wizards mucking up the gears

this week presents us with some wizard related questions.

mystical puppet strings in an amazing move. (for those of you that dont have the pdf on your smart phone it allows the wizard to choose how and when holds from parley are spent) but we are in dispute on just how powerful it is. basically it come down to how magic the move is. is it compulsion to the point where you can get attacked by raiders and parley one of them into defending you against his comrades or should it follow normal common sense rules of making people do stuff. (wont do anything they are super opposed to or that goes against their nature)? this has been kind of a get out of jail free card so far and i think its getting on agony's nerves...

the whole mystical puppet strings thing led into another issue we had. the situation was our party trying to talk a neutral/semi hostile dog man into letting us copy down a scroll he/she (the debate is still out on this one) had that would allow us access to new and more dangerous dungeon areas. the wizard decided he was going to end this and cast telepathy to use parley (and subsequently mystical puppet strings) on our opponent. now the question comes down to this. the dog person was a very powerful shaman (if it had been a character it would have been around level 5 or 6 while we are level 3). are there any suggestions for dealing with non damaging magic spells being cast at higher level entities/magicians? we had floated an idea of the difference in levels being applied as a modifier to the roll (so if it was level 5 the roll would take a -2 penalty) but i dont know how good that is. (also i think it was only going to apply to other magical peoples) this one im currently at a loss for, i dont really like the above mentioned solution but i do think that there should be something there...

oh, also adept hirelings are insane!(again for pdfless can add their level to damaging spells or if the spell is not damaging can add 1 to any other roll, extend the range or add another target as long as the spell is their level or lower)  we just really started using hirelings and so far have seen the protector, the tracker and the adept. the tracker was useful but just allowed us to do things we couldnt otherwise (we have no ranger) the protector works, but it seems like at higher levels it would be a lot more useful. (we are currently level 3 so the protector is level 2. we have been doing hireling HP as 5 + (d4 +1)/level so the protector has around 8hp but after being equipped with plate mail and a shield she can usually survive 1 hit.) but the adept is crazy. the multiple targets ability seems very good and adding 1 to any roll in a non damaging spell (we have ruled this cannot be the to cast roll) is very very good situationally (it has been used with telepathy to get an additional +1 to parley). one question is are adepts limited to wizard spells? we have used it with cure light wounds (cast by our wizard, but hes an elf so he can get access to it)

thats all i can think of for now, maybe the other will weigh in with their thoughts on the issues we encountered.

There were a couple problems that came as a result of mystical puppet strings. Basically, it allows to ruin the excitement of an otherwise tense situation by allowing the player (more or less) anything he/she wants on a 10+. I know this can come at a cost, but honestly the cost in our situation was kind of forced into the mechanics to limit them.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that mystical puppet strings in this situation was too good, which led us to alter the rule slightly and make it only affect those of lower level, the problem came after that yet again, when we realized that I had still rolled a 10+ on the parley move which pretty much left the npc doing what I wanted.

One of the things we had trouble with was just how good to make parley in general. ben pretty much covered mystical puppet strings... it seems all around insanely good, and honestly if ANYTHING it shouldn't allow a parley roll to be 20 times more effective than the charm person spell. Essentially, the way it's worded, mystical puppet strings is a slightly less effective dominate spell, the difference is that it is a parley roll and 3 classes have easy access to the ability (multiclassing). While I can see a lvl 7 spell being this effect, it's hard to imagine a lvl 2 ability being the same.

My suggestion would be to get rid of mystical puppet strings and either change charm person to become a minor version of this, or just nix it all together. imo any ability that let's you pick the results of parley is entirely too good, however if you're sacrificing 3/4 of your spell book to do it, it's not so intensely good.


This leads us to the other questions about parley. How effective is parley at convincing others to do something? on a 10+ you're pretty much guaranteed to get what you want, which is ok for lower level encounters, but rolling a 10+, according to the rules, against a high dragon would take with it the same result. There's no real rules for opposing parley and, at lvl3 a character can be as good as he'll ever get at it. I don't really know how this is solveable or how other games are dealing with the parley skill, but it would be nice to get some feedback. 

Good points all around, of course.

The adept is probably too good, I was just looking at that this weekend. Part of that comes with the new damage balance, the adept won't be adding so much. I had a hard time coming up with anything else for an adept to do, mechanically, so I'm leaning towards just leaving it as + damage. I guess apprentice wizards can't do much besides blow things up.

As a tangent, that's something that cracks me up about 4E D&D: it's easy for a wizard to harm another person more than a good sword wound would, but relatively hard to conjure up a glass of water. It actually makes a nice kind of sense, for D&D.

