How make a fair fight?

[Thiagocord]

Hello guys!

Next Saturday i gonna play with my group again, and so many things has happened on game, and now when im preparing the scenes i in trouble on balance the enemies, my players have about 20/30 experience and just got Legend 2.

In titanomachy we has some guide lines to balance the game based on players Legend, but it didnt seem to care about how many experience the players has on their character.

So how you guys create your enemies how you game ? There is some math i missing somewhere on the books?

[Aristarkos]

The math part I would say is a ratio of 3 dice / 1 Defense. What this means is that with 3 combat dice you have a fair chance (more than 50%) of hitting and injuring an enemy with 1 Defense. For every extra Defense you add to an enemy (and some enemies have HIGH defense stats) you need to add +3 dice to the attacking force to have a decent chance of hitting.

[Mateus Luz]

The extra experience, in my experience, don’t really make the character more powerful, just more versatile.

What I mean is, most of the characters will roll 9 or 10 dice in their area of focus since session 0, and additional experience will give more area of focus, maybe another relic or even another Purview, but as the number of Booms and Knacks is limited by legend, and the number of marvels is limited to a fixed number per scene, it will not affect the power level.

In other words, Legend is the real power measure in Scion, not experience, so adding a lot of experience to the characters will have little effect on how powerful their adversaries are and more impact on the variety of tasks they can handle.

[Florin]

The math part I would say is a ratio of 3 dice / 1 Defense. What this means is that with 3 combat dice you have a fair chance (more than 50%) of hitting and injuring an enemy with 1 Defense. For every extra Defense you add to an enemy (and some enemies have HIGH defense stats) you need to add +3 dice to the attacking force to have a decent chance of hitting.

Don't forget to factor in enhancements. Just 1 or 2 enhancement reduces the needed dice significantly. Each point of enhancement would cancel a point of defense.

[Thiagocord]

The math part I would say is a ratio of 3 dice / 1 Defense. What this means is that with 3 combat dice you have a fair chance (more than 50%) of hitting and injuring an enemy with 1 Defense. For every extra Defense you add to an enemy (and some enemies have HIGH defense stats) you need to add +3 dice to the attacking force to have a decent chance of hitting.

I see, but you do this maths based on natural defense of the archetype? For example a titanspawn has a natural 4 defense , then you tune up the titanspawn defense by players Dice pool?

[Thiagocord]

The extra experience, in my experience, don’t really make the character more powerful, just more versatile.

What I mean is, most of the characters will roll 9 or 10 dice in their area of focus since session 0, and additional experience will give more area of focus, maybe another relic or even another Purview, but as the number of Booms and Knacks is limited by legend, and the number of marvels is limited to a fixed number per scene, it will not affect the power level.

In other words, Legend is the real power measure in Scion, not experience, so adding a lot of experience to the characters will have little effect on how powerful their adversaries are and more impact on the variety of tasks they can handle.

Hmm, i got it , i was kinda worried, because last session my players was Legend 1 and their totally destroyed a villain and two mooks, then when their finally get to a dragon ( a titanspawn nerfed), their nearly got wiped, i got little worried since it was a 5 v 1 fight and some players got busted pretty bad.

[Mateus Luz]

Hmm, i got it , i was kinda worried, because last session my players was Legend 1 and their totally destroyed a villain and two mooks, then when their finally get to a dragon ( a titanspawn nerfed), their nearly got wiped, i got little worried since it was a 5 v 1 fight and some players got busted pretty bad.

That is kind of hard to predict, Storypath (and Storyteller/telling for that end) are a bit hard to predict when dealing with combat in general. Games like D&D are made to “absorb” fails and criticals of both sides of the side (chars and NPCs), making it more predictable, but with the little amount of “hit points” the characters have in Storypath (et al) a critical hit or a miss means a lot in a fight. Storypath have the extra aspect that is the cost of a critical, resulting in a less lethal result in general, but yet it’s possible to have a wipe out of a small group of underlings.

My suggestion is, the bosses must be hard and must need some synergy of the characters capacities to work, so the characters almost being wiped may be a good result in the end. If it’s not the original idea, try to talk to the players so they start to work as a group, maybe even tank, healer, damage and support, it may help a lot in the capacities. If it’s not the case, you may balance the adversary in the fly, giving that extra push or restraining the boss to let them survive just barely.

While that, I must admit that I had a few combat scenes that end up in a unexpected way, including 3 talents (in Trinity) fighting a powerful Psiad and defeating her in 2 rounds of ultimate synergy of their powers (to the point I houseruled enhancements have a hard cap no matter the situation).

[Heavy Arms]

Did Scale come into play with said dragon?

Scale is, probably, one of the harder balancing points for the Storypath system to get used to. A very small difference in Scale - esp. in combat - has a drastic impact on a conflict. A 1 Scale difference is a significant advantage, a 2 Scale difference is an incredibly challenging opponent, and a 3 Scale difference is something the books suggest not even bothering to try (at least in a direct fight). A Scale 3 dragon against a bunch of Scale 1 PCs can easily take out a non-combat PC in one hit with an OK roll (and if they can area attack via fire breath that can easily leave the whole group in the lurch).

