One thing that has become a little annoying for me is the time it takes to have a fight. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot faster than most other games, but a fight between two PC’s and a group of 10 or so enemies can take the darnest amount of time. Even if the PC’s ambush them.
I’ve been thinking about how to resolve this, and I’ve come to realize something. This is because DW has exactly the same problem in combat that D&D have; you make a lot of rolls, but the individual roll doesn’t have a huge impact on the progression of the fight. Progression, not the fiction, a single roll can have a lot of fictional impact, but it is rarely a “game changer” per se.
For example, if a level one Fighter deals damage to a “group” monster (6 hp) with leather armor and a shield (2 armor), there’s a 70% chance, given no other modifiers than the fighter’s damage die, that it survives, albeit maybe injured. There’s even a 20% chance that he deals no damage at all. If they also have to roll H&S, then there’s also the chance that the fighter won’t even get to roll damage at all.
As GM, you can make soft moves to speed up the fight, but I think it’s a problem that you have to make monsters flee or run for backup all the time, or just have then die by happenstance or as a “kewl fireworks” effect.
The problem is; the H&S move doesn’t let you kill monsters easily, and given no “help” from the GM, even modest encounters can drag out for a very long time sometimes. And it bugs me, because I don’t want to spend 30+ minutes fighting 5 cultists + a lieutenant, but I want the cultists to be there as an obstacle sometimes, because it forces the players to make choices that affects the fiction.
A fight is a risky situation like so many others, but for some reason it seems like it takes so much longer than vastly more dangerous and intense situations.
How do you people solve this?
No idea how to solve this problem. Perhaps a zoomed out combat move?
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I’ve tried a couple of times, but never come up with a move that feels satisfactory or conclusive, or required a complete re-think of DW’s combat-oriented moves. The closest I came was jury-rigging something from the AW: Dark Age rules. That was a while ago, but it was something along the lines of “There’s a trade-off of harm as established, then stuff happens depending on yours and your opponent’s damage, armour, skills etc.”
Andrew Winnenberg’s solution is pretty good too, especially if you consider the sum total of the enemies’ HP as a ‘morale pool’ instead. When the morale pool drops below a certain amount/percentage, they flee in terror.
Yeah the HP pool is a good idea for numerous enemies. Treating them like a swarm.
Another way is to carry over killing damage, so to speak. If a fighter rolls a 10 on an opponent that only has 3 HP left, then that 7 remaing damage goes to the guy standing next to them. Fictionally you can justify it by the fighter being a whirling dervish killing machine or however you feel. I use this all the time if a single player is attacking two or three opponents. Think of the fight scenes where the hero downs one orc them jabs his blade into the next cutting a swath through the battle.
Also H&S doesn’t let you kill monsters easily because killing monsters shouldn’t be easy or it wouldn’t be heroic. No bards sing songs about the guy who did the easy thing.
Make sure both sides have a goal beyond “kill the other guy”. If the fighter is holding off the cultists at the foot of the stairs up to the altar so his partner can stop the sacrificial ritual and save the prince, it’s going to be a lot more interesting than a plain old drag-out fight to the death with ten dudes.
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I don’t have a lot of time now, but my intention was to make combat faster to resolve, not make it easier.
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You’d have to dump the damage/hp mechanic for that to happen I’m afraid.
I fear that creating “Swarm Enemies” takes away from Give every monster life.
We resolved an entire combat situation that would have taken longer than desired by rolling Defy Danger. Before rolling we defined 10+ and 7-9 outcomes. Then players threw the dice and we continued with the fiction.
Why don’t you just give your monster’s less armor and HP and have them do more damage. That will serve to compress the combat (because they die easier) without sacrificing the challenge (because they kill easier).
Tim Franzke, a goblin horde can be a colorful monster, too.
If you want to make it faster, but not easier,Andrew Winnenberg’s mobs system is the way to go, in my opinion. (In the spirit of Fate Core Mobs).
