2 Questions for fellow GMs:
1) How can I make ranged combat more interesting for my players? If they stock up on ammo, then they are not threatened very often, and the consequences are already known, hell, THEY get to pick the a list!
2) How can I make Intelligence and Wisdom more useful? For almost all my players, that is their dump stat. What use do they have in-game? Especially since I don’t DM dungeon crawls, and “check for traps” isn’t a thing.
“Check for traps” isn’t a thing.
Why not? “If nothing has established that the location is safe, traps are always an option.” They’re not just for dungeons.
But you can throw all kinds of stuff at the players that demands their wit and wisdom: Invincible monsters that have a specific weakness—Discern Realities to find it, Spout Lore to identify the ancient weapon that can kill it, etc. Also, the Perilous Journey and Take Watch moves both rely on Wisdom and both deal with getting the jump on enemies (or not). Take a cue and ambush the dungeoneers without mercy.
Good questions!
1) that’s a little tough, because your players are obviously trying to make the situation favor them with the ammo stocking. Make sure your enforcing carrying capacity to limit just how much there packing. The way I would liven up their range combat is give them enemies that are trying to get in Melee with them that have ranged attacks (knife throwing assassins or orcs with throwing hammers). That way every time they role a 6- they have something coming at their face, either a monster or some attack
2) the best way to make those stats relevant is to use them! If the players are asking a question about a place or surroundings, make them role for it instead of handing the information over. Also, Discern Realities works on NPCs and other characters as well, make sure to remind them of that every time they are trying to get information out of a person. It will take a little coaching, but eventually they will get it.
I feel like I need more information before I can provide answers, David Schirduan.
1) Why do you feel that ranged combat is currently not interesting? Just because your players choose to mark off ammo when they get a 7-9 on their Volley roll doesn’t mean that interesting/dangerous things aren’t currently happening around them that will require their immediate attention.
2) I don’t understand. Are your players are not using Spout Lore and Discern Realities? If not, why not? Are you, as a GM, giving them the information that these moves are supposed to give them? If so, stop. That will get them to start using the moves and the associated stats.
Yeah, what John Allder Stephens said!
Also, Defy Danger on WIS would be a good substitute for the traditional D&D roll of 1 in 6 for spotting a trap before you set it off.
Also, also, remember your Advanced Delving chapter (in Apocalypse World we call it Advanced Fuckery). If the players are always using ranged attacks to take everything down remember that you can make custom moves for special monsters. Let’s say there’s an evil illusionist who they’re firing missiles at. Just make his own move, MIRROR IMAGES: When you Hack & Slash or Volley Zephyr, you roll +INT instead of +STR or +DEX.
SURROUNDED BY WIND: When you Volley at the air elemental and hit 7-9, the GM chooses the result.
Also, also, also, are they killing everything? You can spice things up by throwing in NPCs who just don’t like them for whatever reason and are willing to make their live hell in town. Are your players just going to Volley the local sheepherder’s mother when she’s badmouthing them to the mayor and the constable? They should have realized how influential she was before they accepted her grandson’s help in that dungeon last week where the knife-throwing orcs skewered him.
I love WIS. Patrick Henry Downs defy danger to spot and react to traps or to defend your mind against monstrous assault or to act in spite of fear. Plus, of course, discern realities to understand how things really work.
That said, discern realities does sometimes get lost. It sort of sounds like it should be a wacky, mystical move — especially if in the back of your mind you associate it with AW Open Your Mind. Extending the “never say the name of your move” advice from the GM to the players, discern is probably best when the character is described as trying to find out some information and the GM responds by calling for a roll.
David Schirduan You do realize that the carrying capacity for PC’s is modified by the strength modifier, not the value, right? Most people who complain about stockpiling ammo seems to miss this.
For the latter question, I have never had this problem with any players. When the ask a question about a person or situation, just tell them that it isn’t immediately obvious, but they can find out if they poke around for a while (Discern Realities). Alternatively, if it is something the character might know, have them Spout Lore.
