Encounter metrics

[Lemnoc]

I would like to better understand how other GMs scale their encounters so as to keep them challenging but not overwhelming. Are there some general rules-of-thumb or advice in terms of matching encounters by physical numbers, skill levels, CAs, damage potential, etc.

From the standpoint of metrics, when is an encounter too easy? When is it too deadly?

P. 231 gives good advice and tips. Others?

 

[Dan True]

The most important aspect is Combat Actions. Even monsters with massive armour and HP can be taken down by PCs if it only has 3 or 4 CAs.

I would say: If the combat consists of multiple opponents (a group of bandits for instance), then the total number of CAs should be about equal on both sides of the combat. But, you of course also need to taken into consideration surprise, special rules, high skill etc. but it is hard not make this into a formal system.

If the combat is between the party and one single opponent: a vampire, a giant crab etc. then you need to give it something else in place of those combat actions else the fight quickly becomes easy (though the players might not realise it during the fight):
High Armour: An armour value higher than most average damage rolls, is a good start but not always applicable. The greatest problem is that the monster can still be tripped, and when it is prone it becomes a lot less dangerous.
Immunity to some CMs: Primarily trip, but also the skill penalties for impale etc. stack enough of them on (and some will get through eventually) and the terrifying monster can sometimes be rendered down to a rather silly garden ornament, rolling around on the ground.
High skills: Imperative, to limit the amount of CMs the party gets.
Special rules: This is the road I would focus most on - give it +2 CA which can only be used to evade, make it immune to most CMs, give it a shock ability that takes effect when you hit it etc.

It is hard to make a complete system for balancing Legend games, but eyeballing gets easier. When making encounters with multiple enemies, a few bandits too much can make an encounter much harder while even the most terrifying monster can be a pushover if you use the CMs correctly
The most important thing is probably when you run it: if you don't want the combat to be fatal, but rather a warm-up or "introduce the new evil lords minions"-combat, then you can handle it during the combat. Lower the skill of the soldiers immediately, make one of the crossbowmen fumble etc.

- Dan

 

[Mixster]

Dan is mostly right, but here's the tricks I'd use (Or what I put down when he talked about making a DM's guide):
To get a rough view, I'd count "effective CAs" (ECA). This should be a monsters or characters number of CAs multiplied by his chance for those CAs to actually do something.

For example: A zombie has one CA, and a Bite Skill of 30%. The chance that it will do anything with it's bite each turn is 0.3*1=0.3 It has 0.3 ECA/Round.

Elaboration on this might be needed though, dependent on the thing it does, if the perceived action is likely to kill the opponent if it succeeds and no parries are made, the "effectiveness" would be much increased. I'd suggest following something akin to this table:

Multiplier            Threat
0.25                Not likely to do anything, unless it crits (1)
0.5                  Only has half the normal effect. (2)
0.75                 Both damage and CMs work to a lesser extent(3)
1                    Average (4)
1.50                Dangerous
?                    Beyond Deadly

An explanation of the numbers in the table:
1) CMs do nothing, damage is negligible, either due to armour or a ridicolous amount of HP. Criticals can often change these two, since you can Bypass armour, or you "debuff" CMs become very hard to resist.
2) Either CMs or Damage is neglible. This is often the case with well armored opponents, where you need a crit to damage your opponent, but you can still trip him, and on a crit he is pretty much done.
3) Either the monster is immune to some of the best De-buffs, it regenerates the damage it suffers quickly or something.
4) I perceive normal effect as 2-3 unparried hits by a monster or player in this category puts the creature out of the fight. This can get tricky, because one mob with 25ECA taken out by 2-3 hits here is a lot worse than 25 ECA 1 monsters that get taken out in 2-3 hits each.
5) 1 unparried Hit from this thing likely kills you instantly. Either because CMs are so extreme, or the damage is insanely high.
6) This category is mostly reserved for monsters like dragons and that godslayer beast in the monsters of legend book. Suffice to say that one hit from the monster, even if parried or evaded should kill you. Meaning the monster essentially kills CA*Skill Value opponents each round. The ? is because the effectiveness of this is very dependant on the opposition. If the monster only faces 2-3 enemies, killing them in that amount of CAs is very deadly, but if the monster faces thousands of enemies, killing one or two of them hardly makes a dint in their effectiveness.

