CorpCommander Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Ok, lets say you are a GM. You have five 75pt Heroes. Total value of the party is 375pts. How many bad guys can you throw at them for a 'fair' fight? 10 x 40pts? 2x 200pts? Points seem to be geometric in effect. Are there any good guidelines? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhamin Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Re: How do you balance out opposing forces? Originally posted by CorpCommander Ok, lets say you are a GM. You have five 75pt Heroes. Total value of the party is 375pts. How many bad guys can you throw at them for a 'fair' fight? 10 x 40pts? 2x 200pts? Points seem to be geometric in effect. Are there any good guidelines? Thanks! Total point costs only become a useful tool for comparing characters after you know what guidelines everyone's attacks and defences are built on. The active point costs of attacks and defences along with combat value, factoring in total amounts of Stun and Body are the only real guides. As you can see, this all gets complicated. To start out with, send the characters against teams of equal numbers with about the same kinds of attacks they have and slightly weaker defences. This will allow them a good fight, but will tip the balance enough in their favor that you won't be constantly wiping out the party. Once you get a sense of how the attacks and defences interact, start throwing in "the tough guy" who can take more abuse than anyone they have seen yet, or "the quick guy" who is faster than any of the PCs and get a feel for how they have to deal with them. Only then should you start throwing them up against one or two enemies whose attacks and defences are both better than the party average. By then your PCs will hopefully learned enough teamwork to beat them and you will have figured out the fine points of hero enough to build an enemy who won't destroy them all by phase 5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitz Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 The way I normally do it is like this: I wildly overestimate the capabilities of the party and bring them all to the point of imminent annihilation, all the whille desperately backpedalling to find some way that some of them can survive without making it appear that I'm protecting them OR I wildly underestimate the capabilities of the party and then start frantically trying to find ways to stop everyone yawning and going to sleep. It's a talent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent X Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Originally posted by Fitz The way I normally do it is like this: I wildly overestimate the capabilities of the party and bring them all to the point of imminent annihilation, all the whille desperately backpedalling to find some way that some of them can survive without making it appear that I'm protecting them OR I wildly underestimate the capabilities of the party and then start frantically trying to find ways to stop everyone yawning and going to sleep. It's a talent. Oh, that's just wonderful! ROFLMOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom McCarthy Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 I have notes on the OCV, DCV, SPD, DEX, PD/ED, and Dcs of attacks typical of the heroes as a whole. I typically put them up against villains who outclass them in one or at most two of those categories. If the villain outclasses them in one, he can fight (but will lose to) two heroes. If he outclasses them in two, he might beat two of them, but might balance 2 and a half heroes. For example: Heroes OCV 8-12 DCV 6-9 SPD 4-6 DEX 20-30 PD/ED 15-26 (22 average) DCs 9-12 Dr. Megala will probably give two of them a good fight (OCV 12, DCV 8, SPD 5, DEX 24, PD/ED 25, DCs 14-15). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorpCommander Posted June 17, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Originally posted by Tom McCarthy I have notes on the OCV, DCV, SPD, DEX, PD/ED, and Dcs of attacks typical of the heroes as a whole. That is a great system, I love it! It makes planning any type of Hero game a bit easier. I'm thinking of running a fantasy game by converting some adventures I really like from D20 to Hero but I don't want to mis-convert the beasts the party will have to fight into paper tigers/steam rollers. This is a great way of looking at it. Thanks everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Originally posted by CorpCommander That is a great system, I love it! It makes planning any type of Hero game a bit easier. I'm thinking of running a fantasy game by converting some adventures I really like from D20 to Hero but I don't want to mis-convert the beasts the party will have to fight into paper tigers/steam rollers. This is a great way of looking at it. Thanks everyone. Yeah, I think it's a great system, too. Assuming a beginning GM, one way is to take enemies on about the same power level as the player characters. This should be an even fight. Should you pull out a stronger-than-PC enemy, my rule-of-thumb is to underestimate. It's always easier to throw more at the heroes. By underestimating a) the heroes aren't killed you start to get an idea of what power level you can throw at your players in a single enemy, whether a tiger, supervillain, alien, whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnTaber Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Hi CorpCommander, This topic often comes up in the FH thread. You may want to search for an older topic. In my mind this is one of the toughest things about running FH. Balancing the combat is tough. I generally have my PC fight grunts/wolves/wimps in a short prelim sort of encounter. After that I adjust accordingly. It takes time to get this right... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinecone Posted June 18, 2003 Report Share Posted June 18, 2003 Annother GM cheat technique is to use a "horde" of small guys instead of a express number..."How many Kobolds?"...Ummm an Sh*tpot of um....so if they wade through theres 40 or so and if they start hurting, turns out there were only a dozen and it was hard to estimate with the adreneline going....at least till you have an idea of what they can handle "A Bunch of 'em" is an easy cop-out.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEmerged Posted June 19, 2003 Report Share Posted June 19, 2003 Henchman. My rule of thumb is as follows. Decide how many phases I want the combat to last. Let's call it "Phases". Take the number of PC's. Set the base number of henchman as ((phases times PC's) plus PC's). So if I have 4 PC's and want the fight to last 6 phases, the base number of henchman is ((6 times 4) plus 4), for 28 henchman. This assumes the PC's have at least a mild SPD advantage(PC 4 versus henchman 3 for example). If that is not true, the final number is 2/3rd of the base. Point Similar. Ideally, if the points of the individual opposition characters are similar to that of the PC's, I usually go with +50%. With 4 PC's, I'll usually go with 6 NPC's of similar point totals. Big Bad -- defined as a single target the PC's should nonetheless have a fighting chance against. Add the PC's point totals. Assume a 1/3 "overhead" and multiply that sum by 2/3. Generally, assume that at least 10% of that should be spent in appropriate perks (base, vehicle, etc.). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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