This is in repsonse to this thread, which I did not want to derail further:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1680



Speaking as the person who wrote the stats for last year's BI, I can say that, unless your judge was going off-script, there was never a scene with 30 minion crossbowmen. The crossbowmen had between a +4 and +7 (depending on Tier) to hit and did an average of 19 damage utilizing Careful Aim. It was suggested to judges to use average damage to help speed things along and to prevent "hot dice" scenarios that could trigger Massive Damage. In my estimation, 19 damage would not trigger the Massive Damage rule in most Heroes. 30 Crossbowmen would have dealt 95 damage to each Hero in an opening volley...that would have been a TPK.

There have been several comments/complaints about the crossbows. Most of which seem to me for people to be advocating that things just be easier. If the BI was overpowering, you would know by a massive Hero body count. Last year, we had a jaw-dropping total of....1. (and that Hero could have spent a Fate to avoid it). By the way, I have also heard complaints that there are not enough Hero deaths...for example, some players thought punches were pulled in the Uhxbractit fight because NO ONE died.

I think the problem lies in the understanding/expectation of what BIs are. To make it clear:
BATTLE INTERACTIVES = WAR!!!!
In war, bad things happen. Yes, Heroes can die during wars.
Battle of the Alamo: Davey Crockett, William Travis, Jim Bowie
Lord of the Rings: Boromir, King Theoden
Hobbit: Thorin Oakenshield, Kili, Fili, etc.
Battle of Troy: Ajax, Achilles, Hector, Menelaus
Arthurian Legend: pretty much everybody

Anyone who enters a battlefield expecting the enemy to roll over and play dead for them or believes their survival should be assured is just naive. Go into it expecting to have your character die.

Like anything else in Arcanis, the fight difficulty will be geared to story purposes. But you can rest assured that in BIs, most fights will range from Difficult to Lethal, with a couple of "Average" fights thrown in. (if it helps, please reference the Bestiary to know what the various fight difficulty levels mean).

When it comes to BIs, you need to assess your character motivations. Is this a war you want to fight? Is it something you would be willing to lay down your life for? If so, gird your loins, armor up, pick up your weapon of choice and have at it. If a particular character's survival is more important than the cause at hand, I would suggest bringing a back up character.

Finally, I would suggest that if anyone has a problem with the fight construction, feel free to contact me and volunteer to write stats for the campaign. I would be MORE than happy to have more people distributing the workload. (For reference, stats for the Arcanicon special was about 50-60 hours of work for me and Cody wrote 3 of the Encounters as well).

I completely agree with you, but there is something frustrating for melee characters when they are turned into pin cusions

I was one of those who went down in that fight, but that was primarily due to my own stupidity. BIs should be high risk/high reward (which is a conversation in and of itself based off the changes to BI rewards...but this isn't the place).

Keep up the good work Matt. Not everyone was complaining.

I very much appreciate your perspective Matt. BIs used to strike fear in the player base and did have that real sense of mortality around it. I still remember the Battle of Enpebyn where the entire room of ~120 players was 1 or 2 tables away from a entire room kill. That was intense.

There are various factors at play, so let me list the key ones that come to mind and brainstorm a bit on how to deal with them. Players often

1. want to be involved in special events and feel like their character's actions matter.
2. want to maximize their XP with a single character
3. expect their character should survive or be able to be brought back

Ideas to ponder
1. One way to potentially deal with the maximum XP issue would be to have two separate events that are mutually exclusive. A character who is participating in the BI can't do this other mod or special event because they're taking place at the same time. This wouldn't physically have to take place at the same time, but could. If the XP thing effectively washes out between those who partake in the battle and those who don't that could lessen the "I'm playing this with an inappropriate character" scenarios.

2. Put out lots of disclaimers that the lethality of the event is expected to go up and that 19 point shots for example aren't going away. Expect to die if you don't bring a character that's appropriate. With this, provide pregens that would fit with the BI experience for people who need one at the door.

3. Have a "next of kin" cert or something similar to provide some benefit to another character if the primary one bites it. Rewards wouldn't be as good as having survived, but could lessen the blow slightly for a player that loses their character.

More thoughts later, need to run for now.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

One other thing I've noticed is that the player/table skill varies widely regardless of equal PCs. Some tables have the same players year after year and are well trained in working together. Other tables are complete throw together ones. It would be nice if there were some allowance made for that. This could be an option to take a slightly more or less dangerous combat path with rewards that are commiserate with the skill.

As yet another idea, the Arcanicon rounds during the special ran in many ways like a BI. Different objectives with potentially different skill sets required. This could mean rather than averaging out successes / failures across tables, that a total number determines ultimate success or failure and margin of success. Battle rolls could be used to help gauge the rough number of successes needed to help balance out tables across missions.

The different options would then impact the difficulty of particular encounters or rounds.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I don't think less combat-intensive should equate to fewer rewards. Otherwise, it gives the tables that play together year after year and are higher rank a substantive bonus beyond just having an easier BI/event.

I did really enjoy the way the ArcaniCon event ran where you could choose a different goal each slot. I thought that was a nice change from the typical BI where every table does the same thing most slots.

