Balanced Opposition

[Cardinal]

Quick question for the assembled experienced GMs on this board. I am planning to put a team of 4 350-400 heroes (5E Standard Superhero parameters) through there paces.

 

What do people think is a balanced opposition? If I go with one badguy? What about a team of villains? Agents? Anyone have a rule of thumb?

 

Thanks for your help.

[Kenn]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

How experienced are the players of the four heroes? How experienced are you at game mastering?

 

And a lot of it is what kind of dynamic you want. If you go with one villain versus the four, you need to make sure he can avoid or suck up a lot of the team's attacks. If you go for a roughly similar number of opponents, than you can probably count on it degrading into a number of 1-on-1 fights.

 

And a lot of it is based on what kinds of heroes are in play.

 

In short, there is no rule. A lot of it, until you start to really know the player's gaming styles and the heroes they're playing will have to be guess work.

[CraterMaker]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

Sometimes it depends on the power sets of the hero's, too.. If youve got two buffed up combat machines in the group, you're gonna want a lot of goons in the mix.. What powersets are you looking at the players to have?

 

Me, I'd go with one big baddy, a henchman with similar power build to the toughest of the pc's, and a score or so goons, off the top of my head. First major fight is just goons w/ henchman taking a couple pot shots and leaving with the prize.. second major fight the goons and the henchman (or a one on one fight with one of the heroes, if you can arrange it), third and climatic scene, Major Baddy and a few goons.

 

Thats for cinematic lower powered heroes, though.. The flavor of your game might influence your choices, too, if you're playing close to a familiar genre..

 

-CraterMaker

[Cardinal]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

The characters are being created right now. The characters are all relatively experienced, but have widely divergent abilities in character creation. I think we are going to end up with a Brick, Power Armor, Tporting MA and light brick/EB.

[Questar]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

Quick question for the assembled experienced GMs on this board. I am planning to put a team of 4 350-400 heroes (5E Standard Superhero parameters) through there paces.

 

What do people think is a balanced opposition? If I go with one badguy? What about a team of villains? Agents? Anyone have a rule of thumb?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

 

All of the above, eventually. My rule of thumb for starting off a campaign is to design an encounter at the beginning with relatively light opposition, so the heroes can have success early on and get used to their new abilities. A couple of low-powered villains and a team of agents often works well for this.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

In my experience, if you have four heroes against four villains in a straight fight where all the point totals are about equal, the heroes will almost always win, probably because the GM (or this GM at least) can't operate four characters as efficiently as the players can individually operate their own characters.

 

To even the odds, make the villains with attacks the heroes are vulnerable to, or make them particularly resistant to one or more of the heroes' attacks. Or add and extra villain or two. Or make the battlefield one that favors the villains' powers over the heroes. Or throw in goons. Or make the heroes spend time rescuing normals. You get the idea.

 

Against a single big bad guy, make sure the villain has good defenses (Damage Reduction is especially useful here), and isn't particularly vulnerable to any one hero's attack (don't give him 50 PD/ED Armor and then forget Mental Defense when one hero has a good EGO attack). And usually it helps to make the master villain with a high SPD so he can more nearly match the heroes action for action, or you can give him goons or traps or something to slow the heroes down.

 

__________________________________________________________

"Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

In my experience' date=' if you have four heroes against four villains in a straight fight where all the point totals are about equal, the heroes will almost always win, probably because the GM (or this GM at least) can't operate four characters as efficiently as the players can individually operate their own characters.[/quote']

 

Yes and no. The players have four brains against one and each focuses on only one character, which is a big advantage for the PC's. The NPC's can be designed to work well together. As well, if Our Heroes have some noteriety, the NPC villains can design plans around the heroes with the expectation they will come up against them. if the villains are an unknown commodity, they can build up a pretty fair advantage before the heroes figure out their capabilities.

