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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 3, 2012 6:47:32 GMT -8
So my party has three hard-hitting ranged characters with lots of area of effect attacks and one melee character who has fairly severe penalties for attacking more than one target per round.
Does anyone have suggestions for how I can keep encounters with more than one enemy from turning into range-fests where the player of the single melee character doesn't feel like his character isn't contributing much, BUT I also don't stop the ranged players from doing their cool tricks?
So far all I can think of is a physical bottleneck space, but I can't pull that every time. And the ranged players would also feel frustrated if they can't use their best attacks.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 3, 2012 10:03:17 GMT -8
My immediate thoughts include:
1. Surprise! Have the bad guys pop up right around the party. Bandit ambush sort of thing. 2. Atmospheric effects (weather, fog, etc.) It's not easy to shoot a bow through driving rain or heavy wind. 3. Close quarters.
Those just leap to mind as ways to alter the physics of a fight. There are lots of other ways and it would depend a lot on what you were trying to accomplish in a given scenario.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by hoseirrob on Mar 3, 2012 17:29:43 GMT -8
Champion combat - the parties best against an honorable orc tribe's best - maybe making them friends in the future. This is all in addition to what jib said.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2012 0:20:25 GMT -8
Change the setup to encounters. If the goal is "kill all the enemies" and they're all clumped together in a room with a single doorway on each side then you get those fights where the players form a firing line and shoot down the enemies who are all standing 10 feet away.
What if the enemies are smart enough to flip over tables and beds, give themselves cover, and move forward into melee by leaping between the cover?
You can also sandwich a fight. Never get into the rectangular room. While the party is still out in the hall the enemies come out from the room in front of them. Then a door opens behind them, more enemies. Melee guy can only be one side or the other. He's going to be effective on that side while on the other you've got a ranged character having to think fast.
What about darkness? If you're playing a fantasy setting there are plenty of enemies that can see in the dark. Can all your player characters? Give them an interesting space to explore, lots of cover and objects, but the key is they HAVE to explore it to shed light where the enemies may be hiding and sniping or ambushing from. The melee guy wanders off with a torch and the ranged ones are ready to fire at anything they can see.
Objective-based combats: the characters aren't worrying about killing all the monsters, they're worrying about rushing up this spiral staircase to get away from rising water or lava while enemies harass them from every angle. Or they need to save someone from kidnappers, and taking down enemies around the perimeter is half the battle, the other half being to rush in and protect innocent people from attacks. In another battle replace innocent victims with a portal that some enemies are trying to open, or a message they're trying to send with magic or smoke signals or whatever makes sense in the setting. Break through a line of enemies and attack the device or its operators. Once that's done, mop up the enemies scattered around.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 4, 2012 4:46:50 GMT -8
Man, I gotta start answering these things faster; all the good ideas get taken before I get here. Seriously though, JiB, hosierrob, and sentinel all suggested great ones. A good way to make encounters more challenging is to "play your enemies as smart as they actually are". As sentinel said, if the baddies your PCs are fighting have a human-level of intelligence then as soon as one of them takes an arrow to the chest, the others are going to dive for whatever cover is available; flipping over tables and beds, jumping behind barrels or wall corners, or even using dead bodies as shields if they're desperate. Taking this one step farther, well prepared baddies will have ways to counteract attacks from PCs wielding missile weapons. Think of it this way, have you ever played DOOM or any other first-person shooter game? Did the monsters start way down at the other end of the hallway giving you plenty of time to shoot the fuck out of them before they got to you? No. The level designers found all sorts of clever ways to put those nasty demons right up in your face so that your guns were virtually useless. They were waiting right around corners ready to chomp on you, behind silently sliding secret doors that opened up behind you, or turned the lights off on you so you couldn't see the things creeping up on you. You don't want to be a dick about it though. One of the HJ's listeners wrote in with a horror story of a DM who had his Hill Giants spread out 30' apart simply because that was the AOE of the mage's fireball spell. As JiB said in your other thread, it's a tough balance between setting up an encounter that is challenging because the bad guys took reasonable precautions and intentionally negating the PC's abilities.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 4, 2012 7:17:22 GMT -8
Regarding cover, I should mention that I tried that in the last encounter. It did make things more interesting overall, but it didn't stop the ranged attackers from dominating. I had twenty-five bandits against a party of four. The plan was for the frontmost ones to swarm into melee range and the back ones to tip up the tables and start shooting arrows from behind cover. However, the party all rolled better than the bandits on initiative, so they got to go first. The thief stood on the ceiling invisibly and shot exploding arrows over the tops of the tipped-up tables. The mage entangled an entire front tableful of bandits in ice so that they couldn't swarm, and the cleric blasted another group with his really scarily powerful plague spell. The latter didn't prevent them from attacking at least, but IIRC it also bypasses armor (I'd have to check his character sheet to be sure), so cover wouldn't necessarily cause him any problems. Anyway, this left a total of about four enemies for the paladin (aided by a war dog) to go after, and the paladin could only attack one at a time.
The player of the cleric has suggested finding an attack for the paladin that will let her take down an enemy in one strike, which would help some of it; but she's still only able to hit one target per round, while the others were typically hitting five to seven at a time.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 4, 2012 17:27:12 GMT -8
Eesh. As Tappy would say "There's no wrong fun." and usually I agree with him, but the story you just related seems so ridiculously overmatched that I can't imagine anyone involved having fun. Had you planned for the encounter to be a challenge for your players, or was this just intended to be a little speed bump before they got to the fight with the big bad? If it was meant to be a throw away encounter then it's no big deal really, but if you had wanted to provide them with a solid challenge then you have some problems. 4 PCs decimating a group of 25 bandits simply because they won the initiative roll doesn't seem right at all to me. It almost sounds as if you're playing a pen & paper version of the DynastyWarriors console game, where you just repeatedly mash the buttons to have your character wade through endless armies of useless mooks while never getting scratched once.
I probably sound like a broken record, but I think this warrants a serious sit down discussion with your players. Directly ask them what they thought of the encounter and if they thought it was fun or not. You'll get some variation of two different responses which will help you moving forward.
If your players tell you that the encounter was an absolute blast because they got to be ultimate bad asses and kill a bunch of guys without breaking a sweat, then you (unfortunately) need to start treating your encounters like a button mashing video game. Don't worry about realism or what your NPC's would realistically do when attacked because you're players obviously don't care about that either. When planning your encounters, assume that you will lose the initiative roll, imagine what the players will do on their turn, and assume their attacks cause the maximum possible damage. Run the numbers and make sure that enough of your NPCs will survive the initial attack so that you'll get to attack back.
Honestly, if your players just want to roll dice and kill shit then I would suggest you play as the adversarial GM. Throw balance and fairness out the window and intentionally try to kill them. Have your NPCs take precautions that they wouldn't realistically have been able to make. Have enemy spell-casters start the encounter with their defensive spells active. Give important bad guys Rings of Quickness to boost their initiative. Fight fire with fire and have your own Invisible Cloak wearing, ceiling walking, exploding arrow shooting assassins. Look at what spells your players use a lot and find ways to counteract them. Normally this isn't my style of play or the type of advice I'd give, but it sounds to me as if you have a group of power gamers. I say this because the Cleric player suggested finding a way to turn the Paladin into a one hit one kill death machine to bring him up to par with the rest of the group, rather than suggesting the rest of the party take it easy and not be so damn killy killy.
If, on the other hand, your players say they didn't have fun in the encounter because they are so powerful, perhaps it's time to scale back a bit. Talk to them and see if there are abilities or items they think are over powered, and then ask them to turn them in or come up with a tweak so they're not so powerful. Explain to them that you're finding it hard to give them a challenge without seeming like a dick and see if they have any solutions. If they're reasonable, mature people they'll realize that the GM should be having fun too and hopefully change things so that everyone is enjoying the sessions.
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Post by dropbear on Mar 5, 2012 3:51:11 GMT -8
All of the above advice is good and hyvemind's right talk to your players. If the Paladin not have fun but the others are your in for a tough time. If the paladin not that into combat, make it up in role play for her.
Another option is formal combat. What kind of foul spawn would use a ranged weapon on the field of honour? well PC but it will not look good "that 1 cp, didn't you shoot sir stew with a bow on the field? that'll be 1 sp, in fact I don't want you drinking here leave now. As your mother i just ashamed of you " Or it's a test of faith and gods don't allow missile weapon or flashy magic.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 5, 2012 7:32:21 GMT -8
Regarding cover, I should mention that I tried that in the last encounter. It did make things more interesting overall, but it didn't stop the ranged attackers from dominating. I had twenty-five bandits against a party of four. The plan was for the frontmost ones to swarm into melee range and the back ones to tip up the tables and start shooting arrows from behind cover. However, the party all rolled better than the bandits on initiative, so they got to go first. The thief stood on the ceiling invisibly and shot exploding arrows over the tops of the tipped-up tables. The mage entangled an entire front tableful of bandits in ice so that they couldn't swarm, and the cleric blasted another group with his really scarily powerful plague spell. The latter didn't prevent them from attacking at least, but IIRC it also bypasses armor (I'd have to check his character sheet to be sure), so cover wouldn't necessarily cause him any problems. Anyway, this left a total of about four enemies for the paladin (aided by a war dog) to go after, and the paladin could only attack one at a time. The player of the cleric has suggested finding an attack for the paladin that will let her take down an enemy in one strike, which would help some of it; but she's still only able to hit one target per round, while the others were typically hitting five to seven at a time. The first thing that leaps to mind is the wall crawling thief shooting exploding arrows is probably actually the biggest problem both for you running the game and for the bandits. The question I would ask myself is, "How smart are the bandits?" How did they survive to be high enough on the totem pole to even be a bother to the pc's? They have to be somewhat smart and resourceful and resilient. Use that. Remember that villains are smart if they plan to be villains for very long. Invert the problem for a moment. What would the party do if confronted by themselves with their own tactics? What would you expect them to do? Is it really so odd to think that the villains would have similar capabilities and resources? Questions to consider: 1. How smart are the villains? 2. How resourceful are the villains? 3. How much intel do the villains have on the pc's? Just things I try to keep in mind when designing writing bad guys and games in general. Cheers, JiB
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 5, 2012 16:50:31 GMT -8
The first thing that leaps to mind is the wall crawling thief shooting exploding arrows is probably actually the biggest problem both for you running the game and for the bandits. Well--I'd say in the last combat that three out of the four players had fun and felt like they were kicking butt and contributing to the overall success. The only one who didn't was the player of the paladin. I discussed this with some friends over the weekend, and they suggested tossing in something with magic resistance/immunity for the paladin to go after. I may try that for this week's game.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2012 16:53:34 GMT -8
Twenty-five mooks are a lot of shit to kill. Are you throwing waves of enemies at the party to satisfy the ranged characters and all their area attacks? What if the mooks are just a shield for some big bad melee enemy that the paladin has to deal with? Or the big bad has invisibility and pops up right next to a ranged character and the paladin has to go save someone's ass.
