Advice to GMs on how to efficiently organize battles

[EpicureanDM]

33 minutes ago, ffilz said:

OK, how do I do it... Note that I run 1st edition RQ, but I couldn't imagine doing things any differently with any other edition...

Sometimes I will use resources like FOES or Trolls & Trollkin to provide quick sheets for the opposition. Note that I prefer the earlier form of each NPC is an individual as opposed to the later form (Borderlands for example) where all the opposition of the same type is identical.

Sometimes I'll note damage and stuff right in the module (blasphemy...)

Sometimes I'll take notes on scrap paper.

I track POW used and spells cast individually.

If I'm running RQ, I'm running it because I like this level of detail. If I want to track less detail about opposition, I'll run something different.

As someone else said earlier, the question is not about "how do you organize battles", this is a more specific question about how to run powerful opponents with a great deal of resources, and doing so according to the rules.

[Jon Hunter]

Something that has not been mentioned in the discussion so far about balancing combats.

The behavior of your adversaries, this makes a lot of difference

Some people like to play NPC's as maxed out, on the nose, top end performers, fully rested, mentally focused, with good intel, emotionally balanced and highly logical.

Any student of military history knows this is BS, combatants make monumental blunders ( no its not just the PC's ), and NPCs can and in my view should  be played as s such.

Attrition, hubris, bad intel and emotional responses on the part of NPC's can all make difficult encounters very easy for the players.

Inversely 3 well warned trollkin warriors on a choke point with missile and some magical support can become a deadly encounter.

NPC intel, tactics, motivation, time to prepare, emotional state, the fog of war and current  attrition should be bigger factors in NPC threat level than there stats.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Jon Hunter

[ffilz]

43 minutes ago, EpicureanDM said:

As someone else said earlier, the question is not about "how do you organize battles", this is a more specific question about how to run powerful opponents with a great deal of resources, and doing so according to the rules.

Well, the OP in this thread said:

Quote

I would like to exchange notes here about GM prep for violent encounters with multiple throw-away NPCs.

Nothing about power levels... Though I get that was a question in the other thread.

But to run higher powered NPCs with lots of options, I start from the tracking I do, and then I just layer on picking from the larger set of options. Now with RQ1/2 the rune magic is sort of easier to manage because once the NPC has used his Shield spell, unless he had several, he doesn't have that anymore. The big Thanatar battle I ran, the floating skull Thanatar Priest couldn't summon another Shade because the PCs had destroyed the one he first summoned back in the Rubble, and he hadn't had time to gain POW to sacrifice for a new one. I don't know how RQG would handle that, but it sounds like the rune pool would just let him summon a new shade.

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

What I don't see is fights being anywhere close to "decided" after a couple of rounds.  I'm not saying you all are lying or anything!  Not at all.  Just that something you do is very very different than what we do.

 

The basic math of RQ combat in a 1 on 1 fight ends is that it continues until one  combatant rolls a sufficiently greater degree of success than the other. Hit versus failed parry, special versus success is one, special versus failed parry is 2, and so on. If the losing side doesn't have enough armour to absorb the blow with only a superficial wound, they are out of the fight, at least temporarily. 

Loss by attrition of general hp is on top of this, but should relatively rarely be a factor before the fight is over for other reasons.

Depending on the armour and weapons involved, for normal combatants the required difference in number of successes will be 1 or 2. Really tough monsters (dream dragon)  only die to an unanswered critical, and mythic ones (crimson bat) not even then.

The exact number vary, but for evenly matched opponents it is going to be of the order of 20% for 1 degree, and 5% for 2. In a free-wheeling skirmish, that is per participant per round, so the chances of an even 6-a-side fight between armoured opponents staying that way are something like .95^^12, or 54%. And the chance of that happening for 5 rounds in a row is .54^^5, or 4%.

