleplayers, and really makes the whole system more elegant. Character creation was actually sped up a noticeable amount in three different groups, and players has less analysis paralysis in which +1 stat should get the 15 and which the 13.

 I also prefer the elegance of removing  numbers that only come up occasionally, but are ignored for everything else. The final benefit is that people do not need to reference a chart in the book to determine when stats increase. 

Since I removed the attributes down to just the modifiers it necessitated a change in how HP was calculated. There were two ways to go about it, one was just making HP a static part of the character similar to the damage dice (this is the route I took). The second option was to somehow use the modifier for constitution in a new formula for calculating HP.  

I went with the static HP values, and I actually think it is not a sacrifice of switching to modifier only, but actually a huge improvement. 

HP as an inherent part of the class has the following advantages:

1. Character creation is again, simpler and faster. HP was almost always something I had to explain or confirm for players. 

2. It makes class strengths more obvious and upfront. Now when a player compares the paladin and the cleric, they will see right away that a Paladin has more HP than a cleric. 

3. It makes stat selection simpler and less gamey. In the old system, if you had two +1s or +0s to assign, they were not equal. You would be better off putting the 12 (not the 9) into Con to get that three higher HP, even though the modifier was the same. 

Anyway those are my thoughts, again any feedback is appreciated. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nurw7zdojtdzi9t/SlayerHack.pdf

20 thoughts on “As I mentioned in the recent discussion on the fighter, I have been working on my own DW hacking of all the core…”

  3. Looks great! I too knocked it down to just the modifiers in play instead of the 11 here and 15 there. Saves time, and at the end of the day, makes a lot more sense.

    I really dug the whole concept of it, it sets a very cool tone. Have you done any other classes or CCs?

  4. Question though. What are your thoughts/how would you handle the ability increase at level up? I really like where you are going with this and that’s the one place I see as a challenge to overcome.

  5. Joe Stroup Either you increase a stat every even level (2, 4, 6, 8) or on 3, 6, 9. I run the evens in my games. My players really like it. (I have edited the basic and special moves sheet to reflect this)

    Sorcerer Blob 

    I have already hacked all of the core classes as well. Currently working on six others (Blood Mage, Martial Artist, Psion, Warlock, Corrupted, Illusionist). 

  10. interesting! “always prepared” is probably more DW-friendly as a mechanic than my original “monster hunter” move, I guess I was trying to evoke that Witcher/Helsing/Buffy-style preparation montage without really thinking if there was a better way in-game. I really like “tell me what you fear”, too, that’s a great starting move. Will take some ideas for my own revisions of the original Slayer

  11. Andrey Barsky Yeah, in practice we found that the original Monster Hunter was very evocative. But if you botched the roll, the class just felt gimped. Also it made it less one shot friendly. 

  12. good point. I’ll probably keep the monster preparation move but make it an automatic 3 readiness (because you’re prepared, dammit), with “always prepared” as an advance that lets you roll for it on the spot. 

    did you find Tools of the Trade to work well? in my own playtests it’s always seemed like a clumsy move, so I’ve been rolling it into a Gear option (“you have an arsenal, which contains monster hunting weapons. describe a few, and what they’re meant for”) and replacing the starting move with Exorcist, which seems to be ok. 

    I like Quick Learner, maybe even more than I like the original Know Your Enemy, but you obviously can’t have both, so I’m going to experiment and see what seems to feel better. 

    also – mind if I use your little sword icon for the original class? it’s neat!

  13. Tools of the Trade is interesting actually. It was the move that kinda made me fall in love with the class idea in the first place. But, it is somewhat clumsy. 

    While it has been used to good effect, it does require some ingenuity on the player’s part, and sometimes just is not very useful. The Well Organized move I added does help alleviate that by always rewarding the player at least with that +1. I want to test it more before making a determination on it though. 

    Feel free to use the icon, glad you like! I am using icons like that for all of the class hacks I am working on. (You can see the fighter icon in the earlier fighter discussion)

  16. I didn’t know how awesome this could be until I played a game of Sixth World. It does the same thing, only goes one step further and only has 5 abilities (which I think actually make more sense to new players). Streamlining the older playbooks is a good idea and something I’d like to try and tackle at some point. I also like the idea of simplifying abilities down to Awareness, Combat, Stamina, Craft, and Presence like in Sixth World.

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