Reducing HP and increasing damage output (as Nathan Parrish suggested) isn’t a bad idea, and would potentially shorten the length of combat, but there’s still a lot of rolls to make.
Eric Nieudan might be onto something. HP and Damage are class based, so you could devise a generalised mechanic that doesn’t require an extensive overhaul.
Tim Franzke Just because you want to Give Every Monster Life, doesn’t mean that a horde/swarm of something can’t be a monster in itself. What would you think if a horde of carnivorous locusts were sweeping through the field you are traversing? I’m sure having one single locust insect would not make sense in that scenario, nor would giving each individual locust of the swarm an hp pool.
My favorites so far are the moves in The Regiment (especially v2.1). The Assault move is about taking ground, winning a tactical advantage, forcing surrender, driving the enemy back, and so on.
Damage is a by-product of assaulting; both sides roll their weapons’ damage dice, which are adjusted for cohesion – charging down an alley way to assault an MG nest from the front is going to net you withering fire, while the same MG nest that’s been pinned and can’t see you well is going to only rake you with incidental fire.
There’s a nice supporting move called Covering Fire that trades ammo for +1 forward for allies, and/or pins the enemy.
Now, this works naturally for WWII firefights because we’re used to thinking of them as squad actions, with a tangible goal that makes sense in the wider battle. You take a hill to deprive the enemy of a sniper position; you take a building to get a vantage point on the enemy unit in the market square, etc.
Most fantasy combat (especially in clear-the-dungeon games) is more like a cluster of duels that have a fairly decisive end. I think it could work in fantasy combat, but I think it would require thinking of the dungeon less like a string-of-pearls series of fights, and more like a battlefield. You push the goblins back out of the entry room, but (other than the one you slew) they all take up position in the gallery beyond (and so on). Dungeon war.
Kasper Brohus Allerslev In my opinion, the GM has the foot on the gas pedal here. 10+, 7-9’s, and 6-‘s can sometimes be enough to decide what happens. If the group is consistently rolling good rolls, perhaps that actually accellerates the death of the beast you have presented. Perhaps a lot of bad rolls make things get real bad, real fast. I know some people are hard pressed to say that they give their beasts hp and stick to it so the dice decide the fate, but I don’t think it has to be that way all the time.
I probably stick to the strict hp pool 50% of the time, and the other 50% I scale one way or another to make sure the encounters feel fresh, not drawn out, and epic.
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I reckon this is where Dungeon World really shines compared to standard RPGs. Fights are not just “Hack and Slash until you or the enemy are dead”; instead, they’re fictional constructs! Duels, swirling melees, executions.
A tooled up Brute vs. a lone goblin isn’t going to trigger H+S. Instead, the Brute is probably strong enough to pick up the goblin and hurl them into a wall/ over a cliff edge/ just bear hug them and crush them. No effort!
In a larger melee, you might slice at an enemy who’s distracted/ vulnerable/ unprepared. You’ll probably just kill them, rather than trigger a move.
The character might have evade a threat from something else, but that just opens up a hard choice, maybe a Defy Danger roll: take damage and kill, or escape the danger?
That seems like cheating to me Damian Jankowski.
To expand on Damian Jankowski’s point, damage isn’t just HP based. The 12HP dragon is the best example, but it should also be turned around too: If you cut through a dragon’s achilles heel, that’s not just 2HP damage, you’ve taken a leg, or maybe a wing out. Immobilise a monster and someone will execute it without needing to roll for Hack and Slash.
In the same vein, if a monster eats your leg, you’ll have difficulty triggering Hack and Slash too!
Oh no, let’s not get into the “Tweaking HP on the fly is cheating/a violation of the rules” discussion….we already beat that horse to death in other threads
Also, don’t forget about tags – even if the straight HP damage doesn’t kill a monster, a messy or forceful blow can take an opponent out of combat, by leaving them alive but in excruciating pain or holding in their entrails, dismembering of a limb, knocking them off a ledge to plummet to their doom, etc.
