Balancing encounters

[Slimcreeper]

Okay, boss encounter:

Multi-disciplined 6th Circle Warrior and Elementalist. Primarily uses elementalism to boost combat abilities. Thread Sword and Forged plate armor. He's Iopan, so I want him to be pretty scary. Also, a 4th circle troll warrior, mini-maxed to a certain extent so that his social defense is only 5. It's the second time they've faced the troll, so they should know about his weaknesses. Plus a number of Iopan soldiers, mooks but not pushovers. One per party member? With all the standard caveats about party make-up, what kind of party would you throw that against? Should the Iopan have tactics, and how much will that change the encounter?

[Mataxes]

What is the Circle/Race/Discipline makeup of the group?

[Slimcreeper]

That is the question! What would be some appropriate parties to throw this encounter at?

[Mataxes]

Oh. I guess misunderstood the question?

I thought you were asking, "These are the two main bad guys in the encounter for my group, how many mooks should I add to balance things out?"

Part of the thing with balancing encounters is that it really depends on your player group composition. How many PCs? What race/Discipline/Circle are they? What talents/skills/magic items do they have?

A group with an Air Sailor, Scout, Archer, and Illusionist at Circle 5 is going handle that encounter very differently from a Warrior, Swordmaster, Nethermancer, and Weaponsmith at Circle 5. And if there are more PCs, but they are only Circle 3? That's a different situation.

What are the conditions? Is the PC group getting ambushed? Or do they have time to prepare and set the terms of engagement?

There are really no simple answers when it comes to encounter balance. You can compare numbers and get a rough idea of how things are likely to shape up, but a character whose stats are an 'outlier' can throw things out of whack.

For instance, if you have a windling who has dual-Disciplined as Thief and Warrior, and has a group thread tied to their Physical Defense, so their PD is a good four or five points above the next highest in the group? An opponent that would have a decent chance of hitting them would potentially tear through the other members of the group.

Some of the things mentioned in this thread are decent rules of thumb, but they're just a starting point.

[Slimcreeper]

I've got some adventures that I'm writing more or less for fun; I'm not sure when I'll get to run them, but It will certainly be a minute before I have a party at this level.

I know the encounter would need to be customized to the group once they got there, but as an exercise I think it would be useful to hear what general parties they would expect to face off against them.

The scenario has the party retrieving a valuable artifact from the stronghold of the newly-installed Iopan overlords of Kratas. They have a way in, but it turns into an "it's quiet ... too quiet" scenario. The party should figure out there will be an ambush, so it won't really be an ambush. The Iopan should have a couple of rounds to cast Fireweave on himself and the troll (using the karma power) and Flameweapon on everyone else with an extra thread. The battlefield will be in a fairly small room in a basement. One of those old-fashioned basements with lots of adjoining rooms. The Iopan prefers face-to-face combat, although he does have fireball loaded.

[Slimcreeper]

This is the actual scenario. Agorah is the Iopan warrior/elementalist; Gubt is the troll warrior. Ruthger is a 1st circle Nethermancer who is allied with the party.

The Approach

The building of purple stone in unmistakable. Its walls are mostly intact, though all of its upper floors and its roof have long since collapsed and rotted away. Though the stone is a natural material, the color is almost gaudy. You’ve never seen anything like it. The floor inside is covered with rubble and broken, rotted debris from the collapsed structure.

Finding the trapdoor to the basement requires an Awareness test DN 10. The rubble is unstable and acts as a trap. Every round a character is searching and fails the Awareness test, the character may set off a debris trap.

Debris Trap: Detection 8; Disarm 8; Initiative 15/d12+2d6; Trigger: walking on rubble; Effect: Step 10 damage from rubble collapsing; entangled DN 10.

The old canal channel is almost perfectly square, pitch-black, and just barely large enough for a troll to walk through without scraping her horns. It is straight as a rule for as far as they can see. There is no sound but the slow drip of water from the ceiling. After walking for a ¼ mile, they come to an old wooden door, partially ajar. It isn’t trapped. A large chest of drawers is wedged against it, preventing it from opening all the way. Trolls and obsidimen must make a dexterity test (6) to get through. If they can’t, then it takes a strength test (6) to move the chest of drawers silently. If they fail, it tips over and falls with a loud crash.

If Chlo Was Able to Tip Off the Talons

There are 8 rooms of various sizes in the basement level. Two are old storage rooms, including the room with the tunnel. One serves as a dungeon, with several prisoners chained to the wall. They will threaten to call out if the players don’t free them. One is a guard room, empty. One is a magical laboratory, stripped of anything of value. One is a workroom, again stripped of anything of interest. One is locked, barred from the inside. It has an armor rating of 7 and 20 hit points. An awareness test of 8 will reveal that people are inside, being quiet. Otherwise:

This room is larger than the others, probably 20x40. Four sconces on the wall give off a weak light. There are several tables in here, as well as a couple of ladder-back chairs. What catches your eye, however, is a gem the size of troll’s fist. It is covered with a fine webbing of blackened cracks. Nevertheless, it seems to gather what light is in the room and amplify it.

