Noticed a potential bug with the Druid. The background move Totemist (which I think is good) says:

Noticed a potential bug with the Druid. The background move Totemist (which I think is good) says:

Noticed a potential bug with the Druid. The background move Totemist (which I think is good) says:

You are bonded to a specific animal or beast; your Tell reflects it, and you always possess its Instinct. When you use Shapeshifter to take the form of your totem, you always succeed as if you had rolled a 10+.

The move Shed (also good) says:

When you take damage while Shapeshifted, you may choose to forcibly revert to your normal form in order to negate the damage.

Together though you have kind of an at will damage shield—nothing is stopping you from repeatedly shifting in and out of your Totem form to block all damage. I think the way to fix it is to put a limiter on Shed. Maybe “you can’t shift into that form again until you’ve made camp”. Or instead of negates all damage “reduce the damage by half” or “reduce the damage to 1”.

2 thoughts on “Noticed a potential bug with the Druid. The background move Totemist (which I think is good) says:”

  1. I like the first solution; it makes sense on a fictional level that an animal shape you sacrificed to save yourself would need time to recover (whether it’s making peace with the wild spirits, or the animal soul retreating to a different plane to heal, or however the druid frames their shapeshifting). It’s also cool in the context of a Totemist, since you still keep your instinct; the animal struggles for a release that for the moment it can’t have. Or something.

    The other two proposals don’t really address the problem; they just turn Shed into free armor instead of free physical invincibility.

    (NB: my real answer if the rule remained unaltered would be to just trust your players not to try and break the game or go against the spirit of the rules, and manage it with fictional positioning, but I do like the proposed change all the same.)

  2. This is worded a little clumsily, but what if Totemist was toned down to:

    “When​ ​you​ ​use​ ​Shapeshifter to​ ​take​ ​the​ ​form​ ​of​ ​your​ ​totem,​ ​ ​7-9 results count as 10+ (you transform quickly and without issue), and a 6- result counts as 7-9 (you transform ​but​ ​you​ ​are​ ​put​ ​in​ ​a​ ​spot​ ​or​ ​draw​ ​unwanted​ ​attention).”

    So the totemist always transform into their totem and always avoids a GM hard move, but there’s still the possibility of being put in a spot (albeit much reduced). That way, repeatedly using Shed would still carry a small risk.

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