 

I've had my players get their clocks cleaned in a first encounter on more than a few occasions. They commonly review the battle afterwards and assess what should be done differently if/when they encounter that opposition again. The second battle is generally much tougher for those villains.

[Chimpira]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

I am in agreement with Hugh on this.

 

When I first got to be a leader in a superhero game I always got butterflies in my stomach when we fought someone new. The unknown was a powerful force. After the first battle and I got to test what we were up against I would lose the butterflies on subsequent encounters.

 

As a GM I have a mode that I go into when I run a battle. I am thinking about my villians and little else. One of the reasons I have taken to letting other members of the group run helpful npc's during these encounters. I forget about them. I have seen GM's that are masters of NPC's and villian fights but I just never got the hang of it.

 

As a rule I usually try to stack the deck against the players. In a fair fight the players usually will pull it out. I still want my players to win I just want them to dig just a little deeper. But it is not something I recommend for a new GM. You need to develop an eye for the game first or you can ground your PC's into so much paste.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

In my experience it is usually easier to balance equal or near equal numbers of PCs to villains. I have also found that the players prefer the type of fight where they have opponents at worst only slightly better than they are. They can see small successes during the fight as the villains begin to go down.

 

With one huge villain it can often be frustrating as they try to wear him down while avoiding being one-punched.

 

I agree that the first fight being against a similar number of lower pointed villains, possibly supplemented with agents, being a good intro - the players feel more like they are superheroes in that kind of scenario.

 

 

Doc

[GreyGuardian]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

If the players are new to hero and / or superheroes in hero system then you might want to go with a couple of squads of agents. Agents go down nice and fast and as long as you don't arm them too well they probably will threaten / hurt, but not knock out, the heroes.

[OzMike]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

To build a single villain for a group of PCs, one strategy I have used that works is to go for the 2nd best strategy. So I make OCV as good as the second best OCV in the PC group, the DCV, the active DC etc.

 

Then if he's meant to fight the whole group by himself (or herself) I tend to go with Damage reduction (at least 50%) or I do funky stuff like give the villain the same stun as the whole PC group combined. Yeah, big stun I know, but it means we avoid the one-punched by Bat-God thing and after all I am the GM and I have unlimited points. Besides it's not really points but the power level that make it unbalancing.

 

Depending on the type of PC group, I may up the speed by one of two points above anyone who isn't a speedster too.

 

Then I have a villain who has the legs to go toe-to-toe with a group of PC's but won't blast/punch/mind control them into oblivion.

 

And I also like goons - although to speed things up I'd recommend just giving them a number of hits they can take (e.g. Can be hit 2 times) rather than mess with stun, body and end to speed combat up. And they can have reasonable attacks but their CVs can be low. Oh, and goons never get recoveries.

 

If making a team for the group to fight, make them a TEAM, not just a bunch of folks with powers who are in the same combat. Have them use teamwork, swap opponents, help each other. Sure, the PCs might get trounced at first, but you'll end up with opposition that the PCs will love to fight again and again.

[Rapier]

Re: Balanced Opposition

 

Here is my rule of thumb.

 

You have four 375pt heroes (you said 350 - 400, so that's half way).

 

I like to do slightly more villains at the same power level (or so) with few background skills. So, in this case I would use 4 - 6 villains at about 375 - 425 points. I don't normally go much beyond 50 pts over the characters. Keep the DCs pretty much the same and try to develop villains that will be a challenge but will also play, at least to a slight extent, into the character's schtick.

 

I try to mix up the archetypes so that they don't keep coming up against the same type of character (eg blasters week after week). I try to balance the villainous teams out with a speedster, brick, martial artist and energy projector. I try to avoid mentalists, because a mentalist would REALLY chew up my group.

 

This is the recipe I use for a well seasoned team that uses good tactics and can accomplish a great deal. For a less seasoned team or one that still hasn't gotten a good grasp of tactics, I would probably reduce the stats of the villains by 5 DEX, 10 DEF and 10 AP.