In the adjacent room is Agorah, Gubt, and enough human soldiers to make it 1 combatant per PC. The soldiers are using handaxes, not their poleaxes. Agorah will cast Flame Weapon on himself, Gubt and all of the human soldiers. The party will hear the whoosh of flames from the room next door. Agorah and Gubt come rushing out. Gubt will go straight for the biggest fighter he sees. Agorah will use Tiger Spring and Air Dance and a Fireball if he can; otherwise he’ll cast Fireweave on himself. He will have completed Battle Rites so that he doesn’t have strain on Tiger Spring. He may take a turn to use Tactics on the Iopans soldiers. They will go around to the other door to trap the party inside. This is a very cramped battlefield. Anyone other than windlings using 2-handed weapons is considered Harried.

This is a very dangerous battle. If Ruthger falls in battle, he will curse Agorah as a dying act. Spirits will fly into Agorah’s eyes and blind him permanently. Ruthger cannot be raised from the dead in this case. If the party doesn’t have much in the way of front line types or is of lower circle, reduce the number of Iopan soldiers. In the case of a TPK, any characters that are knocked unconscious but not killed will awaken in a coffin, hands and feet tied tightly, in a wagon on the way to Iopos.

[Mataxes]

Okay.

Uhm...

You still need to have a target in mind for what approximate Circle of player character the scenario is intended for. Since you don't know what the make-up of the group facing the challenges are going to be, the best you can do is have the numbers fall into the "typical" range for the expected Circle. You make certain assumptions, and base your work on those.

(This is something we do in the early stages of development when we're coming up with numbers.)

But, again, it comes down to comparing numbers. For example, our "typical" character will have a Step 7 in their important attribute, and a rank in the talent or ability equal to their Circle. So, a C5 Warrior's Melee Weapon will be assumed as Step 12. For a (so-called) equal challenge, then, the target should have a Physical Defense of 12. This gives a bases (roughly) 50% chance of the Warrior hitting with Melee Weapons each round.

Of course, our Warrior has Karma, and other abilities that might come into play to push the odds slightly in his favor. So maybe we bump up the target's PD a little bit (say, two or three points), so that our PC needs to do more than just stand there and trade dice rolls. This can be done with spells, thread items, or tricks/talents of his own. (How you do that depends on the individual and what they have available for resources.)

Of course, our Warrior isn't on his own. He has allies -- so we need to come up with other challenges in the encounter. And we make similar assumptions about other potential party members. What is the typical PD of a C5 combat focused character? Support? Magician? What about Mystic Defense? Can we make things interesting with a Social aspect to the encounter? Are the mooks simple thugs intended to provide extra bodies to soak up damage? Are they an obstacle that needs some tactical thought to overcome? Maybe they're not much of a challenge toe-to-toe with the Warrior, but pose a danger to magicians, so our Warrior might need to help protect them -- meaning they aren't able to pull out all the stops and focus on the big boss.

Balancing encounters is art and science, but the science isn't perfect. When developing an encounter "blind" -- that is, you don't know anything about the group that will be facing the challenge -- you make things up based on assumptions, and do the best you can. (This is why, for the scenarios I write as convention demos, I provide pre-gens. At least in that case I know what the numbers and group composition are likely to be and can plan accordingly, and also build in spots for each potential character to get some spotlight time.)

I don't know if that helps at all, but it's the way I approach things.

[Serespar]

Have been using a metric (RTD or Rounds to Defeat) as part of the process of balancing encounters, it's not perfect but it does seem to help as I think things through setting up combat scenes. Thought I'd share.

Fair warning, am a bit of a math geek. Have set up probability distributions for the step tables in ED, along with damage and armor calculations (among other things). Most are set up as lookup tables you can use in excel for steps up to 30, target numbers up to 30, and armor up to 20; covers a lot of ground for what you run into at the game table.


RTD [Round to Defeat]
Rounds to Defeat = [ (Damage to Defeat) / (Total of average damage after armor for all attacks the combatant makes during the round) ]

Damage to Defeat is usually the unconsciousness rating, but can be set as death rating or damage before you plan to have the opponent run
Average damage = [(Probability of an attack hitting) x (Average damage after armor)]

The base calculator I use in excel has a table pre-loaded for a number of creatures; you put the creature or character name in the calculator and it looks up the statistics you have entered and calculates the fight metrics. As PC circles go up, I just add another entry with Smash the Warrior (Second Circle) next to his entry of Smash the Warrior (First Circle) along with his new and improved primary and secondary attacks.