Don’t give info away for free. Always put a price tag on it. Otherwise you are not “being a fan” of the characters with high values in these stats.
As for defying danger using Wisdom as a “perception” like stat, that is in a way a hack, as the defy danger move only states that it is used when defying danger using “mental fortitude”. It is not “wrong” to do it, it is just not specifically stated that perception is tied to wisdom. Just a note.
Kasper Brohus Allerslev it’s easy enough to switch that to Defy Danger with INT, using “quick thinking” probably makes more sense anyway, but I said WIS without looking at the move based on my years and years of playing AD&D 2e.
Patrick Henry Downs Yeah, I figured it was a D&D habit 🙂 Dungeon World doesn’t actually have an explanation for what the stats “mean”. The stats only mean that you are somehow better at utilizing the moves that uses them.
The moves paint a pretty clear picture though 😉
How about enemies not hurtable by arrows, like stone golems or dwarfs with giant shields?
Re DD + Wish for traps. If they searched for a trap, it would be DR using Wis, so I’m fine with DD with Wis to be spotting something that just doesn’t look right. The difference is that because you didn’t describe searching, you get at most 1 question, and there is partial harm (hard bargain, etc.) On 7-9
Looking for traps, if not the thief move, is Discern Realities.
Tim Franzke Yes, that’s what I said. Getting a “something’s wrong” intuition just in time to evade the trap (or reduce its effects) is very like searching for the trap. Sufficiently similar to seem like a good justification for defy danger using Wis. That said, to each his own.
Okay, you now have this intuition. But that is a GM making a Soft Move at you “show signs of an approaching threat”. The trap is triggered, what do you do with that information.
That is much more interesting then checking when you enter a room if you have a sudden feeling. Because just being in the presence of a trap is not ” act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity”
Because the threat is not imminent and you haven’t suffered a calamity yet. You can defy danger when you trigger the trap to jump out of the way (statting that you had a bad feeling the whole time)
Tim Franzke As a player I think the questions under Discern Realities are too narrow for a wide array of information, or I never get anything useful out of it. As a GM I follow the fiction and the narrative tells my players give me, which leads me to more often using variations of Defy Danger to reveal things when PCs are in peril because players tend to look at those questions and don’t translate them into “this is my trap-detecting, engineering-theorizing, spotting-an-ambush move” and sometimes I’d rather just tell them what’s about to happen rather than wait for them to pick that question.
Sure. You are making a soft move then. They have to react now instead of being able to plan it out.
You should debate what’s more interesting with some of my gaming group. They would soundly disagree with you.
That’s not how we’ve played it, but I think that’s an interesting misinterpretation of what I said.
Tim Franzke you are perhaps providing a meta argument for needing to be very explicit. Maybe not an argument that saying the names of the moves help though. :-).
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone yet mention specifically that one of the GM Moves is “Show a Downside to their Class, Race or Equipment”. This could be incredibly useful when it comes to players who start to get lazy when they feel like they’ve found a “winning” tactic like just attacking from a distance. Remember, the GM has powers which extend beyond those which might seem obvious related to the current monster threat.
A downside to their equipment when it comes to ranged weapons could be that they require ammunition. As the GM, you’re able to take their ammo in situations other than just on their 7-9 rolls. As a matter of fact, on a miss, you can choose to do all kinds of things (if you can find a way to properly justify it with the fiction created by your narrative) that would take all of their ammo.
You can also set up situations where they are easily surprised by an attack from a direction which they were not expecting. For example, if your archers are going out of their way to climb up into a tree or a hidden niche in a wall somewhere, hit them with creatures and/or weapons which can take out trees and walls.
I’d like to point out that “I don’t DM dungeon crawls” to me sounds as boring as “I only DM dungeon crawls”. Some of the issues you might be encountering with finding ways to bring certain stats, etc. into play might be based on self-imposed limitations you’re placing on your game.
I’m confused by a lot of the comments here. The character moves are triggered by the players having their characters do stuff. There are no D&D-style ‘perception checks’.