And I like Jib's advice. Put the players on the defensive sometimes. Make the enemies smart and resourceful; use all the magic your players would use against them. Put the enemies on the offensive. The players burst into an enemy lair and slaughter them. Some enemies gotta come back, kick in the doors of the inn at night, kidnap a bunch of people, then set fire to the thing while the PCs are in their beds. Maybe if the enemies can't stand up in a fair fight they'll have to go guerilla style, attacking the PCs then melting back into the shadows. Never line them up to get shot down by the PCs.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 5, 2012 17:37:33 GMT -8
Had you planned for the encounter to be a challenge for your players, or was this just intended to be a little speed bump before they got to the fight with the big bad? No no, it's just a warm-up. It's quite early in the adventure, and the real purpose of this fight was for them to discover some interesting things in the bandit chief's "office" when they search around afterward. I also wanted to (a) see how easy it would be for them to take out this group, and (b) give them a chance to kick some butt and have fun if it was as easy as I suspected it might be. I'm not unhappy with how easily the group eliminated the bandits. I'm unhappy about the fact that they didn't all get to participate. What if the mooks are just a shield for some big bad melee enemy that the paladin has to deal with? Or the big bad has invisibility and pops up right next to a ranged character and the paladin has to go save someone's ass. Those are good ideas--thanks!
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joegun
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Post by joegun on Mar 6, 2012 12:14:57 GMT -8
I've found if you want the melee guy to have fun with a bunch of ranged guys, make him shine in his *cough cough* class. As a defender his functional job is to make sure the ranged guys are protected. If he is running off leaving them in the back to get slaughtered by something, then he isn't defending much. Like others have said before change the dynamic of the combat so that the ranged guys are feeling the heat.
One other thing I did once to a couple of my ranged players: I had the enemies tamper with their bows beforehand (in this case it was a turn coat in the party). However during the first round both the ranged guys had to spend couple rounds restringing their bows, or switch to melee. That gave a couple rounds for the melee guys to shine.
I also do a lot of small buildings ( not many 10x10 buildings in my world ) which makes it much more difficult to use the ranged combat advantage.
So mostly a rehash of what others have said, but maybe a few additional nuggets of information.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2012 19:13:33 GMT -8
Questions to consider: 1. How smart are the villains? 2. How resourceful are the villains? 3. How much intel do the villains have on the pc's? Just things I try to keep in mind when designing writing bad guys and games in general. Cheers, JiB Several people have implied that you don't want to tailor an encounter to nullify your party members' specific abilities. Why not? It sounds like they are pretty high-level, which would generally translate into being fairly well-known in the gameworld. I don't see a problem with looking at JiB's points here, and saying "Rather, Very," and "as much as possible." Maybe a skilled rogue is tracking them, studying their tactics and abilities. Perhaps during a stop at a tavern, a magic-using patron secretly checks out their gear to identify what kind of magic it is enchanted with. However you justify it to yourself, all you need after they have the fight of their lives (if they comment on how this other group of opponents seemed to be prepared specifically to take them on) is a quick intelligence check after which whoever got the best result has a hazy memory of seeing several of these faces around in the last few towns they've been in. Hope this gives you some more food for thought.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 6, 2012 21:40:39 GMT -8
I'm not unhappy with how easily the group eliminated the bandits. I'm unhappy about the fact that they didn't all get to participate. Yeah. That's the main problem here. I think I went off on how to "fix" the ranged characters when the real issue is how to include the melee character in the fights more. Other people have offered good suggestions; "honorable" one-on-one melee combats to "solve" encounters, "rescuing" the ranged attackers from teleporting/fast moving foes, and placing encounters in tight spaces. There is something else you can do too. You mentioned that you're using BESM to run the game in your other thread. Now I've never even looked at that system, but I know it's used to run anime-inspired games and I'm somewhat familier with the anime genre tropes. Are you playing in a setting where it would be "normal" for master swordsmen to do incredible things with their swords? Like creating blasts of wind or force, splitting the ground with a sword strike, cutting arrows out of mid-air and other normally impossible feats? If so, then you could tweak the character to reflect these abilities. I'm only suggesting this because you're playing BESM so I assume that the game has that anime feel to it.
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