Skip to main content
edited tags
Link
Thomas Markov
  • 154.5k
  • 30
  • 864
  • 1.2k
Source Link

Suggestions to replace or tweak the DW barbarian's "taunt"

I've recently been coming to realize in my Dungeon World game that my barbarian player's AOE taunt mechanic ("What Are You Waiting For?") is somewhat of a disruptive, aggravating move. For people who aren't familiar with it offhand:

What Are You Waiting For? When you cry out a challenge to your enemies, roll+Con. ✴On a 10+ they treat you as the most obvious threat to be dealt with and ignore your companions, take +2 damage ongoing against them. ✴On a 7–9 only a few (the weakest or most foolhardy among them) fall prey to your taunting.

  1. It feels like an MMO mechanic - it jerks away "threat," in a fairly nonsense manner, just because the barbarian is yelling a challenge. Not the guy who was just peppering you with arrows, not the rogue stabbing you in the ribs: his large friend is now the larger concern because he shouted at you.
  2. It's somewhat narratively limiting - unless I want it to just end immediately after someone else performs a threatening action, which feels impotent, it means everyone in the fight is now just trying to kill the barbarian. Which probably wouldn't be quite as much of an issue, except...
  3. It adds to the barbarian's already-ludicrous damage potential. The barbarian in question used his 2nd level move to get Appetite for Destruction and take Merciless from the fighter move set, so with a two-handed sword, anytime he taunts then successfully gets into melee and swings, he's doing 1d10+1d4+3 damage. Assuming it's something he can actually fight, it's probably dead on the floor at this point.

Essentially, either I need to learn better ways to deal with this move and still provide a challenge to my players, or - and the barbarian's player is open to this - I need to find a way to tweak, alter, or replace What Are You Waiting For with something that actually makes sense to me in the context of the game.