What kind of adventures do you play?

[Cendorn]

So, I have a hard time finding pre-made adventures.

This leaves me in the blind as to what difficulty level others use.

We have a party of four characters, built by the rules. One sorcerer and three warriors.

Last night I had them face a band of "Viking" warriors, 10 of them, that they surprised in their longhouse. PC prepared (damage resistance and maximized damage for all) and enemy unprepared (though I let them have their armour donned at remarkable speed).

Tough battle due to the high number of opponents.

Then a Wurm as written. One blow to the head and it was dead (sad really since it could have delt some serious damage).

Third encounter a room with 16 skeletons (as per Monsters of Legend). PC had to retreat. (I had the skeletons fight on without heads, arms and legs until destroyed).

I know the game is not about balanced fights, but I'm curious how others play it.

How many fights per hour gametime, how tough fights, how often does someone die?

BR
Cendorn

 

[strega]

The biggest issue is not the numbers of opponents a group can fight but the relative numbers of CA's each side has.

Someone did a sort of encounter calculation system to allow GM's to more easily make encounters challenging. I generally look at the levels of combat skills and number of CA's that the party has and judge it by eye from there.

The Vikings could be better having one or two hold some sort of chokepoint unarmoured to give the others time to get into armour and cast any spells.

Personally I've found Wurms go down like a cheap.. no I won't go there. They need to stand off and use their breath weapon (23 m radius) or their bite at VL range for 3D10 damage which makes a knockback possible. They can only move 6m making a slow retreat not so good. Still 21 damage to the head is a decent strike.

 

[rust]

This leaves me in the blind as to what difficulty level others use.

Well, I use none at all. My setting is a sandbox, and its inhabitants
cover the entire range from very weak to extremely powerful. It is
up to the player characters to gather the informations required to
decide when to fight, when to avoid and when to run. That said, in
my campaigns combat is rare, mostly because the players learned
that it is very lethal, and prefer non-violent solutions to their cha-
racters' problems whenever possible. A fight is a sure sign that so-
me plan did not work.

 

[Loz]

How many fights per hour gametime, how tough fights, how often does someone die?

These are extremely difficult questions to answer. Much depends on how much your players, and you, like combat, see it as an essential part of the game, and how attached players are to their characters.

Combat can be deadly: there's no such thing as a guaranteed melee where the characters are safe from harm. Even the lowliest foe can, with the right rolls and combat choices, incapacitate or kill a player character, regardless of skill or challenge level. Some fights will be tough; some easy. The game doesn't run to the D&D/Pathfinder paradigm of ever-increasing degrees of challenge based on character level, so its very tough to draw a comparison between RQ/Legend and level-based games.

You and your players will, with experience, learn to use Legend differently to other game systems. The characters will learn to fight judiciously, flee when necessary, or employ a variety of different tactics based on the foe and situation. Its far more than hack/slash/fight-to-the-death/collect the XP.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

It depends entirely what kind of adventure I run. Sometimes I have hosted long game sessions without any fights, these sessions have been part of longer diplomacy, infiltration or murder mystery adventures. Other times sessions have been battle heavy, but those scenarios have been about leading men in battlefield, rescuing friends from enemy castle, fighting against pirates who try to enslave the characters, escorting caravan through very hostile territory etc.

There is no rule how many battles there should be. But personally I try to remember that while many players enjoy occasional battles they don't usually like if strong NPCs are constantly trying kill their characters without giving them any rest.

 

[DamonJynx]

I ran an encounter the other night and it was designed to be a combat encounter with around 10 foes, but in play there was very little direct combat and no fatalities, the PC's defeated and captured their enemies handing them over to the local authorities with only 2 serious wounds the NPC's and a broken jaw to another. It was good to see them do other stuff than just hack their foes to bits and it was a lot more fun!

 

[dmccoy1693]

The game doesn't run to the D&D/Pathfinder paradigm of ever-increasing degrees of challenge based on character level

This, frankly, is my favorite part of Legend.

 

[TheWayfinder]

The game doesn't run to the D&D/Pathfinder paradigm of ever-increasing degrees of challenge based on character level

This, frankly, is my favorite part of Legend.

Mine too.

I've been playing in a Deus Vult game for the past year and been having a blast, and though I and my fellow players have been well seasoned, it's as though we can still be challenged by threats that, if we had been playing d20/Pathfinder, would seem trivial. We're currently in Russia, and we're dealing with a werewolf problem (and in Deus Vult, werewolves are never easy).

 

[alex_greene]

It depends.

Horrible answer, but it's true. Legend can be used for a hack-n-slash dungeon delve, or a campaign based around exploration of unknown territories, or stories of intrigue and politicking - the core rulebook just gives you the basic mechanics - chargen, skills, combat, equipment, task resolution, gear, the magic systems and GM'ing - and what you do with your games is entirely upon you as Games Master.

