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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: arete on January 17, 2011, 01:11:51 AM
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I am having trouble damaging my players in combat. I rarely get anything past a minor consequence or 2 and a few physical stress boxes checked. I am filling all the mages mental stress boxes, but they manage to end combat right about that time. My physical characters generally make it though combat with a few stress boxes.
I wanted to here how other GM/ST's experiences have been.
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What are you sending against them?
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I ran my second session yesterday and had similar results, but everyone had fun so I didn't consider it a problem. My players were very leery of having to take consequences so they invoked many a Fate Point to boost their defense rolls.
Did your group consider the lack of lasting consequences a detriment to the game?
I'd second MijRai's question though. Lay out some of these combats for us. Who was involved, what happened, and perhaps what did you expect would happen?
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Or for that matter what are they doing? Any sort of example of the kind of combat you usually have would help us help you.
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I've only had one combat so far; ghoul threw a section of a marble slab at characters, 1 dodged (very sweet roll - she looked awesome doing it) 1 didn't & ended up with "cracked ribs". As it happened, I was working nights last night and reading up some on the Diaspora version of FATE, and there is a thing about "Severe Consequences must be carried through one complete session (from beginning to end) in which the stress track associated with the Consequence does not take any hits, and are removed at the next refresh" which I thought was very interesting.
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Make the enemies more powerful. If you accidentally make them too powerful to handle, the PC's can always concede. If you accidentally make them too weak, there's not much you can do beyond sending out more of them.
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So far i have used the red court vamp stats out of the books for the 1st adventure, and that was ok.
This fight i am referencing I used the stats from Tessa and her daughter + 5 denarian henchmen who I gave +5-6 combat skills to plus supernatural ratings in all the physical stats. Of note I had Michael and Sonya show up to help them which ended up tying up 1 of the henchmen.
My party is at 11 referesh 37 skills. I have 1 Wizard very focused on evocation, her mentor a Warden who is more focused on tham, a Native American Emissary of Power, and The Summer Knight. They do a wonderful job with tactics. Generally the 2 physical characters get into position sense they have inhuman speed, and end up slapping on an aspect or 2 while the Wizards murder the enemy. On the few occasions field position is lost the wizards generally break a sweet. Also important is that both of my physical characters have 3-4 athletics and 5 melee for defending plus the physical powers.
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One thing you might try is hand grenades. :) Denarians don't care about collateral damage like even maybe vampire Courts might, and their mortal goons are easily capable of being decked out in body armor and military weaponry. With your physical PCs Athletics a little less than their Melee, you'll definitely want to keep using ranged attacks on them (plus keeping your villains out of sword, knife, and chainsaw range is a plus).
If the villains know who they're going up against, they can make sure to stay spread into multiple zones to avoid the wizards' area effects, and if they ever have a choice in the matter they can pick terrain with higher border values so the fighter-types take longer to reach melee distance.
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I am having trouble damaging my players in combat. I rarely get anything past a minor consequence or 2 and a few physical stress boxes checked. I am filling all the mages mental stress boxes, but they manage to end combat right about that time. My physical characters generally make it though combat with a few stress boxes.
I wanted to here how other GM/ST's experiences have been.
Are you trying to stack maneuvers? As far as I know, the best way to land a powerful consequence is to have several attackers perform a maneuver to place an aspect on the target, then let one attacker free-tag all those aspects.
Monster A throws dirt into the targets's face (Weapons vs. Athletics maneuver to add "Sand In The Eyes" aspect to the target)
Monster B knocks over a tower of crates (Might declaration to add "Unsure Footing" aspect to the scene)
Monster C takes both free tags for a +4 to its next attack vs the target
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Good advise so far and thank you. I would like to here stats and outcomes from other gms if others have time to post that much info.
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One of the things you could do is start threatening the wizards. If they start worrying about their own safety then they may start putting some of their actions (and stress) into defense, which means less for offense.
Wizards are amazingly powerful though, they tear stuff up. Try throwing it back in their face by throwing some casters at them.
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to make a unfriendly encounter for a wizard:
turn on the sprinklers
lure them into a room pre-built with a magic circle
turn off all the lights ( wizard becomes a target if he summons light and friendly fire is a pain )
have lots of innocents around
to make an encounter unfriendly for the physical people:
unstable ground, loose sand, ice, knee high water, a kids inflatable jumping gym ( great fun here )
Aoe, like grenades
choke points, make them walk a path to get to the villains with pits on either side, or walk across a plank between two buildings
multi-tiered fields of combat, makes them have to split up and focus more on the movement then the beating
now to some of the above, the nickelheads fall back to a Family Fun Center (http://www.fun-center.com) you now have several engines of destruction in a giant building full of kids and parents, on can go hide in the giant climbing structure (think McDonalds on steroids then times 10 ) another goes to the lazer tag area and the other heads out side to the out side area.
inside you can make use of the sprinklers after some fire has been thrown, plenty of humans to make the wizards sweat, all of the people will make for a hard time running anywhere, multiple floors allow for some great chases.
outside, the miniput course will provide a great place for a fun battle as you have all sorts of odd things in the way and no good straight paths.
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Kaldra, you are truly evil...
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oh man those are solid ideas. Ty
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You could also try using multiple waves of enemies and enchanted items in the hands of nonspellcasters.
For example, you could have the PCs fight four zombies in a concert hall as a warm up. Once they win (which they will) a necromancer and his ghoul drummer walk onto a balcony overlooking the stage and a 1000-year old uberzombie runs in to attack them. The necromancer rains down evocations while the drummer uses Performance maneuvers and the uberzombie attacks the party directly. What's more, the uberzombie is equipped with potion javelins that can strike an entire zone at once.
One of the best things about this game is that the GM can control the difficulty of a fight by having NPCs take or not take consequences. Have you been using your NPCs' consequence slots?
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Yes I have been using the conseqences for "named" character, but not for mooks. I made a few fights where the badguys had more stress/concequences but next time I am goling to up skill to a 6 or 7 to see which makes for more entertianmeent
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;) you think thats bad?
taking a leaf out of one of my players books from an old 3.5/3.75 game your BBEG starts up an orphanage and starts teaching children the ways of thievery and eventually shape shifting, in the dnd setting it was infecting them with lycanthropy but la we digress.
start out by having the children stealing from occult shops, small things crystals and such, then have the pc's stumble on one of the robberies and see one of the kids do something like a minor evocation or some such, eventually have a wolf attack the group and when they kill or knock out the wolf have a kid form in front of them, no better way to stone cold stop a group from violence or make the waaaay hesitant than to have the children be on the other side.
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;) you think thats bad?
taking a leaf out of one of my players books from an old 3.5/3.75 game your BBEG starts up an orphanage and starts teaching children the ways of thievery and eventually shape shifting, in the dnd setting it was infecting them with lycanthropy but la we digress.
start out by having the children stealing from occult shops, small things crystals and such, then have the pc's stumble on one of the robberies and see one of the kids do something like a minor evocation or some such, eventually have a wolf attack the group and when they kill or knock out the wolf have a kid form in front of them, no better way to stone cold stop a group from violence or make the waaaay hesitant than to have the children be on the other side.
Not all players will care.
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aye it depends on the group, however in the DRFPG setting if your character takes action against children, long term it means your character thinks they are the type of person who can hurt or kill children and their gm slowly starts to let the evil maniacal laugh roll out of his/her belly, you have to get the deep belly one.
thats another way to make combat a bit harder on the characters, what are the long term emotional or psychological effects of killing/harming these people they fight; do they care if the shops damaged in the scuffle go out of business?
what happens when the mournful daughter comes a knocking one day and wants to know what happened to her father, that bouncer at the night club who got in the way or maybe he was one of the goons that the party tuned up.
