The Numbers Problem

Submitted by xDungeonMasterx on Mon, 2008-03-03 18:34. Feedback

During a session of Excalibur, I encountered a problem and would like the opinions of my peers on RPG Lab.

There were more players there than I usually had and so I thought to myself, "Hmm... I'll increase the monsters proportionately to the number of players."

It went from a group of five orcs to fifteen. Needless to say, keeping track of where each orc was and which orc had which health with little less than a scrap sheet of paper and some scribbled digits. This frustrated me and the players. Many players had to wait for several minutes before they could even act.

In retrospect I believe increasing the numbers of enemies wasn't a smart move. Perhaps if I had just increased their health instead.

I was just wondering what you guys would recommend. The mathematics and numbers of the gameplay is what I most dislike. I would much rather feed it through a computer that would do all of the mechanics for me and allow me to concentrate my efforts on immersing the players into the game. Perhaps a program of some kind? I don't know.

I would like to hear what everyone here recommends.

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Well

Submitted by Evil1 on Tue, 2008-03-04 10:34.

I have my combat set up so there can be hundreds of enemies but with simple calculations and emphasis on roleplaying its no problem.

I never liked fantasy for that; the fact that combat is often strung out and could take hours if not days. A freind of mine told me last week that his character in a freinds group was fighting the same dragon for a week of 5 hour sessions!

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the balance

Submitted by Obnomauk on Mon, 2008-03-03 20:09.

the balance of monster power to party power is important, too easy and the players get bored too hard and combat takes three days!

what I find works for most situation is this:

total the Life Force, or Hit Points, or what have you of the party at the start of the night any encounter that is supposed to be easy should be monsters of half that number, moderately difficult would be equal or slightly higher. Hard is 1.5 that value Insane would be 2X that number. this tends to be fairly simple math.

I choose between more monsters and stronger monsters like so:

the number of monsters needs to be equal to or fewer to the party unless there are NPC allies involved in which case you can kill off scores of monsters with nary a roll of the die.

(but always allow the party the final kill)

I increase the strength of the critters to make up the numbers or toss in a harder 'boss' if needed. the exception is for 'mooks' or monsters that can be slain with a single PC action in which case I load em on but I group them into smaller segments and determine sucess or failure for combat for larger groups of monsters as a unit and apply any and all damage in a random manner.

I find that players don't mind combat or long action cycles so long as they are the ones who are making most of the rolls. what they mind is the Game Master taking 20 minutes to determine the results of the monsters.

-Obnomauk

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Evolve in play

Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Mon, 2008-03-03 23:06.

Games vary pretty radically in how combat works, and part of the advantage of PCs is they can come up with ingenious plans to get out of tight scrapes. Thus. rater than trying to come up with a mathematical system, I use movie logic instead. Its pretty rare in any media to get the main event first. Test them with lesser fights and ramp up to what they seem capable.

Generally speaking, enemies that are too weak might be uninteresting, but far more entertaining that the process of making new characters. Making up a reason for a last minuet save is quite a bit more contrived and story breaking than reasons for an understrength enemy.

Maybe they just come across a few stranglers of a road march, or the advance patrol. Perhaps someone is simply testing them, or the enemy is over confident and holding back.

Additionally, you can plausibly reinforce a weak encounter - someone heard the fight, they were searching for their lost friends etc. A winning opponent simply abandoning the fight would be rather unusual.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

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To compliment that note

Submitted by Relentless96 on Tue, 2008-03-04 01:42.

Chainsaw touches on this idea, but I just wanted to expand it.

Sometimes the easiest way is to do things in waves. For example, there might be 15 orcs, but the players will fight them 5 at a time. This adds a slightly new element, as you could potentially increase the number of orcs to 20, even 30. This is because it is easier to take out 5 orcs at a time than the full 20 strong. You can add a lot of drama to this, simply by not telling the players how many total orcs there are. By the time they get to their fifth wave, the players will surely be playing up the "defiant last stand" routine.

http://www.1km1kt.net/Aaron-White.htm

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