thief with bows

in our game we have a thief who decided he wanted to primarily use bows. unfortunately this means that he is more or less ineffective in combat next to my fighter and the mage who will soon be able to fireball things into oblivion. there are several things i have thought about on this issue.

* there is no + damage for taking a penalty on a 10+ for volley.
now i am not sure that volley should get a 2x multiplier for damage like hack and slash because for HnS you always take damage while for volley you get put in a dangerous position or loose ammo. but the ability to beef you damage makes HnS leave volley in the dust damage wise.

* allow some sort of sneak attack with bows (maybe a move that needs to get taken)
leave all the restriction of a normal sneak attack but let it be made (at close range) with a bow. i do not think that any of the options for sneak attack would have to change, even the "dont get into melee" one could still work (you shoot them with an arrow and they get super pissed and charge you)
***also on backstab*** do you think it would be an issue if a thief with a rapier used dex on backstab instead of str as they have a precise weapon that lets them use dex for HnS? (maybe another move for graceful backstab?)
(i mainly ask these things because our thf took a super low str and has not used backstab yet...)

poison is the only way to currently boost damage on ranged attacks for a thf, i think its pretty neat but ours has not taken it yet (i think the randomness turns him off even though its on average way better than the warrior damage boost which gives a static +2, he may also be concerned with price/application time)

Thanks for the feedback. We're working on some major rebalancing right now, particularly around damage, so we'll definitely keep that in mind.

One of the tricky parts here is how "hard" it should be to be a Thief with a bow. If we make moves that enable bow use, we're still saying that the Thief has to give up moves to be effective with a bow, those moves could be used for other, cooler stuff. If the Thief can use bows right off the bat, we have to be really careful with how we write their moves, and it starts to intrude on the Ranger's shtick.

okay cool, im looking forward to the new stuff. most of our issues right now seem to revolve around damage (both given and received)

the main example of this i guess would be my fighter. i have gotten lucky and rolled 10s on both my hit die so far (1%!) so i can take hits from pretty much anything (im only wearing full plate with no +armor moves so i do not think i am breaking the game through excessive armor) and on hit i do 2d8 + 4. with the amount of HP i have i can easily double that without much worry and thwomp anything we find.  (we changed the fighter weapon to have 2 +1 damages and a +2 pierce so my sig wep does d8 +2 then i took the +2 damage move and dual wield from the ranger list for 2d8+4)
i guess this wont be as outrageous when the wizard hits level 3 and can fireball the room for 3d6 x 2 (if there are low numbers of baddies that almost keeps up with the warrior...) but the wizard can still die rather easily while the fighter is much harder to kill.

im rambling now... but maybe some more examples will help with ideas for the new system.

That's really useful info, thanks. The more ideas I have of what damage and armor people are actually getting, the better.

i think one of the things that makes damage kind of hard in this game is the connection between dealing and taking damage as well as the nature of taking damage when compared to DnD.

this example is taken from our game, we are level three so the numbers reflect that. the scaling could change at higher levels but i can only foresee the divide  growing wider, not smaller.

in DW the lower hit die of some classes (mainly thf but bard as well) make it difficult for them to actually engage in melee combat. at level three, the thief in our group has 15hp and wears mid tier armor (soaks 2) compared to my fighter who has 36hp and wears top tier armor (soaks 3). the expectation of taking damage to do damage allows for a fighter to stand up in a melee because he has the HP to shed to keep fighting while the thf can stand maybe 2 rounds before they need to heal.
this also holds true for dealing damage. while there is not really any difference between the base damage we can do (thf can get the ability to use the largest weapons and poison is comparable to any of the + damage abilities that a fighter can get [the only real difference i can see in base damage is the ability for the fighter to take dual wield out of the ranger tree while the thf cannot]) the real ability to do damage is the option to double damage in exchange for taking a hit if your roll 10+. this allows the fighter to take some damage which he can tolerate to do a lot of damage while the thf cannot take that damage as casually.

i am not saying that all classes should be equals in combat, but already at 3rd level (and even at 2nd level) in our game my fighter was doing 80% to 90% of the damage in combats in a group with a thf a bard and a wizard (who doesnt really count, all he could do was cure light wounds...) both the thief and the bard were using d8 bows because they would not have been able to survive getting into combat. when they did they tended to defend my fighter almost constantly to prevent themselves from just dying.

again, im not sure of a good fix for this, and i have no idea on what youve already worked out for your revamped damage system. these are just some observations i have had.



oh, a few questions:
*when choosing to do double damage for melee or empowered spell would you say you have to choose before rolling damage or wait until after. (we've been playing choose before and will probably continue that way no matter your answer, im just curious.)
*same thing with adventuring gear. state youre using it before the roll, or wait to see if it is needed?
*with the defend move, perhaps remove the ability to spends a hold to move damage from yourself to the person you are defending? this would make the meatier types (pals and fgts) need to look out for their squishy comrades instead of making the softies spend all their turns defending the tanks so they can divert damage to the guys who can stand it. just an idea...

Adam and I think we have this nailed down. Big changes: no more hitdice, and much slower damage progression.

As for your specific questions:

You make those choices before you roll. The move kind of states the order: roll, make any applicable choices, then apply the effects of those choices (like dealing damage).

I hadn't thought about adventuring gear. Probably before.

You're completely right on the defend move, I hadn't thought of that lame behavior. The move shouldn't encourage that.