David Guyll, Can you explain to me how you use the messy tag in combat and how you deal with such things as chopping off a player’s arm? If you do chop off a limb, do you let the players reattach it using healing magic? How restrictive are you on the use of healing magic? Answer if you have time and thanks.
David Guyll, Can you explain to me how you use the messy tag in combat and how you deal with such things as chopping…
David Guyll, Can you explain to me how you use the messy tag in combat and how you deal with such things as chopping…
(Hint: Ask the cleric.)
@Guyll: Usually I don’t give penalties. Simply I negate the action (ie. no, you can’t wrestle with 1 arm) or I turn an action in something more difficult, splitting the action in 2 different rolls, or directly changing the move type:
– want to attack with a 2handed sword and only 1arm? Then Defy Danger on STR, ’cause you need to keep yourself strong and firm, THEN hack’n’slash. So, more chances to fail, and more things I can think on, with a 7-9 result.
– want to attack with a 2handed sword and only 1arm? Then Defy Danger on STR, IN PLACE of hack’n’slash. And you can’t obtain very good results you could obtain with hack’n’slash.
@Benson: About the cure for the severed arm… now this is a good chance to adventure (kill the werewolf to get its ousia, so you can bring that to the old man that can distill an elixir to rigenerate the arm), to ask questions to the players, to have a wizard doing a cool ritual, etc.
David Guyll “It, as so many things do in Dungeon World, depends” That, my friend, is how a business consultant answers a question. 😉
I’d say it really depends on the type of enemy the group is fighting. A great beasts teeth probably wouldn’t even leave enough material to reconstruct the body part they made contact with. A typical weapon certainly has the possibility to remove a limb but while it might sever the flesh around the actual wound, the limb itself would most likely stay mostly intact, allowing for relatively easy, magical reattachment.
If a player does actually permanently lose a limb and it can not be reattached because it was separated for too long or simply fully destroyed, there are still a lot of options to get a replacement. Get a magical or mechanical replacement, make a deal with a deity, be it good or evil, to get a new arm or have a necromancer reanimate the arm to make it a separate entity. All of those options would allow you to introduce completely new mechanics for the player, for example allowing them to overcharge a mechanical arm to improve their strength but every time they do the cogs and pipes in it are damaged so they have to consider the risk vs. the reward.
You guys are awesome, like a bunch of mad scientists. Thanks for the excellent feedback.
Sub
😀 finally, there’s a lot of media (especially japan manga/anime) where you find crippled heroes that have no drawback for their condition. Missing eye? Cool scar, no negative modifiers. Missing arm? A couple of workout months and you can wield anything with your arm or mouth (!) etc.
So, it’s simply the texture of your character changing, not its potential (if you are comfortable with that kind of larger than life settings).
I keep tags like Messy in mind when describing the scene in general. The creature with the Messy tag might crash through doors, shatter a table, bash down a wall, kick a brass brazier across a room, rip a tree from the ground, flip over a cart, tear a horse in half etc.