Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

GM Encounter Design Guidelines

7 posts / 0 new

Last post

Fri, 2012-01-13 19:39

tsedeq

GM Encounter Design Guidelines

I am working on creating a campaign, and am looking for some advice on balancing combat encounters. In games such as d&d, there are clear guidelines for the GM to know the difficulty level of an encounter and therefore select enemies appropriate to the players' current power, and I'm wondering if anyone has been able to come up with a similar tool for EP. I understand EP is not a combat-oriented game in the same manner as d&d, and embrace that. However, the group of people I rpg with enjoys a healthy mix of tactical combat and storytelling, which I think EP can provide. It is not fun if a combat turns out to be too difficult or too easy for the players. Obviously a GM can use various tactics (such as fudging die rolls) to tweak the difficulty level, but there is some point at which the inequality between players and enemies is unfixable without ruining the encounter with obvious deus ex machina. Does anyone have ideas of metrics to use to be able to judge the difficulty level of combat encounters? I guess this is essentially a two part question. First, how to easily gauge the combat prowess of a party (since this will change based on current morph/equipment selection, but I don't want to have to go through any tedious work such as reviewing exactly what equipment/mods each character has). Second, how to gauge the combat prowess of mobs (optimally, this would use the same method as in #1, but non-morphs such as xenoflaura might require a separate form of analysis). I have a few thoughts on the topic, but was curious if anyone else had done any work on this or there was a relevant resource out there which I haven't yet heard of. Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Fri, 2012-01-13 21:25

weaver95

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

I'm a rank n00b when it comes to designing games in this setting...but i'm about a month into my current EP campaign and I can tell you what I've figured out what worked for me and my group. when it comes to gauging difficulty...I don't even consider player balance. half my group has morphs with emergency farcasters and the rest backup their egos on a regular schedule. so if they then run into say...50 combat bots and a battalion of exsurgents armed with antimatter baseball bats, they just reboot from last backup and rethink their approach to completing their mission. Now that's not to say that they haven't had some combat encounters. far from it - they've beat the snot out of a rogue hacker and his modified pets. they took him down with a sniper shot and coordinated hacking/psi attack. The key was play smarter, not harder. if the big bad guy has tons of combat gear they start looking for alternative means to do their work. if the target is weak, then they go in for a beat down. I guess what i'm trying to say is that when designing an encounter/adventure I don't worry so much about balancing combat encounters. I design them according to what resources my bad guy is most likely to have on hand AND what level of trouble he's expecting. Given that there are so many options for characters to salvage their ego and resleeve into so many new morphs, I don't feel that I have to 'pull my punches' at all. that was the hardest part for me to adjust too as a GM. I didn't want to accidentally kill off a PC without giving them some sort of grand, epic and meaningful death...but that's in pathfinder. In Eclipse Phase, I can kill off the entire party and they just restore from backup and review their XP logs to see where they fucked up and/or cover their tracks.

Sat, 2012-01-14 10:25

tsedeq

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

Weaver - thanks so much for your input. I am excited to attempt the challenge of designing multiple ways to accomplish a mission beyond combat, since that's pretty much been the only solution to things in the other rpgs I've played. But, I do want to give my players a few situations where combat is a viable, but challenging option. Also, I plan on doing some gatecrashing exploration scenarios, where death has more serious consequences than a resleeve can fix (as the players may never be able to retrace their steps to the same location, or the enemy will have moved somewhere else). How did you determine the skills and equipment appropriate for the rogue hacker and his pets in that combat encounter you mentioned?