Once the fight is not even, then the dynamics change drastically. First,  one side will have 1 person who has to parry twice at a significant penalty. RQ:G is more generous here than rq2, but that still greatly increases the chance of them going down. Secondly, and probably more importantly, the winning side has the ability to heal a casualty without anyone being able to finish them off, or force them to yield. So to reverse an advantage of 1, you need to take 2 people out of the fight in a single round, without suffering casualties. And correspondingly more for the bigger deficit you will probably be in next round.

Violence is an option, not an obligation. Sometimes the other way is surrender, or retreat.

in the extreme case, this math means any fight against a single monster less than the crimson bat is very likely to end with the defeat of the monster. Even if the monsters takes out 1 player per round, then 4 people get 10 chances to roll a critical, 5 get 15, and so on. More with missile fire, which allows 2 attacks per round. Unless the monster has the ability to no-sell a critical, or engage all opponents, it is  probably going to die to an arrow in the eye. Once it is dead, all surviving pcs heal up. The open question is whether anyone died, and if they have the magical resources to do that again if they continue on.

If things don't work that way for you, then i'd be interested to hear where the assumptions break down. Is it that your players are running lots of defensive magic, and no offensive magic, so that an unparried special doesn't take someone out of the fight? Are you being generous about letting people heal themselves from incapacitation while engaged with an opponent? Is it specifically allied spirits that break things? Or something else?

 

 

 

[Bren]

2 hours ago, EpicureanDM said:

This is exactly right. There's no value in drawing owls for new RQ GMs.

🤣 This and Jeff's Battle Size and Intensity table made this a nice surprise.

[General Confusion]

My biggest suggestion for running a fight with a 'complex' enemy like a Rune Lord is to pre-program it.

 

What I mean by that is, during your preparation before the session, sit down with your statblocks for the enemy Rune Lord and their allied spirit and their mooks, and sketch out their basic battle plan - the Rune Lord will cast this important spell round 1, the allied spirit will cast this other spell, the mooks will form a shield wall to guard their boss's flank, the NPC shaman will summon a spirit, etc. Give them maybe two or three rounds of this, and then actually roll it out yourself and note down who succeeds and fails at what. Those successes and failures, of course might shift what the 'plan' is; if your Death Lord is trying to cast Crush on his maul and fails his 90% Rune roll, maybe he tries again - or maybe he gives up in frustration and just charges in headlong, which forces his backup fighters to scramble to cover him.

This does two things; first it makes running the fight faster, because for the first couple rounds you don't need to roll many dice, and second it allows for tactical blunders or triumphs to occur in a natural-feeling way, because how the battle goes will pivot unpredictably on how the PCs interact with the predefined 'battle plan'. 

 

After two or three rounds things will be well off the rails, but by that time probably the numbers have dropped some and the rest of the fight will be simpler to manage. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by General Confusion

[Squaredeal Sten]

5 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

....

What I don't see is fights being anywhere close to "decided" after a couple of rounds.  I'm not saying you all are lying or anything!  Not at all.  Just that something you do is very very different than what we do....

Our PCs are now pretty high level, so Shield 3 / Prot 4 is common, and Shield 5 / Prot 6 is not unheard of. ....

Thoughts?  I'm really interested in what about your combats make them more decisive sooner, because ours take a long time.  Even a "minor" one.

When both sides have good armor  and a lot of magical protection up, then yes I saw a lot of indecisive rounds while we waited for that critical  roll.

For a while the Humakti with god enhanced sword and Bladesharp had modified sword skill of 150+, so the opponent's parry is degraded 50% and the player  rolled for a mere 95 or less.  That tended to put a hole in the enemy line.  Then the Humakti player left, a sad loss.

Then my players got crafty; they started doing one huge attack Rune spell like Lightning 3 or 4  or Sleep, boosted by 4 to 10 MPs to smash through the Countermagic or Shield.  This is easier to do when a couple of Adventurers have storage crystals and high POW.  So now with a good POW vs. POW roll. the target has his abdomen cratered by lightning.  It speeds up the fight.

