[Gnarsh]

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

For example, in one game I was having a lot of trouble with a very tough rune lord equivalent. Since he was a Yanafali, I kept things interesting for him by having a subplot be people attempting to administer his resources away {transferring troops to other commanders, getting his armor assigned to someone else, etc}. It was amazing how quickly he decided he needed an administrative specialist. {I was working for NASA at the time, and they had something called Zero-Based budgeting, which made an appearance in the game}.

I do a similar thing in my game. Not so much with the administrative headaches, but more about environmental problems (no. not like global warming!). The players were more or less "heroes" of the kingdom (or those rascally friends of the heroes who weren't perhaps so upstanding in their methods). But the adventures tended to follow larger plots that were outside the scope of the players to affect more then indirectly.

For example, I'm currently running a set off scenarios that will eventually result in a fairly large scale bad guy causing all sorts of problems. But for right now, the big problem is that the island nation off the coast has been having food shortages and this will spill over into the area the PCs are living in. So while they can kick butt on any random group of broos that might wander by, for all their power they are still at the whim of fate in the larger picture of things. This sort of thing may not seem that critical, but in terms of making a campaign believable, it's *huge*. Not all threats come in the form of a group of bad guys seeking to fight the party.

Also, in a game like RQ where a tank is heavily dependent on magical spells, adding some Dispel capability to the enemy mix can make a big difference. Players who thought their characters were invincible often feel less certain when their Shield spells go down. Also, in RQ and BRP {snd Fire and Sword} a fair amount of a character's defense is "active". Overwhelming them with numbers, so that they cannot parry all of their foes, is often an effective tactic. Offbeat forms of combat, such as spirit combat, can also be a problem for the PC's. As you might imagine, when facing high level parties I often use all three techniques, plus a demon or other large monster

I've done the same sort of thing as well. In my game, I've actually come up with some special rules (extensions on engaged and closing rules really) that allow for foes with a numerical advantage to turn that into a real combat advantage. So a horde of trollkin can theoretically swarm over a group of much tougher opponents and win. Also, I've found that mixed groups of bad guys work well. Not everyone's going to be exactly the same and that should apply to the bad guys as well. This allows for mixed power level PC groups to work. You can have one or two much tougher PCs in a group simply by adding additional foes that aren't much tougher. Sure, the powerful guys will wade through them, but as long as you're challenging the bulk of the group, this still works. Obviously, you can (and should!) also have the tougher NPCs face the tougher PCs and give everyone a challenge.

Also, it's not wrong for a GM to throw an encounter out there that the players are simply going to win. Let's face it, if you've got a party full of Rune level characters, exactly how many random encounters are going to challenge them? Sometimes, this can be some of the most comical and "fun" encounters and result in stories that players re-tell over and over though. We were once on an adventure with a "high power" group. Really high power. As in, we're going after some super old vampire-litch wanna-be deity guy holed up in his evil lair with his hordes of minions and whatnot to mess up his millennium. Along the way, the party's traveling through some hills. The ridiculously powerful (and hilariously "evil") elf shaman/gardener character spots a trip rope ahead on the trail. On a whim, he decides to just shoot the rope, gets a lucky hit and snaps it with a single shot from his bow. The party kinda shrugs and moves on. The next day, they see what looks like a well hidden pit trap. The earth priestess tosses out a large gnome and rumbles it. The party shrugs and moves on.

At the end of the adventure, the GM admitted that he'd originally had a group of bandits there who were going to attempt to harass/ambush the party. However, after seeing how easily we just blew through their well laid traps, they decided that messing with us was just not a bright thing to do and packed it in. IMO, that was *vastly* more fun, interesting, and "real" then if he'd just buffed up the power level of the bandits and had them attack.


It's important to treat NPCs as more then numbers on a sheet calculated to face and challenge the players. Sure, the adventure should challenge them (in multiple ways hopefully), but each individual NPCs presumably has a reason for doing what he's doing. Bandits aren't there to provide a fun fight for the PCs along the way. They presumably actually want to get some cash without dying. Broos may want to spread chaos and expand their cult(s) evil influence in an area, but each one will certainly prefer to do this by having their rival or competing tribe members die then themselves.

Balance is important, but it's not just about balancing individual encounters. It's also about making the game world feel like it's a real place, with real consequences and rewards and in which the NPCs at in ways that make sense. So sure, sometimes that means that a horde of baddies are going to descend upon the player character's heads. Other times, that's going to mean that enemies will slink away in the night to plot some other less suicidal method of obtaining their goals...