Encounter Balance

[The Overseer]

Hi all,

 

I have had a quick glance through my books and I cannot seem to find anything to address the following.

 

As a GM, how do I go about balancing my campaign encounters?

 

Can I just throw a force at the heroes that has a equal sum of character points to the team, or is it a little more complicated than that?

[Nothere]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

Yes it is more complecated than that. For just two examples that will wildly throw off encouter balance irregardless of points.

if one side has a nnd attack. If the other side has the defense, it becomes vastly easier. If they don't vastly harder.

if one side has a suseptability. If the other side attacks that weakness vastly harder, otherwise vastly easier.

Without adders it's pretty straight forward two sides with 10d6 attacks and 20 defenses are even. But with all the points people have to work with how many don't have at least one power with some type of adder?

[The Overseer]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

I suppose all the modifiers make it all a little too complex for some sort of automatic calculator too... Ah well, I suppose I will just have to suck it and see!

 

Thanks for the response

[Haerandir]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

As a very VERY general rule, similar point totals and similar combat abilities (damage classes, CVs, SPDs, etc.) will generate fairly evenly-matched opponents.

 

One thing that I look at when I'm not sure if a character is a suitable opponent for my campaign is to compare him to an established PC (or a hypothetical construct that represents the average abilities of several PCs) and ask: "Given a level playing field, how often will these two characters hit each other, and how many hits can each of them take before they go down?" This will give you a rough idea of both how long the fight between the two characters will last, and who 'should' win. Of course, dice rolls are random, and even the most rudimentary of tactical decisions can significantly influence a fight one way or the other, but it'll at least give you a chance to spot extreme mis-matches.

 

Basically, a villain whose defenses can shrug off an average roll from the PCs' main attacks, or who has a +4 CV advantage over the PCs, is going to be extremely difficult for them to defeat, and should either be weakened or used as a 'boss-fight' encounter.

 

As a rule of thumb, agents/minions/unpowered thugs should probably be easily defeated in 1-2 hits, standard opponents should be able to withstand 4-8 hits, and major villains should be able to take 10 or more hits. Keep in mind, the longer a fight lasts, the more opportunities there are for characters to Recover lost Stun, or regain consciousness, so long fights tend to get longer. If you're going to screw up, it's better to err on the side of low defenses and brief combats. After all, players love winning, and you can always have another squad of agents respond to the sound of fighting if they get too cocky.

 

You don't have to run the numbers for every villain you design, or pick from a published product. Once you have a few game sessions under your belt, you should be able to work out what levels of offense and defense work for your group. Then you just need to scan a writeup looking for oddball stuff like 6D6 NNDs that target DECV, or martial artists with 12 DCV and Defensive Strike, and make sure there's a way your PCs *can* fight them.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

In my early days as a GM, I used a copy of a player character's sheet and ran him/her against one of the NPC villians in a test combat. A few phases was enough to identify any vast discrepancies.

 

In the case of NNDs, see how many on each side have the defense. Also the same with mental powers.

 

Consider non-offensive powers, such as Invisibility and Desolidification. If the other side has no possible way to detect the invisible character, or attack the desolid character, you have potential balance issues.

 

In general, I like to try and have an NPC villain to "match up" against each PC hero. They may not pair up in combat like that, but when they do it can set up a nice "nemesis" effect.

[Armitage]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

Adventurer's Club #3 had a Combat Rating system for 3e/4e. Digital Hero #3 had a similar Effectiveness Rating system for 5e, that could be easily adapted to 6e.

Both systems give a character a numerical rating calculated from OCV, DCV, largest attack, movement, defenses, special abilities, etc. A 350 point superhero is estimated to have an Effectiveness Rating of 100 in the 5e system, for example.

Both systems conclude that two PCs with a rating of X would be a match for 1 villain with a rating of X + 10. Neither system adjusts for Vulnerabilities or Susceptibilities though.

Digital Hero #3 is available from the Hero Store. The article mentions an Excel spreadsheet for Effectiveness Rating calculation on the Free Stuff page, but it's either gone now or was never there. I would suggest contacting the author of the article, but it looks like he hasn't been active on the forums since July 2008.

 

EDIT: The Wayback Machine is your friend.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

Also, if you find that your villains are going down so easily, or running so roughshod over your player characters, that it's spoiling the enjoyment of the game session for the players, don't be afraid to improvise. Scale your villain's attacks or defenses up or down; mentally add an ability to the villain that helps balance the combat (and add it to his sheet later), or don't use one he has that would be especially devastating to the heroes; maybe fudge a die roll or two that randomly fell out too good or too bad. Don't deprive the players of a cake walk (or thrashing) that they've earned by their play; but IMHO, fun is more important than strict adherence to the rules. As you become more familiar with the system you'll develop instinct as to who and how many will make for a challenging encounter.