Also of course the Lightbringer adventurers developed Rune Lord scale weapon skills and magic themselves, so while not having Humakt gift their Swords, they are pretty dangerous.

That was the evolution in my campaign.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling

[Dr. Devici]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

The first one is the "handling time" of the combat rules and the extent to which it increases nonlinearly. That is, if you have a group of five PCs against the same number of dark trolls (ten combatants), and you have a group of five PCs against a Death Lord, four skeletons, an allied spirit, and two NPC allies of the Death Lord providing magical aid, (thirteen combatants), does it take 1.3x as long to run each given round, or does it take longer? 

Agreed, and would add that beyond just the superlinear scaling of time to resolve is the tedium added past a certain point, where the GM is now stuck repeating the same actions several times. The repetition involved in a 3-on-1 fight against a PC makes it feel less intense than a 1-on-1 duel.

2 hours ago, Eff said:

This leads into the second aspect, which is- how should GMs play someone like a Rune Lord in battle? Let's step away from ZZ for a second here and focus on, say, a Wind Lord, because I've spent more time thinking about what an Orlanth cultist can do. So by default a Rune Lord will have 90% in a relevant Rune, which is to say, they can cast their Rune magic at a 90% chance absent anything else. They will have 18 CHA and so will have access to up to 18 points of spirit magic. They will likely have high POW to cast said spirit magic with, and thus a plentiful reserve of MP. They have a 90% or better Passion related to their cult or deity. They also have a heightened chance to use Divine Intervention. Finally, they have 90% at a minimum in a relevant weapons skill, quite likely multiple of them. 

I am curious, what do you identify as the pain points in this list? Because my experience has been that Rune Lords are more or less fine to run, but a relative pain to stat up during prep.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

36 minutes ago, General Confusion said:

My biggest suggestion for running a fight with a 'complex' enemy like a Rune Lord is to pre-program it.

I think this applies to any fight - have a battle plan for the NPCs.

But, also be willing to roll a Battle or INT for them to see if they follow through, or get distracted, confused, react to the wrong threats, etc.  As @Jon Hunter posted, NPCs can and should make tactical mistakes.

I often have  couple of battle plans in mind for the NPCs, a well thought out Plan A, a decent alternative Plan B, and a sub optimal but not completely stupid Plan Z.  Makes the battle more "realistic".  And also easier for the GM.  A bad plan is easier to run than making everything up on the fly.

[Bill the barbarian]

It has been said elsewhere that Trollpak's excellent adventure Munchrooms gives tactics for multiple opponent combat, as does Grubfarm and the Caravans from the same pak... alas, it is not RQG nor human. I believe most tactics used will be able to be good in RQG and this should not be a detriment to it's continued use.

One secret to Munchrooms, prep, prep, and prep. It is big. Oh and if you have RQ2 change the timeline

Spoiler

to a few weeks if not  seasons

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Bill the barbarian

[Dr. Devici]

2 hours ago, EpicureanDM said:

That matches my experiences with RQG, but I suspect they've been less extensive than yours. Even at the relatively "low levels" we played at, the power of Heal spirit magic and, especially, Heal Wound as a common Rune spell made combats last often closer to 4-6 rounds.

I would guess most of the discrepancy is how quick enemies are to rout in different people's games. When I was running lower level encounters, enemies only had a few rune points at maximum, and most weren't going to rejoin the fight after using Heal Wound unless the tables dramatically turned in their favor. Heal wound to them was for making sure their legs were in working order to run away.

[Squaredeal Sten]

1 hour ago, Dr. Devici said:

.........

I am curious, what do you identify as the pain points in this list? Because my experience has been that Rune Lords are more or less fine to run, but a relative pain to stat up during prep.

