Encounter Balancing? Options

[Phatpug]

Hey everyone. I recently started a 4e game and am having trouble balancing the encounters. So far everything has been way to easy for my crew, they sweep through the bad guys in a few turns. I am trying to scale things up, but i don't want to go overboard either. Is there a good way to determine before hand the difficulty of an encounter. I'm an experienced GM and have been following the Shadowrun universe for a while, but I'm new to the game mechanics. I understand that as a GM you can only do so much, a lot rest on your players and the dice, but I feel like I
'm flying blind when it comes to encounter difficulty and would appreciate any help.

[Warlordtheft]

This is one of the more difficult parts of shadowrun. Opposition that is too low in terms of power is a cake walk, and opposition that is too high can kill a party in 3 seconds or less.

How I go about it in a mirrored shades type campaign:
1. Make the game about the mission, not the body count.
2. Up the pay with the higher risk missions.
3. <insert gadget of choice here> works both ways.
4. Drones and spirits are nasty force multipliers. Use them often.
5. Magic is nasty, opposition without it is a cakewalk (usually).

How I go about it in a Pink-Mohawk type campaign):
1. Make the game about the mission and the body count.
3. Add more guns and grunts.
4. Drones and spirits are nasty force multipliers. Use them often.
5. For evey Mage there is two enemy mages.

[Rubic]

It depends on just what they're doing to make things go through. Is their face schmoozing, infiltrating, and ensuring an organizational blunder? Are they making the right calls to the right people for the right support? Or are they simply going pink-mohawk, guns blazing, and devastating everything in their path?

The latter is the easiest to deal with; just make their opposition competent, so that they carry good weapons, adapt to situations sufficiently to challenge (too fast and it's a TPK, after all), and have the ability to call in back up (makes the run more immediate if backup is called). The other two can be harder to deal with, as you may very well negate a particular team member's usefulness completely by stonewalling them. In fact, the second is the ideal any run should strive for, the Ocean's # sort of run.

One side of all of these you can still play for, after the fact, is revenge. The corp that was wronged, the family of a ganger or corpsec who died, a corpsec or law enforcement specialist who's excited by the challenge... this could lead to a counter-runner group that seeks their downfall.

I started a thread, if you do a search, that was about ways to limit and challenge players so that you're not just stonewalling them, while providing challenges for them to overcome.

[Phatpug]

Thanks that helps. How do paracritters fit in? Is there anywhere that says, 3 hellhounds is a moderate encounter for a balanced party of 4?

[BnF95]

Thanks that helps. How do paracritters fit in? Is there anywhere that says, 3 hellhounds is a moderate encounter for a balanced party of 4?

It would depend on the design of the party of 4. If all 4 were Vindicator-equipped cybertrolls, not really, on the other hand if all 4 were pornomancers then it would be TPK. Also it would depend if the hellhounds were stock or cybered.

[TheOOB]

There is no way to say what is and is not a good threat. A threats difficulty depends a)on the composition of the party, and b)the situation in which the threat is encountered. A force 6 spirit is a tough foe for mundanes, but magicians can wreak them fairly easily. A powerful fighter can be taken down easily with surprise, but may be impossible for a party if he has cover, allies, and a tac-net.

Just keep in mind your players strengths when building.

Also, here is a good rule to keep in mind:

The less a GM knows about the magic system, the more powerful it is

The less a GM knows about the hacking system, the less powerful it is

Characters can be made better or worse based on your knowledge of the rules.

[suoq]

Thanks that helps. How do paracritters fit in? Is there anywhere that says, 3 hellhounds is a moderate encounter for a balanced party of 4?

How many dice are the party throwing?
I mean that seriously. Some builds throw more dice than other builds. Some builds handle a larger variety of threats. It's fully possible to have an entire party that can't do diddly squat against a particular type of threat depending on the builds and the circumstances.

In all honesty, cheat if it improves the game. If they go through the earlier encounters like tissue paper, increase the later encounters. If they get pounded, decrease the later encounters. If you need the boss to hold on for one more round to help out the reveal, then have him burn an edge, even if you didn't write down "burn an edge". Scenes can be changed in the middle by the arrival of backup (which can work to the player's advantage as well as the NPCs).

Perfect planning up front isn't possible when everyone is new and it's ok if some encounters are easy and some the party ends up retreating from. Not all encounters have to be balanced. Just make sure the players understand that they can't win every battle and every now and then, retreating may be a necessity.

As you get experience with the group you'll be able to plan more accurately. In the meantime don't handicap yourself at the cost of your players enjoyment of the game.

[Ascalaphus]

Don't sweat it too much; players are usually ok with easy encounters at the beginning (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There isn't a hard metric to estimate encounter difficulty, because PCs in SR are far more differing in power level than in D&D. However, some things you can do:

* Analyze each encounter afterwards with the players; ask them why it was hard or easy.
* If an ability of the PCs seems very powerful (magic!), read up on the rules carefully; maybe you missed some balancing factor that makes it less powerful than you previously thought.
* If an ability simply is powerful, there are usually in-game ways to defend against it; higher-end NPCs will be using those defenses.
* Single powerful opponents don't work well in SR, because firepower is generally higher than defense. Use multiple enemies, and don't group them in one spot for 1-fireball-gets-all.
* Make enemies use cover, crossfiring, covering fire, surprise, grenades, traps and any clever tactics you've seen the PCs use.
* Figure out the PCs' strong and weak spots.
* Gradually beef up the enemies' stats until you hit the sweet difficulty spot. After a couple of encounters, you should have a better idea of how much these particular PCs can handle.

