# Weak Hits vs Misses in Starforged tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/starforged #references/reddit ![[Starforged (cover).jpg|200]] > [!quote] [**ShadowCetra** on Reddit asked:](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/comments/1lyvhjy/starforged_question_about_combat_misses/) [r/Ironsworn](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/)•3 hr. ago > [ShadowCetra](https://www.reddit.com/user/ShadowCetra/) > > So combat is objective based instead of enemy health based. I get that, though it is incredibly odd to get used to (and I find I quite like it) > > But one thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. It seems to me that misses aren't as punishing as a weak hit? > > For example. On a weak hit on most combat moves, you have to make a suffer move, losing something on a track (like health or spirit). But on a miss all they say is to pay the price. > > Now pay the price is an oracle table and only 3 of them effect tracks like health or supply, etc. > > So I'm super confused with how I should be running misses in combat. Am I ALSO meant to be taking harm, stress, etc. In addition to rolling on the pay the price table on a miss? > > I'm just not sure the 'right' way to play out a combat here on a missed move. > > Edit: one other thing that just occurred to me. Things like the move 'endure stress' and 'endure harm.' If I'm not at 0 on their respective scales, I am meant to be able to decide NOT to make those moves and just take the hits, correct? Or do I roll those every time I take harm or stress? Alright, let's talk about combat moves and combat in **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Starforged]]**. There's something important to keep in mind about the way that Starforged is set up in terms of your character, and that is the most dangerous thing to your person is not whether you live or die. All characters are created with things that they care about, and those things *should* be on the line at some level in every conflict. Your personal health and psychological safety are at risk, but far more dangerous is every time you get in a conflict, you risk increasing threat to the reason that you're doing things. So let's start with *Enter the Fray*, which is what you're going to have at the beginning of every combat. On a weak hit or a miss, you very well could be starting in a bad spot. And that means you really have to work to dig out of it. You can't even end the conflict and have a chance at getting the stakes unless you're in control. If you take that +2 momentum, then you're probably going to have to use it sooner rather than later, if only to get a strong hit so that you can get in control so that you can resolve the overall conflict. *Gain Ground* is what you do if you are in control and are trying to turn that into progress on the track or more momentum. *Gain Ground* takes you out of control on a weak hit, putting you on the back foot, but allows you to build momentum or take an add to your next move. But on a miss, you are in a bad spot, and the fiction escalates a bit so that it represents the fact that you are no longer quite as in control of the situation as before, and you're going to *Pay the Price*, which may be taking whatever damage—between physical, mental, or damage to your fictional position. In some way, you are giving up advantages that you had. Likewise with *React Under Fire*, which kicks off with you in a bad spot, probably trying to maneuver into a position where you can make progress. But on a miss, you have an active cost as compared to with a weak hit, where you only have a light suffer move but essentially accomplish within the fiction what you intended to do. For example, let's assume that your enemy has tossed a grenade over the wall that you were using for cover, and you need to leap out and away from the explosion. We know what happens if you get a strong hit. If you get a weak hit, you throw yourself away, but perhaps catch some shrapnel and suffer -1 health and head directly into *Endure Harm* to see what happens. On a miss, the obvious thing that happens is you take the full brunt of the explosion, which is likely going to be more than -1 health.[^1] *Strike* lets you mark progress twice on the conflict track, which is absolutely fantastic on a weak hit. But then you find yourself in a bad spot. If you miss, not only are you in a bad spot, but you're *Paying the Price*, which is obviously much worse—even if *Paying the Price* doesn't result in a counter going down. (It could be much worse; it could be a clock filling up.) *Clash* is what you do when you're not getting what you want. That is, you are in a bad spot. Again, on a weak hit, you mark progress, but you're still not in control of the situation. You stay in a bad spot and *Pay the Price*, but if you miss, you don't even get to mark progress. That's a much worse outcome. *Take Decisive Action* happens when you're in control and you're ready to close out that conflict track. This is really the *only* way to win the fight. And a weak hit on *Decisive Action* can really roll into some awkwardness going forward. This is actually one of my favorite tables, even though it is one of the shorter ones. So much story that doesn't immediately hit comes out of this. It's glorious. On a miss, far worse than just *Pay the Price* happens here. You lose the conflict. Whatever the stakes of the fight were, you lost them. Definitely worse than the