If you DI them out, you can recycle the rune lords in a second encounter in another season.  Same with rune priests though with lower POW likely.  So their flight is not only rational but helps you GM. And the campaign gets a recurring opponent who should anticipate the Adveturers' methods next time.

[EpicureanDM]

6 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

For a while the Humakti with god enhanced sword and Bladesharp had modified sword skill of 150+, so the opponent's parry is degraded 50% and the player  rolled for a mere 95 or less.  That tended to put a hole in the enemy line.  Then the Humakti player left, a sad loss.

Then my players got crafty; they started doing one huge attack Rune spell like Lightning 3 or 4  or Sleep, boosted by 4 to 10 MPs to smash through the Countermagic or Shield.  This is easier to do when a couple of Adventurers have storage crystals and high POW.  So now with a good POW vs. POW roll. the target has his abdomen cratered by lightning.  It speeds up the fight.

For anyone that's still uncertain, notice how this sounds like someone who's actually used the rules of the game. Contrast that with this from Jeff:

Quote

[S]ome players might be casting spells or using missile weapons, others might be trying to double-team an enemy while defending against another.

Or this, from a different thread that spawned this one:

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Your new adventurer may be battling grunt Trollkin, but a Rune Lord will be taking on a Dark Troll warrior who’s a Death Lord of Zorak Zoran, with the full panoply of Rune spells, enchanted lead armour, zombie and skeleton hordes, etc., and a clan or warband backing them up (with specialists, healers, trained battle-insects, allies, and the like).

These latter two responses sound like someone who didn't study for a test, so they give vague answers in the hope of earning partial credit.

I can make this more concrete.

There's a scenario in The Smoking Ruin book called, "The Grove of Green Rock." In it, there's a climactic battle involving a Gorakiki Rune Lord and his retinue. The "suggested number of foes" for this skirmish is:

• The Gorakiki Rune Lord plus his giant longhorn beetle (which also houses the Rune Lord's allied spirit)
• Two additional giant longhorn beetles
• Three dark troll initiates of Kyger Litor
• One trollkin veteran leader
• Three trollkin followers

Their stats are all in the book. This skirmish is intended to take place at night.

Here are some questions to chew on:

• What stats, spells, skills, equipment, etc. do you think a group of PCs would need to have for this to be a fair fight? Bonus question: is it fair to suggest that most parties of PCs would have that exact makeup? What if there's an Issaries or Ernalda initiate in the group? An Eurmali? Do the combat-focused PCs need to be stronger to compensate?
• What spells and tactics do you think your sample PCs would use to defeat these opponents? Be specific! Look at how Squaredeal Stan described things.
• What spells and tactics do you think the Rune Lord and his warband would use? Again, specifics count. 

Imagine you're the GM and you've actually got to make decisions and announce them to your players at the table. I don't think anyone needs to do a round-by-round breakdown of every participant's actions. But imagine what you'd be saying to the players as you announce the warparty's actions. You'd be speaking in terms of skills and spells, using numbers and figures that mean something in the rules.

I'll do this myself. I'd be very grateful if @Jeff , the first credited designer of RQG, gave it a try.

Edited February 23, 2023 by EpicureanDM

[Akhôrahil]

15 minutes ago, EpicureanDM said:

• What spells and tactics do you think your sample PCs would use to defeat these opponents? Be specific! Look at how Squaredeal Stan described things.

If it were my PCs, and it was outdoors, and they were visible, everyone would be hit by dual Thunderbolts on SR1 and virtually all taken out instantly...

(I nerfed Thunderbolt to be POW vs POW, but it's still absolutely, utterly vicious, with virtually no defence except pre-emptive Cloud Clear, which Trolls are kinda unlikely to use.)

So I would try to work with stealth and ambushes - a sensible tactic regardless - to make it something of a challenge.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[EpicureanDM]

34 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

If it were my PCs, and it was outdoors, and they were visible, everyone would be hit by dual Thunderbolts on SR1 and virtually all taken out instantly...

(I nerfed Thunderbolt to be POW vs POW, but it's still absolutely, utterly vicious, with virtually no defence except pre-emptive Cloud Clear, which Trolls are kinda unlikely to use.)

So I would try to work with stealth and ambushes - a sensible tactic regardless - to make it something of a challenge.

Quote

What stats, spells, skills, equipment, etc. do you think a group of PCs would need to have for this to be a fair fight?

 

[ffilz]

Hmm, is part of the problem here the increased power level of starting RQG characters such that they need more advanced opponents?

When I started playing RQ1, I cut my teeth on trolls and trollkin with a few battle magic spells each. By the time I was dealing with more advanced NPCs, I had the combat system down well, and got to see what PCs did with their growing array of battle magic spells. Playing at that level, rune spells rarely saw action. And as I have mentioned before, balancing encounters was never much of an issue. Sure, some encounters were probably over powered versus the PCs, but TPKs never happened, so the PCs found a way to win, or disengage before losing too many PCs.

[Barak Shathur]

11 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

15 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

When both sides have good armor  and a lot of magical protection up, then yes I saw a lot of indecisive rounds while we waited for that critical  roll.

This is where a good fatigue system comes in handy. IMO one of the better solutions to BRP ping pong. Either a linear one as in RQIII, which however is a little cumbersome, or an interval based one as in RQIV (roll CON ever 6 rounds, reduced by ENC, or suffer a penalty).

[radmonger]

8 hours ago, EpicureanDM said:

I'll do this myself. I'd be very grateful if @Jeff , the first credited designer of RQG, gave it a try.

In the interest of jeff working on getting the next books out, i'll try answering. As such,  the caveat applies that i play with house rules that, for combat, are probably closer to rq2 than rq;g. And i haven't actually ran the scenario in question.

There are three key pieces of advice given in the scenario that are always relevant.:

• incapacitated foes surrender or run away; the trollkin in particular have very weak morale
• a successful battle roll gives a player who makes it an accurate assessment of the situation.
• either the number of enemies should be matched to the party, or the players allies should come to their aid. Personally I prefer the latter, because eventually the players will notice if they always face one less dark troll when Bob can't make it. And getting more allies is an action the players can take, whereas facing less enemies isn't.

it also has a consequences of failure section, meaning the battle is there to be fought, not necessarily to be won. The story continues either way.

Using the default setup, there are 11 combatants, ranging from weak to strong. Some people (not me) do play with 8, but IME a party for a combat-heavy campaign like this requires 2 to 4 combat specialists and 0 to 3 support characters.  For the sake of the example, we will assume 2 and 2.

In a system like 13 Ages, such a battle would be balanced by some of the PCs being high enough level that they can be expected to take on two or more foes and win. This is a difficult calculation, and the fact that it can be done at all is one of the arguments in favour of such systems over D&D.

In Call of Cthulhu, fighting such a fight could be a scenario failure condition you should have avoided. Or it could be an exercise in trying to survive running away, or applying the thing you found out about during earlier investigation .

RQ can be run like Call of Cthulhu , but it it's a poor fit for the 13 Age style. if you find yourself wishing the rq2 treasure factor system was more accurate, you are probably slipping into the 13 age style. if you do prefer that, you might well be better served by that ruleset.

But there is a RQ style that is its own thing, This is based on the assumption that most of the enemy are too strong to fight at any odds worse than 1 on 1. So, as a battle roll will reveal, to have a fighting chance, there needs to either 11 combatants on the players side, or a corresponding number need to be 'taken out' before engagement, by  tactics or strong magic.

The trolls are using good tactics, attacking from stealth at night. just fighting on a level playing field will requires light rune magic. So winning just by tactics is unlikely. The players do get given a one-use magic item that will take out one combatant. And elementals can engage some more, and maybe lightning takes out another but all that is unlikely to be enough. So if they just all attacked together, they would almost certainly win. But that would be neither realistic nor fun.

in the fight, there are, in jeff's terminology, two encounters. These may happen multiple times each, if not decisive.

In the first, the 8 enemies than can use missiles attack. 1d2 engaging each PC. the others are counted as out of position. The trolls have the numbers here, but this is unlikely to prove a decisive advantage as missile fire can be freely healed from. If light magic is available, facing a skilled archer, or one using ranged Rune magic, they will likely take losses. Meanwhile, the PCs, realising they are outnumbered, should call for help.

in the second encounter, the non-trollkin advance to melee. There, the 4 pcs face 3-4 enemies, depending on how well the previous encounter went, and maybe a battle roll by the troll rune lord. The others are counted tied up fighting  war trees and the other mercenaries. In the grand scale of things, this is still a small, pc-focused fight, so if the players win, their side does, and vice versa. Though you could have some NPC mercenary rescue them from a defeat, if you think that would sit better with your players.

Combat starts with the PCs picking their foes; any who don't get selected then get to choose a PC to engage. it proceeds until one side gets a 2-man advantage. For those without allied spirits, healing is not available unless that side has an unengaged combatant with the right magic.  It also ends early if the troll rune lord is taken out, but that is unlikely as he does have an allied spirit.

hope that helps.

 

 

[Eff]

13 hours ago, Dr. Devici said:

Agreed, and would add that beyond just the superlinear scaling of time to resolve is the tedium added past a certain point, where the GM is now stuck repeating the same actions several times. The repetition involved in a 3-on-1 fight against a PC makes it feel less intense than a 1-on-1 duel.

I am curious, what do you identify as the pain points in this list? Because my experience has been that Rune Lords are more or less fine to run, but a relative pain to stat up during prep.

Pain points for running, as opposed to prepping: 

-allied spirits and bound spirits and remembering what they can do

-DI and the breadth of magic options

But most of the pain points are in prep. 

[Squaredeal Sten]

16 hours ago, EpicureanDM said:

.... "The Grove of Green Rock." In it, there's a climactic battle involving a Gorakiki Rune Lord and his retinue. ....

• What spells and tactics do you think the Rune Lord and his warband would use? Again, specifics count. 

Imagine you're the GM and you've actually got to make decisions and announce them to your players at the table. I don't think anyone needs to do a round-by-round breakdown of every participant's actions. But imagine what you'd be saying to the players as you announce the warparty's actions. You'd be speaking in terms of skills and spells, using numbers and figures that mean something in the rules.

I...@Jeff 

The printed scenario actually has a pretty detailed tactical plan fior the troll attack, which actually seems to me not to be optimal, thus cutting the Adventurers some slack.  (The Adventurers have a big section of perimeter to defend and a better plan would be to use the trollkin slingers to feint at one end, then if the Adenturers react toward them to break through at the other end.)

Anyway, the only things I would add are:

1) Keep your eye on the ball, which is to get the egg laying beetles onto the target tree.  It's not a skirmish, not a slugfest, it's a breaktrough.  Use the initiate trolls to hold the Adventurers while the Rune Lord gets his beetles to the target.

2) The dark  trolls all have Blinding and should use it with extra boosting MPs to neutralize Adventurers before the trolls charge, while the slinging is going on.

3) Remember that trolls have Darksense, so I don't know why the scenario says they waste RP on Darksee.

4) When the trolls do charge they should cast Darkwalls to isolate the intended breakthrough area, reducing Adventurer response.  All the dark trolls have Darkwall.   Ideally that isolates 1 or 2 Adventurers and the others don't know where the breakthrough zone is for a few melee rounds.

5) The Gorakiki Rune Lord is already specified to have cast his cult Rune spells, which give him extra limbs and head bite = added attacks.  All the GM needs to do is execute:

Cast Mobility and Shimmer just before the charge, by the RL and his allied spirit.  Remember to use MPs from his spirits.. 

