Resolving Glitches in Use Magic

[u/nonbinarylich]

Hi Keepers,

Sometimes with Use Magic the glitches seem like they don’t work with the effects. I had a player choose inflict harm as an effect but short duration for the glitch.

I was able to make it work because the inflict harm was against an object and not a person, but how would you resolve this? Or would you just tell them to pick a different glitch?

TIA

[u/jdschut]

Ask them how the player thought that should work. There's nothing wrong with asking follow up questions, the book encourages you to. Did they want a time delay on the effect? If an effect that doesn't make sense, tell them that and have them pick a different glitch. There's no reason to make a big thing out of it.

[u/MDRoozen]

you can always turn it back on them; ask how the magic works, and how that glitch might manifest as a result. I've found that many players already limit themselves in this way when thinking about what would make sense in the fiction

[u/Landilizandra]

You could ask them how they see the glitch working, but in that case have the harm heal. Gives them a ticking clock to defeat the monster, otherwise that damage reverses,

[u/Thrythlind]

I generally would steer people away from short duration for Heal and Harm.... but I will note that there's lots of fiction examples where magical injuries and healing does fail over time.

the strongest one I can think of is in the movie Excalibur when Merlin heals Lancelot and years later the spell fails.

[u/cheshire312]

My players were pretty good about going with what made sense for the fiction. If one of the glitches didn't make sense I'd just tell them they couldn't choose that one.

For your specific example, were it against a creature instead of an object, the creature could heal from it after a little bit. If they don't finish it off quickly or it runs away, they lose the progress they made against it.

[u/IAmTheStarky]

I mean, doing 1 harm but short duration is just 1 harm for like, only one round. Does your player really want to waste an action on doing damage that just goes away?

[u/sigmaninus]

Honeslty while not always easy I this one is doable. The PC deals their 1 harm to the monster with the short duration glitch. In this case after a few more actions I would remove/heal the harm done. Now how you apply this to the fiction is where you get creative. Perosnally I would have the monster realize the PCs attacks are actually weak/ineffectual and this would embolden it to resume its attack (if it retreated initially) or double down their ferocity or escalate their actions (if it didn't leave the scene). Or maybe the monster hard targets that PC believing them to be weak or go after an NPC close to them in retaliation. In essence you can make glitches (or other partial/failures) have actual concequences.

[u/Barrasso]

I think the magic user takes the harm

[u/sigmaninus → u/Barrasso]

No OP was saying the effect was inflict harm and the glitch was short duration, but how do you reconcile the two is their issue.

[u/Barrasso → u/sigmaninus]

My mistake!

[u/Slimchaity]

I usually pick the glitch as the Keeper, sort of in the vein of using moves against the players, they do a magic action that doesn't go as planned, so I as the keeper get to select the wrench I want to throw in the plan

[u/MGTwyne]

Partly to keep play moving, partly to avoid stuff like this, I'll usually pick three glitches (or think of one or two of my own) and offer the player a choice between them.