Re your questions:
1) Sometimes the characters are being smart and attacking an enemy from a distance, successfully avoiding counter attacks. That’s okay; let that happen sometimes. But make sure your monsters are reacting appropriately. It’s fair to have a monster fall back, hide behind cover and wait, grab their own ranged weapons, or blitz the archers with multiple attackers. If the monsters act strategically, it will become very interesting.
2) If characters keep running into situations without looking around first (Discern) or thinking about what they’ve learned (Spout), stuff should get really bad for them. After they trigger a few traps, get ambushed, fight an overwhelming enemy, etc, they will learn to approach situations more carefully (just like the real world right?). Frex, if they go into a strange new town and don’t (a) know who’s really in charge, (b) what they should be on the lookout for, (c) what’s not what it appears to be, then they’ll get into trouble fast, right?
Also, monsters can make ranged attacks as well… And use cover and concealment to their advantage.
Ranged weapons aren’t a “win button”.
well 1 bundle of arrows (ammo x) has a weight of 1. you can have multiple bundles of arrows as long as it doesn’t go over your carry limit.
You could rule that every additional bundle you have on you has 1 ammo less as its maximum but that is kind of weird.
but ammo is abstract right? I wouldn’t be to stinchy there. Give them tons of loot they then can’t carry.
Tim Deschene Note the Ranger playbook. You can take two bundles (6 ammo) as a starting character.
I don’t think you should impose ammo caps. If someone wants to be “that dude who carries around three quivers” then let them.
That said, I’d ask some hard questions if a character was rolling around with 12 bundles of arrows!
that might be a golden opportunity.
I’d start by reminding the player that while he’s playing DW to the letter, he’s not playing to the spirit of the game. (You may tell him frankly that you expect him to take more risks or you’ll consider shifting the Spotlight to PCs who are more interesting in combat, if you think a threat will help). In the worst case, you may actually have to change the rules to find an acceptable solution. Offer him several choices of how to deal with the situation:
1) He has to alternate between ammo and other choices every time he rolls 7-9 on Volley.
2) Whenever he picks the ammo choice, he loses a random (d3) amount of ammo.
3) Everytime he picks the ammo choice, the ammo loss increases (first 1, second 2, third 3, etc) and is only reset by picking another option.
4) He can only pick ammo on a 8. On a 7 or 9, he has to pick another option.
How is that behaviour not with the spirit of the game?
Because with unlimited ammo and free choice to pick ammo reduction, a 7-9 would preserve the Status Quo, which is explicitly what moves should not result in.
But you can’t get unlimited ammo, can you?
Respectfully, Lars Kobbe , I disagree. Like Tim Franzke said: it’s not necessarily against the spirit of the game.
I’m fairly certain that you’re far better off using the GM’s moves to counter a player’s boring/repetitive/whatever behavior rather than trying to switch up the rules of the game. The RAW give you a lot to work with.
Just make sure that whatever approach you take, you make it fun for everyone at the table. Depending on your player(s), a GM ratcheting it up a notch might feel like GM abuse. Make sure that you continue to be fans of the characters, and let the players know as well:
“That sneaky goblin jumps onto your back, rips your arrows from their quivver(s?!), and throws them into the fire! It seems like [character name] is certainly in a bad spot, but I know there’s more to him than flinging arrows. Let’s find out what that is! What do you do?”
Whoa! I came back from work and was greeted with a maelstrom of +2 to conflict!
Wow, so much good stuff, let me try to reply to as many as I can. If I ask a follow-up question, it’s not because your answer was inadequate, only that I am hungry for more!
John Allder Stephens You are right, I can bring impending danger upon that at any time, but I don’t like how arbitrary “discern realities” seems to be. I don’t want them to have to use it in EVERY room or set-piece that they walk into. Maybe it would be better to give clues instead of punishing them for not DR. like “All of a sudden, you feel the wind pickup, and can feel someone watching” give them a spider sense of some kind.
Also, I really like the monster-weakness idea. I’ll have to try it.