So how would one go about using this in a game. Well let's look at how powerful a group of adventurers would be:
A, B, And C Are player characters.
A has a good Combat Style (95%), good armour (6 armour points), and a great sword, with 3CA.
B has a lesser combat style (80%), Leather armour (2AP), and uses shortspear and shield, with 3+1CA, he also uses his evade skill at 95% a lot in the combat.
C is mostly a scholar, his combat style is 70%, he wears no armour, uses a sword and dagger, with 2+1CA.
Now, as a standard they would be:
A has 3*0.95=2.85 Standard ECA. However, against most opponents he'll probably be considered deadly due to the damage on his greatsword and his reach. This would increase his ECA to 4.325. Also note that against him, most opponents would be considered a lower threat level (most likely the 0.75 multiplier) since they would have trouble with his high skill for CMs and his armour for damage.
B Would be alternating between his combat style and evade skill, so I'd average them out to 87.5%, He has 4 CA. Which gives him 0.8775*4=3.51ECA. Do keep in mind that against some opponents the limited tactical flexibility of his shortspear will impair him.
C, the lesser of the lot would be going at 3*0.7=2.1ECA. However, his dagger would in most circumstances be considered to be of a lower threat-level putting him down to about 1.925 ECA in total (0.75 times one of those CAs), if the rules that the off-hand CA must be with your off-hand weapon are in effect.
This group thus has a total of ~10.1ECA.
Assume they were to face a group of mooks, and the GM wants to know how many they realistically can take.
Mook: 50% combat style, is using Short Sword and Shield. 2+1 CA each. And no armour.
So each Mook has an ECA of 1.5.
The group should be able to take 6 Mooks, and come out bloodied. Throw 7 at them and they would probably go down.

 

[soltakss]

That's interesting.

How would you count magic or Legendary Abilities? Would those effectively increase the effectiveness of the CAs or possibly add CAs to the calculation?

 

[Mixster]

That's interesting.

How would you count magic or Legendary Abilities? Would those effectively increase the effectiveness of the CAs or possibly add CAs to the calculation?

The problem with adding magic is that it is very binary in effect. But it's power is often really high.

If for example a character uses his magic to buff himself, and he almost always have those buffs on him when in combat. And the opposition has no real way of removing them, you should simply count him as his buffed up version. A character that always have an AP of 12 due to shield would probably count most opposition as a very unthreatening opposition. And a character with 6CAs due to enhance would probably run over most opponents in terms of ECA.

However, when using magic offensively, it turns weirder. First it's important that magic that affect multiple targets should probably get more CAs, but it also uses more CA, which means there must be a gain/loss optimum for such spells. As well as the ability to affect more.
In addition to this, the opponents ability to resist it should probably be calclulated too.

All in all I'd say that the final ECA of an optimized sorcerer would be: His skill times CA/2 (he needs range + targets to be effective) times [number of opponents] times [effect multiplier] times [chance to resist spell].

 

[DamonJynx]

That is a highly scientific method of designing encounters.

I just eyeball it and work for an average of 1 opponent per PC with an average base of 2 CA adjusting HP and skills depending on how challenging I want the encounter to be. Half General HP for minions if there is a mob, otherwise it's general HP and skills -20% for easy, +/- 10% for standard, +20% for more difficult encoutners. Obviously, leaders would be more highly skilled.

 

[Mixster]

That is a highly scientific method of designing encounters.

I just eyeball it and work for an average of 1 opponent per PC with an average base of 2 CA adjusting HP and skills depending on how challenging I want the encounter to be. Half General HP for minions if there is a mob, otherwise it's general HP and skills -20% for easy, +/- 10% for standard, +20% for more difficult encoutners. Obviously, leaders would be more highly skilled.

Sure. I'd probably eyeball it too in most circumstances, but I like having a method to eyeball from.

 

[DamonJynx]

I guess a lot has to do with how much time you can devote to working this sort of stuff out. Personally, I don't have the time to work things out that accurately (and to be perfectly honest I'd never thought of using a formula, well done btw). Near enough is good enough and I let the dice fall where they may.

 

[Lemnoc]

I'd probably eyeball it too in most circumstances, but I like having a method to eyeball from.

Agreed. My interest in metrics is some basic guidelines on how many adversaries to throw against players so that combats seem varied and encounters have a kind of verisimilitude. Not every encounter involving five players should feature five potential combatants, in other words. But when pushing the outside of the envelope, it's good to know the dimensions of the envelope.

How many mooks is a mook too far? How many mooks is a mook too few? Legends is a LOT less forgiving than other RPGs, and a party of even careful characters can go down rather quickly on a few bad rolls.

Good to understand these things mechanically; and good tips, thanks.

 

[rust]

I would like to better understand how other GMs scale their encounters so as to keep them challenging but not overwhelming.

My settings are sandboxes, so I do not scale encounters at all.
The various groups of the setting are as strong as is plausible
within the assumptions of the setting, independently from the
strength of the characters. It is up to the characters to decide
which encounters to risk and which ones to avoid, and to de-
velop the tactics enabling them to do so.

In my campaign the characters discover whether their gathe-
red informations and their scouting gave them the right idea
of their enemies' numbers and strengths only during the en-
counter. Sometimes they overestimated their enemies, some-
times they underestimated them, and then have to adapt their
tactics to this surprise.

With this background I think the best advice I can give is to
make sure that both the characters and their adversaries are
aware that people rarely insist on fighting to the death. More
often they plan for the case that they will have to retreat (and
continue the fight on another day and with a better plan) or -
worst case - to surrender.

In a way, you could say that my way to scale encounters is to
remind the players that their characters should think ahead to
always have a Plan B, preferably even a Plan C. :wink: