Creating challenging opposition for a large, high-powered group

[Fandraen]

I'm going to be starting a campaign next week with 5 or 6 players, and so far there's a strong push from at least two of them to go all-out and start the game at Submerged level with lots of supernatural interference. (10 refresh, with wizards with white council status, knights of the cross equivalents, plenty of deity interference, etc; I'm not sure we're likely to have any true mortals at all.) I ran a quick one-shot for them before we really got started, since we had a day with a missing player, and discovered that it is *hard* to create good, challenging opposition for a large, high-powered party.

I'm not a sufficiently experienced and fast-thinking GM to run more than two (*maybe* three) simultaneous interesting NPCs; that means that a pack of Denariians are right out unless I recruit an NPC assistant for some special mega-battle. That leaves me trying to cram some 50-70 points of powers into two or three NPCs. I'm seriously concerned about the NPCs starting to look all the same after a while, because there just aren't *that* many powers in the book; if I give everything supernatural toughness and recovery, and their mental or social equivalents, and I'm *still* looking at full-PC power numbers. I'm really worried that my big NPCs will end up varying only slightly in their mechanical effects. I tried throwing in a bunch of low-power minions, which was interesting for an encounter, but not really something that seems to work well for major opposition and prone to slowing the game down.

Experienced GMs: How do you provide interesting, runnable opposition for a high-powered party over a long campaign? I'm trying to figure out whether I'll need to tell the players that we need to tone the power level down, but I would really prefer not to, given how excited they seem to be about the high-powered game.

[Deadmanwalking]

My dear sir, the answer is simplcity itself: Minions!

Every true mastermind should have minions of some sort, a -20 Refresh villain with  seven or eight Ghouls backing him up is a lot more dangerous than said villain alone.

And minions are extensions of the Boss-man for most roleplaying stuff, and can thus be left as a sidenote in characterization.

[Ophidimancer]

Another suggestion: The Psycho Rangers

This is a trope that has a group of bad guys that mirror the group of good guys.  YS331 calls it "The Mirror Method" and basically you build a bad guy either as a dark mirror (similar build, opposite motives) or the perfect foil (skills that fill in the characters' weak spots) to one of the protagonists and thus you have a group of bad guys that are just about the same level as the good guys.

[John Galt]

I'd go with a head of house whamp or blamp, kemmlerite, or scion/emissary of Dragon.   Lemme know which you'd prefer.

[YuriPup]

I would practice one of the most important GM stills at this point: No.

You have a very good point about being new to the system. Its working together to tell a story.

If you like the idea of getting to submerged..then tell them you are willing to give XP quickly as you all grow into the system but out of the gate "No".

[finnmckool]

And don't forget set dressing that's bad in ways not covered by rules. Like by-standers! Oh sure you COULD use your turn to smite that ghoul but then THOSE three over there are going to eat those nuns.

And don't forget set dressing that's bad in ways that ARE covered by rules. Like collapsing buildings! Putting your characters on a timer really limits their options and forces them to think creatively while at the same time making them poop themselves. Fire's good.

Tactics, tactics, tactics. Your villains aren't dumb are they? Good! Then you've got a week to plan and they a moment to react. Without getting into spoiler specifics I'm reminded of a bad guy who trapped good guys with his big boat on their small boat on a big lake, with a lot of stat-killing smog, a lot of ghoul minions, a lot of machine gun fire, and a lot of innocent by-standers. Sure our heroes got out of it, but fighting was a delaying tactic to GTFO.

Just make sure you're not the sick GM who only leaves room for ONE solution...leave it open ended and they'll surprise you with "third options" or "option c's" as I like to call'em

[Fandraen]

Ophidimancer: I love the shadow PC concept, especially for storytelling purposes, but I'm worried about having to try to run five or six major NPCs in a single encounter, with highly varied skill sets. Other than "ignore minor skills", are there any good tips for how to keep from slowing things down in that case? I have a, shall we say, *creative* set of players, so I don't get to do very much accurate pre-planning. Bonus points if the tips include "How to play an NPC wizard with minimal brain space".

John Galt: Whamp or Blamp? Those I don't recognize. Cowl is actually high on my list of possible NPCs, but (just my luck) he's really not properly statted out in the book. A dragon/dragon emissary is a good idea, and one I haven't looked into much yet. We haven't even picked the setting yet, so we're *really* all over the map in terms of expectations, but it looks like "godbotherers" may end up being a good summary of at least half of the party, so convenient deities and deity servants (like a certain blond-haired bodyguard) are also high on my list.

YuriPup: Yeah. I've been practicing in the mirror. Looks like I need to do it a little more, huh.

Finn: In this crowd, I'm much more likely to need to worry about the alternate bad-GM trap of "Well, I can't see any way out of this, but I know these folks will find one". One solution is totally not an option.   You have some very good points about scenery and non-stat challenges. Thanks!

[YuriPup]

I rarely, now, worry about how the heck the PCs are going to get out of some bit of trouble as a GM. They have 4+ brains to my 1. And adding in color will often spark ideas in the PCs who will turn that bit of detail to their advantage.

[GruffAndTumble]

Minions or assistant PCs are a must. I had four Submerged PCs utterly annihilate a Denarian with 27 refresh worth of powers, including several physical enhancements and spellcasting with Fantastic-capped Skills. They just had the pure mortal blow a pile of fate points taking down his shield spell and then went to town.

Short of Physical Immunity with a difficult Catch or absurd amounts of refresh sunk purely into staying alive (a bare minimum of 10 between Toughness, Recovery and Speed), there is almost no way for a single villain to stand up to more than a couple PCs. I'm not just talking Submerged PCs, either--Pure Mortals with readily invokable aspects can wreak serious havoc.

With these facts in mind, I recommend the always applicable Ghoul mercenary/henchman standby, or maybe summoned demons/spirits in construct bodies. The latter require you to stat them yourself, but they're not hard. For Sidhe villains, a few modifiers on top of a Goblin works wonders--the Gruff entry proves that.

[John Galt]

Whamp, Blamp, Ramp - White Court Vamp, Black Court Vamp, Red Court Vamp.

Cowl is at the raggedy edge of writeable.  He's more of a plot device.  He's said to have more power than Faerie Ladies, and would be the strongest Wizard in the whole senior council.  I wouldn't give him anything below 40 refresh, and that's way too powerful for your group of 10 refresh PCs.

If you want a Kemmlerite I can write one up.  Though Blamps have the most potential to be seriously nasty.  Running around with superpowered Renfields and the ability to afflict mental stress on their opponents is no joke.  A Kemmlerite with zombie hordes isn't a pushover either.  I made a guy I wanted to be a PC in a more neutral/evil campaign that is based off the blood mages from Dragon Age.  Sponsored "Blood Magic," the ability to summon and bind demons, and 12 shift mental attacks are just some of the nastiness he can dish out.  And that's with only 10 refresh to work with. 

[finnmckool]

On what Gruff was saying...don't feel shy about getting nasty either. I threw a Raw Head and Bloody Bones at my crew. They killed it quite handily. But I didn't just use the template, I chucked some extra toughness on that mother. Nothing scares a player like a baddy that keeps getting up when you knock it down. Even if they're clobbering it, they feel like they're fighting for their lives.

The point is, don't feel shy about tossing in some extra powers on your monster. Up that refresh all you like. They're monsters. They don't have refresh caps. That super ghoul not super enough? Up his strength, speed and toughness. Which their mouths all go dry when their wizard puts him through a wall and he runs back out only slightly inconvenienced. Is that fae not scary enough? Give it wings. Nothing's worse than wings. It's adding a whole new axis to the fight that the players can't access (axis access-heeehee). Plus it opens up tactical possibilities for everyone. More dynamic fight. "Claws" are good too. Nobody likes those.

[CMEast]

I agree with the others, minions, tactics and scenery.

We had a tough fight against some Hobs, they aren't the toughest creatures ever but it was in an abandoned underground train station with no lights, no water or anything. We ended up with one wizard maintaining a light spell in the zone while the rest of us defended him. We also had to use the sight to find out where we were walking to and, when one of the wizards used an earth spell to push the hobs back, the scene gained the aspects 'on the verge of collapse' and 'leaking gas main' so we couldn't use fire or earth spells.

It was fun

[MWKilduff]

Look throwing more power into a bad guy is not always the best way to go.  A lot of the guys in this thread have mentioned minions and thugs to back up the bad guys but I think If you had some idea of the level of effectiveness you would stop there.  To use a simple example, if you had a virtually unlimited number of low level thugs think about the ways that they can mess up supernatural characters.  Any changling can get a beat down with crowbars and pipe wrenches.  Wizards can have their foci and enchanted items stolen or busted by any number of gang bangers or thugs not to mention the are just as easily beaten down by just about anyone.  Just use unprovoked attacks on the characters and have them try to start figuring out who is targeting them.  By the time they have it figured out they should be softened up enough to make even a standard bad guy a challenge.  All you need is the bad guy handing out the weaknesses of the PC's to these normal humans.  Good luck!