12 thoughts on “Quick mechanics question: when you Defend, can you spend your 3 hold all at once on the same option?”

  2. Doesn’t that compromise the utility of H&S? My PCs are now lvl 5 and they asked, because defending now seemed to be their best option for damage, if that was possible. For today I rule it not to be possible but I told them that I’d gather some opinions.

  3. It doesn’t really — defending is defending. It stops being useful as soon as you want to do something else. If I’m a monster, with real wants and needs, and the party starts turtling and defending constantly… Well, I’m just going to move on and pursue my objective. Or attack in ways that preclude retaliation (ranger attacks for the win).

  5. You can but it is 3 different times you are doing it. Also, if you are mostly using Defend to deal damage you probably are actually triggering a different move. 

  8. I think what OP means is the following situation. 

    Hero A rolls a 10+ on Defend to protect himself, giving him 3 hold.

    A monster attacks Hero A.

    Hero A spends all three hold to choose “Deal damage equal to your level” three times

    My thought on the situation is:

    Yes you can spend more than one hold on an attack

    No you can not pick the same option twice for one attack

    I’ve heard this idea before and it seems that doing what OP proposed is just taking advantage of wording and is not following the spirit of the move. There is no other move (that I know of) that allows you to pick the same option over and over again within one roll of the move. Defend shouldn’t be any different. 

    I wonder if Defend would benefit from being changed from a “Hold” move to a “Choose” move and have the player roll every time they want to Defend.

  9. You can choose the same option as many times as you want, but only once per instance of defending.

    (Ie, troll attacks – I spend 2 hold to deal damage and reduce damage taken; then a goblin attacks – I spend 1 hold to deal damage).

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