I do agree with the horde or reduced HP method. One of the concepts I liked in D&D 4E was the 1 HP monster – it could still dish out level appropriate damage, but a single blow would kill it since it was a goon. Think about some classic fantasy battle scenes, for example from LotR. In the Moria tomb, our heroes chew through the Orcs quickly, but it takes their combined efforts to bring down the Troll.
What it boils down to is that the quicker the combat is, the less granularity you will get from a narrative perspective.
Yeah– although DW fights can turn into hit point slogs, in my experience, the results of a 6- turn them into something so much more. In my first DW game, a fight broke out in a house and ended, thanks to spectacularly swingy rolls, with the house collapsing on my head, taking out me and all the bad guys we were fighting. It was an epic end to the fight and, although the GM gave me some hit point damage just so I’d feel accomplished, the important event, to me, was I got a house dropped on my head!
Tim Franzke I don’t defend one or the other in regards to changing HP – because to me that’s the least important part of the battle. If my players are fucking bored, I’m going to change things to make it interesting. I try to stick to my HP pools, but if it is clearly impacting the fun level, that’s when I change things. If you think of it as cheating, think about what your players might be experiencing. Do you never allow players to modify their playbook moves if they really want to? Do you ever say “no” to your players during the game? Maybe if you think this is cheating, you should see how strict you are running your games and ask yourself if your players are having fun.
If a player causes 9 damage out of a beast’s 10hp pool during a battle that is already taking too long, are you really going to wait until someone takes that one last HP, or are you going to roll it into a fictional situation, e.g. it falls almost unconscious but not dead, etc.?
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I agree with the “less HP/more damage” and “each battle has a goal other than completely eradicate the other side.”
Have them surrender. Have an easy fight that flees toward a trap.
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Let’s not forget the flip side of “Give every monster life”, those monster often want to KEEP that life. If the battle is going badly for them have a few break ranks and run/retreat. If the Orc A just watch you slice the hand off of Orc B maybe he’ll rethink his commitment to the cause.
Is EVERY single cultists committed to the point of suicide? Or are some just in the cult to piss off their parents?
Having some flee will shorten combat as well.
Also, “give every monster life” means, to me, more than “give them hit points.” It means “make them do dynamic and interesting things and don’t have them sitting somewhere waiting for heroes to come slay them!”
Please stop suggesting to have a point or alternative goal with every fight. I rarely plan encounters, they just sort of happen. This is how:
PC’s are exploring a dungeon and happens upon a group of goblins…
GM: “As you look around the corner, you see nine or so goblins. They are laughing and having a good time while roasting sausages over a bonfire. What do you do?”
P1: “We should just kill them, just to make sure we won’t have trouble with them later on. Is there any way out other than this one?”
GM looks at map
GM: “Eh, no. Not really..”
P2: “Great! I take my bow and take aim. Are we doing this?”
P3: “Hellz yes!”
And now we are in a situation where the goblins can’t run away and the exact point of the fight is to kill the goblins. This happens, and it happens a lot because I specifically don’t pre-plan fights. I sometimes use a pre-drawn map.
I understand why you suggest it, but it is not universally applicable, and dependent on style, it might rarely be applicable.
Well, it sounds like the point of the fight is to get past the goblins and eliminate them as a potential future threat or alarm. The expedient way to do that is to kill them. It’s not the only way, of course, but it’s the most expedient.
At some point, long before the last goblin spends his last hit point, it will be clear to everyone at the table that these goblins are toast. If your players don’t love the hit point grind (some do!), call the scene right then or after everyone gets one spotlight moment, and say the goblins are mopped up/surrender/booked into the local jail/eaten by a grue/whatever. The tension in the scene is effectively over, and you can move the story along once the players have the definitive upper hand.
