For those who use World of Dungeons as their rules-set, how do you treat the “Cure” ability that Clerics get? The rules text simply says “(you can attempt to neutralize poisons, remove curses, or heal wounds with a touch).” Do you let it restore lost Hit Points (or allow a re-roll of Hit Points) similar to the D&D version of Cure Light Wounds ?
My current game has centered on an outbreak of a magical infestation which “leaked” into the PCs’ home world from Dis as part of the gradual colonization of their world. My player with the Cleric ability took a specific Kicker[1] that a particular NPC was infected and he had to cure him but was then frustrated that I made him roll for the cure and that his 7-9 result didn’t result in a clear cure. My argument boiled down to: a) in the fiction this is a disease unlike anything you’ve ever seen or treated before. It’s also a magical disease and we don’t know how effective/strong your magic is against it, and b) outside of the fiction you framed a kicker around this so of course it’s going to be hard; you can’t resolve your kicker with a single roll in session one! We had a talk about all the things he could do to pursue the kicker. (Use his extensive alchemical equipment to take a sample of the disease, experiment on cadavers, enter the dream-world to beseech his God, journey to the major city to consult the wise and the holy, etc) but he ended up still kind of frustrated and I felt like I had nerfed his character concept, at least from his perspective. Any thoughts on how I could’ve handled this better?
1) For this game I am using an modified version of the Dungeon World XP system. Players Mark Experience a) on a roll of 6- (which, let me tell you, happens all the time in this game) and b) when they hit one of their Keys in a scene. Each Player wrote two Keys for their character, one of which was tied to their Kicker and one of which was focused on a character trait.
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I’d have done the same. 7-9 on a cure disease roll sounds like “stabilized; they aren’t getting any worse but they aren’t getting any better.”
It sounds more like your player hasn’t really embraced the apocalypse engine dao. I think you did the right thing brainstorming with him about next steps. Not sure what to tell you beyond apocalypse engine isn’t everyone’s favorite.
I mean…. yeah, okay, it probably shouldn’t be easy, but 7-9 IS supposed to be “You do it, but…” not, “You almost do it”. What did you give him for a compromise or cost on the 7-9? There’s a lot of potentially good ones! The character himself might become infected. The god might demand a post-hoc price of him for granting this miracle. The malevolent intelligences behind the disease might turn their gaze to the cleric, and begin planning to deal with this potential threat. Etc, etc.
Also you can always, y’know, just establish what they’ll need to try. Just as if a normal human fighter says they try to lift several tons of stone without any aid you can be like “Uh, how are you planning that?” BEFORE they roll, you can say “This disease has resisted all cures so far: you might be able to temporarily relieve the symptoms, at possible cost to yourself, which is more than almost anyone else can offer, but truly curing it is beyond even your miraculous powers, so far. How would you like to go about trying to change that, or possibly even just learning how this is so when you’ve been able to fix every other disease you’ve ever encountered?”
Also, at least as I understand the term, a Kicker could very easily be something resolved in the first session, as long as you explore the consequences of it. Say he cured his NPC friend, even with an easy peasy 12+. Suddenly there’s word of a man of the gods who can cure this seemingly unstoppable affliction! What happens next? Do the sick start seeking him out, en mass? How does he decide who to cure? How do the people he can’t or doesn’t get to, or their friends and loved ones, react? Do charlatans pretending to be him arise, peddling false cures at high prices and besmirching his reputation? Do the powerful and wealthy seek exclusive access to controlling this ability to protect their own interests (and ensure their enemies don’t do the same, by any means?)
Agree with Ben Wray – an interplanar magical infestation is a little more complicated than a wound, curse, or poison. How is the player going to cure this in the fiction? This isn’t a situation where you should be able to just roll and do it.
Ben Wray Yeah, this is exactly what I’ve been going for. I think my issue has been that I’ve been trying to do it in a fiction-first manner of showing rather than telling that their efforts aren’t stemming the tide for long. I should’ve just come out and really crisply made the point that they would have to go further. Truth be told, any sufficiently engaged set of actions could get them there, I just want to discover the story of what they do that seems plausibly like they’re able to find a cure.