Disarming Monsters of their Order of Might

Just musing on the weapon-like nature of the +1s that you get from a better Order of Might, and it occurred to me that, as a hack, you could disarm it! Basically, a disarm could be used to lower the monster’s order of might to the level where certain goals are available.

Like, racing around the dragon to attack its soft(er) underside.

The rub is that you’d have to declare your potentially illegal goal at the start, as you normally would. So you could surge into battle to try to kill the dragon, knowing full well that you have to strip off multiple Order layers before killing is even on the table for you. (However, killing is always on the table for the dragon, since that’s your declared goal.)

Tim had a nice elaboration on this, which was linking order of might to specific intrinsic weapons. So a dragon might have Massive Size (+1s everything), Breath Weapon (+1s Attack, Feint), and so on, each of which represents one of the points of its Order of Might.

Interesting… and I suppose if you finish the fight before you disarm it all the way then you just drive it off?

Has a sort of side-scroller boss-fight feel to it. Nice.

The only philosophical disagreement is the possibility that the might bonuses are supernatural or essential in nature and not physical armaments. For example the immortal lords pictured in the might image aren’t huge, or covered in thick scales. They’re just guys in armor like an adventurer. You can’t kill them because your sword literally cannot damage them. Another example would be a werewolf. Without a silver sword you can’t kill a werewolf, it will eventual heal and come back. Finally, with something like a dragon, there’s also the notion that even if you can get at a soft spot in its belly your sword isn’t long enough to reach it’s heart, liking trying to kill someone with a safety pin… but in cases where you can excuse the extra might as armor plating or special armaments, then it’s definitely an interesting mechanic.

Yes, I suppose it would be driven off. I haven’t worked out the special cases. I suppose players would have to absorb their compromise from the perspective of the goal they were going for, while the monster would absorb only what the players had achieved so far.

So a defeated dragon, but one that hadn’t been worked down to killable order, would be driven off, but leave casualties behind.

Yes, very good point on the supernatural/essential orders. I suppose the GM could insist on plausibility? Also, Tim has pointed out that monsters might have base order, which is a good idea so that you don’t wind up with a Maneuver-specialist party that reduces everything down to Order 1 before poking it with a twig.

So, maybe while it’s technically true that you can’t kill a werewolf without a silver weapon, if you net them, shoot them with two quivers full of arrows (+2D Maneuver), then cut off the head, it amounts to the same thing, even though all you managed to do was get their order down from 6 to 4.