Assuming that happens. Bad dice rolls can drag such a thing out for a long time.
The point isn’t that we can cut it short when it’s clear that the goblins can no longer win with any grain of credulity. The point is that it can take around half an hour to come to that point in the narrative.
For me, it takes a half hour because in that time, I’ve given each player a spotlight where they get to do something. I don’t really see that as a problem.
Maybe not, but with that kind of time frames, it pushes you to make fights “meaningful” in a narrative sense.
Most games I run and play in are one-shots. If a fight with seven goblins takes half an hour, then that fight will either suck out roughly a 1/6th of actual game time, not counting the time it takes for people deciding what to do.
Or… I can choose only to have fights where the stakes are high, which makes for a very boring kind of game.
IMO, the lenght of DW combat is not a bug, it’s a feature. The system has HP to model the attrition present in any version of D&D, thus making the single move not really resolutive.
A single 10+ on a hack & slash is not automatically capable of ending a “subcombat”, it’s more like a single panel in a comic book page depicting a fight. The HP/damage dice system generates its own pacing, marking the time of the fiction.
I see different solutions, with different degrees of distance from the standard handlling of fights and also with a different flexibilty:
o Without changing the Hack & Slash move, one can change the HP of the monsters, as said before, but with an extra twist. The number of HPs can be assigned on the basis of the fictional importance of the fight. Mooks get just 1-4 HP and can all the time be treated as an horde, even if they are usually tougher monsters. Meaningful fights (i.e. requiring some effort for the characters, should have 5-8 HP enemies, wit the chance to carry over extra damage. Fictionally important fights should have standard HP (or increased) monsters, no damage carry over. This way, no midfight change of stats is needed.
o Make a Damage HP pool for the enemies (all the enemies). When damage is rolled, the damage is done to the traget(s) it is also subtracted from the pool. When the pool goes to zero, the fight is won, even if there are still enemies standing (huge rolls from the Fighter come to mind). The GM describes what happens or they can ask the players.
o Write an unzoomed move for combat, which each character can roll with their own thing (DEX, INT, STR, WIS).
Decide how difficult is the combat, mark one for each 10+ or 7-9, if the total beats the combat the characters have won, the characters rolling 7-9 suffered some damage or some consequences, characters rolling 6- get a hard move. Discuss what happened in the fight with the input of the players. If they lost, the GM decides the consequences.
(this needs to decide that the combat is not following standard “sequence”)
o Manage the fight normally, when it’s clear what direction the combat is going, make each player a roll on a move like this:
When you’re winning the fight, roll+you combat stat:
on a 10+ take 3, on a 7-9 take 1, on a 6- you still take 1 but you still suffer some consequences, the GM will tell you what.
+ you have killed or incapacitated or forced to escape the enemies you were fighting
+ you haven’t suffered any more damage
+ you managed to avoid the enemies to call from help
+ you managed to keep an enemy in conditions to be interrogated
+ you recovered something useful
Since each player chooses, even with 4 7-9 rolls, things should be positive for the players (they were winning, after all).
Is there something you would use?
Also, sorry for the long post :/
Kasper Brohus Allerslev I guess my last thought here is, if the goblins are taking too long because you just want to get past them, but this takes too long to happen, and they are just the meat in the way of you and the exit, and they have no real importance to the story… why are they there?
Why are you deciding beforehand that they are not important?
If they are important, why does it matter how long it takes to defeat them? If they are meaningless, then I can understand why it is a problem that it takes 30 minutes – because that’s 30min you could spend doing something else. That’s why I ask, “why are they there?”
I had a battle with an NPC once last like almost 4 hours, but it was important and time didn’t matter. Then I have also had regular less important encounters that only took 30min but felt like they took forever and I was slogging through it.
