A silly little question: during our last game, the Fighter used a 10+ roll on Bend Bars, Lift Gates to destroy a magical battery-cube thing that was powering some evil ritual (and that was impervious to all other attempts to move or damage it). Is that a correct use of the Move, or should I have taken the Move text, which specifies “When you use pure strength to destroy an inanimate obstacle” more literally? The cube was an object, not really an obstacle…
A silly little question: during our last game, the Fighter used a 10+ roll on Bend Bars, Lift Gates to destroy a…
A silly little question: during our last game, the Fighter used a 10+ roll on Bend Bars, Lift Gates to destroy a…
Unless there was some magical protection, I think it’s valid. Just a matter of syntax this this case I would say, as inanimate would lead me to think it is referring to a thing.
I wouldn’t really balk at the fact that it wasn’t an obstacle. But given that it was impervious to all other attempts to move or damage it, I wouldn’t necessarily have allowed the fighter to smash it up though, no more than I’d allow the fighter to Kool-Aid Man their way through a 10-foot-thick stone wall.
The move is triggered by the fighter using pure strength to destroy an inanimate thing. It implies that busting through stuff is something the fighter does and can do, and gives them some control over the outcomes, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction.
My $0.02.
I think it’s a perfectly fine use of the move. Never seen anyone say “well technically that’s not really an obstacle” when the fighter wanted to smash something, and never seen it cause problems when they smashed something that wasn’t strictly speaking an obstacle.
Though there might be other perfectly valid reasons for the move not to activate, e.g. if the cube is (for whatever reason) completely impervious as you say. Though putting them in front of the battery for the evil ritual and not letting them actually do anything to it isn’t very good GMing, imo, so I’d say letting it trigger was the right decision.
Did the cube explode when the fighter broke it? Because that would have been awesome.
Scott Selvidge Alas no, because it was a 10+ roll and the Fighter chose “Nothing of value is damaged” and “You can fix the thing again without a lot of effort”. So now they have a perfectly functional life-essence storing magical battery cube in their inventory, that I’m sure they’ll find some use for at some point…
Ah, well it could be used for something awesome, so you have that to look forward to!
My first question is why was it impervious to all other attempts to damage it? If it had magical protection, BBLG isn’t going to get through that. If it was just really tough in the same way that a reinforced door is really tough, BBLG sounds like it would work.
One could use a countdown clock in this case – that’s a thing in DW, right? For every successful bend bars/lift gates roll, describe damage to the cube or its mechanism, and mark a segment. When the clock is full, the cube is disabled.