Need some advice for handling vulnerabilities please.
For example, in your world you may have trolls vulnerable to fire. Or lycanthropes vulnerable to silver. How do you handle these types of things in your world? My inclination is to say they always regenerate as a move, unless the damage was from that type of attack.
Thoughts?
They might have a move “regenerate from a wound not dealt by flame” or have them react appropriately in the fiction. Have them fear away or focus their attacks on those with a weapon made from their vulnerability.
I had werewolves take damage from regular attacks, but if they escaped they would regenerate off screen.
Their vulnerability was silver, and narratively I treated silver as messy for werewolves. You can cut off a werewolf’s head with silver, never with any other metal, it would just cut into them some.
The party did manage to kill one werewolf by mundane means- Not much survives having their head smashed in with a mace while on fire.
Different creatures act differently though (I know thats not much help). I had a fae lord that could only be harmed by “cold iron” material, anything else would stab through him, but pull out bloodless with the wound healing no sooner had the sword been taken out.
Hey Mike, That sounds like a spout lore or discern to me! If you ask the player and they say ‘yeah, trolls BURN man, we are barbecuing that sucker’ – then have them roll for it.
If they fail their spout lore, you make a hard move, or ooops, maybe trolls aren’t vulnerable to ‘fire’ after all, maybe its just magical fire?
Engage your players in determining the truth (or myths) about how vulnerabilities manifest in your Dungeon World.
Oh, and I always make my monsters with about four moves, and add more as the players learn or make up stuff about them.
Thanks everyone! Tony Ferron Thank you for the great examples. David Guyll thank you for the link. Did a search but I missed that one before somehow.
You could have weaknesses penetrate armor, give a damage bonus on things that exploit weaknesses, or reduce damage on normal weapons (effectively all the same, but flavored differently). A Werewolf stabbed by a dagger might just wince at the damage, but a silver dagger just cuts right through to the bone.
I’ve generally been rolling with the ruling- if my players identify a vulnerability (fire, a specific weak spot, etc), then when they make use of the vulnerability their attack ignores armor.
If it was something like “only damaged by silver” then yeah, the creature would just be straight up immune except silver weapons would function like normal weapons.