Charles Persall Also true, I’m used to more formal systems with turn order and grid-based combat. It’s hard for me to break the idea that the monsters operate intelligently, and have as much freedom as the players.
As for information, isn’t it the GM’s job to tell the players what they see? What is the line between “you see a dark cavern lit only by the essence of your deepest fears” and “There is a 20×17 room with 3 monsters in the top, 4 traps, 2 hidden treaures, and one major quest item that needs a key”
Christopher Stone-Bush Similar to the above answer, I have a hard time knowing what the line is between too little and too much information.
As for the consequences EVEN when marking ammo. My girlfriend has been co-GMing with me the past few games, and has commented that I “am too nice, and the player’s aren’t in danger very often”. I don’t want to kill my players, but I also want to give them a challenge. Since DW doesn’t have any “encounter balance” I tend to err on the side of safety rather than presenting them with a monster that is too powerful. Any ideas on getting over this mindset? “Yes, you did spend ammo, but you also got stabbed when the goblin blocked both arrows and beheaded you”
Patrick Henry Downs Thanks Patrick! I will do more custom moves for monsters in an attempt to counter my player’s gaming. Most of my players admit they are “min-maxers” and are constantly trying to game the system. Two can play at that game, I guess.
Kasper Brohus Allerslev It’s true that I want to be a fan of the players, and ultimately I am catering to their bash and slash gametype. I guess I just hate to see resources go to waste. So far, these comments have given me some interesting ideas on making Wis and Int more useful.
I’m still tempted to just combine the two, since their existence seems more from DnD than necessity. Ideally, I would have only 3 stats: Strength, Speed, and Smarts.
Al Gordon As for the “Dungeon Crawl” comment, what I mean is that I don’t really enjoy planning out dungeons. I’m much better thinking on my feet than prepping in advance, which is why I use DW in the first place. And it’s hard to come up with traps, loot, rooms, puzzles, and bosses on the fly. If my players are just walking through the forest, though, I can do lots of things with that. Any ideas on how to change that mindset? Some of my players would enjoy a more typical dungeon crawl.
Tim Franzke Lars Kobbe Tim Deschene Ben Kaser I have thought about limiting ammo, but I don’t want to punish my players for using good strategy, or stocking up beforehand.
Wow! This is some fantastic stuff. I really appreciate all of your answers and input. Any good DW plays I could watch? I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of opportunities as a GM.
Since the iron is hot, I’ll ask another question that has been haunting me.
How do I make rations relevant? Why do the players need to make camp if they have a healer? Can’t the PC’s just use some healing moves to heal everyone up? like the Cleric’s healing moves?
How are you using the monster group size tags? Because if there is a Hoarde of goblins then there are tons of them. Think the dungeon in the hobbit. A neverending stream of those. You might shoot 1-12 of them but there are always more.
Don’t think in encounter sized monster groups. Think mean and follow the tags.
Also hit them hard, they can take it. If no one is groaning when they roll a 6- something is maybe going a bit wrong.
Rations aren’t important if it doesn’t come naturally from your game. If there are a lot of towns and merchants or lush forests, the characters (who can hunt and aren’t broke) can get food pretty easily. Rations are very important in deserts and dungeons. But don’t forget those perilous journey moves. And I hear rats like to eat rations on a miss result.
Why make camp? Sleepy characters. It’ll be a golden opportunity if they don’t get some shut eye.
My players complain about their lack of wisdom every time they make a perilous journey.
And they have to make camp. They have to sleep, they have to eat. If they don’t eat, they just starve to death, and you can’t heal that.
Besides, clerics don’t have healing moves. They have healing spells, and all spellcasting is dangerous.