Cast Bludgeon 4, then melee: Use thise extra insect limbs, they are free attacks!  Each added attack reduces the target Adventurer's  next parry by 20%.  

6) Use the two bound spirits early  to cast Iron hand on the unarmed extra arm (and figure his STR bonus as you prep the session). Extinguish on Adventurers' torches.   To cast Demoralize before the charge and during melee. Heal, and to cast Mobility on friends and Slow on Adventurers.   More Blinding attempts. 

 The Allied Spirit to cast Dispel Magic to undo whatever the Adventurers cast, plus cast the Rune Lord's spells.

The Rune lord has 71 magic points available to buff himself before and in melee and to undo the Adventurers.  Use them lavishly.

6) Finally, GM realize that the first seasonal troll attack is expected to fail.  Use the War Trees to ensure that happens.  Page 173.

How is that for a detailed plan?

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling

[Akhôrahil]

7 hours ago, ffilz said:

Hmm, is part of the problem here the increased power level of starting RQG characters such that they need more advanced opponents?

When I started playing RQ1, I cut my teeth on trolls and trollkin with a few battle magic spells each. By the time I was dealing with more advanced NPCs, I had the combat system down well, and got to see what PCs did with their growing array of battle magic spells. Playing at that level, rune spells rarely saw action. And as I have mentioned before, balancing encounters was never much of an issue. Sure, some encounters were probably over powered versus the PCs, but TPKs never happened, so the PCs found a way to win, or disengage before losing too many PCs.

To a point, yes. You can still use Trollkin, but they either need to be in some serious numbers (three naked Trollkin with slings is a non-trivial fight, though), or part of a mixed force with some quality support.

Rune magic allows PC to be incredible in the harder fights. Some amount of easier fights will be mostly Spirit Magic, but they have several higher gears to get into when necessary.

I find it helpful to keep the players guessing a bit when it comes to Rune points expenditure - if you always run one scenario per season and they can always tell when the climactic fight is, then they might as well spend all their Rune Magic. If they can't tell for certain whether they will get in other scenarios or fights, they will have to be a little more conservative (and plus, it feels realistic that they'd have to be).

[Eff]

11 hours ago, ffilz said:

Hmm, is part of the problem here the increased power level of starting RQG characters such that they need more advanced opponents?

When I started playing RQ1, I cut my teeth on trolls and trollkin with a few battle magic spells each. By the time I was dealing with more advanced NPCs, I had the combat system down well, and got to see what PCs did with their growing array of battle magic spells. Playing at that level, rune spells rarely saw action. And as I have mentioned before, balancing encounters was never much of an issue. Sure, some encounters were probably over powered versus the PCs, but TPKs never happened, so the PCs found a way to win, or disengage before losing too many PCs.

This is definitely a factor. I think it was Ron Edwards who pointed out most recently for me that in the RQ1-3 method where starting characters had low skill %s, combat really does work like the example with Rurik getting into a barfight and both combatants mostly whiffing- and not affecting each other in the process. And then when you get up into the more experienced characters with much higher skill %s, what's more likely to happen is that both combatants are more likely to parry each other, which means that weapon damage becomes far more of a factor and round-to-round combat becomes even riskier- but you're eased into it. 

And obviously, in RQG, it is quite doable to have starting player characters with 90% in skills, and 70% or more in weapon skills, parrying is folded into the base skill, etc. so you're already in the mode where the most likely outcomes are mutual parries and weapon damage is a factor, etc. (My vivid experience of RQ combat was a one-on-one duel in the Munchrooms scenario, with a marginally improved character from baseline fighting a Karrg's Son, and it was nail-biting even playing pure defense and with a Passion going.)

[Bill the barbarian]

4 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

This is where a good fatigue system comes in handy. IMO one of the better solutions to BRP ping pong. Either a linear one as in RQIII, which however is a little cumbersome, or an interval based one as in RQIV (roll CON ever 6 rounds, reduced by ENC, or suffer a penalty).

