Still working on the Pit Fighter. It was suggested that he should be more interactive with his team, so this is what I came up with (actually it was my daughter’s initial idea, and I’m also stealing from other great stuff I saw here).
Bonds
________ Knows my dirty little secret.
Advanced moves
Anger Issues (Wis)
Once per day, when someone mentions your dirty little secret, roll+Wis
On 10+: You take +1d10 damage forward to your next Hack and Slash against an enemy.
On 7-9: You also do 1d4 collateral damage to yourself or one of your friends.
It’s entirely possible for the Pit Fighter to not have taken that bond, in which case the move won’t work. You can easily remedy this by adding “fill in bond X if it isn’t filled in already.”
“Once per day” isn’t a thing in Dungeon World; the limitation doesn’t work in the fiction and doesn’t make sense. +1d10 damage is basically enough to one-shot pretty much anything, which is also bad. I’m also not sure rolling for this is a good idea since this will probably be triggered during combat.
This would work much better as straight up a +1d4 damage move that’s triggered by someone mentioning your dirty little secret, with no roll involved, but it’s going to feel completely out of place unless the dirty little secret is a core part of the playbook (i.e. there is literally a starting move about having a dirty little secret, don’t leave it as something only mentioned in a bond).
Hm.. not sure about this on e.. if someone mentiones it once a day, how much of a secret can it be? Perhaps think about an anger trigger mechanic?
You can use it this way instead.
___ Knows my Dirty little Secret! (Take -1 forward against any opponent engaged with bond mate, gain +1 forward instead once you resolve this bond)
Edit: Hmm want to add a note, but I would say they can only use this bond once. Otherwise it to powerfull.
I don’t think tying additional mechanics to bonds as part of the bond is a good idea. They already do their own thing.
Thanks for the input, guys. It is HIGHLY appreciated!
The initial idea was:
-A berserk move
-Awesome in power – therefore nerfed regarding availability and risk to balance it out.
-A fictional trigger that fits in with the character (anabolic steroid junkie?)
My thoughts were as follows
1) Any move that could kill a thing one-shot is awesome, but only if it is very rare. Since sessions often only cover one in-game day, it would rarely happen more than once or maybe twice a session. Such a power should also come with some risk. (Thus the collateral damage) Be it as it may, the Fighter, who competes in the same market niche, has “bloodthirsty” that gives an automatic +1d8 damage. So this move is only potentially overpowered if it combines with other moves that gives the player buffs (and are also rare. )
2) I never really thought about the validity of ‘once a day” in DW. It is definitely rife in other games, and can easily be justified in the fiction.
3) It goes without saying the the player has to take both the bond and the move for it to work. What I thought would be cool with this mechanic was that one player gives another player the right to trigger his berserk move – which could make for interesting and fun(ny) situations in the fiction. (And nobody except the bonded character needs to know WHAT the secret is!)
That said, the Pit Fighter is being designed to be a tongue in the cheek character, definitely not to be taken seriously, like the pro wrestling it is based on!
How do you justify only being made angry by someone revealing your secret once a day?
Not revealing it, mentioning it. It’s an “open secret” anyway. And it only works once a day… Because it takes so much mental energy to go berserk, he’s all spent after the first episode! Or something like that.
Jack: “Jim, you wear ladies’ panties.”
Jim: “Hold me back, or i’ll kill him!”
James: “You suck your thumb at night.”
George” AAARG ILL KILL YOU!”
John: “You peed your pants in 5th grade!”
James: Goes berserk
Pete: “Steve, think of your ex wife.”
Steve: “KILL KILL KILL!”
Anyways, that was the idea. seems it may not fly 🙂
Still tinkering!
Well no, “or something like that” doesn’t really work. This is the thing: the fiction comes first. If you can’t justify it in a way that makes sense (if he’s exhausted, why can he do everything else perfectly fine?), it doesn’t work.
In this case, the once a day limit doesn’t work in terms of the fiction (you can have some stuff that’s once a day, but it’s usually magic stuff that works from dawn to dusk or whatever), and with the +1d10 damage it’s effectively a move that says “once a day, kill one NPC.”
Which would actually be a lot more interesting.
When you heedlessly pursue the demise of your enemy at the expense of your own saftey, you may deal as much damage as you choose, up to a maximum of your damage die +D6 against them, but you take the same amount of damage yourself.
Adrian Thoen . I like that.
Just to put the perceived power of a move like this in perpective: The Fighter has a base 1d10 damage plus +1d8 for Bloodthirsty + 1d8 for Taste of Blood . Thats standard 1d10 +2d8 damage on most attacks after the 1st one when Taste kicks in!
The Fighter’s niche is supposed to be dealing damage, though (also, Taste of Blood usually won’t kick in because 1d10+1d8+1d10 is more than enough to kill most things, and is consequently a bad move). There shouldn’t be any other class that equals or surpasses him at it!
There’s a lot of niche overlap between this class and the basic fighter. What role does this class fill within the party?
He’s a tank but not as strong as the fighter. I wrote him mostly for the flavor of WWE wrestling…
More generally: if you remember our conversation about how to write moves, you’ve gone too far on the power/rarity axis and made something that both breaks the maths (but in a way that is entirely uninteresting fiction-wise) and doesn’t trigger often enough to justify wasting an advance on.
Power-wise, it would be a lot more interesting as a move if it outright killed an NPC like the AW Touchstone’s Indomitable move is capable of doing, which would totally justify a rare trigger. However, +d10 on your next H&S is fictionally boring and also doesn’t make much sense: why only on H&S, why only against an enemy, why only damage rather than any other effects of being angry?
Trigger-wise, as mentioned before, it doesn’t make sense for the class concept – once a day is not a fictionally logical restriction in this case, and without a magical angle to the class, “it recharges at dawn” doesn’t work either. It would work better tied to a hold system, but that only makes sense mechanically if this dirty secret is a core mechanic, which it isn’t.
All of these together mean this is not a very good move, especially for the Pit Fighter.
(You should totally just call the class “the Wrestler” by the way, it’s way more memorable.)
I’m convinced…
OK, here is the reworked move
— Fixed (tried to anyway 😉 ) the fictional problems.
— Changed it to a hold system as somebody suggested, thereby removing an unnecessary roll.
— It is still only once a day.
— Made it wider than just Hack and Slash, extended it to intimidate and breaking stuff. (Suggestions for other effects of rage are welcome!)
–Lastly, it is now MORE powerful, since this guy is supposed to be a tank and I realised he is way, WAY squishier than the Fighter.
I like the name Pit Fighter because the Combo moves were inspired by the Street Fighter video game genre, and I was also thinking of van Damme’s Kickboxer: He could totally be played as a kickboxer in the fiction. And he is not REALLY a wrestler even if he is inspired by them, since his fighting is lethal.
I’m prepared to tinker with this for a bit more before I abandon the idea. 🙂
*Anger Issues*
When someone taunts you with your dirty little secret, hold three.
Spend your hold to:
–When you roll Hack and Slash: On 10+, do +1d10 damage, but on 7-9 also do + 1d4 damage to yourself or an ally.
–When you roll Hack and Slash: Trigger a combo or signature move on 7+ instead of 12+
–Take +1 when you do the Intimidating Stunning blow of Sheer Awesomeness
–Do an unprecedented feat of strength, like breaking a door or lifting a gate.
Your fit of rage lasts only a few minutes or so, then you lose your hold. It is cathartic, so you are immune to a repeat taunt for the rest of the day.