Al Gordon I agree that the GM moves are great to counter such behavior. However, in this particular case, there’s no GM move. On a 7-9, the player chooses an option, not the GM. Your example demonstrates a GM move on a 6-. And please take into account that “using up their resources” as a GM would quickly become repetitive and boring as well, given that the player clearly follows a strategy of hoarding ammo. So, on a 7-9 there’s really nothing a GM can do about it. And while the GM can always wait for the 6- to make his GM move, it doesn’t change the fact that the player has a 7+ chance of shooting arrows at (nearly) no cost/risk. And again, my worry is less about the impact on statistics but on the impact on how this strategy influences the fiction. How often can you give the character Spotlight and then narrate: “Ok, you’ve run through another batch of arrows without any interesting consequences…” without everyone becoming tired of ranged combat?
Hunting in the Dungeon World? Good luck running into Razorboars, Direwolfs, Ankhegs and Baloths…
Hi, David Schirduan ! I’m glad to be part of this highly-obliging group, giving you plenty to read and think about today. I’m learning plenty as well.
You said: I don’t want to kill my players, but I also want to give them a challenge.
I have this same problem, so the advice I’m going to give you is also self-directed. It’s the same thing that authors are told by their editors/publishers/whatever: Kill your darlings. Or, in our case, our players’ characters (whom, by the way, we are fans of).
For perhaps the first few sessions, there will be a feeling of danger that your players get, especially if they manage to take a few HP of damage, and even a debility. I got to play the Last Breath move in the first game of DW I ever played, and it… was… awesome!
That feeling of danger goes away if the players start to sense weakness or hesitancy on your part, and ultimately, they will start to lose interest unless they feel that there are some real stakes involved.
So, don’t be afraid to kill a character every so often. Maybe that leads to a plan to resurrect him, or opens the opportunity for a player to try out a new class.
Regarding “boring dungeon crawls”: I did not mean to make it sound like I thought you were running a boring game, which is how that may have sounded. My best advice, based on your follow-up, is straight from the book: Draw maps, leave blanks. The map is there for both you and your players to have a sense of “place” or “location” within a dungeon environment, and the blanks are there for you (and them) to get all kinds of on-the-fly with. Sure, you might decide to make some areas/rooms of the map be or have specific challenges (traps, puzzles, monsters), and/or leave others completely open.
One DW GM trick is to ask a question at the beginning of a session, or perhaps just before the party enters the dungeon, such as “[character name]: As you peer into the darkness, you wonder whether or not you can [survive this, protect your companions, etc.]. What is it beyond the shadows that makes you think this way?” And at some point in the dungeon, make that fear come true.
not to mention animals whoes meat is poisonous like the hideous toxibunny.
How do I make rations relevant?
Because you have to eat. It’s not about the rules, it’s about the story. Unless, of course, you’re a Paladin, who iirc, has some kind of “I don’t need to eat or drink” move.
Why do the players need to make camp if they have a healer?
Because they need to rest. Characters in DW should feel more “alive” to their players than they perhaps do in other games, where they simply feel like stats on a character sheet. Stats don’t need to rest; characters do.
Pro tip: If they have a healer… knock him out, have him taken hostage, or any other number of things that removes him as a crutch to the party.
Can’t the PC’s just use some healing moves to heal everyone up? Like the Cleric’s healing moves?
More of what I just said above. 🙂
You still have to sleep. And sleeping gets harder when the dwarfes belly is rumbling.
and if they stop down to heal and heal and heal, they are probarbly actually making camp. See the trigger:
“When you settle in to rest”
The toxibunny is a delicacy where I come from.
you have to remove the ears before killing them. Works 80% of the time.
Lars Kobbe , yeah, I get that. But you also have the ability to Make a Move that Follows, and when it comes to GM Moves in DW, I don’t believe that the book has the exact same advice as AW of “make your move as hard as you like”, but I also don’t think it specifically requires soft moves for moves-that-follow, or even hard moves for failures.
But 100% delicious.
of course there is a GM move. They shoot, mark ammo and then look at you too see what happens. Then you make a move.
Aiming and shooting takes time in general. There always is an opportunity cost involved.
Also, who do you want to shoot? The Cleavers that are encircling the paladin? Their archer? Or the Shaman that is channelign a spell into the ground?
Archers are all about opportunity cost.
