What have you done with the messy tag, both in the fiction and in the rules?
What have you done with the messy tag, both in the fiction and in the rules?
What have you done with the messy tag, both in the fiction and in the rules?
14 thoughts on “What have you done with the messy tag, both in the fiction and in the rules?”
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If your table wants a dark fantasy/horror game, it’s good for narrating gore, spilled entrails and that sort of thing.
If you’re playing a family-friendly or light-hearted game, you can use it for slapstick effects and comedic hi-jinks. (Your sword swipe cuts through the bad guy’s suspenders, causing his pants to fall around his ankles! The farmer picks you up and body slams you into the manure pile!)
goblins cut in half. severed limbs. loads of heads flying.
always goor for leverage when you then want to Parley.
Good luck hiding the bodies after a Messy death, or calming down the hostages you’ve saved while spattered head to toe with bits of monster.
Massive scars on the PCs after they heal (scarred)?
As I always seem to have Barbarians in my teams I usually make enemies loose limbs and other extremities. If they’re not magical beings that usually means one hit is enough for them to bleed out/run away/stand staring at their guts spilling on the floor. It also means that my barbarians have to Defy Danger if they don’t wish to mutilate their combatants, and I use that as complications a lot, while still making them awesome death-machines.
After the PCs have taken messy damage, I’ve required them to Defy Danger in order to stop the bleeding, on a 7-9 requiring the use of bandages without regaining any HP.
Or I’ve just told them the requirements and asked: “yeah, your pet tiger has a bunch of really deep, nasty puncture wounds from where the rage drake bit her; you’re going to have to expend 2 uses of bandages just to stabilize the wounds, then we talk about regaining HP.”
When fighting a large mole-man monster with a buzz-saw arm, the Fighter got a 7-9 to H&S and took like 6 or 7 damage. Not enough for me to feel like dismembering him, but I used its monster move of “shred metal, stone, flesh, etc.” to say that his shield was destroyed and it bit into his arm and down to the bone. I don’t recall if I made him Defy Danger to do anything but scream in pain, but I should have. I know I gave the Weakened debility. (They used a healing potion to heal his flesh & bone and clear the debility, instead of HP.)
Against a gwythaint (giant eagle/vulture/pteradactyl thing) that did messy damage, again on a 7-9, I had it yank the rogue’s arm out of his socket.
Against an assassin vine (which does messy damage), I took it to mean that the damage was from deep, nasty puncture wounds from the thorns. It shredded their pants/boots and they had to bandage the hell out of themselves and go back to town for new clothes.
I’ve written up monsters, like a treant sort of thing, with a quality that they were immune to weapons that weren’t forceful and messy. Not sure I think that’s a good idea, though.
Plus all sorts of stuff like people described above: enemies losing limbs (even though they still have HP), spectacularly nasty & gory wounds, etc.
so messy doesnt do anything mechanics wise for most people?
If it influences the fiction it influences mechanics. No matter how many HPs you have, if your hand’s been mangled by a monster you have no usable hand – that puts you in new dangers and limits your available options, both of which are expressed in mechanics (triggering moves or preventing moves from being triggered).
Jeremy Strandberg monsters immune to non-messy attacks, things like slimes? where normal weapons pass straight though them but messy attacks detatch chunks of the blob etc?
that works.
Ross Kingston interesting, can you give an example?
Ciel Ferma not really? theres nothing thats been official that comes to mind.
checks rulebook
nope – things like the Swamp Shambler, Gelatinous Cube, and Chaos Spawn are all likely “targets” that would have this ability, though. so anything with the /Amorphous/ tag would have immunity to non-messy attacks as part of the effect of that tag.
maybe.
Ciel Ferma
Here’s an example monster that uses it (see the Bidwraig, top right).
I think it’s a good shorthand, but I don’t like because it puts too much importance on the mechanical tag rather than the fiction they represent.
Like, what if a PC has magic sword that is “sharper than anything; cuts through stone, metal, whatever” and had ignores armor but whoever wrote it didn’t think to give it messy?
A flexible GM would be like “oh, yeah, that can totally harm this thing” but a more by-the-book GM might be like “oh, yeah, but it’s not messy or forceful so… it does no harm.”
That’s really only an issue, though, for someone who’s writing up monsters for others to use & consume. If you’re making notes for yourself to use in play, then saying “vulnerable only to messy and forceful weapons” with full knowledge of what you mean by that (“messy or forceful or something equally badass and destructive”) then it’s great.
drive.google.com – Great Woods Bestiary p4.pdf
The barbarian cut his own arm off to escape a monster once.