[baronspam]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

I have been thinking about these issues myself lately.

 

Part of the problem is that I have mostly played DnD the last couple of years, and whatever you think about that type of game the fact is they have made 4th edition absurdly simple to prepare combats for. You can look at your group and really feel confidnet that x amount of experience points is an easy fight, x+y amount of experience is a typical fight, x+z amount of experience is a "boss" fight, etc. The math is really wired tight. Baring rare and spectacular bad luck on the dice for one side or the other combat difficulty is pretty easy to judge.

 

Hero does not work that way. There is so vastly more flexability in character design that you can easilty get statistical outriders. Two 400 point characters can have significantly different threat levels in combat, and if a villian is taylored to strongly resist what a character is good at and attack something that the character doesn't defend against well you can always build an antogonist that will pound the hero flat and do it on fewer points.

 

As others have said, Hero requires more preperation and planning. You need to look over the numbers, make sure combat values are in line, see on average how many hits the bad guys can sustain before dropping and on average how many hits it will take them to knock out the heroes. The nice thing about hero using all d6's is that you get bell curves. Far more of your results fall near the middle of the range than at the extreme ends, both to hit and damage. Yes, that 10d6 blast could in theory do 60 points, but it almost never, ever will. It will most of the time be within shouting distance of 35. So look at ED, subtract, you can tell with considerable accuracy how many hits it will take to burn through all of a target's stun. And always, always, compare speed. Even a two difference in speed is a huge advantage.

 

In short, I think just crunching the numbers is probably no more work than trying to make hero conform to a abstract encounter difficulty gauge like DnD has. The games are just too different for that to work here.

[Haerandir]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

One thing that I found helpful in my last campaign was to design layered scenarios... Rather than just have the heroes show up to find all the villains I'd prepared for that session standing around in a group, they would come across a crime in progress, with some opponents ready and waiting to fight, and others off in another room or down the street executing some other phase of their plan... That way I could control the flow of battle a bit more. If things were looking too easy, then Warbird and the second squad of Shadow Army soldiers finish stowing the experimental mini-sub engine on their ship and come back to help... If things are going badly for the PCs, or the fight is running long, then Warbird decides, "Eh, let Warhead & Warmonger handle them, I've got what I came for," and leaves. That sort of thing.

[Doc Samson]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

In my early days as a GM, I used a copy of a player character's sheet and ran him/her against one of the NPC villians in a test combat. A few phases was enough to identify any vast discrepancies.

 

In the case of NNDs, see how many on each side have the defense. Also the same with mental powers.

 

Consider non-offensive powers, such as Invisibility and Desolidification. If the other side has no possible way to detect the invisible character, or attack the desolid character, you have potential balance issues.

 

In general, I like to try and have an NPC villain to "match up" against each PC hero. They may not pair up in combat like that, but when they do it can set up a nice "nemesis" effect.

This ^

Run test combats with sheets before running the players.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

One thing that I found helpful in my last campaign was to design layered scenarios... Rather than just have the heroes show up to find all the villains I'd prepared for that session standing around in a group' date=' they would come across a crime in progress, with some opponents ready and waiting to fight, and others off in another room or down the street executing some other phase of their plan... That way I could control the flow of battle a bit more. If things were looking too easy, then Warbird and the second squad of Shadow Army soldiers finish stowing the experimental mini-sub engine on their ship and come back to help... If things are going badly for the PCs, or the fight is running long, then Warbird decides, "Eh, let Warhead & Warmonger handle them, I've got what I came for," and leaves. That sort of thing.[/quote']

 

This.

 

Designing flexible encounters allows you to adjust things 'on the spot' without scrambling to re-write the whole scene.

[Ice9]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

I find the most important factors for encounter balance are the stats:

* Offense: OCV, DCs in normal attack, DCs in strongest attack, ability to see and reach PCs

* Defense: DCV, DEF, STUN, special defenses, ability to attack from a safe position

If those are at the level of threat you want, the total number of points barely matters.

 

To determine that level, here's some benchmarks you might want to look at, which should be possible to determine just by looking at character sheets:

* If all the PCs attack this foe on Phase 12, will he be toast? Fairly injured? Barely scratched?

* If the foe hits the most fragile PC, will it stun them? KO them?

* If the foe hits the sturdiest PC, will it have any effect?

* Are any of the PCs useless against this foe?

* Can any of the PCs defeat this foe extremely easily?

 

 

A handy trick for when you're still gauging the PCs power level - put them up against an incoming source of foes, such as alien invaders beaming in from a mothership, zombies rising from a graveyard, villain agents flying in on jetpacks, or whatever. If they easily defeat the first wave, you can send several more, or even some tougher reinforcements. If they barely survive, the flow can dry up.

