Difficulty of Encounters

[dccbade]

Trying to become a Palladium Fantasy GM. I am wondering what the best method is for determined the level or difficulty of an encounter. I am not obsessed with game balance, but I also don't want to make encounters that are either too easy or far too deadly. I don't see anything like this in my Palladium books. Any suggestions? (If this topic has already been done to death please point me in that direction. Thanks in advance!

[kiralon]

No real easy method other than practice really, and even then the wild boar can kill the party with random dumb luck.

But start small and add incrementally (maybe reinforcements for example), and unlike games critters often don't want to die so will run as well.

[Hotrod]

Trying to become a Palladium Fantasy GM. I am wondering what the best method is for determined the level or difficulty of an encounter. I am not obsessed with game balance, but I also don't want to make encounters that are either too easy or far too deadly. I don't see anything like this in my Palladium books. Any suggestions? (If this topic has already been done to death please point me in that direction. Thanks in advance!

When putting encounters together, I try to keep three guidelines in mind:

1. Encounters should have consequences. As a rule, I generally dislike encounters that have no bearing or impact on the rest of the adventure. Even if the creatures or people the group encounters are not directly connected to the overall goals, the outcome should have some kind of impact on the rest of the adventure.

2. Give the players some agency in how they respond to the encounter. I cringe whenever I see an encounter written up in the books as a "player characters must do _____." The way I put them together, the players can choose between at least two of the following: talking, skills, and violence. I also like to leave the door open for players to improvise their own solutions.

3. Have plans for success and failure. Leave escape routes open in case the party can't win, and do the same for any key NPC or villain. Unexpected defeat in an encounter doesn't mean death, and unexpected victory doesn't mean that the adventure is over.

I find that when I stick to these guidelines, issues of level/difficulty don't come up all that often.

[Library Ogre]

Palladium doesn't have a clear metric for determining this, but my rule of thumb? Compare the damage capacity of the sides, averaged over the attacks per melee of each side. Damage in PF doesn't vary all that much... the difference between a d6 dagger and a troll with 4d6+15 damage with his giant-sized weapon are big, but it tends to average out over time a lot more than damage capacity.

So, let's say you've got a super-powerful monster, with 7000 HP/SDC (DC, or damage capacity) and 5 attacks per round. The party has 5 people, each with about 50 DC, and 4 attacks each.

So, the super-powerful monster has 7000/20 or 350 DC/Attacks, while the party has 250/5 or 50 DC/attacks; the monster is probably going to win, because it can soak up a lot more damage than the party can put out. If the monster only had 700 DC, then the party will probably win, because it's 35 v. 50.

Now, we could get a little more indepth, looking at average damage per attack, considering AR and bonuses and the like, but this is rule of thumb stuff.

[Hotrod]

I think I should rephrase my thoughts on this issue.

A lot of GMs like to scale encounters with their player characters. In a video game, this makes sense, as you only have so many abilities and means to overcome any given foe. In general, if you want to progress to the next level, chapter, or area, you have to beat (and usually kill) the foes in your way.

In tabletop play, I try to avoid scaling to suit the party's abilities/level. It's not the GM's responsibility to ensure that the player characters can defeat any given foe, nor is it the GM's responsibility to ensure that any given encounter will be a significant threat. It is 100% OK for a party to encounter opponents who far outstrip their combat power; they'll have to use other ways to accomplish their goals. On the flipside, it's also 100% OK for a party to far outstrip an opponent's combat power.

What matters to me as a GM in these encounters is to present the players with meaningful choices with consequences that matter for the party moving forward. Having the party lose a fight can be a good and useful thing, especially if it gets them to dig deep, develop themselves, learn more about their foe, and claw their way back to triumph and glory. An undefeated party is a pretty boring thing. This can be a little jarring for some players who want to fight and beat every foe they encounter, and it requires a certain level of trust and respect between players and GM, but I think it tends to result in more interesting character development and adventures that satisfy on a level that's difficult to find in a video game.

