Also keep in mind that the "monsters" (exsurgents, exhumans, TITAN war machines, etc.) are not used like "monsters" in some game where you just have a group of 5 to 10 of them, and then they attack the party head-on. For example, I always play the TITAN war machines as a [i]minimum[/i] of 5 to 10 [i]big[/i] ones backed up by [i]hundreds[/i] of other ones, because, hey, they're a horde of killer robots and they forced humankind to flee Earth. Exsurgents like to be sneaky, and their main goal is to spread the virus further. Thus, the most dangerous thing about them is that they are corrupting food fabbers, hacking into the local mesh, ambushing people in dark alleyways and giving them the virus while wiping their memories of being attacked, etc.

There's no Rolling involved when you build characters. Character generation is not random. It's point buy. When your players build their NPCs they'll have 105 points to spend on Aptitudes. And 1000 points to spend on everything else; Morph, Skills, Moxy, Traits, and money for gear. You'd build monsters and opponents the same way. So, in that sense it's balanced. Some people think that building a character is a lot of work. It is the first time because there are lot's of skills to choose for a character and the gear list is huge compared to DnD. You'll find that after the first couple characters it gets easier and you'll pretty much know what skills to choose for the archetype you want to build. Over all the game isn't really concerned with balance tho. EP isn't really suited to Dungeon-Crawl-With-A-Boss-At-The-End play styles. I'm not saying that it lacks in the Combat department. It has a very developed, some would say too complex, combat system. It's a game that is much more concerned with setting and works very well for players who enjoy mystery exploration and political intrigue.

gigan wrote:

just outa curiosity how would you make enemies balanced to the characters.

Trial and error. The nice thing is that PCs have backups, so if your monster is *too* good it only wastes their latest bodies and equipment... and memories, reputation... and maybe also converts the ex-characters into monsters. One game session had me improvising, and the two PCs found a fractal. The tough character shot it to pieces, but the pieces penetrated his suit and began regenerating inside him. He was put in a healing vat. He soon realized that it was being taken over by the emergent TITAN system - which was also dissecting him alive. The other PC managed to get his stack out (leaving the copy of him in his own brain to his horrible fate...) and plugged it into the nearest body he could find. Then they firebombed the healing vat and the trailer it was in. The PC was *not* amused about losing most of his possessions. Whether he had learned to respect self-enhancing nanotechnological monstrosities is another question. In the same session I introduced a relative to the fractal, the line. It looks like a whisk of spiderweb stretched across the Martian desert surface, at least a mile in length. Hard to see except in clear sunlight. But if something crosses it, it jumps up and performs a complex slicing sequence with its monofiliament edge. Then it returns to the ground. I never wrote any stats for it, but it was great for setting the mood of the approach to some ruins, make the PCs plan their approach carefully, and give them a hint that the place was dangerously "active". Still, the best monsters are human. My favourite NPC so far remains a AI researcher who is trying to save mankind... by doing very risky experiments on controllable superintelligence, happily sacrificing anybody (including copies of himself) for the greater good. The guy is friendly, talkative and in many ways on the same side as the PCs. But thanks to him Saturn now has one moon less.

Quincey Forder wrote:

... and condemn a kid to grow up unloved to he would cling to him or people chosen by said old man,

I always saw leaving Harry with the Dursley's was so he would grow up with out developing a huge ego, like the one Draco and the Slitherin's tend to have. And who is the innocent he let rot in Jail and could have legally had released?

I haven't looked too closely at the creatures in Gatecrashing, are they adequate monsters? Plague horror is one aspect of EP-style monsters. There are also the behind-the-scenes conspirators that turn ordinary people into willing but ignorant tools for their plots. Not to mention the posthuman and exhuman offshoots that have simply gone too far (?) In last evening's game session we of course realized that the true monsters were the PCs.