Cantrips and Rotes - failed rolls

Hi,

I was watching someone else play Dungeon World and they said that Cantrips and Rotes didn't require dice rolls. I looked in the rules but can't see officially them being different than other spells.

In my own campaign we originally treated them like all other spells, but our spellcasters were powerleveling much faster than other classes. We discussed keeping them as normal spells xp and DM-moves-wise, but the whole nature of the spells are that it is like every day small magic tricks, and noone really liked that they could trigger hard moves.

In my campaign now we say that they still require dice rolls, but they don't give xp on failures and can't trigger Hard Moves. Seems to work fine.

How do you handle Cantrips and Rotes?

I was watching someone else play Dungeon World and they said that Cantrips and Rotes didn't require dice rolls. I looked in the rules but can't see officially them being different than other spells.

The rules as written don't spell out the exact relationship of Cantrips/Rotes to ordinary spells. It's very explicit that they don't count against your spell limits, and no other distinction is made, so claiming they don't need die rolls is an ex-recto house rule.

In my own campaign we originally treated them like all other spells, but our spellcasters were powerleveling much faster than other classes.

I'm really curious about this part.  You've mentioned it before, and it's certainly not an effect I've noticed.  Do I infer correctly that your spellcasters are/were levelling faster because they were rolling a lot more because they were casting a lot of spells? 

So, every one of those xp came from a failed die roll.  What kinds of hard moves were you making on those failures?  ("Take away their stuff" is legit, which includes applying the partial-success consequence of forgetting the spell.)

More importantly, why were the other characters not doing more stuff?  Players can roll Discern Realities and Spout Lore pretty much any time they want to, for instance. 

And if you're keeping their lives filled with adventure, shouldn't there be a lot of Defy Danger rolls all around?  What is the Fighter doing while the Wizard is casting his Magic Missile?  If you have a passive player, then maybe you need to make a point more often of asking them what they're doing, or making them respond to an enemy threat.

I *have* seen characters race ahead in experience, but generally it has looked a lot like random luck, when someone at the table just keeps rolling like hell. 

Yes, I'm curious as well. How are all these power leveling spell casters surviving so many hard moves?

A miss on a weak spell shouldn't imply a weak consequence any more than a miss on a Level Nine Plague Of The Pox should make the wizard fall over dead.  A Sanctify rote, for example, might turn all the wine and mead in the tavern where it was cast into water.  Think about the next ten minutes after THAT happens.  An Unseen Servant operates as usual for fifteen minutes, then suddenly BOLTS in the opposite direction with whatever was given to it. 

If they roll for rotes and cantrips, and have so many failures there the wizard and cleric are bumped extra levels, 90% of the dangers and scenarios the party finds themselves in ought to be the consequence of the wizard and/or cleric.  Not 'ought to be' as in a statement of morals, but as in they must be attracting SO MUCH bad karma it will likely be taking all the party's time to deal with it.  Which should drag the other characters upwards as well.

If your party is comprised of magic users with low modifiers in the applicable stats that would do it, but ANY character so designed (a fighter with -1 STR for example) would be a trouble magnet AND leveling machine.  Barring their likely and untimely death.



.... having said that, having level 0 spells be 'free' seems like a legit homespun way to speed up play if the XP isn't wildly out of balance and the group is acting in a clear and decisive direction.