The GM section does not give you a mechanic for creating your settings - the game really needs a Games Master's Guide to help you with that - but it does actually give assistance with such details as determining the strength of the players' opponents, from your basic mooks through to the important NPCs - see the Combat section, p. 146, and the following on p. 230:-

Statistics: It is not necessary to create, from scratch, monsters, creatures and Non-Player Characters. Use samples from published adventures if you do not have time to create your own but even then, it is not always necessary to roll the Characteristics for every single trollkin in a group of 20 – use the average value given in a creature’s description, instead. Even then, you may only need a handful of statistics: Magic Points, Combat Actions, Movement, Combat Skills, Persistence and Resilience and a couple of major skills, such as Athletics and Evade. If you use General Hit Points for underlings and minor Adventurers, as outlined in the Combat chapter, then you may not even need to use the Hit Locations, either. The watchword is expedience: where statistics are concerned, note down only what you are certain to use. If other values are needed for some reason, then there is nothing wrong with a little improvisation as long as percentages you use reflect that nature of the creature and fit the general risk of the scenario. All creatures are different – just like Adventurers!

p. 230 also has a section titled "Risk," where a mechanic is given that you can use to determine the suitable levels of threat posed by NPC combatants to challenge the characters. You can use these mechanics in the game to measure the toughness of your foes, and use the other non-combat skills such as Courtesy, Evaluate, Insight, Mechanics to give them challenges that test other aspects of their character than their chosen Combat Styles.

The "Gamesmastering Legend" chapter goes further than that; it presents the themes of Legend - principally that of Community; the characters do not exist in a vacuum, and the game is built around the premise that the characters are part of a community, with responsibilities and so on. Unlike most fantasy roleplaying games, the characters have a "folks back home" to protect and come home to, and the game is not nearly so satisfying if it's played exactly the same as the other FRPGs where characters exist in isolation, and tired, clched dungeon delving is the only game in town.

The versatility of the game system allows you to present the characters with different kinds of scenarios, different kinds of challenges, requiring different strategies and delivering different messages - are your characters in to just loot temples and fight endless streams of mindless kobolds and orcs, or do they want to roleplay interactions with political backstabbing enemies while finding out more about their estranged families and the dark family secret that you yourself must soon inherit? Do they want to run games set in a time of war, or stand on the prow of a merchantman, braving sea serpents, spume and seasickness, heading out to explore strange new lands and trade with them for silks and spices and dangerous new ideas?

As I said, it depends.

 

[soltakss]

So, I have a hard time finding pre-made adventures.

This leaves me in the blind as to what difficulty level others use.

Fortunately, I am in the position where I have a lot of scenarios from older versions of RQ, which fit my campaign perfectly. At the moment, I run approximately 20% published scenarios, 30% campaign material, 30% player-instigated scenarios and 20% on the fly scenarios.

In my opinion, most pre-made scenarios have to be heavily modified, so I just use them as guides.

We have a party of four characters, built by the rules. One sorcerer and three warriors.

Last night I had them face a band of "Viking" warriors, 10 of them, that they surprised in their longhouse. PC prepared (damage resistance and maximized damage for all) and enemy unprepared (though I let them have their armour donned at remarkable speed).

Tough battle due to the high number of opponents.

Then a Wurm as written. One blow to the head and it was dead (sad really since it could have delt some serious damage).

Third encounter a room with 16 skeletons (as per Monsters of Legend). PC had to retreat. (I had the skeletons fight on without heads, arms and legs until destroyed).

Sounds like fairly tough opponents.

Have you had any encounters that didn't involve combat? Legend is very good at non-combat interaction.

I know the game is not about balanced fights, but I'm curious how others play it.

How many fights per hour gametime, how tough fights, how often does someone die?

We play four-hour sessions every Monday evening. Of those sessions, we have a combat maybe once in every 3 or 4 sessions. So, a fight every 12-16 hours. But, we play a very high-level game, so there is a lot of intrigue, politics, magic and HeroQuesting, not all of which involves combat. Also, my players play their PCs in a very timid way, in many respects, so I can stall the game by suggesting that there is danger ahead and watch them running around like headless chickens. If I want to kill a session, I just give them a choice and sit back and wait.

In previous campaigns, we might have had one combat per session, maybe two, so a combat every 2-4 hours.

My first group had a combat every 2 hours or so, but my second group had combats much more often, as it was a very intense, combat-oriented game.

As for balance, using magic and Hero Points tends to balance things out, as does playing stupid guards and cowardly opponents. I always say that a well-organised group of NPCs can take a single more powerful foe out quite easily. They can even take an evenly matched group out fairly easily.