One final question if I may beg your indulgence. My players will be starting with no equipment, cast into an undergroud prison/cavern complex. I’m sure they will attempt a Hack and Slash maneuver while unarmed. Should I allow class damage as if armed, or perhaps have all damage be stun based, so long as the target is able to be stunned? Thanks guys, you’ve really helped me prep for this unexpected but not unwanted excursion into Dungeon World.
One final question if I may beg your indulgence.
One final question if I may beg your indulgence.
Give them their class damage die. Always. Regardless of what they are swinging with. The only time you wouldn’t give it to them is when the fiction calls for it. Say that are fighting someone in a tank. Fists would do jack and diddly to it. If they were going for say a hay maker to a slave drivers exposed chin, then they get it.
class damage is their damage, weapons are only important because of the tags it gives them. So let them deal damage as normal, but make it harder to deal that damage. For example, the fighter can do a d10 of damage with his pinky finger, but he has to get inside the reach of that guards ax first. let the downside of not carrying a weapon come from the fiction, not the rules.
Thanks, guys.
As long as it can make sense in the fiction, they can do the move.
That said, might also be nice to leave the door open a crack to non-combat options to get them going. I like to use custom starting moves, such as: “Okay thief, roll +dex. On a 7-9 you have smuggled in your toolkit or a dagger. On a 10+, both. On a miss, you’re in shackles as well.”
To trigger hack & slash, the character must first be able to deal harm to their enemy in melee, and be vulnerable to attacks from the enemy. Oterwise Hack & slash just doesn’t trigger.
If the enemy cannot fight back, you just deal damage.
If the character cannot harm the enemy, the GM gets to make a hard move, generally “Tell consequences and ask”: Your bare fists have no chance of harming the rock golem, and if you attack, it’s going to ignore the blow and crush you. Do you still want to attack?”
Adrian Thoen has the right answer.
Whether or not the PCs can then actually Hack & Slash with bare hands depends entirely on the fiction, i.e. on whether or not they’ve established (or it seems reasonable) that their character is somehow good with bare hands, and on what the enemy they’re fighting is wearing.
The Wizard probably won’t get to H&S at all, for example, but the Fighter is probably experienced enough that he can do real harm with his bare hands, and gets to H&S.