Sun, 2012-01-15 02:17

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

Class/Level game GM's usually have this question at first because, (I'm speaking from experience here), they're used to having arguments over whether a certain class is over/under powered at a certain level. Ignore that tendency. Obviously there are no "levels". Which is a good thing, because Levels of Class A have never been equivalent to levels of Class B in any rendition of any game anytime. You just end up eyballing it anyhow but now you don't have to deal with what the publisher tells you should work, (but wont). (Some basic GM advice: before deciding who has the upper hand in a conflict determine what outcome would be success or failure for each side. It's rare that you can write a realistic scenario where total annihilation of the opponent is the goal.) 4 things you need to look at first: (in order of importance) Actions, Durability, Perception, Range, The side with more offensive actions is more powerful. Count the number of combatants that are armed and then count their SPEED stats. A team of 3 shooters each with a speed of 3 has up to 9 offensive Action Phases in a single Action Turn. Durability can balance Actions. That team of 3 (Speed 3) shooters are going to be out classed by a squad of 9 (Speed 1) cops. Even though each side has the same number of actions and can potentially develop the same volume of fire it's harder to kill 9 than 3. Even if the cops aren't as tough maybe only having half the total durability they can still take 3x the number of Wound Effects. Force multipliers like Shells (drones) can have a huge effect. The side with the best intelligence (Perception) will probably win. One character with Tera-hertz enhanced vision or the team with the best hacker riding overwatch or commanding surveillance drones will probably win any cat-and-mouse maneuvers before the conflict starts. This means coordination and potential ambush. Damage VS Armor in this game dictates that shooting conflicts rarely last more than 2 turns. (this is also the area in which PCs are usually weak unless they're on their home turf.) Never bring a knife to a gunfight and don't get caught in the open. Range isn't always a factor in Eclipse Phase because it's hard to find areas in this setting that can't be covered by a light pistol (60 meters Extreme range). But range modifiers are the most common negative modifiers and they stack up pretty quickly. Having longer range via bigger weapons or greater mobility is an important bonus. Those are the 4 main things to benchmark. There are other obvious quantities to consider such as High Armor rating or high damage weapons but they are obvious and easily balanced if they happen to come into play.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sun, 2012-01-15 17:50

tsedeq

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

otp - thanks so much for the feedback, that was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I do very much love the idea of no "levels" in an rpg and instead having players improve steadily and slowly over time. The d100 system is perfect for this and one of the things that attracted me to EP (along with its amazing campaign setting). Speed and Dur are easy enough to quickly eyeball. As far as who can get better intel on enemy locations, that seems key but tough to quickly measure, without looking at the details of equipment, etc... Range definitely seems to be a consideration, but also tougher to gauge quickly. I guess for both, I'll just need to learn some key advantage-giving pieces of equipment to keep an eye out for. Noob question - is there any way to increase the number of physical complex actions in a turn? I know there are a couple of ways to get extra mental or mesh complex actions, but wanted to double check there was nothing allowing a character to shoot twice, for example (other than by increasing speed). As far as high damage ending combat after a couple of turns, that is one thing I noticed with the game and was concerned about. There are some relatively cheap credit-wise ways to pack a gigantic punch, ending combat very quickly. That certainly makes combat much more about positioning and preparation, which I think should be very interesting to try out.

Mon, 2012-01-16 04:42

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

There is no gear, trait or Psi, that grant additional complex actions in an Action Phase. As for shooting twice; any weapon that has a Semi-Auto or Burst-Fire capability can be fired twice in a complex action. (IIRC there is a -10 mod for choosing a second target.) Intel is easy to judge. Who has Perception skill and Perception modifiers? (essentially this should be everyone because players are warned specifically to give their characters perception skills and Perception boosting gear is really cheep, it comes standard in most helmets.) What you really need to look for is anyone who [b]doesn't[/b] have the gear, and anyone who is actively using surveilance such as drones and mesh overwatch. Range is even easier to judge. Bigger guns have better range. In Kinetic weapons its a factor of 5 or 10. Add to that the fact of the concealability rules in the first two pages of the gear section and you'll end up with a party that usually only has small weapons like kinetic pistols and shard pistols at hand. (If they've even managed to get those in play without causing a major incident. Remember that it's cheep and easy in EP to give every airlock and street corner the equivalent of contemporary Airport security. So your players won't have guns anywhere that you think it's inappropriate for them to have guns without some serious planning and role play.)

Quote:
That certainly makes combat much more about positioning and preparation

another way to say that is; "Realistic" which can be unsatisfying for certain types of players. Combat is DEADLY in EP. It's all about maneuver warfare and the OODA loop. If you can grasp the game well enough to maneuver the opposition to thier potential your combats will last as long as your players can keep their characters alive. Remind your players of this by killing their characters untill they get the hint ;)

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2012-01-16 10:09

tsedeq

Re: GM Encounter Design Guidelines

OneTrikPony wrote:
Remind your players of this by killing their characters untill they get the hint ;)

Haha I like your style. Thanks again for the tips.