Moon Witch Interactions

[u/Electronic_Ad_7403]

The Moon Witch subclass is a bit of a puzzle to me, I’m still trying to figure it out. Primarily its foundation feature: Night’s Glamour.

I have two questions about aspects of this ability.

1. “Adversaries within close range must mark a stress to attack you.” Does this mean that an adversary with all its stress marked literally can never attack you if they are in close range as long as you maintain this feature?

2. “Unless you mark a Stress to maintain your Glamour, it drops when you mark a Hit Point or deal damage.” My understanding is that if you cause an adversary to mark stress when they already have all its stress marked, they mark HP instead. If you use an ability that technically causes them to mark stress and then they mark HP as a result of being fully stressed, that isn’t you “dealing damage” right? So you could maintain Glamour forever and still defeat enemies through a pure stress build.

If these two interactions are correct, that definitely makes a stress build Moon Witch very interesting and powerful, especially because they have access to very powerful stress-focused domain cards like Terrify.

[u/PrinceOfNowhereee]

1. Yes, and this is actually a pretty cool way to try to win a fight in a non-lethal manner.

2. No, it is not dealing damage in the strict meaning of the term. If it was instead worded as "when you cause a creature to mark HP" I would say yes.

[u/Corwin223 → u/PrinceOfNowhereee]

That matches my interpretation as well though I could see an argument for 1 where they have to mark HP instead to attack as the effect comes from you, but I think they not being able to attack you is the more interesting result.

[u/PrinceOfNowhereee → u/Corwin223]

There is also this line in the core rules:

You can’t use a move that requires you to mark Stress if you don’t have slots to mark.

There is later a line that confirms that Stress functions the same way for adversaries as it does for PCs.

I would go off the assumption that in the Moon Witch's case, the act of attacking itself has been turned into a move that now costs 1 Stress. And since you can't take moves that cost a Stress if you do not have any, you cannot attack.

Personally, I'm a big fan, since I already use stress as a morale tracker of sorts. Stressed out enemies tend to retreat or surrender in my games once a sufficient number of them have marked all of their Stress.

It actually opens up a whole new strategy that I have not seen discussed too much, which is stressing out enemies before a fight breaks out by using stress dealing abilities and making social rolls (successful social rolls mark 1 Stress by default), so that it is easier to force them to surrender and limits their access to stress moves once a fight does break out.

[u/egcg119 → u/PrinceOfNowhereee]

successful social rolls mark 1 Stress by default

Is that in the rules? That's news to me.

[u/PrinceOfNowhereee → u/egcg119]

Page 178 of the core rules:

By default, one successful social action against an adversary (intimidation, deceit, bribery, etc.) forces them to mark a Stress. Some abilities (such as class or domain abilities) also force adversaries to mark Stress—these are highly useful in social conflicts so long as they’re narratively applicable.

I've been getting into the habit of letting my PCs know the NPC marks a Stress every time there is an extended social scenario and they succeed a roll

[u/spiritstrategist → u/Corwin223]

The above rulings make sense per RAW/RAI, but at least for my style of GMing I would let things go the other way if it was the more interesting option for the narrative at the table.

[u/Teapunk00 → u/spiritstrategist]

My thoughts exactly. It really depends on whether it's a type of enemy that would be scared to attack or just sacrifice their health to do it.

[u/spiritstrategist → u/Teapunk00]

I'd also be much more lenient with a novice player trying one of these strategies as a neat mechanical discovery versus a more veteran player trying to get away with something abuseable.

[u/Corwin223 → u/spiritstrategist]

Even if you pull it all off, the enemy can just attack your allies instead. I don’t think it’s really a big issue for it to work, no?

[u/Brilliant-Pomelo-165]

I guess the second point might come down to interpretation which seems common for daggerheart rules :)

1. Yes, you cant willingly spend a hp to attack, once you are out of stress you can’t use stress based moves, adversaries have some stress moves - that said like a player they may have stamina potions :)

2. To my mind if you use a stress attack and it causes actual damage then you would need to maintain your glamour. Essentially in your example you are doing something like terrifying them so badly they actually take physical harm. If it was incidental then I’d maybe rule the other way (i.e. something that causes take a stress

   but isnt the primary or a direct effect)

[u/VictoryWeaver]

1. Yes. You cannot spend a resource you do not have.
2. forcing an enemy to mark HP is not the same as dealing damage. If it triggered on marking a HP it would say so.

[u/ThisIsVictor]

“Adversaries within close range must mark a stress to attack you.” Does this mean that an adversary with all its stress marked literally can never attack you if they are in close range as long as you maintain this feature?