Although I don’t use it often, there is nothing saying you can’t progress the combat on a bad roll either. Essentially, it is success at a high price. For example:
6- on Volley – Your crossbow bolt strikes the insectoid creature in the temple and its head explodes in a gout of blood, showering the nearby fighter in ichor. There is a sizzling sound as the blood begins dissolving the fighter’s equipment. (Reveal an unwelcome truth and Use up their resources)
6- on H&S – You jab your sword up through the Ogre’s jaw, piercing his brain. The corpse immediately falls forward knocking you to the ground and crushing you under its immense weight. Take d4 damage. With the wind knocked out of you and unable to move you struggle to breathe. (Deal damage and Put someone in a spot)
6- on Cast a Spell – The Fireball errantly explodes as it leaves your fingertips. The ensuing blast engulfs and incinerates the remaining goblins, but your are on fire as well. Take d8 damage. (Turn their move back on them and Deal damage)
Kasper Brohus Allerslev
“Please stop suggesting to have a point or alternative goal with every fight…it is not universally applicable, and dependent on style, it might rarely be applicable.”
You aren’t the only one having this issue it seems and advice that doesn’t fit or work for you might be just what works for someone else.
Just sayin’
Damian Jankowski Sometimes I add stuff to make the world seem more alive and dynamic. I don’t add monsters for the sole intend of seeing them butchered.
Most of the time, it just makes, well, sense that they should be there, but they aren’t strictly necessary.
Eric Lochstampfor Good point.
Hey Kasper Brohus Allerslev , given your example above about running into a group of goblins and then the players are hell-bent on murdering them…
It seems appropriate at that point that a move needs to be made, so why not make a custom move (Instead of defy danger)?
When you stumble on a Goblin camp and you are hell bent on bloody murder roll + STR (with help from others if appropriate)
On a hit they are murdered. On a 10+ choose 2 on a 7-9 choose one.
* you take no damage in the fracas
* no one is alerted to your presence
* you loot the goblins and find a rare treasure
That sort of thing?
Kasper Brohus Allerslev That’s a good way to look at it – that it just makes sense that they are there. After all, the PC’s don’t have to fight the creatures. That’s their choice. But either way, I would still try to make it entertaining. I think that Nathan Roberts actually just wrote a great idea for those situations you seem to be encountering and may help to make those smaller encounters interesting without having the actual battle.
OP’s post implies that “long” = “boring”. Paride pretty much summed up my thoughts – scale the fight based on the importance of the fight. If mid-fight the importance of the fight changes, you can adjust on the fly.
I would also add – insert the environment into a fight if it seems to be lagging. Earthquakes, rockfalls, water bursting through walls, fog, precipitation, blazing heat, etc. can all be part of the fight and increase interest and provide possibilities of fictional fun.
Well, sometimes i just fuss over a fight and just say, ok 10+, fine, you win, period, not counting hp s. I feel i dont really need a move for that, its just a matter of pacing. But yeah, its d&d-esque fantasy, so zoomed in combats are standard, though i used hp pools for mobs intuitively, because im just too lazy to track individual hps fo mooks.
Nathan Roberts who Rolls this move? Who Takes the damage And how much damage so they take?
A lot of the suggestions are good, but many of them have the problem (from my POV) that they kind of subvert some of the basic moves. Zoom out moves can be good, but they can also negate moves important to the individual player.
For example, a “you slaughter X enemies / they are wiped out” outcome completely negates the damage die of your class, your equipment and all moves you have that in some way interact with Volley or Hack & Slash. Besides, it greatly favors low damage characters.
I don’t think there’s an easy solution to speed up combats, especially not by adding new basic moves as they most often have side-effects.
Chris Shorb I do not imply that long is necessarily boring. Rather, too long is boring. Besides, I have no control over the “importance” of the fight. That depends on how important it is to the players.
Hey Tim Franzke , I just wrote that on the fly, the idea I was trying to get across was to have a custom move to fade over a fight as to not have to play it all out.
