With this endeavor, I hope to make us all better judges for fun and profit. Ok, maybe this will be for more fun than profit. But, for those who judge, I hope to enlighten you a bit on the way combat encounters are written for the Legends of Arcanis Campaign. Hopefully, this way, you will be able to quickly tailor-make your encounters on the fly and adjust to the table sitting before you.

First of all, this is not D&D 3.0/3.5. In that system, judges would average the level of all the characters and come up with an APL. You then ran the APL stats as written. Yeah, smaller tables made things a bit more difficult, but thems the breaks. IMHO, that system had the drawback of turning us into lazy judges. You ran what was on the paper. But, Arcanis is MUCH different and more customizeable than that. In Arcanis we add all ranks and tiers of characters together to determine the Encounter Budget. NOTE: IT IS NOT AN AVERAGE. Most mods now are statted for "Low" and "High" Tier. Low is written for 6 1.5 characters (EB=9) and High is assuming 6 2.0 characters (EB=12). This is adjusted by Encounter Difficulty. Easy encounters subtract 2 from the total, Moderate encounters have a 0 modifier, while Difficult and Lethal encounters modify it by +3 and +6 respectively. I, personally, add a +/- 1 to these numbers to give a little "wiggle room" in the creation process. I always describe the 4 categories like this:
1) Easy: At a 6 man table, 2-3 people can sit out and the party still handles it well. all 6 partiipating makes it a 1-sided slaughter.
2) Average: Everyone should have to participate, but the fight should not really be that worrisome.
3) Difficult: A pretty good knock-down fight. Maybe 1 or 2 are Vanquished, depending on dice. The players should know they have been in a fight, but not overy worried about death.
4) Lethal: it should be interesting. By interesting I mean "Oh god, oh god, we are all gonna die". The goal is not to kill anyone, but the players should feel death breathing down their necks. Multiple people should be Vanquished throughout the fight and possible even 1-2 deaths, depending on dice, tactics, etc. These fights are generally reserved for BIs or big end of a mod series fights (but can pop up anytime). These fights should be epic, with players having a great story to tell after they walk away from the table (even if their characterd went the way of Beltine's Cauldron).

One of the things I will be attempting to do for mods that I stat out is give more information so that Judges know if an Encounter is designed to be Easy/Moderate/Difficult/Lethal. So, let us say that you are running a group of 6 Tier 2 Rank 2 characters. This gives an EB of 13.2 (round to 13 for ease) and it is a Difficult Encounter. That means the total Encounter should not exceed 16 (again +/-1). Each creature has an Encounter Tier Value listed at the bottom right of the stat block. Adding these together will let you know what the encounter was designed at. For example, using straight Bestiary critters, the encounter comprises 2 Agamassi (ETV 3 each) and 2 Ssanu (ETV 5 each). If you have a group of 6 2.2 characters, you are still golden. However, let us assume you are seated a table of 4. Suddenly, that same encounter went from Difficult to the high end of Lethal. So, it needs adjusted. (and it should be. Table size and player rank/tier combnations can skew a combat quickly away from what the author intended. This can make players believe that certain mods/fights were specifically designed to cause TPKs, which was not the intention) Now, back to point,yes, you can adjust defenses or stamina at will. But, you can be much more precise than that. If the encounter does not call for a specific number of NPCs, you can adjust by possibly dropping one or two. (Given the Agamassi/Ssanu example, dropping 1 Agamassi puts it into the correctly intended EB). However, if the story calls for a set number of NPCs, knowing the Low stats were designed at EB9(+3 for Difficult), you could just use those stats. However, you could also feel free to "mix & match" stats for a bit more fun and creativity (which also keeps players guessing). Let's say that at the Low Tier, you notice that each Ssanu had an ETV of 3.5 and each Agamassi was 2. In total, it makes an EB of 11, which fits the +/-1 factor, but is a little weak. So, you could use 1 "High" and 1 "Low" stat of each of the Ssanu and Agamassi to get a 13.5, which fits the general ballpark.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you need to "beef up" an encounter, you could add more creatures (again, mixing and matching high/low stats to get the correct EB numbers) or, you could have fun with Variations. I strongly suggest that all judges keep the mechanics for 2 Variations available at all times, those being Brute and Exceptional Specimen. Each one raises a creatures ETV by .5, an gives you many wonderful options. Brute is perfect for warrior-type NPCs. It makes the critter slightly easier to hit Avoidance-wise, but gives 30 stamina, +1 to skills, Diehard, and either Powerful Attriibute (Die Bump) to Might or the Resilience quality (which is perfect to keep Commons from being 1-shotted by Murderous Precision. Alternatively, Exceptional Specimen is perfect for any type opponent. it raises all defenses by 1, gives 5 stamina, 1 Wound, +2 to all skills, and 1 Quality (perfect for adding in a talent or Martial Technique that would improve them) Additionally, you can choose between a die bump to the creature, 6 additional stamina, or a 2nd additional quality. Both of these Variations can be added (or subtracted, if needs be) from a creature's stats within a minute.

I realize this can sound like a lot of work, but with just a little bit of practice, it can start to become natural to you. The payoff, of course, is higher player satisfaction from a correctly challenged table for the intended story
.

Matt,

I like what you are trying to do, but I'm going cross eyed trying to learn this from reading about it. Any chance of doing a mini-workshop over lunch or dinner at Arcanicon?

I short cut it and just 'ballpark' it sometimes based upon the encounter difficulty Does that make me a bad GM?

John

Eric...I am planning on doing just that. I wanted to 1) post this for everyone who won't be there and 2) hopefully, give people a leg up before the convention.

John...absolutely not. I am merely showing a more precise way to use the given stats. I firmly believe that having a strong foundation of how the stats are built will allow judges to better understand what the authors intend for a mod/combat. One of the problems at last years Arcanicon is that some judges did not understand these fundamental differences and just ran "stats as written" and it became an overtly difficult situation for some tables. I am just hoping to head off a similar problem from here on out.

The Delve at Origins used many of these ideas, and is structured so the fights scale as the party-size changes (with the intent of keeping the overall difficulty in line from 3 players to 7 players).

Granted, I know people haven't seen it yet (tm), but it is wending its way through the works.

Maybe not the right place to ask/request this, but can stat blocks include 'common' attacks with all the numbers calculated?

For instance, if an NPC has mighty swing and sweeping strike, can there be an attack block with those already as an advanced maneuver?

Same with commonly used spells for the NPC?

John

I have tried to put in most of the maneuver numbers into the "Special" section for the stats I write (time permitting). Spells are a lot trickier because of 1) the number of them and 2) all the possible variations with Adaptations. It tends to make a stat block HUGE.

My biggest challenge as a GM is figuring out all the right numbers for common-use spells and weapon abilities. Some stat blocks have them, some don't and figuring it out on the fly isn't really feasible. I usually just take a best guess and go with it. I suppose I could spend an hour or two figuring it all out for all the bad guys but when they are only there to live for about 5 minutes that's not always a good use of time.

Perhaps for casters you can pick 2-3 common spell/combinations and stat those and leave the rest for GM's to do if they feel it's warranted.

As an aside, one thing that D&D 4th did right was separating NPC's from PC's from a rules perspective. You didn't have to 'build' an NPC using PC rules, you just picked what you wanted them to be able to do and stat out their 3-5 abilities.

John

For me biggest issue is difference between an optimized party or not. Two of us locally play Nierite tanks and we pack 4 smite heretics and a murderous precision just between us. These kinds of characters count for more in a fight than a face or a knowledge monkey.

Placeholder so I might get notified to follow this thread.