So, after running an EP campaign for about a year I've been playing in a D&D5E campaign for about four months. Very different, and helps shed light on some of the explicit design choices that went into EP. One of the things I love about EP is that there aren't really "cannon fodder" enemies that you know will only be a threat in large numbers. Much like real life™, anyone can be a threat under the right circumstances.
The downside to that is that it can be tricky to throw together diverse combat encounters without risking the "cakewalk or TPK" extremes. In D&D there's a straightforward "Challenge Rating" mechanic that gives GMs a ballpark estimate of how dangerous an NPC or threat is. Obviously the leveling system makes that easier, but I've been contemplating how something like that might work in EP.
Is there a simple(ish?) metric that could be used to weigh the threat level or difficulty of a combat opponent, or group of combat opponents? Is such a thing possible? Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, but I can see something like that really helping new GMs who are trying to feel things out.
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Eclipse Phase "Challenge Rating"
Sat, 2016-03-26 10:53
#1
eaton
Eclipse Phase "Challenge Rating"
- Wound threshold
- Armor
- Fray
- Speed
- Primary combat skill
- Average (and peak) damage per successful attack
- "Extra Skills" (Immobilizing Psi skills, etc)
Wound threshold, armor, and fray boil down to "how hard to take down" while speed, primary combat skill, and avg/peak damage output boil down to "how hard they hit the PCs." The PCs can be rated on the same scale, too. It's far from perfect because it doesn't account for tactics or other force-multiplier abilities, but it's helped me avoid sending them up against grossly *underpowered* enemies more than a few times.INT ( ((WT * (Fray / 100) + Kinetic Armor * 2) + ((Average Damage * (Weapon Skill / 100) + AP) * SPD) / 5 )It takes "Defense Rating" (Wound Threshold multiplied by Fray/100, plus armor times two), adds it to "Offense rating," (Average damage multiplied by chance-to-hit, plus weapon AP, times speed), and divides it by five. "Average Damage" is naively calculated on the assumption that d10s will roll a 5, and assumes that the character will use all of a weapon's capabilities for max damage — medium pistol on full auto rather than single shot, for example. It looks a little goofy, but I plugged it into a google spreadsheet and it's pretty easy to calculate from a simple NPC block or charsheet. I plugged in NPCs from NPC File Prime, and the spread is interesting: Research Scientist: 1 Vacworker: 2 Gang Member: 4 Criminal Enforcer: 5 Security Trooper: 9 Hoplite Infantry: 13 Bodyguard: 14 Assassin: 22 The PCs in our current campaign are 6 and 7, respectively, though they've recently had to resleeve into fairly underpowered bouncer morphs to lay low. As anticipated, speed and armor both have a big impact on the final score: If you take away the reflex boosters and neurachem juice, the Assassin drops down to just 12. Replace a security trooper's heavy armor with a standard vacsuit, and he's just a 6 — about the same as a criminal enforcer. For a first pass, it feels like a decent back-of-the-envelope calculation I'll use in the future for "combat threat". I'm curious to see how much it differs from what others have come up with…