David Schirduan couple custom moves with elaborate adventure setpieces and you are basically running an old school adventure. Many of the “classic” D&D modules had rooms or scenarios which were easily avoidable if the players only spent a little time scouting instead of rushing in guns blazing. The dungeon moves are a great way of replicating an improvisational setpiece, and they can be applied to things that aren’t literally dungeons.
You could have a town populated with evil cultists that the players find themselves resting in several times and every time they blow a roll in town you can use something from your moves for the town, or set up some grim portents for the town since they’re cultists and all.
I’d also like to point out that I think the best advice in this thread comes from Al Gordon . “_Showing_ downsides” is a great way of building tension, regardless of the source.
> Maybe it would be better to give clues instead of punishing them for not DR. like “All of a sudden, you feel the wind pickup, and can feel someone watching” give them a spider sense of some kind.
That’s totally fine, and you have several GM moves to set that up: Reveal and unwelcome truth; Show signs of an approaching threat; Point to a looming threat; etc. Describing the situation should give them plenty of clues that will prompt them to Discern and Spout all over the place.
> I don’t want to kill my players, but I also want to give them a challenge.
DON’T kill your players! Kill their characters. 😉
Seriously though, the GM rules say “Describe the situation; portray a fantastic world; fill their lives with adventure; think dangerous.” It’s your job to make them earn their XP, and there is literally no way to play it safe in Dungeon World. Every time they look at you, you are either bringing new threat into focus or following through on a threat they know about already; with few exceptions, that’s what the GM moves do.
Tighten the screws. It’s up to them whether they’re heroic enough to deal.
David Schirduan It is a fine line with information giving, but for dungeon world, I give them a basic description of the room, all the normal things they can see and notice at a glance. If they want more information, then they roll. Same goes for people (discern realities works on people too!)
As for the make camp/rations discussion, there is one very important use for it, Leveling. You can’t level without making camp. Nor can you refresh spells and get the most efficient healing in the game without resting.
Also, you can’t make a perilous journey without rations, you have to travel ALOT slower without them, or maybe not at all.
Your players are doing dump stats wrong. In DW your Int stat is your relationship with the world inside your head; what you know or can figure out. Wis is all about your relationship with the world outside your head; intuition, empathy, your connection to the divine, and… observation.
Looked at that way, you’ve been letting characters survive dungeon crawls with Perception as their dump stat. Spout Lore and Discern Realities are key moves,vast quantities of good fiction flow from the liberal use of these moves. Encourage your characters to use them often.
Re: hard cap on ammo, that’s the way I do it. 3 ammo is the per-character limit in the games I’ve run. It intensifies the 7-9 Volley result, and since it’s an up-front limitation, no one feels screwed by it. I like that ammo is abstracted in DW, and a hard cap feels in line with that abstraction to me.
Bundle of Arrows 3 ammo, 1 coin, 1 weight
Elven Arrows 4 ammo, 20 coins, 1 weight
And remeber, if they go and pick up arrows of the soldiers they just killed – these are
Bundle of Arrows 2 ammo, 1 weight
each. You don’t get to restock your other bundles of arrows becuase they are “still there”
Does that help the problem?
Jason Lutes How can you fictionally justify not being able to hold, under any circumstances, any more than a bundle of arrows? Or to ever hold elven arrows? Can a barbarian carry more than one axe?
Whether they understand it or not, 3 ammo limit DOES screw the ranger.
Ben Kaser The ranger would be screwed indeed, but for the fact that losing ammo (on a 7-9) is always a player choice. They’re choosing to empty their quivers to avoid other Bad Stuff happening, but Bad Stuff happening is what DW is all about, in a way.
But I’m not sure a hard cap is necessary. Is there really any difference between the ranger who deals with his bad rolls by carrying 10 bundles of arrows and the fighter who carries 10 healing potions?