As for Mystical Puppet Strings: it's modeled on the Brainer's In-Brain Puppet strings, and I'm thinking maybe it should be more like that. Here's what I'm thinking:

Parley - stays the same. They owe you something and have an incentive to do it.

Charm Person - stays the same. Just like Parley, but with a little more hold and works better on PCs.

Mystical Puppet Strings - Completely rewritten:
When you have time and intimacy with someone, you weave subtle magics around them. Tell them what you would have them do and roll+Cha. On a 10+ hold X, on a 7-9 hold Y. Spend hold whenever you want to choose one:
They take twice your level in damage
They take -1 right now
They stand a drool for a moment
If they fulfill your command, that counts for all your remaining hold.

Dominate - stays as is. Very powerful against NPCs - you get to say how they spend hold. But no better than Charm Person against PCs.

Does that sound workable? Mystic puppet strings is now something you have to make an opportunity to use.

As for Parleying a dragon, I see your issue, but let me respond with this: why would the dragon deign to speak with you in the first place?

lol, i know if i was just learning magic the first thing i would want to do is blow stuff up!
i think the puppet strings sounds good, i dont think there is anything wrong with it being powerful it just seems too easy to use currently. one of the major issues we are having with parley in general is that on a 10+ the target needs to do 3 of the choices and 2 of the 5 are pretty close to each other; they give you an item or information or they do what you want them to do. if you are trying to get them to give you something or information these are pretty much the same thing. another option is they are convinced of something you believe is true can kind of work towards that end too. a dragon may choose to ignore you, but when both parties are trying to to get into a fight, parley quickly finishes things with the limited choices that the MC can take to spend hold.

Sage, the dragon doesn't choose to Parley with you.  Parley represents intimidation, bullying, and coercing.

If I gear my Charisma to be +3 by level 3, I pretty much can parley any encounter and get around it.  Mystical puppet strings just intensifies this.

I really like Parley used sparingly in combat to thwart an opponent or two.  It seems thematic and about right on its effectiveness.

When a barbarian starts saying "I jump off the nearest rock with my axe blazing through the air and scream menacingly at the Dragon barring my teeth, warpaint, and scalps of those I've slain in its face!" then as MC I'm not going to be like, "Sorry, Dragon doesn't want to parley with you, try again."  And Parley, as-is, will let you defeat that dragon like 70% of the time with a single roll if you have +3 charisma.

Also, one more thing - the MC should spend Parley hold according to what the player's want right?  It would be super lame if he chooses to defend you when you parley the enemy to give you something.

I think the main crux of the issue is that Apocalypse World is not geared towards ramping up challenge to the PCs via escalating encounter power like D&D.  It's very anti-climactic to be able to Parley nearly anyone in the game and the MC can't really do much about it besides hand-waive and use fiat.

How does parley finish a fight?

If I'm the GM and I say "So, the orc chieftan blows his horn, summoning his honor guard, and charges you!" and the Bard says "I Parley him and tell him to stand down" my response is always "How? There's a bloodthirsty orc running at you, why is he listening to you?"

If they have a chance to talk before a fight, sure, they might be able to avoid combat. Which is great, and likely to generate more problems, since its the GM who gets to choose if they hold a grudge. But remember, "to Do It, Do It." In the middle of a battle? That's a tough time to get an enemy to listen to your lies and/or reasonable offers.

Hack and Slashing a dragon follows a similar idea. If you can actually get up close to a dragon, with you blade unsheathed, you can swing it at the dragon just as easily as you could at a goblin. But getting that close to a dragon? That's tough. You've probably had to sneak and fight your way through traps, guards, and other challenges just to get here.

There's a very D&D instinct that rolls against bigger things need to be tougher, and that's not really true in DW. Things are tougher because you have to be in a fictional position to do them.

Take the old staple of presenting a case before a king in court. In D&D, the king probably has high stats in resisting persuasion, since the assumption is that anyone can make that roll. In DW, the king isn't harder to make the roll against, but getting the opportunity is tough. You'll probably have to make a number of bribes, maybe take some quests on the king's behalf, and present a worthy gift, just to have the chance.

agony, looks like I cross-posted with you.

Parley certainly includes intimidation, but why would one puny human with an axe be intimidating to a dragon? And, how did you get there in the first place? These are the elements that go into making intimidating a dragon "harder."

Intimidating means threatening something, right? If a player described that action to me, I'd say "so how is that intimidating to this creature, who sits on a pile of gold mixed with the hundreds of skeletons of those it's slain? The dragon puffs out a bit of smoke and says with a smirk "only 3 skulls, little pink-skin? That was my first meal when I was a hatchling."