 

Also, you probably don't want to introduce your BBEG until you get a handle on what its stats should be like. Start with some scouting forces or a second in command; that way, if you overestimated, it still shouldn't be a TPK, and if you underestimated, then the BBEG doesn't get easily toasted.

[baronspam]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

To determine that level, here's some benchmarks you might want to look at, which should be possible to determine just by looking at character sheets:

* If all the PCs attack this foe on Phase 12, will he be toast? Fairly injured? Barely scratched?

* If the foe hits the most fragile PC, will it stun them? KO them?

* If the foe hits the sturdiest PC, will it have any effect?

* Are any of the PCs useless against this foe?

* Can any of the PCs defeat this foe extremely easily?

 

 

.

 

While your entire post was solid advice, this checklist is excellent and going in my notebook. If I understood how this mysterious "rep"thing worked I would give you some. How about a cookie instead?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

While your entire post was solid advice' date=' this checklist is excellent and going in my notebook. If I understood how this mysterious "rep"thing worked I would give you some. How about a cookie instead?[/quote']

 

How to Rep:

 

[baronspam]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

And rep to you for teaching me how rep works

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

I keep the PC sheets after a game, so I can look them over ... both for the sake of checking Disadvantages to come up in a game, and so I can check their stats. I usually write down a kind of chart with the PC names down one side, and a list of combat statistics across the top (DEX, EGO, SPD, Levels, DCs) which I then average, and use both the average and the high values to determine good opposition.

[The Overseer]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

Thank you everybody, such a lot of useful information... As it turns out the GM currently running or 4ed DnD has had to go back home (was over here on a placement) and so tonight I was informed that my turn to GM had now come up three months early ((panics)) and I now have a week to write my first scenario... Nothing like pressure is there! lol.

 

However, your input is going to help me greatly, thanks again everyone x

[Cardinal]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

As a very VERY general rule, similar point totals and similar combat abilities (damage classes, CVs, SPDs, etc.) will generate fairly evenly-matched opponents.

 

One thing that I look at when I'm not sure if a character is a suitable opponent for my campaign is to compare him to an established PC (or a hypothetical construct that represents the average abilities of several PCs) and ask: "Given a level playing field, how often will these two characters hit each other, and how many hits can each of them take before they go down?" This will give you a rough idea of both how long the fight between the two characters will last, and who 'should' win. Of course, dice rolls are random, and even the most rudimentary of tactical decisions can significantly influence a fight one way or the other, but it'll at least give you a chance to spot extreme mis-matches.

 

Basically, a villain whose defenses can shrug off an average roll from the PCs' main attacks, or who has a +4 CV advantage over the PCs, is going to be extremely difficult for them to defeat, and should either be weakened or used as a 'boss-fight' encounter.

 

As a rule of thumb, agents/minions/unpowered thugs should probably be easily defeated in 1-2 hits, standard opponents should be able to withstand 4-8 hits, and major villains should be able to take 10 or more hits. Keep in mind, the longer a fight lasts, the more opportunities there are for characters to Recover lost Stun, or regain consciousness, so long fights tend to get longer. If you're going to screw up, it's better to err on the side of low defenses and brief combats. After all, players love winning, and you can always have another squad of agents respond to the sound of fighting if they get too cocky.

 

You don't have to run the numbers for every villain you design, or pick from a published product. Once you have a few game sessions under your belt, you should be able to work out what levels of offense and defense work for your group. Then you just need to scan a writeup looking for oddball stuff like 6D6 NNDs that target DECV, or martial artists with 12 DCV and Defensive Strike, and make sure there's a way your PCs *can* fight them.

 

In the vein of this post, I threw together a quick spreadsheet for another thread. The concept is that in order to determine a rough metric of effectiveness you need to look at the average damage a character will dish per turn and the average damage they will get hit with. Each is based on the average damage past defenses * the probability of getting hit.

 

As noted, this is thrown out the window when you get to things like NNDs, drains, etc. but it should give you a rough sense of how long someone can survive.

[Sidume]

Re: Encounter Balance

 

Something that wasn't mentioned that you need to take into account - game changers. Do any characters have any ability that might skew things? A character with a well designed power can be hard to defend against. If the PC has this ability - kudos to the player, but you can't let it dominate the whole combat. Area affect attacks (especially disciminatory ones), metal attacks, transparent entangles, Ego Drains or continuous attacks can be particilarly unbalancing. On the defensive side, Damage Reduction, Desolid, Enhanced Senses and Suppresses can make a world of difference.

 

If you have a character who took the time to create a really effective combat character - you may need to be careful that the rest of the PCs don't wind up just being support.

 

Also, be careful that too many of your PCs don't have similar vulnerabilities.