Combat tips for a newcomer

[Gwyndolin]

With the release of the new BRP, I have decided to use it for most of the games I am want to run in the near future. However, when planning out combat encounters, I am curious how I should approach them. I come mainly from dnd 5e where its almost comical how hard it is for players to outright die. 

I have a decent amount of experience with Coc 6 and 7e but I want the player characters to be a bit more survivable than that.

Basically how do you plan combat encounters to be fun and tense?

[el_octogono]

If it's your first experience with combat in BRP I'd make your players face no more than one enemy each. Superior numbers in BRP is THE best combat advantage you can get. Start with enemy combat skills around 30% for rookie or common enemies and 50% for more experienced, trained, main ones, etc.

Long range weapons are quite an advantage too so use them sparingly or give PCs chance to get cover. Which leads me to my last tip...

Encourage your players to get tactical and USE the environment. It's one of the best and more engaging aspects of BRP combat IMO. Try using creative and alternate solutions. If an enemy is getting tough try other things: use ranged weapon, try a stealth attack, try to grapple, push or drop down.

Edited April 23, 2023 by el_octogono

[Ravenheart87]

I don't plan combat encounters. I design environments, which have places, people, and problems. Rarely comes "combat encounters" out of the blue. If they want to break in somewhere it is expected there will be guards, and it's up to them to do the scouting in advance, learn their numbers, devise tactics to deal with them. If man-eating giants live somewhere, there are romours or signs of it, and it's up to them how they want to deal with the monsters. If they anger someone powerful, they can expect ambushes - and the more powerful they seem, the harder these become over time. Another thing you should keep in mind, is that most living beings don't want to die: they will surrender or flee if things go south rather than get massacred. None of these are BRP-specific things though, just common sense - I build my D&D sandboxes like that too, though there some places do have implied level ranges (but very vague, with some surprise "eff you" monsters way out of the range to mess with careless players).

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, Gwyndolin said:

I have a decent amount of experience with Coc 6 and 7e but I want the player characters to be a bit more survivable than that.

In addition to El Octogono's and Ravenheart's suggestions above, you might want to explore the Heroic Hit-Points option, at least until the group becomes more familiar with how things run.

SDLeary

[Gwyndolin]

Thanks everyone.

This actually really helps. I will definetly have another read of the heroic hit-points option as that might be bestg for the kind of game I want to run. 

With regard to encouraging my players to use the environment, do you prefer to use physical battle maps or just theatre of the mind and explain whats the environment around them is like? I was introduced to ttrpgs in a very war gamey way so Its something I have trouble with sometimes. 

[Ravenheart87]

Miniatures and battle mats are tools. Like all tools, they should be used when they help, and left in the drawer when not needed. For a duel in a bar roomI wouldn't pop the battle mat open - everyone will know from a short description and using common sense, what's around them. For a battle with height differences, objects that can provide cover or can be interacted, of course I will take them out to make things easier to follow.

[DreadDomain]

11 hours ago, Gwyndolin said:

I have a decent amount of experience with Coc 6 and 7e but I want the player characters to be a bit more survivable than that.

To ease into it, you have a few options which you can combine together - but first, do not use the optional hit locations.

• As already mentioned, you can use heroic Hit Points (CON+SIZ instead of the average of CON and SIZ)
• When suffering a major wound, do not use the Major Wound table (or at least ignore permanent effects). Suffering a major wound, the character will only be able to fight for a number of rounds equal to their remaining hit points. That in itself is a good warning to the players that depending on the situation, they should think about disengaging and fleeing or surrendering.
• My favorite is to take a page of CoC 7E. When a character gets to 0 HP they are only dying if they suffered a major wound (in this combat or if they still have a previously unhealed major wound). If they do not have a major wound, they are only unconscious. The reason I like it is that it gives the GM a lot of control on lethality of the game and unless they roll in the open, they can simply secretly adjust rolls to inflict just under the major wound threshold if they desire.   

[svensson]

To the OP:

1. Friendly fire isn't friendly.

2. Grenades are addressed 'To Whom It May Concern'

3. Cover and Concealment are VERY different things. Yes, they're related but don't confuse them!

4. It's only 'cover' if it actually blocks the enemy fire. Hiding behind a tree when a tank gun is firing at you is not helpful.

5. No plan survives contact with Player Characters.

6. If it's stupid but it worked, it wasn't stupid.

7. Contact with enemy forces always happens at the corners of 4 maps, each of a different scale, in lousy lighting conditions, and with a radio that has a short somewhere in the headset cord.

[el_octogono]

8 hours ago, Gwyndolin said:

With regard to encouraging my players to use the environment, do you prefer to use physical battle maps or just theatre of the mind and explain whats the environment around them is like? I was introduced to ttrpgs in a very war gamey way so Its something I have trouble with sometimes. 

I usually play theatre of the mind. I find I can get immersed more easily and think as if I am in place of my character and make more interesting choices. I find it harder to get into the scene using battlemaps, but maybe that's just me. What I do use is some fast schematics to give some idea of positioning and size of things when it's not so clear.

[Nakana]

tldr: BRP doesn’t do “encounters” design like other systems. I think that’s a good thing. This sometimes inadvertently leads to overpowered situations and I might fudge the dice.

----------------

One of the things I love about BRP is that it doesn’t have strict mathematical formulas to follow in order to create “encounters”. 

Because of this, I design environments that make sense. If it’s feasible that x number of baddies are in a given locale, then that’s what I put together. A group of 4 adventurers kicking down the door to kill 12 bad guys is probably a bad idea (not always the case in other systems). My players have learned to weigh the pros and cons carefully. 

