DwD Studios

I would assume you can. I'd run it like, you make the resist roll on the first turn you're hit at whatever penalty you've accumulated (If you choose to resist), then on subsequent rounds, you make the roll whenever you choose in your set of actions with whatever level of penalty you've acquired, as I apply those effects at the end of the turn. Am I doing it wrong?

I have another similar question though, about multiple actions. In my group, I've not been allowing multiple attacks all at once. In other words, if a character wants to swing two or three times, we go in initiative order, everyone getting their initial attack, then go around again to whomever desires to make further attacks. There's no specifics in the rules that I noticed, and I could see a case for players making all of their attacks at once, but I wanted to avoid the ninja quisinart effect where a single player swings three or four times and decimates a big baddy. Any 'official' word on this? (Or direction to where I missed it)

Thanks in advance!
Matt

Correct, according to the rule as written.

BTW, a lot of these questions should be asked in the Q&A section of the site, I'll go ahead and add this topic.

I like your thought, it allows all the characters to participate defeating something. About a month ago during a BBF game one of the players was setting up for an awesome jump-from-the-cliff-on-top-of-the-bad-guys. He rolled poor initiative and another player got there first and wiped out the bad guys. He was really disappointed.

:D That was awesome. :D <--Player that jumped from the cliff (rock actually) onto the beast. Threw my spear first, though, then jumped from the rock. The spear was a critical success that killed it in the first blow with a high damage roll. I rolled craps for the rest of the night. :(

Well, when another GM was running and I cast three AoE effects with my spellcaster, effectively and completely ending the fight before anyone else could do anything, we decided some change was in order. LOL

You need the corrected edition.

Corrected edition of which? Offensive Strike? We are using the rules that are, so far as I know, current. OS does 1d10+1d10/lvl and I was a lvl 3 SpellCaster. We were fighting a small pack (like 8) of something relatively small, orcs I think, or maybe zombies. Granted, they wouldn't have been a big challenge to the group, as all of us had raised our Primary skills to rank 3, but it was still... dissatisfying.

Since it only took 3 castings to get rid of 8 opponents, I assume you used it toward all 8 opponents at once within 3 squares? If so, did you do 1D/2 +1D/2 per level damage instead, as per the rule for multiple targets? At 3rd level, if all 3 castings passed, this should average 30 damage per creature. (The damage on each creature should be cast individually. So some would get a lot of damage, while others would get only a little.) To deduct 20 from the second roll and 40 from the first roll, casting all 3 is rather difficult. It would seem to me you would have rolled a rare 3 consecutive successes.

Actually, average on those damages would be 11 points per casting. The average amount of a D10 roll is 5.5 if you add it up, but as orcs and other rank 1-2 creatures have about 15 hit points or so, that pretty effectively wiped them out. Taking their resist into account, you'll likely miss on at least one cast, but 22 points is still more than enough to take them out. lvl 3 spellcaster, house rule giving elves +10 to spellcaster, and Spellcaster Primary. I think my logic is like 72

36+20+10+30=96

I won initiative. 96, 76, 56.

Not really that hard of a set of rolls to make.

You're right.

And I see the problem.

You might start with the correction of using only 1D per level, removing the bonus die, so a group casting would be only 1D/2 per level. This takes off 5.5 damage from that scenario. In that instance, it would have left several alive. Even still, it needs more control.

Try this equation:

Level/2 x 1D/2 for group casting
Level/2 x 1D for single casting

Well, I didn't think reducing damage further would help, since it would increase difficulty when facing 'bigger' creatures. Our fix was the round robin in initiative order. We also don't reroll init at the beginning of every round though, in the interest of speeding up gameplay. With little critters, the idea wasn't to make the combat harder, just to give everyone a chance to at least swing. We wanted everyone to feel involved, even in 'easy' combats.

That's the good thing about these rules, they're really hard to break. Whatever I need to do to fix my game doesn't necessarily apply to yours, so long as it works.

I have been meaning to figure out a way to eliminate Initiative entirely using the Dungeon World "DM Moves" rules with this game, but it might make things a bit confusing. But I was also working on another thing that would allow spellcasters to add effects on to spells to allow them to perform other feats but at the cost of either dropping a damage dice or implementing a larger difficulty for doing something amazing.

Perhaps increase the difficulty of casting over an area? I would think realistically it would be very taxing to mentally target multiple foes or blanket an area with a single spell.

Eliminating randomized initiative doesn't sound like a fully viable fix to me. Instead, it's allowing one's self to be pigeonholed. The only reason it works is because your spellcaster is pushed down the initiative order and it doesn't resolve the fact that the combat is still likely to last only 1 round because of the spellcaster. I wouldn't appreciate that myself, if I were a spellcaster. Sometimes it's just fun to be first, as in the painting on the BBF cover. I found that exciting and I wanted it.

I never appreciated draining a magic user of power or taxing them in any way. It's magic. It comes from an unknown dimension and never requires anything more than a calling upon a demon or making a hand gesture with the right words. The words and movement having some mystical effect within themselves that calls forth the magic. By all accounts and definitions, this is how magic works. Exhaustion is a concession of modern shysters and television/movies.

I think reducing the power is exactly what's needed. Think about it. To keep the spellcaster from becoming the sole hero, he has to learn to be a team player. To be a team player, his magic should work to benefit the team, not to do all its heavy lifting for them. Thus, if the OS spell simply damages monsters, instead of clearing them, then the rest of the party can participate in killing the monsters. Under no circumstances should a single spell be able to clear a room full of monsters unless the monsters are lower level or the warrior can also clear the room.

Jeopardy is needed. Without jeopardy, there is no real combat. It becomes humdrum and not fun.