If you describe the PCs and what they've done so far, we can give more specific advice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[squee_nabob]

It is very hard to make a balanced encounter in SR because as Warlordtheft noted, it is very “swingy”. IF you are off the mark a little, it is a roflstomp by one side or the other. My suggestion:

Don’t try. A balanced fight should never be part of your “this make the mission hard”. Err on making fights ‘too easy’, because killing all your PCs can end a campaign. Make overwhelming violence a tool in their toolbox, not a way to judge difficulty. Some missions should be solved with violence (e.g. there are 3 gangs threatening a Mom and Pop shop, make them stop). They could solve it with talking to the gangs, relocating the store to a better area, hiring other gangs to provide protection, or killing everyone. Add in some hacking and you have a run!

A mission where violence is not an option is “fetch me the widget, I don’t want anyone to know it’s gone”. Overwhelming violence will not solve the problem, but properly executed controlled violence is still a tool. You could kill a few guards by making it look like an accident, or attack another base for the same corp and have them send their reinforcements to the decoy attack.

[Phatpug]

thank that helps a lot. my runners are a bioware troll street sam with mostly melee and assault rifles, a human mage with mostly utility spells and some pistol skills, a human driver ( i use driver because he refused to get the cyber for rigging and wanted a motorcycle) with infiltration and SMG skills, and an elf technomancer.

lol we probably bit off a little more than we can chew right out the gate with the technomancer but i've always believed the best way to learn a class was to play it so there we go.

Thank you again for the info. i know a lot of my problems will be solved with time and experience but you guys have helped to make me more comfortable running the game from this point on.

[Hound]

Honestly, my general strat for balancing goes something like this: Make an educated guess, then if that isn't quite working when you play it out, make stuff up and change it on the fly. My players are not really the hit/dice-counting types mid-combat, so they almost never notice. Also, having a storyline reason for either side being able to get reinforcements at your convenience is good, especially for the first few missions.

Overwhelming violence will not solve the problem, but properly executed controlled violence is still a tool.

this may be my favorite quote from this forum so far. Would you mind if I sigged it?

[Bull]

Honestly, my general strat for balancing goes something like this: Make an educated guess, then if that isn't quite working when you play it out, make stuff up and change it on the fly. My players are not really the hit/dice-counting types mid-combat, so they almost never notice. Also, having a storyline reason for either side being able to get reinforcements at your convenience is good, especially for the first few missions.

Ooo. There's a couple members of these forums that this will send into a tizzy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Me? I'm firmly it the "Make drek up to tell a better story" category. I will regularly:

1) Fudge Dice

My old GM had a saying: Dice are for sound effect only. Pick up a big handful of dice, roll them, and make the outcome cinematic and entertaining, when necessary. I don't do this all the time, but when needed? I'll ignore the dice.

2) Their armor is made of Tissue Paper!

If the party is in danger of being wiped out, I'll let the players mop up the bad guys a little easier than normal. It helps that I don;t tell them how much damage the baddies take, just give them vague ideas (Justa flesh wound, looks like that hurt, etc).

Note, this only applies if this is through no fault of their own. I won;t kill off the party due to a few poor dice rolls on their part, or some good ones on mine (And my dice LOVE me). However, if they do something suicidally stupid ("Just Lofwyr? We charge!"), well, then... Let the dice fall where they may.

3) Hardened Armor and Reinforcements

Likewise, if something is supposed to be challenging and they're mowing through it like nothing, I'll go the other direction. That's not to say I won;t reward good planning, good play, and good reolplaying. If they logically outthink the enemy, they won;t magically get a random encounter or have the guards surprise them out of nowhere. Bt if they're just rolling over the enemies blindly and without even trying, and the encounter isn;t strictly a "gimmee" one (WHich I will do from time to time), then I'll beef it up. Give them some extra dice, extra edge. Send in reinforcements. Whatever is needed.

But yeah, overall, Shadowrun's impossible to really balance. There are simply too many variables, and the system isn;t a level based one. You can have a completely badass 0 Karma newbie, and you can have a very mediocre 200 Karma character. It's all in how you spend you points and how you play the character. You'll just get used to it in time. Most games aren't really set up to handle Challenge Ratings or Encounter Levels like D&D and the like, so it's a learned skill for a GM to be able to roll without those training wheels (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

[TheOOB]

Also, don't try to make fair fights. Key rule of being a shadowrunner, don't get into a fair fight, you either have the advantage, or you run.

[Blade]

I don't really balance encounters. If the PC decide to go guns blazing inside a secure corporate complex, they'll face combat drones and military-grade troops. If they pull a gun in a standard mall, they'll either face an underpaid mall guard or (more probably) the cops who'll arrive when they can.
What I'll balance is the overall level of the run: I won't send standard starting character inside a Zero Zone, but I might try with 200+ karma characters.

I also count on the players to do the balance themselves: if they don't think they can handle the guards, they'll have to come up with a plan that doesn't involve shooting them. If they end up in a fight anyway, they can still run away. The use of good tactics and surprise can also help level the battlefield.

[Psikerlord]

One easy way to up fight danger is just add more foes. If the party regularly blitzes 8 gangers, next fight hit them with 10. Or 9 plus an extra shaman. There will definitely come a point where numbers tip the balance. Obviously you can't do that all the time but it's an easy power boost for your mooks.

[squee_nabob]

this may be my favorite quote from this forum so far. Would you mind if I sigged it?

Go ahead

[Cheops]

To up it just start using more advanced tactics. Have a couple of foes lay down suppressive fire while a few more sneak up with sub-guns or shotguns. Mages and riggers/hackers should be controlling the battlefield. Hackers give bonuses to all the other combatants through the network. Riggers use drones to limit the PC's use of terrain and to jam PC communications. Mages make life uncomfortable in the PC's location forcing them towards the suppressive fire and shotgunners (Ice Sheet is great for this).