While Legend is the dominant metric of "vertical" power (that is increased power in one focus instead of "horizontal" power in versatility) over XP, access to Scale is a major part of the system and less predictable. By Hero level Scions should have access to Scale in a few ways, but players might not be thinking about some of them and/or might not have considered making sure to having some broad access to low level Scale boost: a smooth talking Scion of Aphrodite that put all of their stuff into social boosts might struggle to bring even a +1 Scale on a single combat roll (like not getting beaten silly by that dragon in one shot).

There's no simple metric here though, because Scale is highly contextual outside of powers that explicitly grant it. It's not going to inherently tie into XP (and to an extend not directly tie into Legend).

[Thiagocord]

That is kind of hard to predict, Storypath (and Storyteller/telling for that end) are a bit hard to predict when dealing with combat in general. Games like D&D are made to “absorb” fails and criticals of both sides of the side (chars and NPCs), making it more predictable, but with the little amount of “hit points” the characters have in Storypath (et al) a critical hit or a miss means a lot in a fight. Storypath have the extra aspect that is the cost of a critical, resulting in a less lethal result in general, but yet it’s possible to have a wipe out of a small group of underlings.

My suggestion is, the bosses must be hard and must need some synergy of the characters capacities to work, so the characters almost being wiped may be a good result in the end. If it’s not the original idea, try to talk to the players so they start to work as a group, maybe even tank, healer, damage and support, it may help a lot in the capacities. If it’s not the case, you may balance the adversary in the fly, giving that extra push or restraining the boss to let them survive just barely.

While that, I must admit that I had a few combat scenes that end up in a unexpected way, including 3 talents (in Trinity) fighting a powerful Psiad and defeating her in 2 rounds of ultimate synergy of their powers (to the point I houseruled enhancements have a hard cap no matter the situation).

I see, in that fight for example i didnt not use “second wind” skill of the dragon, because the players aalmost died trying go getting him down one time, i will try to hold myself when build enemies , and use tension if things begin to be easy.

[Maitrecorbo]

To expand on whats said above.

In the last game i ran i had a big number of antagonist attack the band.
The goal was an encounter hard enough that running away would've been a good decision.
What i forgot was that one of the scion had the Warrior knack for using scale when being outnumbered.
This turned what was supposed to be a very challenging encounter into an absolute massacre (those poor npcs never stood a chance 😆)

[Thiagocord]

Did Scale come into play with said dragon?

Scale is, probably, one of the harder balancing points for the Storypath system to get used to. A very small difference in Scale - esp. in combat - has a drastic impact on a conflict. A 1 Scale difference is a significant advantage, a 2 Scale difference is an incredibly challenging opponent, and a 3 Scale difference is something the books suggest not even bothering to try (at least in a direct fight). A Scale 3 dragon against a bunch of Scale 1 PCs can easily take out a non-combat PC in one hit with an OK roll (and if they can area attack via fire breath that can easily leave the whole group in the lurch).

While Legend is the dominant metric of "vertical" power (that is increased power in one focus instead of "horizontal" power in versatility) over XP, access to Scale is a major part of the system and less predictable. By Hero level Scions should have access to Scale in a few ways, but players might not be thinking about some of them and/or might not have considered making sure to having some broad access to low level Scale boost: a smooth talking Scion of Aphrodite that put all of their stuff into social boosts might struggle to bring even a +1 Scale on a single combat roll (like not getting beaten silly by that dragon in one shot).

There's no simple metric here though, because Scale is highly contextual outside of powers that explicitly grant it. It's not going to inherently tie into XP (and to an extend not directly tie into Legend).

I didnt use scale on that fight, i followed the tips of titanomachy and taked our scale against legend 1/2 players, and one player used scale against the dragon and begin to throw some rocks on him, that ia what give then some edge on the fight, but the fire breath hitted then pretty bad, their party is well balanced having one leader/one healer/ two tanks/dps/ 1 full dps.

[Aristarkos]

I see, but you do this maths based on natural defense of the archetype? For example a titanspawn has a natural 4 defense , then you tune up the titanspawn defense by players Dice pool?

Tuning up an opponent's defense doesn't seem to be a good idea because it makes combat more boring: roll the dice... miss.... roll the dice... miss... and so on. Thankfully Storypath has the mechanic of building up Momentum for every failed hit against an opponent so that alleviates the problem many RPGs have of having boring fights against opponents they can barely scratch.

If possible I instead inject more mooks and underlings of the big bad evil opponent because then the group must divide their efforts instead of all teaming up against the one opponent.

[Maitrecorbo]

Another thing you can do with storypath is add complications.

Say for example the antagonist covered the ground in a sheet of ice. Whenever the pcs make a movement or attack roll they also have a complication of 1 to avoid slipping and falling.

[Aristarkos]

Another thing you can do with storypath is add complications.

Say for example the antagonist covered the ground in a sheet of ice. Whenever the pcs make a movement or attack roll they also have a complication of 1 to avoid slipping and falling.

That's a very good point! Being the horrible human being that I am I would probably have the combatants entering the frozen field make a mixed action between fighting and keeping stable on the ice, forcing them to use the lowest of their Close Combat + Attribute and Athletics + Dexterity, which might result in a lower dicepool for a min-maxed character.

[Thiagocord]

Thanks for all tips guys, today i gonna see how things will go,lets hope for the best!