Sometimes I let the dice fall where they may and the players suffer the consequences of their actions. 

But (this is where I give you questionably bad advice) my preference as a GM is: epic story will almost always win over rules. 

If my players are losing the battle, and I have a very strong story reason to NOT have them die, I will give them a slight edge. Maybe I rule that the opponent missed when the dice actually hit, or maybe they don’t deal as much damage as I rolled, or maybe I drop the opponents HP down.

My players have no idea that I do this (it’s not often anyway). I don’t just give my players an easy win, I make them sweat it out and barely survive. But if there is a narrative reason why I need them to survive I steer the action that way. Sometimes a character dies anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Again other GMs may disagree with this approach so consider this potentially “bad advice”. But for me, story trumps game. 

Edit: to actually answer your question, with experience you'll get better at the feel and flow of BRP combat and better judge how to build out your environment/encounter/etc. 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Nakana

[Ravenheart87]

I'm not a fan of fudging, it enforces bad habits and some players find it downright insulting if they find it out. It's okay to let them fail if they overestimate their power, don't flee from lost battles, and don't try to surrender/fake death/parley to save their hides. I do assume for sentient opponents for example, that they would try subdue them if possible, because prisoners can be a good source for information and ransom.

I'm kind of naturalistic in my GM-ing style though, which might not be every group's cup of tea, but even if you are keen on saving your players' hides there is usually a better and more sensible way to do so that doesn't require fudging. I already mentioned taking hostages as an example above, but you don't have to wait till the battle is over - enemies don't like wasting resources either, they can easily intimidate the losing side into throwing down their weapons. Or an NPC can show up who owes them a favour (or wants something from them) to resolve the conflict, which might be cheap, but works in context and can has its own interesting consequences.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Ravenheart87

[devinlc]

10 hours ago, Ravenheart87 said:

I'm not a fan of fudging, it enforces bad habits and some players find it downright insulting if they find it out. It's okay to let them fail if they overestimate their power, don't flee from lost battles, and don't try to surrender/fake death/parley to save their hides. I do assume for sentient opponents for example, that they would try subdue them if possible, because prisoners can be a good source for information and ransom.

This. Very much, this!

[Atgxtg]

On 4/23/2023 at 9:31 AM, Gwyndolin said:

With the release of the new BRP, I have decided to use it for most of the games I am want to run in the near future. However, when planning out combat encounters, I am curious how I should approach them. I come mainly from dnd 5e where its almost comical how hard it is for players to outright die. 

BRP is pretty much the opposite. Practically anybody can roll a lucky critical and main or even kill just about anybody else. 

A key factor too is that "dead" is usually forever and if it is a PC said player will need to write up a new character to continue.

Ambushes are to be avoided. In D&D they are used to ramp up the tension but in a game like BRP, a good ambush can take out half the PCs before the players can do anything about it, and that can often turn the encounter into a TPK. Basically the thing to take away from this is that real tactics work, and so something that would play a major factor in a real fight (ambush, fortification, heavy weapons) will likewise play a major factor in BRP.

While skill and experience do provide an edge, they do not provide the commanding edge they do in D&D. For instance a 10th level fighter in D20 really has little to fear from a 1st level NPC behind a heavy machingun. Even if the 10th character gets hit he can probably shrug it off in D20. In BRP, a heavy machingun will probably incapacitate or kill even an experienced PC on a hit. 

You can also try playtesting a fight. Get copies of the PC's character sheets and run though a fight or two to see how it goes. IN BRP the PCs winning a fight unscathed is okay. PCs don't have to lose half their hit points for it to be a good fight (I know some D&D players who use that last bit a criteria in D&D and they got mauled a lot in RQ and Pendragon because of it).

On 4/23/2023 at 9:31 AM, Gwyndolin said:

I have a decent amount of experience with Coc 6 and 7e but I want the player characters to be a bit more survivable than that.

There are some options for increased survivalbility, namely: give the PCs a signficant edge in skill, gear and magic. 

On 4/23/2023 at 9:31 AM, Gwyndolin said:

Basically how do you plan combat encounters to be fun and tense?

By making it appear tense. The key thing is that the stats on the NPC sheet are not what make a NPC seem tough, powerful and scary, it is how the GM presents and plays the NPC that makes the NPC seem tough, powerful and scary. So if you want a villain to seem like a big baddie the roleplay them the same way you would if their stats were higher.

Ultimately the players don't see the NPCs' character sheets and don't know that said NPC has a 20 STR and Sword at 350%. The players only find that out when the GM shows the NPC doing things, and in the case of such a NPC , hopefully long before the PCs fight said NPC. 

For example, in Star Wars, we (the audience) are shown that Darth Vader is a major badass long before Vader shows up in his TIE fighter to shoot at Luke's X-Wing. We see him pick up a man, choke another through the Force,interrogate/torture Princess Leia and even face off against Obi-wan Kenobi in a lightsaber duel. So we know how much trouble LUke is in during the trench run. The key to making encounters exciting to to make it seem like the PCs are in a tough spot, even when things aren't quite as bad as they appear.

Basically most of what the players see is what the GM presewnts to them so a good GM can greatly influcne how the player see a situation or NPC.

You don't want to overdo-it though, or else the players will just assume that you are hyping up everything, but in general try to make the NPCs look threatening. If you set up the encounters well, you can make a pushover enemy seem like a real threat. I've run some adventures where some time afterwards a player would see the actual NPC stats are being surprised at how low skilled, somethings even incompetent, the NPCs were. 

 

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Atgxtg