The problem you’re having, I think, is that the players (and you!) are not thinking broadly enough of the move-mechanics. If he’s got the arrows, he can never be hurt on a 7-9, right? Because he just marks off one of his eighty arrows. But that move says you have to take a bunch of shots, and that sounds like the kind of thing that takes time. Nasty things might happen in that time, or it may just mean that the spotlight goes away from him for a while longer than normal because he’s clearly busy in the fiction firing all those arrows . It also sounds like a monster would seriously take notice of a bunch of arrows whizzing by him, and reassess who he should be a-hittin’.
And then you have the issue of all those missed arrows- where are they going? Marking off an arrow is less of a no-brainer when friendly fire and collateral damage is in play. Do up a little ‘what happens to them missed arrows’ table if you want to be impartial. It doesn’t have to be players that get shot, either. Anything that elfy mcshoot wouldn’t want to hit should be in the crosshairs: maybe there’s some breakable treasure around, hmm?
But for a quick and dirty solution, you could always make arrows weigh double/triple, or they piss off the local fletcher so now he only sells them arrows at 30x the price, or when firing off a bunch of shots on a 7-9, roll 1d4 to determine how many extra arrows need to be fired. or 1d20 if you really want to send a message.
And no one even mention Blot Out the Sun yet…
The fictional justification is that any Ranger worth his salt doesn’t need to carry around a ton of arrows — s/he makes every shot count. We don’t think of it as a bundle of arrows, even though that’s what it is on the equipment list — we think of it more as a character’s “loadout.”
And I don’t think it screws the Ranger at all, since the Ranger will tends to roll 10+ on Volley more than the other characters, and I’ve added a custom choice for the 7-9: *Hold fire and wait for a better shot.
So I see characters holding fire, moving to get the shot, and doing -1d6 damage more often. I wanted added emphasis on the choice to use up a point of ammo, and so far it’s working just fine within our fiction.
I still don’t fully get the problem.
The GM most of the time controls how easy it is to get new ammo. How easy enemies are to hit with arrows and how resilient they are to them.
Also, how is a good Range and Cover action worse then melee?
To each their own. I think it’s pretty clear that an ammo cap isn’t fictionally justifiable and is a revision to the rules that hobbles one character in particular.
Poor rangers get no love!
Rangers got lots of loves 2 weeks ago ^^
It is in fact fictionally justifiable, as I just took pains to demonstrate. You may not like the justification, but it’s poor rhetoric to claim something is “pretty clear” when it’s not.
Until you see it in practice, I’m not sure what claims you can make about a given class being hobbled. Somehow our hobbled Ranger comes out looking like a badass nearly every session.
Point taken, though: you don’t buy the justification.
You revised the DW rules to fix a problem you see. You did so by limiting how much ammo characters can carry. The ranger is the only character that focuses on the bow, and is the most significantly impacted by this rule change. This includes: ranger’s starting loadout (removes option to choose 2 bundles), number of possible targets when using Blot Out the Sun, being corralled into not choosing -1 ammo on a 7-9 Volley by only having max 3, and generally being more likely to run out of ammo (eliminating access to one or more class moves).
Like Tim, I don’t see what the problem is that needs fixing. If the problem is that archers are not interesting enough or too powerful, there are other ways–within the existing rules–that can help.
That said, I didn’t intend to be rude in my posts above. I apologize if I was.
You know how cover works right ?
Temporary or circumstantial cover works the same way as armor that you wear: 1 armor for partial cover, 2 armor for major cover.
I never said I was trying to fix a problem — Volley and ammo obviously work fine as written. I’m experimenting further with the idea of an abstracted supply of ammunition, and trying to intensify the 7-9 decision-making a bit.
In any case, it’s just a house rule for this one campaign. All I’m saying is that, in actual practice, it works fine so far. I understand the objections, though.
I ran a game the other night where the ranger rolled a 6 and his bow string broke (used up his resource). That got his attention! Prior to that I just had multiple attackers coming at him and he could only hit one before the other reached him. I made him roll Defy Danger to get out of melee range before he could fire his bow again without taking damage. I don’t see infinite ammo as that big of a deal.