So we played our first session of AW today. Overall it went really well and I'm very pleased with the system.

PCs: Battle Babe, Gun Lugger, Brainer, Savvyhead

Lots of fighting. Much more than I would have expected, but I shouldn't have been surprised what with the BB and GL in the group. Anyway, conflicts quickly escalated to full-on gunbattles and we ended up with some pretty big fights right away.

Due to me not reading the rules quite right, whenever a character received Harm but rolled a miss, we didn't issue out any Harm. This worked pretty well. But near the end of the session it became clear we were doing it wrong, and that any time you take harm, you Take Harm, end of story, even on a miss.

That means that every time you use Seize by Force in a violent conflict (or at all?), you're guaranteed to take harm. This doesn't seem to be that big of a problem if you've got 2 Armor and aren't going up against any heavy weaponry. But if you're a Brainer or a Savvyhead, you're hosed; there's no way to get involved in the fight without getting chewed up pretty bad, it seems. And since you may use the Seize by Force move more than once in a single battle, the risks are even higher.

It seems the option to reduce harm by 1 on a miss (in exchange for a complication from the 7-9 list) is meant to help with this, but since at least some harm is guaranteed in every fight, how do players w/o heavy armor get through it?

So following my long, stream of consciousness setup (sorry)...my questions:
(1) Am I correct that you always take Harm when using Seize by Force?
(2) Other than heavy Armor, how do you mitigate Harm in a battle or other violent conflict?
(3) What's the design impetus? Are we trying to discourage characters w/o heavy armor from getting into gunfights? Is there just too much action in my game so far?

Thanks. I'm really enjoying the game.

Jake