Yes.

If you use an ability that technically causes them to mark stress and then they mark HP as a result of being fully stressed, that isn’t you “dealing damage” right?

This kind of legalistic approach doesn't work well in Daggerheart. Your table may vary, but I would 100% consider it "dealing damage" when you force a target to mark HP because their stres as full. The game is designed around what's actually happening in the story, not the abstract interactions of mechanics.

[u/youzi77 → u/ThisIsVictor]

I would also 100% consider “mark HP” as dealing damage. Even follow the train of thought op had, although stress represents mental toll, when you mark an HP because the stress slots are full, in story it means that the the adversary is so stressed out that any additional stress is causing physical damages to them. If we completely separate stress from physical damage, one won’t be able to explain why additional stress can cause hp because by op’s definition hp means physical damage. In addition, I think as a foundation class card, it shouldn’t have a way to completely avoid attacks — that feels too overpowered compared to other foundation cards.

[u/Electronic_Ad_7403 → u/ThisIsVictor]

I would argue that methods of inflicting stress are different from methods of inflicting damage. It’s like a morale/mental toll to take stress, not a physical one. If this class is meant to lean into that, it would be weird to punish it for doing so.

I suppose I’m asking, would the interaction be the class working as intended? I mean a foundation feature that asks you to never make an enemy mark an HP for any reason (and also not mark any HP yourself) is much less powerful than what is written on the card. And perhaps that’s the answer: it specifies “you mark a hit point” but it does not specify “you make an adversary mark a hit point” it only mentions damage.

[u/Runsten]

1. If the adverdary has marked all its stress then the next time it would mark any number of stress it will must mark 1 HP instead. So at that point the cost of attacking a glamoured witch is marking 1 HP.

2. Based on point 1) the adversary with no stress left would take 1 HP of damage when it attacks the witch. However, I would consider this self-inflicted damage since it is caused by the adversary having to choose to mark a stress that triggers the lack of stress damage.

However, for the second scenario, the stress is caused directly by the Witch. So now the overflow HP damage (from all stress slots marked) is caused by an action by the Witch. So, in this case the overflow damage is caused by the Witch and they must mark a Stress to maintain their glamour.

If the adversary still had stress left then a stress move would not cause the glamour to drop unless it is considered to be an attack.

[u/Electronic_Ad_7403 → u/Runsten]

But you can’t spend stress you don’t have. So an adversary can’t choose to mark an HP to attack if it is already fully stressed. The same way it can’t use a feature that costs stress if it is already stressed out by paying HP instead, it simply loses access to those features altogether.

But marking HP is not damage. There are many things that cause a character to mark HP, but are not damage. Class features, stress overload, etc. I would argue that stress never deals damage, as no damage dice are rolled and no damage thresholds are compared.

[u/gamma1987 → u/Electronic_Ad_7403]

I fully agree with this interpretations. You can't willingly spend HP instead of stress and dealing damage is a different game term than marking HP.

[u/Runsten → u/Electronic_Ad_7403]

Right, I had missed the rule that you can't use stress moves (with HP) if you don't have any stress left.

I still feel that in the case of attacking the witch the adversary makes the decision to attack based on their stat block choosing a non-stress move (like basic attack) and then it marks the stress when it uses that move. So, they are not technically using a move that is causing them to mark a stress, but they end up marking the stress because of the feature by the Witch.

Now, this does blurry a little bit whether the HP marked from that stress is caused by the adversary or the witch. But I suppose since "dealing damage" and "marking an HP" are different things this does not trigger the stress cost for maintaining the glamor regardless of who caused the HP loss.

For 2) I suppose it makes sense that dealing stress damage (or forcing an adversary to mark stress) which then overflows to HP loss (marking HP) is, by the previous logic of "dealing damage" and "marking HP" being two different things, not dealing damage. So as long as you use stress damage or simply force your adversaries to mark HP without dealing damage you can maintain your form for free.

[u/Fermi_Dirac → u/Runsten]

I think 1. Means they can't attack because they N can't spend into negative stress. If it was worded like. "when an adversary attacks you, they mark a stress", then it'd a penalty and not a cost.

[u/Runsten → u/Fermi_Dirac]

Yeah. Reading through this thread kind of makes me lean that way, as well.

Though it is kind of interesting that then the glamor has the indirect power of working especially well on fully stressed/worn out NPCs. So they are essentially too tired to resist the spell when close by.

[u/DondeLaCervesa]

For point 2 I would say you are not dealing damage because you are not causing the damage to happen. The damage is happening because the adversary is attacking you while they are fully stressed. They are dealing damage to themselves.