[custom move] reasonable??

Howdy all.

Our battlebabe is getting annoyed at how, while awesome at intimidation, she is useless when the shit actually hits the fan.

The question came up - can there be a move to use cool to do damage? we looked through the sheets and found nothing, but the idea has been tingling at the back of my head a while now.

Any chance people here could either a) help me out, or b) tell me why its a bad idea.

I was thinking of something like
Eye of the Storm
When in battle you can wait for the perfect moment to inflict harm On a 10+ you inflict +1 harm. On a 7-9 you inflict harm but your lack of attention to everything else causes you to be in an untenable position. On a miss you are taken by surprise and take +1 harm.

Does that seem appropriate for AW?

I think that was the actual design intention behind the Battlebabe: she's great at stirring shit up, not so good when trouble actually starts. Maybe I'm wrong.

Then again, the Battlebabe has quite a few awesome battle moves. There's Visions of Death which allows you to basically pre-emptively decide the outcome (unless you roll a Miss). You don't need to wear armour with Impossible Reflexes. You stun people with Dangerous & Sexy and you inflict +1harm with Merciless (remember, 2 harm is enough to down most NPCs).
But the most powerful move might be Perfect Instincts. A +2 bonus is a lot in AW. Coupled with a good stat, that's +5 total, which means you can't fail, and will be probably rolling 10+. If you get three hits on a read a sitch move, that means you just got three automatic success rolls for the future (and since a PC usually acts about three times during a battle...).

Yeah, I agree. The battlebabe is quite powerful, even in combat situations. She just requires a little more prep.

Eye of the Storm doesn't strike me as a bad idea in general (although, what exactly do you roll?) but it seems, strictly speaking, worse than the Battlebabe move Merciless. As I read, it it's +1 harm sometimes, versus an existing move that gives you +1 harm always. Right?

And as others have said... Battlebabes aren't useless when the shit hits the fan! Like, you've got Ice Cold, you aggro someone to surrender and get 10+ (which you'll get better than 50% of the time, assuming no interference), they either surrender, or they suck however much damage you've got pointed in their face. That's up to 5 damage if you're packing a big hi-powered shotgun, which is pretty much a messy death for any NPC, and a very bad day for any PC. And if you add, say, Perfect Instincts for the bonus when acting on a reading of a sitch, you're actually not that bad at seizing by force when you have to, either, and practically unstoppable at acting under fire. And there's Dangerous & Sexy, which lets you tie down the opposition's greatest threat with just a look, or Visions of Death, which lets you just outright say who lives or who dies...

What moves did your group's Battlebabe take? How was (she?) using them?

Eye of the storm is neat! Does it work like "any time in battle, you can roll+cool to wait for the perfect moment to strike"?

In the final book there's a chapter about custom moves. One of the sections is about custom character moves for improvement -- when it's time to improve your character, but none of the available options excite you, the MC can create a custom character move for you. Eye of the Storm fits right in.

-Vincent

Yep, that's the intention.
When the Battlebabe is in the middle of a battle, she spots an opportunity and watches the target until he drops his guard, then strikes.

But of course, you are risking someone coming along and whacking you upside the head while you are waiting..

It was put on the table at the end of last session when our battlebabe had an advance, but didn't know what to spend it on (and also wanted some "cool stat" fighty move")

gah! just noticed I forgot to put the stat in the move.

its supposed to be roll+cool

Tangentially related, but here's my favourite custom Battlebabe move, which (sadly) I have yet to introduce in-game:

What Doesn't Kill You, Makes You Hotter
When you have taken two or three harm, all your +hot rolls have a +1 for as long as you remain wounded. If you have taken four or more harm, take +2 to your rolls.

OR, alternately

Whenever you take five or more harm in a fight and survive, gain +1 hot. You cannot choose to be disfigured.

-

I am kind of waiting on the final game because I understand the Harm system has been overhauled somewhat -- I am hoping it will have some new bits to hook this move into.

Ice Cold lets the Battlebabe roll Cool when going Aggro on NPCs (or Hx vs. PCs), or if you want to be good at Siezing by Force, take the Stat set with Hard=0 and spend three of your first 7 advances pumping it to +3 (one of the first five, then the next two).

Someone mentioned starting Battlebabe vs. Gunlugger and when I took a close look at that, the Battlebabe looks a lot tougher that I'd originally thought.

Or hell, take Perfect Instincts and buy the Operator's Eye on the Door exit move, start shit and then duck out laughing your pretty ass off. Fun times.

I love What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Hotter. The +2 to all rolls seems like a heavy bonus though.

It is a heavy bonus, but you are also within 2 harm of being dead at that point. It's possible the move would work fine without scaling, though, if that was a concern. My perception is probably coloured by my experience with the game -- in our dozen+ sessions I think we only had PCs at 4+ harm once or maybe twice.

Er I also realise from your phrasing you may have misread -- it's +2 to hot rolls only, not all rolls. Another option would be to limit the bonus to seduction rolls only -- so you end up with pretty good odds of being able to worm your way out of a lot of deadly situations, but only if you are willing to put out (or pretend to put out) to whoever's involved.