hey Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, I know this has been brought up in comments before, but I don’t think we’ve ever had an actual answer – what’s up with the range weirdness on the Immolator’s Burning Brand? Hand and Touch range are the same thing, surely?
hey Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, I know this has been brought up in comments before, but I don’t think we’ve ever…
hey Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, I know this has been brought up in comments before, but I don’t think we’ve ever…
the move says you to “conjure a weapon of pure flame” although the actual mechanical execution seems to just mean you set your hand on fire.
“Hand” is a range tag (“you can use it to attack someone at arm’s length or closer”); “touch” is functional, not range: “you use it by touching it to the target’s skin”. pp 397-399.
I don’t know if this is mentioned in Dungeon World, but based on (at least) other games, “hand” is hand-to-hand range, like somebody standing in front of you. “Touch” is really close, like you can touch them easily. Grappling range.
except that in dungeon world, it’s explicit in the book that “hand” = “stab with a dagger” range, and that punching people is a “hand” range attack too. Most hand-to-hand combat is actually “close” range in DW parlance, at least in things published so far.
So… there isn’t really much perceivable different between “hand” and “touch”. And DW is all about perceivable differences.
You can use it for both, right? Like, at both ranges? Am I missing something?
the move, as written, allows you to attack at “touch” range by default (a range tag only seen on poisons prior to this, by the way). If you get a good roll your flaming weapon can do “hand” range – i.e. the same range as a fighter’s fist or a thief’s dagger. Which doesn’t seem overly different from “touch” range? There’s no way to get “close” or “reach” on this weapon, so you can’t have a flaming sword or a burning whip… just a hand that is on fire, or a hand that is ever-so-slightly more on fire
(obviously you can THROW the fire, but that’s a different kettle of fish).
touch is super intimate, I think it’s more like kindling an internal flame than even burning someone by hitting them. I mean, people can hack it if they want to…
Ah. Okay then. I think, perhaps I was getting a bit too invested in the “conjure a weapon of pure flame” bit. Perhaps reading it as “conjure a pure flame that can be used as a weapon” might bet better.
Jarrah James that’s how I read it, you make a weapon out of fire, that weapon has the ranges you would normally associate with such a weapon
I always interpreted it that, by default, the flame weapon would be some kind of wild, shapeless thing that isn’t really convenient to use at any range. The hand tag is about giving you a range you can reliably hit at rather than extending your range.
Of course, you could still make use of a shapeless blob of fire because you have a fire bending move.
This conversation made me nervous that my hacked version of the new sheets had replaced touch with hand but I guess that’s okay…maybe?