I should make one important caveat, though. While I don't care to scale to fit the player characters, I make and use scalable NPC generators, especially for disposable NPCs who are the equivalent of red-shirted ensigns and stormtroopers. However, I scale these characters to fit who and what they should be (green troops are 1st or 2nd level, veterans are 3rd-5th level, elite veterans are 6th-9th level, and living legends are level 10+). You can see some Palladium Fantasy examples of these on my Patreon page.

[kiralon]

I think I should rephrase my thoughts on this issue.

A lot of GMs like to scale encounters with their player characters. In a video game, this makes sense, as you only have so many abilities and means to overcome any given foe. In general, if you want to progress to the next level, chapter, or area, you have to beat (and usually kill) the foes in your way.

In tabletop play, I try to avoid scaling to suit the party's abilities/level. It's not the GM's responsibility to ensure that the player characters can defeat any given foe, nor is it the GM's responsibility to ensure that any given encounter will be a significant threat. It is 100% OK for a party to encounter opponents who far outstrip their combat power; they'll have to use other ways to accomplish their goals. On the flipside, it's also 100% OK for a party to far outstrip an opponent's combat power.

What matters to me as a GM in these encounters is to present the players with meaningful choices with consequences that matter for the party moving forward. Having the party lose a fight can be a good and useful thing, especially if it gets them to dig deep, develop themselves, learn more about their foe, and claw their way back to triumph and glory. An undefeated party is a pretty boring thing. This can be a little jarring for some players who want to fight and beat every foe they encounter, and it requires a certain level of trust and respect between players and GM, but I think it tends to result in more interesting character development and adventures that satisfy on a level that's difficult to find in a video game.

I should make one important caveat, though. While I don't care to scale to fit the player characters, I make and use scalable NPC generators, especially for disposable NPCs who are the equivalent of red-shirted ensigns and stormtroopers. However, I scale these characters to fit who and what they should be (green troops are 1st or 2nd level, veterans are 3rd-5th level, elite veterans are 6th-9th level, and living legends are level 10+). You can see some Palladium Fantasy examples of these on my Patreon page.

I don't scale my encounters by level, but by location, also the bad guys get tougher over time like the good guys, however certain areas will be easier because its further away from the point(s) of conflict so the enemy generally don't have the resources for lots well equipped bad guys. However the closer to the centre of operations the tougher and more there will be. Got an orc horde, sneak past a few, kill a few, find 300 orcs, no way a party can kill them so they get reinforcements themselves (Kingdoms will usually send soldiers because no ruler likes unaligned armed and armoured troops on his land).

Remember to rule what happens when a player dies mid adventure before you start so the players know they are either starting at level 1 or 1 level below the party average or whatever you decide.

[Library Ogre]

I think a GM does have to scale encounters for his party... though that doesn't mean that they're the only consideration.

Let us say my party is going to face some bandits. Now, I could decide that these bandits are a score of trolls... or they could be a single troll with a score of goblins. They could be assassins and mercenary warriors, with battle axes and long bows, or they could be peasants with soft leather armor and spears. The GM has control of who these bandits are, because he's creating them.

Now, the GM might set up some troll bandits in the hills, and some human bandits closer in, and the party might make the decision to go after the trolls, and that's their fault... but the GM is still in charge of what's available to fight.

[Veknironth]

Well, I'm more with Hotrod on this. I think the GM should make the world and let the PC's decide on whether to engage in combat or not. If there is a set encounter that is there to move the adventure along that is something you can plan. Like if you want the PC's to vanquish some enemies and then find a note on a body or something, you can make them a bit less powered than the PC group. Otherwise, make up whatever group the way you think it fits in your world. Then the PCs can decide if they want to get involved with and how they want to get involved with them.

If you're using SDC, there is plenty of time to let the PCs run or surrender. It doesn't have to lead to death every time, unless the players want to fight to the death. If you aren't using SDC, the PCs have to be a bit more careful. But, since the canon is 2nd edition with SDC, you can easily have the enemies chop down that SDC and let the PCs think about whether they want to continue the battle. They lose a few, lose some gold and items and they'll probably think about different ways to accomplish goals.

-Vek
"Let the PCs make the decisions whenever feasible."