This is why I use the Encumberance system.

[Bill the barbarian]

14 minutes ago, Eff said:

And obviously, in RQG, it is quite doable to have starting player characters with 90% in skills, and 70% or more in weapon skills, parrying is folded into the base skill, etc. so you're already in the mode where the most likely outcomes are mutual parries and weapon damage is a factor, etc. (My vivid experience of RQ combat was a one-on-one duel in the Munchrooms scenario, with a marginally improved character from baseline fighting a Karrg's Son, and it was nail-biting even playing pure defense and with a Passion going.)

Thanks, I did my best!

[Andrew M]

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 

What, then, would people do to make this specific kind of combat, of PCs versus a Rune Lord in full kit, with some support casting and some goons, run smoothly without glossing over the things the Rune Lord can do? Even a spell like Leap, hardly the first to come in mind, offers the option for an expeditious retreat or a circumvention of PC defensive positioning. 

My caveat here is that most of the fights I ran with runelords were back in RQ3 but the approach is similar

There are two ways I would approach it

1) I expect this NPC to survive and be a recurring character.   For this I would fill in a character sheet for them, this would be done in an arbitary way. So 90+% skills for his cult skills, and other skills I think he should be good at AND may actually be rolled. Decide if he has any iron armour or weapons otherwise gear is standard. Give him and his allied spirit a full load out of spirit magic picking spells I think are useful , Bladesharp,protection Dispel magic(for the allied spirit) demoralise etc. Assign rune magic points for a Rune Lord I would generally give at least 10 but this is somewhat dependant on what the pc's have.  I would assume at least some stored magic points in crytals etc , again scaling based on the pc's as they are the baseline for what your campaign world is like.   That gives me a sheet I can use any time he turns up, for specific encounters I will decide if he has a warband or similar with him based on the social situation.

Running the fight is always complicated for a powerful opponent and you as the GM do not have the brain power to fight an NPC as well as the players will handle their characters , there are more of them. Then you just try for your best , while making the game fun.  I do 'cheat' allowing the npc to act to some degree on things I know about the characters to represent their experience and knowledge and make up for my distraction

2) One off encounter.  No character sheet its too much trouble. Pick the skill level for combat skills , and write down the SR and damages for reference. Write down the cult skills and spells (or have them for reference) he will be good with those skills and have those spells.  Then decide on which spells he has on the fly as he needs them, writing them down for reference. So most rune lords will have Fireblade or Bladesharp and use it, if they thinkthe pc's are serious opponents then use rune magic Shield and something like Mindblast or lightning on dangerous pc's, if possible have the allied spirit use disruption or similar to identify who has countermagic before risking wasting a powerful rune spell.  

 

In a convention game recently I had 6 powerful pc's vs a squad of hoplites, Brangbane the Ghoul king and a Lunar illuminated rune lord and priest. I had written stats for Brangbane , the Hoplites were in Plate armour with 75% weapon skills and had cast Bladesharp 3 , Shield 2 . The Lunar priestess had Shield 6 and Iron armour , had Truesword and Bladesharp 6.  The hoplites were formed up between the heroes and the important people. I planned for a slugging fest while the pc's cut through the hoplites while the priestess and Ghoul king cast spells , then engaged the pc's at the right moment or instead retreated into the cave do the nefearious plot could be completed bringing the game to its expected climax. This was a solid plan.

On turn 1 my players burnt all their rune magic and the orlanthi teleported a boosted Humati and Babbester gor write on top of the priestess and Ghoul, technically the pc's should then have killed the lunar that turn. By desperate improvisation (Divine Intervention) and deciding the lunar priestess was also secretly a thanatari with the severed head of a wind lord in her bag so she could teleport I managed to get her into the cave before the pc's killed her. I could not save the poor Ghoul King from the pc's. You jsut cannot be fully prepared for what your pc's will do