miss outcome, where you actually do get whatever the stakes of the conflict were. You'll notice a consistent theme here, which is that being in a bad spot is not good at all. It significantly limits what you can hope to achieve and keeps you from resolving the conflict in your favor. All the weak hit outcomes incorporate this as well. While we're in here, let's talk about *Pay the Price* because it's pretty clear why having to do it is bad and often worse than the weak hit outcomes. It opens by telling you that you can choose one of the following outcomes, and one of them is to *make the most obvious negative outcome happen*. Often, that's worse than just taking some physical or psychological damage. In fact, in almost every case, putting yourself in a worse fictive position is nastier than taking actual harm and is probably going to lead to harm and stress sooner or later anyway. The real threat carried by *Pay the Price* is that it should be very meaningful when it happens. You need to attack the things that make sense as a side effect of failing to do what you were trying to do as that move in the conflict. These are not good things, and they may not happen immediately, which is something I don't think is talked about enough in the book itself. When a trusted individual or community acts against you, it might not be immediately obvious that's happened to the character. But you (the player) know that something you just did set somebody off. You can figure that out now, or you can leave it hanging in the rafters for you to wander underneath later in the story. It's the Sword of Damocles. Being separated from something or someone could be that your weapon goes sailing out of your hand, either across the room or down an endless shaft. Now what? Something of value is lost or destroyed. Well, if you have something of value, there's probably a reason that you were carrying it around, and now the situation is particularly unpleasant. All of these things are worse than just most of the outcomes of the weak hits, which all come with the implication that you are at least achieving what you set out to do in the context of the move, even if you aren't improving your position in respect to the rest of the conflict. Remember, it's *fiction first*. It's always fiction first. The story has to make sense in the context of what you're doing. You never *"I swing my sword at him."* You're always trying to do something, trying to accomplish something. Moving forward toward your goal. A weak hit means that you move toward your goal, but it gets harder or more complicated, or you get a setback along the way. A miss means that you don't move toward your goal, and things get worse. The result of *Paying the Price* can be stat track effects, but a character has a lot more vulnerability than just those. Finally, let's take a look at *Endure Harm*. You are correct when you notice that you can choose to just take the harm and not try to endure it or reduce it. Sometimes that's what makes sense for the character to do, or for the fictive positioning. If your lady love strikes you across the face with a loud *"How dare you,"* and it makes sense to you that you would have your emotional state damaged by that (ie. take -1 spirit), you don't have to roll for it. You can just take it. That's the fictive position that you've decided on. It's pretty rare that this would be your choice, but perhaps you don't want to risk a miss, because that can be particularly unpleasant. So, ultimately, the misses are universally worse than the weak hits, both in terms of what they mean for your fictional position within the scene and your moving toward resolving it in a way that you want to, and strictly mechanically as the results of *Pay the Price*. Part of the cost you're not taking into account is what happens when you're in a bad spot and what that means for your choices in terms of moves as a result. A weak hit means that you succeed partially. A miss means that you're not making progress at all. --- So what does that mean in the context of being the "right" way to play out a combat with a missed move? We have to start at the top. What is the combat *about*? Why are you in that combat? What is it that you hope to gain as a result? Is the goal as simple as *"kill that guy"*? It could be. That's a perfectly reasonable goal for a conflict. Maybe the goal is *"convince him to stop hitting on your girlfriend,"* and it's just that you've chosen a duel at 30 paces with blasters as your mechanism of persuasion. Also perfectly reasonable. Having tracked him down to the administrative hub of the space station, you issue a formal challenge, which he is happy to accept. You square up in the middle of the road with a cocky smile as we *Enter the Fray*. The first thing you do is figure out what your objective is. In this case, it is *"convince the jerkwad to back off your girlfriend."