In answer to your question, If we really want to make this move a reality I guess everyone in the fight makes the move? With regards to the stat rolled, perhaps it could be changed based on how the player says their character engages… The wizard may cast spells and use INT for instance.
Thus, based on the players rolls, they may all take damage and I guess that’s up to the GM. I’d probably say the goblin damage x2 or 3.
Disclaimer: This answer has not been tested in actual play.
What about enemies that do not trigger hack and slash? That conflicts a little bit with the description of the move, but it makes sense to me. You don’t roll H&S to attack a surprised oponent. I woudn’t roll H&S to attack an unarmed enemy unless it was a good fighter. So why roll to kill a lousy mook? A fighter would just slay that minion without necessity of rolling.
So when the fighter attacks one of these minions it kills it without need to roll. That would cut the number of rolls a big deal.
Even so, enemies would still be obstacles. Killing them would take time. They can still attack and the attacks must be dealt with, here you could let the fighter defy danger with strenght, resulting in a sort of Hack&Slash but with the outcomes of defy danger and (optional) the instant death of the enemy in a +6.
Enemies in formation could trigger hack and slash, but if the formation was broken they would get killed without rolls. If some PC lost his weapon he would need to roll H&S to fight the minions. Maybe fighting more than one minion would make PCs need to roll H&S.
I think this solution has potential. Although maybe dealing with all the details is too much.
I envision it as the PCs killing the nearest enemy (without rolling) -> getting attacked by the others -> dealing with this attack (with a roll) -> killing the next enemy (without roll).
I’m not sure about this solution. Any thoughts?
Why killing them without a damage roll?
Killing the monsters you mean?
I was just thinking about the outcome of most fights in DW. Either a TPK (rare), the monsters die / flee, or maybe get captured (so perhaps that could be an option in the custom move), the players get beat up, the players find treasure / information.
I was just attempting to parse all that into the move as best I could in a few lines without much thought. Heck, I’d probably let the players play out the full fight if that’s what they want. We still play with the old rules that use fixed damage and have the ‘loot’ move 😉
Kasper Brohus Allerslev I think you have been given several tools that don’t subvert the basic moves of the characters and allow you to speed up the fight:
-Reduce enemy HP and/or armor
-Reduce number of enemies
-Allow damage to spill over (if the Fighter scores 10 damage on a hit, he will kill three 3 HP opponents, and do 1 HP damage to a fourth)
Where appropriate, allow 6results to result in defeated opponents, but at a high price for the characters-Where appropriate, utilize the fiction to describe how opponents are taken out of combat even though they are not at 0 HP
It is up to you as GM to tweak the encounter to fit the challenge and pacing required for the overall story.
Fixed damage actually helps calculate easily the average number of H&S rolls to kill all the opponents. No 1s or 2s rolled, bigger stability, tough high armour monsters would need always to be hacked multiple times.
I was talking to Miki Madero here Nathan. On your move that makes sense.
Robert Finamore you know you can damage multiple opponents with one Hack&Slash right?
I do know that Tim Franzke , but what I am suggesting is slightly different than what is in the rulebook. The rulebook indicates to apply your damage roll to multiple targets when the fictional action triggering H&S could reasonably affect multiple targets. What I am proposing is for cases where you want to speed up combat or show that opponents are especially weak, make it a standard that extra damage spills over to additional targets. This would extend to other damaging moves (Volley, certain spells, etc.) , not just H&S.
How would these two rules interact?
I would use one or the other for each move. If there is stated intent to engage multiple foes in melee, I would use the rule in the book as written for H&S because it provides a superior effect. For anything else, I would use the spill over rule as long as it makes sense in the fiction.
Isn’t “dealing damage to multiple things” better in most cases? When I deal 8 damage to a group and they all have 4 hp I either kill all or 2. If I deal 3 damage I just really much hurt them all.
