Tag: T. Franzke

Warning post about optimisation incoming

Advocating for WIS as a dumb stat 

Hey tavern patrons, 

doesn’t it suck when you have to put an 8 in one of your stats when making a character? Well, i tell you your choice should be WIS (unless you really need it for your class of course). 

Why is this? 

When you have a -1 to a stat your chances for the results are 

6-    : 58%

7-9  : 34%

10+ : 8%to have that result 

(thanks Michael Prescott)

So you will fail a lot but at least every third roll will be a 7-9. Your question though is, where can i live best with getting a 7-9 “at best”  

So lets have a look at the other options.

STR

If your HP suck this isn’t a bad option either, really encourages you not to get into trouble where you can be punched. But a -1 STR modifier really hurt the amount of stuff you can carry. A 7-9 on Hack&Slash also is dangerous. Not enticing.  

CON

Dangerous as your HP will be really low. Rolling a 6- is always dicy and really low hitpoints don’t help either. This in general hurts you whole character 

DEX

Most often used to dodge things. Now for sure there are other ways to deal with attacks or problems then dodging them but that is what most people default to i found. And a 7-9 on a defy danger isn’t that much fun either. Worse outcome anyone?

WIS 

When you roll a 7-9 you still get 1 question. That is good. Most often this is what you need as i said. Also Discern Realities is easy to trigger often, netting you XP. 

INT

I don’t really like getting a 7-9 on spout lore. Getting something interesting on the topic can be quite useless for a while. False information to act on is fun though. Still, being bad at Spout Lore hinders your ability to add to the game world. Spamming Spout Lore however is a bit more distracting to everyone at the table, especially with so low chances of getting 100% useful information. 

CHA 

Can work as the 7-9 option on a parley is the most fun story-wise. So a bit better chances to get to a 7-9 here are fun. I usually try to have a +1 in CHA and use parley a lot. 

What do you think? 

Do you have a stat you like to have low? 

How strictly do you adhere to the character generation at first level?

Hey everyone. As i get more experienced with Dungeon World i start creating characters not really following the classes description. 

Making other “racial” moves for that of course is easy and fun but i am talking about more here. Right now i would maybe keep 1-2 bond descriptions i like and write the others myself depending on what i want to see in the game. I see no problem with starting with different gear (of basically equal value) or tweaking other descriptive things (like the kind of god your cleric has or what their petition is). 

Would you be okay with that at your table or do you follow this stuff completly at level 1? 

The caveat here of course is that i wouldn’t do that with first time players. They should follow the sheets to get a view of the “intended” DW experience. The looks and choices portray something specific about that classes archetype and are important there. 

But once you have experience with that, go crazy there i think. The options are not really meant as a restriction but as a starting point.

So how much drift is there in your game? Especially when dealing with the 9 classes from the book? 

Marshall Miller makes a good easy description of the fiction first and fictional positioning approaches.

“Words are important” 

And they are. What you describe matters and isn’t just color. Color has a lot of weight in this game. So describe to your advantage.