Then there's, as I mentioned in the cross-post, how you got in front of a dragon to begin with.

in our game we use parley for any sort of social interaction. this includes intimidation and what not. that is generally how we use it in combat. after fighting a group of thugs you bellow at the last one to surrender or die or you charge a group of goblins hollering and screaming and scare off half of their band.

a dragon is one thing, but we dont fight dragons all the time. usually it is something that is intimidatable. (i just made up a word!)

in your ork example, a wizard casts telepathy and can now speak into his mind, i think its rather acceptable that the ork would listen to that, or at least notice it. and if not, i can see the fighter in the group meeting the orks charge and making such a display of dominance that the ork thinks better of the situation and slinks off with its tail between its legs.

I don't have the rules in front of me, but even if you somehow managed to successfully intimidate a dragon, couldn't the dragon still just suck it up and let you take your +1 ongoing against him?  I mean, that's certainly an advantage, but it's not game-breaking, right?

Unless you can stack Parleys.  That might be weird.

we arnt talking about dragons, though. i appreciate the example and realize that there are extreme cases where this is not an issue and can be talked around, but too often parley seems like it can diffuse most conflicts with little to no risk involved. in a lot of situations, like the one we had* are not necessarily outright hostile and the possibility of talking is there. in these situations parley is too strong as it is not hard to pass and even without puppet strings the options given are limited to the point where the players get what they want. (and if the MC thumbed his/her nose the players and bent over backwards to not give them what they were trying to obtain i would say thats a dick move)


* (ill recap; neutral but cautious opponent who we were retrieving half of a spell for. we were trying to talk the person into giving us their half as well so we would both have the full thing, the wizard used telepathy and more or less forced the person to give us the other part. we ruled that mystical puppet strings would not come into effect but on a 10+ you still basically always get what you want)

I don't have the rules in front of me, but even if you somehow managed to successfully intimidate a dragon, couldn't the dragon still just suck it up and let you take your +1 ongoing against him?  I mean, that's certainly an advantage, but it's not game-breaking, right?

Unless you can stack Parleys.  That might be weird.

I don't believe that's part of the options.  More than half the time a person dedicated to Parley will get 10+ and pretty much get what he wants.

But yeah, the Dragon thing I can understand and perhaps that was a bad example.

The situation that arose in our game was this bad-ass Shaman who wanted to meet with the PC's.  My issue is that even if I had this powerful NPC who was sly and manipulative he would be just as easy to trick and parley (More than half the time by odds if you are good at parley) as a beggar on the street who was a half-wit.  Maybe this isn't an issue and part of the problem was I didn't think through the game logic when I created the encounter (I expected this encounter to be a big deal and tense as the PCs confronted a major enemy of the dungeon they were in) but it wasn't - because Parley is easy. 

Maybe I'm just not being a big enough fan of the PCs as the text suggests and maybe there's no room for social combat/hurdles in this game (through mechanics at least) and I shouldn't have had that expectation/baggage from previous systems.

By the way sage, not that it necessarily needs to be said, but my group has enjoyed the hell out of this game.  All of this criticism/critique is constructive and we want DW to be the best game possible - which is why we're bringing this stuff up. 

John Harper just pointed out what I think is the disconnect: Parley, as phrased right now, doesn't really include the fictional positioning part.

The wizard can speak into the orc's mind, great! What does he say? What can he say that actually means something to the orc? If he's intimidating, what can he intimidate with? Death? The orc's already in a fight for his life. Stop fighting and we'll let you walk away? That would probably work, but that doesn't mean he won't come back with friends.

Basically, to Parley with someone, you need some leverage on them. Something they want that you can give them, or that they at least believe you can give them.

I'm emailing with Adam and some other people right now, I think we may have a better version of the move soon.

John Harper just pointed out what I think is the disconnect: Parley, as phrased right now, doesn't really include the fictional positioning part.

The wizard can speak into the orc's mind, great! What does he say? What can he say that actually means something to the orc? If he's intimidating, what can he intimidate with? Death? The orc's already in a fight for his life. Stop fighting and we'll let you walk away? That would probably work, but that doesn't mean he won't come back with friends.

Basically, to Parley with someone, you need some leverage on them. Something they want that you can give them, or that they at least believe you can give them.

I'm emailing with Adam and some other people right now, I think we may have a better version of the move soon.

That makes more sense.  I was hesitant to tell the PC's no so I let them pretty much always parley.  One thing though, is that with Mystical Puppet strings do you still need that leverage?  It seems like no, since you are controlling them and forcing them to do your will.

Well, the new mystical puppet strings is it's own move, so no. The old one, I think so, yeah. My vision of the move is that you're just nudging them through magic, the basic action is still Parley.