Again, this is just a pre-balancing tool as you figure out how long you want fights to last, and helps you see how tough you are making the mix of goons / lieutenants / bosses / arch villains you throw at the party, and in what quantities.


Example Profile
Strawman
Primary Attack [Physical] / Attack Step 9 / Damage Step 9 [ Unarmed ]
No Second Attack per round
Physical Defense 7 (No Armor)
Mystic Defense 8 (2 Armor)
Damage to Defeat 27

First Circle Warrior
Primary Attack [Physical] / Attack Step 10 / Damage Step 14 [ Melee Weapons talent ]
Second Attack [Physical] / Attack Step 8 / Damage Step 14 [ Second Attack Skill ]
Physical Defense 10 (4 Armor)
Mystic Defense 6 (2 Armor)
Damage to Defeat 43

Strawman attacking the Warrior
- The Strawman's attack is against the physical defense characteristics of the warrior (not the mystic defense characteristics).
- Probability of a miss is 61.5%, probability of a base damage hit (Step 9) is 19.7%, probability of an extra success hit (Step 11) is 14.4%, and probability of a two extra success hit (Step 13) is 4.4%.
- Average damage is reduced by the warrior's 4 points of armor. Step 9 (average after armor of 5.6), Step 11 (average after armor of 7.4), and Step 13 (average after armor of 9.3).
- Average damage for distribution of outcomes; between misses and hits, the strawman averages 2.6 damage per round through the warriors armor.
- Given the warriors unconsciousness rating of 43, it's expected to take the strawman 16.7 rounds to defeat the warrior (or, another way to think of it is if they could all physically pile onto the warrior, 16 or 17 of them would on average take out the warrior in a single round through pure dice rolling).
- RTD: 16.7

Warrior attacking the Strawman
- The Warrior's attacks are against the physical defense characteristics of the strawman (not the mystic defense characteristics).
- Probability of a miss is 23.4% for the first attack and 41.7% for the second attack
Probability of a base damage hit (Step 14) is 32.4% for the first attack and 31.0% for the second attack
Probability of an extra success hit (Step 16) is 31.6% for the first attack and 21.3% for the second attack
Probability of a two extra success hit (Step 18) is 12.5% for the first attack and 6.0% for the second attack
- Average damage is not reduced since the strawman has no physical armor. Step 14 (average after armor of 14.2), Step 16 (average after armor 16.4), Step 18 (average after armor 18.3)
- Average distribution of outcomes; between misses and hits, the combination of the warriors melee weapons attack and second attack averages 21.1 damage per round against the strawman
- Given the strawman's damage to defeat of 27, it's expected to take the warrior 1.3 rounds to defeat the strawman
- RTD: 1.3

For balance of power reference,
- the rounds to defeat in Warrior vs Strawman are Warrior (RTD 1.3) and Strawman (16.7) [warrior mops up strawman]
- the rounds to defeat in Warrior vs Waxman are Warrior (RTD 3.4) and Waxman (12.0) [warrior still mops up waxman, but it's a bit more work]
- the rounds to defeat in Warrior vs Stoneman are Warrior (RTD 9.9) and Stoneman (2.4) [stoneman clobbers warrior but he has a chance to run]
- the rounds to defeat in Warrior vs Steelman are Warrior (46.9) and Steelman (1.0) [steelman pawns warrior]

Again, this metric is just another tool in the balance-it-out planning toolkit and only makes sense when you can quickly run the numbers in something like excel. For game tables where I'm not sure what characters will be coming, I use some preloaded profiles to get a sense of the range. I personally find thinking the numbers through helps me set tone for describing the scene of what's flying at the PCs and the danger level. I also know that the metric, while useful, tends to understate PCs (a mix of the impact of karma, spell buffs, and the creativity players bring that no quick metric can capture). That being said, I have found the metric useful as a next level way to look at balancing encounters. YMMV.

Final note, a GM friend of mine has told me that while she had zero interest in crunching the numbers and putting all my silly tables together, she was very happy to grab em and use the calculator as she planned campaign encounters *grin*

[Tattered Rags]

Very nice!

[Lursi]

My dice are public.
My encounters often not fair, so is life.
Coming back another time is an option. ( the scout used to have a list with deferred missions, some of them escalated if not taken on)

This makes reconnaissance much more valuable.
Characters like scholars, thiefs and scouts gain legends for gaining intelligence about and if necessary, escaping the huge evils and others for crushing the attainable ones.

The judgement is however with the heroes.

Sometimes they take on crazy monsters and make it because they have a plan.
We have had three total party kills in 17 years and the first 6, we played every Sunday. The binder with deceased heroes however is somewhat thicker.

When two out of five die, you also have good adventures after that with two heroes going through a much faster advancement, the remaining 7th circle heroes have to lead carefully then. So after a while the party circles go from 3-11 and death has never been a question of individual power, more about failing to resist temptation.