* This is important. It's going to define what success and failure look like. If you miss here, he's got the drop on you. Maybe you stumbled. Maybe you got distracted by a hover tank driving by in the distance. Maybe you're just not as quick as he is. Maybe you're in a bad spot because your girlfriend really doesn't like you and prefers him, and he knows it. That is a fictive positioning that would start you on the back foot for sure. You're in a bad spot. You're limited. Let's say what happens. You rolled a miss, and now you are in a bad spot. Well, you don't have to just slap leather and pull out the blaster. You can engage in some witty repartee. You can try and get back on top of things, especially if your wits are more effective than your reflexes. Maybe you belittle his manhood. Maybe you confess your undying love to your woman. Maybe you just put a keen eye on his gun hand and ready yourself to shift just enough out of the line of fire so even if he does get it off first, it won't be on your body. Since you're in a bad spot and taking action in a fight to avoid danger, that would be a *React Under Fire*. On a weak hit there, you get what it is that you're trying to do as part of the move. You make him doubt his commitment to getting in this fight for your girl. You see his hand going for the gun in a flash, just before he does so. You need to suffer a little bit, and you're still in a bad spot. (*Suffer Stress* here would be appropriate.) You haven't made any progress. You're in a position where you're totally reactive. But if you miss on this *React Under Fire*, things get much nastier. You're still in a bad spot, but you are further from achieving your goal if you were trying to talk him out of being interested—you just rile him up more. If you were watching his hand to see which way he went, you made a bad decision and juked the wrong way. In this case, *Paying the Price* very well might be to Endure Harm (-2). Well, that's just great. So now you're in a bad spot. You've taken a round through the arm, but you're definitely going to take a shot back at him. Sure, he got the drop on you, but let's go. Time for a *Clash*. You draw your blaster and fire, diving to the side for cover behind one of the delivery trucks that take supplies throughout the station. Throwing yourself down behind the truck. Maybe the dice are definitely not worth spitting on today because they deal you a weak hit on that +edge roll. You've edged up (pun intended) progress on your intention, but you're not in a better situation. You're still in a bad spot, and you've got to *Pay the Price*. You popped him a good one, but you misjudged and you instead bounce off and spin back into the street with no cover at all. It could be worse. You roll a *miss*, and you are definitely no closer to scaring this guy off. Instead, he just outright laughs at you, at your stumbling around, and tells you that your girl deserves a real man, and not something on the ground crawling in the dirt like you. You're still in a bad spot, and you need to *Pay the Price*. The obvious thing that could happen is he could put another round right into you as you lay there in the street, but if we're feeling particularly cruel—and I always am—this might be a good time to make a *Test Your Relationship* move with the bond of your girlfriend. You might resolve to do something to be the better man she deserves and show her that. Or you might just step down the level of the bond and have to reaffirm it or reestablish it in some way. You've pretty well screwed this up, so already stuck in a hole, from a fictive point of view. You decide to go all in and *Take Decisive Action* by rolling further into the street onto your belly and taking a complicated shot with the intention of pushing him way off his game. Mechanically, this is really unlikely, especially if you haven't even had any partial successes until now. By that, I mean it's actively impossible if you have literally no boxes full on the progress track. But it may make sense for the character within the context of the story. For the sake of argument, let's say that you do, and it's not strictly impossible, just unlikely. On a weak hit, you actually get what you wanted. In this case, you scare the guy off from hassling your girlfriend. Maybe you do it by putting a round into him. Maybe he's intimidated by the grit you've shown after a solid trouncing and humiliation in front of God and everybody. Maybe he just figures it's not worth it. There will be repercussions. Of course. On a miss, you're a complete failure, and whatever the stakes were for this conflict, you definitely do not get them. You have failed. This guy is not going away. Not only do you not get what you wanted, it's a costly loss. Something significantly has changed for the worse in your situation. Remember, the effects of things don't *have* to be purely mechanically quantified if it makes sense to you and it makes sense within the story. You lose this, your girlfriend dumps you. You are not the man she thought you were. Is that a listed mechanical possibility? Not as such. Could it be interpreted as the implication of some of these? Sure. Could it lead to just *Testing Your Relationship*?[^2] Absolutely. The secret is that the combat is *not just combat*; it is the manifestation of a larger conflict of some sort, even if that conflict is *"this guy needs to die."* Weak hits mean that you get toward whatever it is that you decided you wanted, even if you can't seal the deal on it necessarily. Misses mean that you don't get what you wanted. You don't get closer to what you wanted, and you've burned something about your life or your position in the story that makes sense as a result of your move. That's it. That's the whole thing. [^1]: Personally, I would make this a -3 health *Suffer Harm* because I narrated in a grenade. I knew what I was doing in the first place. It's a risky maneuver. [^2]: Do I watch entirely too much anime, in which this is a perfectly reasonable outcome for tsundres? Yes.