To date, rank and challenge tier have never factored into the rewards equation as far as I've seen. I consider that a good thing. As for less-combat intensive equating to fewer rewards, in normal mods I agree. In a battle interactive though? Especially if they're dialing up the threat in the way that Matt indicated, I'm not sure I buy into two tables that are both 2.0 or 2.5 average tables being given different challenges. 2.0 should be different than 2.5, but arguably two 2.5 tables should be the same. If one is a mish-mash of last minute players which may not be the set of characters based on roles you'd want at a table and the other table plays together regularly, where do you set the challenge level and lethality?



I agree. I really liked the way Arcanicon was executed and see a lot of potential as the basis for the format for future special events. I don't think though that necessarily answers some of the questions though that Matt originally raised. If it's specifically a BI and someone brings a diplomat with very little in the way of combat skills, armor, etc. what do you do with them at least to warn them of the very real consequences to their character.

Players should be willing to have their characters die heroically at story appropriate moments if they're willing to accept a character death at all. Fighting in a BI would be one of those times arguably.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Being locationally remote from the majority of the Arcanis player pool, I have only had the opportunity to run/play the BIs in the module released format.

Recently I ran the Jappa BI for the home group and we held strictly to the time limits.

I also announced before hand if the scene was lethality-TPK

My players loved it. The first scene they would have been (by my estimate ) 2 minutes of gaming to complete but alarm went off.

However twice they completed the scene's completion criteria literally less than 30 seconds before time. (I even showed them my tracking so they knew it was not fudged.)

Not knowing what the BIs are like live, but going on the experienced we have had, they are a blast.

Just my thoughts. And drop me a line if you need help stating for the next one

Cheers

So many of my buttons pushed in so little space.

@Matt: I'm sorry that sometimes doing the work you do is a thankless job. Jae Walker (former campaign coordinator for Living Force) once said (about the RPGA) that, "if I give them a free doughnut someone is going to complain to me that there's a hole in it." So my thanks to you. As a sometimes module writer I appreciate how much work you do for the campaign. Your offerings of "doughnuts" are great as they are.

@Matt again. I go off script (usually only in very small ways) every time I judge something. Because players do cool things that should get some kind of cookie, dumb things that deserve a consequence, and (always) crazy unexpected stuff that isn't covered. As a judge i usually have less time to prep BIs and special events than an ordinary module because they're bigger and we don't get "everything" till the day of the event. This was especially true running the poison jester thread at Arcaniscon where I essentially got 15 minutes to prep the final round. I *think* everything went well... but 100% I made some best guesses. At the crossbow encounter at last years BI I let players spend a Fate point to not take the wound from a massive hit...definitely qualifies as off script. But the players were tense and essentially finished the round with no fate left. About where they should be halfway through a BI. All this is really just an FYI, but I suspect it's true for all judges that they each have a (slightly different) interpretation of each encounter.

Last time: @Matt. It was't 30 crossbow men, but it WAS a boatload. And the PCs got bottle necked by their giant buddies. If you didn't have explosive ranged boom as a party, that encounter sucked.

@Hat. I would add to the lists of reasons why people play BIs and special events is to differentiate their character's experiences with a unique event that is offered once and is then done and gone. In theory anyone has the opportunity to do the same cool things in a module. Only people who make it to BI get to do cool things there. Sorta like bragging rights. "I was there."

@Hat. Choices are great. I would love to see a pair of events where characters (not players) had to choose between doing X or Y. But not both. Though I suspect we'd see some push back from some people.

BIs and Minions are one reason all my characters have some way to hit multiple opponents at once, be it with a Castigate spell or Sweeping Strike martial technique. If you can't get rid of minions in a hurry combat get significantly deadlier and longer (which increases the chance for critical hits/wounds). I was at your table last year Eric and thought you did an excellent job keeping us on our toes. I judged all but the first BI in the 3.5 campaign I know how much work that is. The trick is taking players to the edge of death but trying not to kill them (unless they want to be bravely stupid or it's storyline appropriate). I recall one player died at the Sicaris BI holding a bridge as it was demolished out from under him. I overheard two of the PCI staff discussing it. They thought it was one of the coolest things they had seen. So yeah losing a character sucks but the trick is to die well, to make "such an end as to be worthy of remembrance." [paraphrasing King Theoden from the Return of the King movie]

You know one thing that could make a character death really cool at a BI would be a special cert celebrating the sacrifice. Doesn't even have to have an in game benefit, but it'd be sort of a paper version of a stone memorial erected on site. The sort of things they do on battlefields to remember the sacrifice of units or soldiers. I know I would get a kick out of it. Maybe give them out in a ceremony at the end of the BI to recognize the "honored dead." Then we could toast them like they did in King Theoden's hall after the Battle of Helm's Deep. Something like that would lessen the sting of losing a beloved character. Something to think about.

At least for me, I found the slot choices at ArcaniCon very interesting. I spent the entire day doing Myrantian slots (except the last 1-2 slots because the Myrantian plot was resolved) because Ss'kethis would have done so. I, as a player, would have preferred playing Harvesters or Yarris cult (partly for interest and partly because it seemed like Harvesters was more likely to involve combat which Ss'kethis is built for).

Anytime there are enough options and interesting enough options that you get multiple tables for most choices (a few slots only had a single Myrantian table), I think it was done well. If you can provide choices such that a player preference may conflict with a character preference, I see that as a bonus.