If you are enganged by two enemies but only sensible can H&S 1 and deal 8 damage you either kill 1 or 2. That however opens you up to taking a smaller weapon and a shield since these are harder to use against groups. Against 3 or 4 enemies that is worse though.
So all this does (I think) is make smaller weapons better when fighting few opponents.
So let’s look at a fight w/ five goblins. The player has just rolled an 8 on H&S. Here’s the resulting fiction:
– The goblin cuts you with his spear (take 3 damage), but you bring your sword down on him (cause 4 damage).
– Thanks to the messy tag, you tear off the first goblin’s arm. He’s out of the fight.
– a second goblin rushes to his friend’s aid.
– a third goblin sees this and loses the will to fight, he drops his weapons and pleads for mercy.
– The fourth goblin is momentarily distracted by his companion’s screams, giving the ranger a golden opportunity to strike him down.
That leaves a single goblin willing to fight. Obviously this is an extreme example, with so much happening off of one hit, but you get the idea.
Agreed that the rule in the rulebook is better, but its use depends on the narrative positioning and the triggering action.
Example 1:
GM: 3 Goblins with spears stand in a close rank protecting the shaman.
Fighter: I wade into the front line like a dervish trying to cut down as many of the defenders down as I can. I get a 10 on H&S and a 6 on my damage roll.
GM: With a mighty swing of your sword you decapitate all three (3 HP) goblins with a sweeping slice.
Example 2:
GM: 3 spear wielding Goblins charge from out of the woods in a skirmish (i.e spread) formation.
Fighter: I prepare to receive the charge of the first greenskin and run him through with my sword when he gets within range. I get a 10 on H&S and a 6 on my damage roll.
GM: You deflect the Goblin’s spear aside and drive your sword into its chest. A second enemy moves to flank you and avenge his compatriot. You pull your sword free and in one continuous motion slice the second foe across the midsection. He falls to the ground as his entrails spill out.
Example 3:
GM: 3 spear wielding Goblins charge from out of the woods in a skirmish (i.e spread) formation.
Ranger: I loose an arrow from my bow toward the lead attacker. I roll 7 on Volley, mark off ammo as I take several shots, and I get a 5 for damage.
GM: One of your arrows catches the lead Goblin in the chest and knocks him to the ground, while one of your other shots catches a trailing Goblin in the leg, causing him to stumble for a moment.
In example 1, the declared action includes engaging multiple foes, whereas in the other two examples the GM is tweaking the resulting fiction to allow for damage against multiple targets. Spill over damage is not something I would regularly use, but if you are looking to speed up combat it is just one way to make the party’s damage output more efficient and defeat their foes quicker.
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Nice. You can always offer them an opportunity with a cost too Robert Finamore. So the fighter may wade in as described and you say “Huh, nice decapitation, the gobbo shaman is shocked and enraged and just out of reach! She is about to cast some horrible Waaaaa! magic at your face! You have opened a chance though, if you throw your sword with alacrity you can deal your damage to the Shaman, but you will be left unarmed… What do you do?”
Tim Franzke
True, it might make more sense to roll for damage.
The main objective of my proposal was to avoid rolling H&S so -6 wouldn’t slow the fight too much.
As I said I have never used it, so I didn’t even think about damage rolls!
I love and use many of the suggestions in this thread, and therefore manage to keep fights snappy. What struck me as interesting in your original post, Kasper Brohus Allerslev, is that you say that DW combat is “a lot faster than most other games”, because it’s pretty much the opposite in my experience. However, I don’t play any traditional RPGs. Games like Shadow of Yesterday, Dust Devils, InSpectres, Primetime Adventures, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Fiasco will let you just breeze through combat, if that’s what you want.
I never pre plan my DW games, and play everything off the cuff, but still make sure that encounters are about other things than just killing each other. Plus, what goblins, especially given their description in DW, would not have an escape route in order to flee and bring back the horde?
Stefan Grambart sums up my technique in making fights dynamic very well. I like moves having ripple effects.