I’ve been playing with penalties to player rolls, and I thought to institute the Rule of Three: no roll can have more than a +3 total bonus or a -3 total penalty. My players don’t like it, as the rules allow for bonuses higher than that. What, if anything, do you think a good cap would be?
I’ve been playing with penalties to player rolls, and I thought to institute the Rule of Three: no roll can have…
I’ve been playing with penalties to player rolls, and I thought to institute the Rule of Three: no roll can have…
Naaa, why to cap the fun?? Ehi, even if they manage to get a total +7 bonus, they still have to face that 2 on the dice, so a total of 9, so a mixed success, that let you GM with the power of putting some good soft move on them! And you get that 2, seldom 😀
And we know that +7 is REALLY uncommon, usually you’ll find a +4 / +5 on table (max Attribute +3, Help +1, Magic or similar bonus +1 = total +5).
Also, you can put powerful enemies, and forcing your players to face lot of “Defy Danger” rolls even before they can start to act.
Both parts (penalties and modifier caps) seem unnecessary.
No cap.
Okay, sold. Thanks!
I think caps and penalties are necessary to keep a feeling if danger present. I would also add a “only can be done on a 12+ or 15 plus rule” to keep ridiculousness difficult. Especially at the 6+ levels.
Gerard Snow I heartily disagree. That really shouldn’t be necessary to maintain a feeling of danger.
We cap at +4
Monsterhearts caps at 4 I believe.
When/how do you give out extra penalties to rolls?
natural 12 and 2 are autosuccess and autofail respectively. No more cap needed
Penalties: trying to use a weapon outside its optimal range; adverse conditions; whenever I don’t want the players to have to make a DD roll prior to their other action.
So you give out what? A -2 like if someone interfered with them? I know Vincent does (/used to do?) it in Apocalypse World.
ramonthe3rd I don’t think that’s true RAW
I’ve given range and visibility penalties to Volley, penalties to DD (Con) for strong poisons, penalties to Discern Realities for especially-well-hidden items, and so on.
Penalties is a good way to buff opponents. Not everyting needs to be done in the fiction only.
Wynand Louw Most of the things that are too abstract to be covered fictionally are already covered by the rules as is, though.
Generally, if something is significant enough to effect the chances of a moves success and it isn’t covered by the rules, it probably wouldn’t make fictional sense for the move to trigger in the first place.
Using fiction is generally a better way to make things more difficult anyway. Let’s say we have a level 3 Fighter who focused on getting her STR to + 3 as soon as she could. She’s fighting a goblin who just kicked sand in her eyes.
If I break/bend the rules and give her a steep -2 forward to hit, STR is still tied for the highest stat and she still has better than average chance to get a 7+ on Hack’n’Slash. She has almost no incentive to risk getting in a better position or take a different course of action. She would have to have better stats all around or I would I have to increase an already harsh penalty for it to even become a somewhat viable to change her tactics.
If I follow the fiction and say “How can you hit that goblin when you are effectively blind?” then she is forced think outside box. Maybe she’ll use her decent DEX to defy danger to quickly get the sand out of her eyes first. Or maybe she’ll try to get in one roll with her worse CHA to intimidate the goblin. Following the fiction usually does better job of making things harder mechanically and gets more interesting results.
This isn’t to say that RAW works perfect in every situation (That’s what custom moves are for!) but frequently adding modifiers on the fly seems like a good way to learn some bad habits in DW.