In my games, divine authority affected basically everything. However, it's not such a powerful move, and it's best used against people who don't want to attack you, or else it has no effect, since they were going to attack the paladin any way.

It's fairly powerful--if it can affect anyone and any number of anyones, then it's kind of an unlimited defend move, with only the choice of redirecting the attack toward you. And since the paladin has heavier armor and better HP than many of her/his allies, and may want to defend innocent victims, it seems to have a lot of heft.

I don't want to take away part of what makes the Paladin cool, but I also don't want a situation where the paladin just turns on the attack magnet and suddenly none of the NPCs present have any options.

I don't see "what's the range of your spell?" as being terribly provocative, and I'd prefer a more established answer to a question about the rules, but I guess you could have some fun with that.

New question: are spellcasters expected to roll to activate rotes? The "cast a spell" moves use the word "spell" and not "rotes," and the language in the prep moves kind of acts like rotes are different than spells--but I just find it ambiguous.

Thanks for the help. Now, as we inch closer to starting, I admit to being confused about the first session.

The first session chapter says I don't prep an adventure, and I don't create any fronts. I have ideas, and then I roll with it.

Does this mean that for the whole first session, there are no fronts in play, or no defined fronts, anyway? Or do I quickly make up an adventure front on the fly? Or does it matter? I'm happy to improvise, but I want to play the game as designed, and I can imagine being in a situation where I don't have "what my prep demands" to draw on or adventure front moves to make, and I might feel lost.

In addition to any "official" answer, I curious to hear what other people have done.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to run DW via pbp. So I'm re-reading the beta in a panic now that it's real. Here are some questions so far, with probably more as I come. Feel free to link me to answers already given.

1) Anybody got a rule of thumb for distinguishing between defying danger using INT vs. WIS, or a handy definition of "mental fortitude"?

2) End of session: does everybody have to agree on the answers to the questions, or is it majority rules, or what? Argue till you have consensus? Anybody can veto with a single 'no' vote? Does the GM get a say?

3) Carousing: Basically, is "you" singular or plural? Does each person roll carousing separately? Does each person have to pay the coin separately?

Undoubtedly, more to come. Thanks in advance.

Somethings to consider, when thinking about race moves.  Including a race in a class says some powerful stuff about both the race itself (Orcs have Fighters, obviously, but do they also have Rangers?  Do they have Wizards?  What do these things tell us about Orcs in the world?) and about the class, too.  From a setting standpoint, it's important to understand first how that impacts the world - what it says about Clerics in general that humans and dwarves can take up that role but nobody else can.  Does that mean Elves have no gods?  Does it mean halflings are spiritual but not religious?  Why are humans the only Paladins?  etc etc.  It's not an arbitrary choice but a setting statement.

From a mechanical standpoint, the race moves do one of three things - illustrate skill (giving an easier chance to successfully accomplish a particular task) illustrate difference (breaking the rules by allowing stuff like rolling with a different stat, using cleric spells when you're a wizard, etc) or illustrate options (broadening an existing move to encompass new options at various levels - new questions for Discern Realities, etc etc). 

Often, the mechanism is the last thing we'll come up with when determining a race move.  Remember that the race moves (plus any race-related tags for equipment or whatever) are the only way, before the game begins, that players can learn about the races of the game.  They need to paint a broad, interesting picture you can start from.

Exactly this is what makes me think that the poor Dwarves get short shrift in the beta. Humans can be anything--got it. Elves can be nearly anything, Halflings a lot of things.

Dwarves can be fighters or clerics. If you're a Dwarf, you fight, or you fight and pray. That's it.

It reminds me of a guy I once heard critiquing the Klingons: "You can't have everybody in a culture be a warrior. Somebody has to grow the food."

Only two choices for Dwarves, especially just those two, makes them seem to lack depth. So I hope they get a little more love.

Here's a chunk of the example of play:

The goblins on the fumes, though, they're coming right at Rath."
Ben jumps in. "I step between Rath and the crazed goblins and make myself a big target, drawing the goblin's attention with a yell."
"Sounds like Defend" I say.
"Okay, I rolled a 7, so I hold 1."
"Great. The three goblins on fumes pratically bowl Rath over as they slam into him, swinging their daggers wildly."
"No they don't!" Ben says. "I spend my hold to get into the way and direct the attack to me."
"So Brianne steps in at the last moment, pushes Rath out of the way, and the goblins lay into her instead. Looks like 5 damage.

It sounds to me like in this case, the attack of 3 goblins is treated as a single attack in terms of the hold required for defense and (probably) damage as well (it doesn't say what die or dice is rolled to yield the 5 damage).

So, really? 1 hold can redirect any number of attackers? And multiple attackers just do the same base damage? 'cause that seems to invite players to undertake the not-terribly-plausible strategy of "try to get them all to attack me--it won't do any more damage than one of them, and then they can't attack anybody else."

What am I missing?

I completely understand the homage bit of knowing that you have, say, a Strength of 17.

But there are VERY few cases where you use the score and not the modifier. Calculating HP, some specific cases where Charisma is factored in as a cost discount. Can't remember any others.

For new players who don't know the history, this is an unnecessary level of complexity. For new players who do know the history, it threatens to be too like what they know and thus lead them to wrong conclusions about this game being like some other game. And I've never liked games that have you generate a score only in order to generate another score, and this seems to be doing that. 

Since level increases at 3/6/9 give +2 to score, why not just give +1 to modifier and be done with it? Build in some other HP formula, simplify the character sheet, make it more like AW in how it handles stats.

Forgive me if this has already been talked to death--have only skimmed the first few pages of the forum here.