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My players have been really responcable about killing. I have 1 character who operates in the grey area of the laws, but otherwise all my players are ethical. I really have not had many issues with the roleplay side of things.
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aye it depends on the group, however in the DRFPG setting if your character takes action against children, long term it means your character thinks they are the type of person who can hurt or kill children and their gm slowly starts to let the evil maniacal laugh roll out of his/her belly, you have to get the deep belly one.
thats another way to make combat a bit harder on the characters, what are the long term emotional or psychological effects of killing/harming these people they fight; do they care if the shops damaged in the scuffle go out of business?
what happens when the mournful daughter comes a knocking one day and wants to know what happened to her father, that bouncer at the night club who got in the way or maybe he was one of the goons that the party tuned up.
Not necessarily.
The position I am coming from is that war is war. Conflict is conflict. Violence is violence. Soldiers and cops sometimes have to kill children. Just because they do so doesn't mean it gives them pleasure.
Killing anyone is traumatic. Killing children may be more so, but to do so will not fundamentally warp someone into an evil creature.
If someone evil is turning children into combatants, their deaths are on that person. Not he or she who has to defend themselves.
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Not necessarily.
The position I am coming from is that war is war. Conflict is conflict. Violence is violence. Soldiers and cops sometimes have to kill children. Just because they do so doesn't mean it gives them pleasure.
Killing anyone is traumatic. Killing children may be more so, but to do so will not fundamentally warp someone into an evil creature.
If someone evil is turning children into combatants, their deaths are on that person. Not he or she who has to defend themselves.
Sorry to deviate from the topic, but I agree full Bear. There are plenty of veterans of the Vietnam War who didn't become evil, but they were forced to kill women and kids. Also terrorist groups are known to get kids to kill for them. In a war situation you sometimes have to kill children because they are coming at you with an assault rifle. Let's not forget the children warriors in Africa...the evil people are the ones turning these children into combatants.
/rant
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Sorry to deviate from the topic, but I agree full Bear. There are plenty of veterans of the Vietnam War who didn't become evil, but they were forced to kill women and kids. Also terrorist groups are known to get kids to kill for them. In a war situation you sometimes have to kill children because they are coming at you with an assault rifle. Let's not forget the children warriors in Africa...the evil people are the ones turning these children into combatants.
/rant
Exactly.
And the Dresdenverse is very gritty. It can be dark and dare I say, "realistic".
Some of the stuff in the books at times makes me whistle or curse. I think that a GM who can occasionally shock players that way is probably doing a good job and staying true to the source material.
The Dresden Files is not a "Happily Ever After" series where everyone comes from nuclear families and are virgins until they get married to a prince or princess.
One of the reasons I was attracted to the DFRPG is the potential for serious role play and agonizing ethical choices. You just can't get that sort of grittiness when everyone is playing elves and all the bad guys are monstrous looking and always act Abberantly Evil.
It's a lot harder to defend yourself against some poor bastard hooked on Red Court saliva than it is a giant floating eyeball with huge teeth and tentacles.
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aye, i did not mean to imply that every one does become evil, only as the traveling people say "as the axe does violence to the tree so does the tree to the axe" its going to have an effect on you, in the end it will vary person to person but its still there.
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Bringing this back to the OP's topic, you might take a note from the books. Dresden rarely gets a chance to rest up before someone else comes gunning for him. He often goes from one battle to another to another, taking consequences along the way. So, you might try a series of encounters to soak up their Fate points and soften them up for a few consequences.
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"what happens when the mournful daughter comes a knocking one day and wants to know what happened to her father, that bouncer at the night club who got in the way or maybe he was one of the goons that the party tuned up."
I love versions of this, ever since I got nailed with it (and two years worth of service to the family of the guy my PC killed).
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I think that using morality on PCs in combat and the subsequent fallout is highly dependent on individual groups and players. We can discuss tactics to help the OP without having to resort to "the NPCs' families all hate you now!"
General rules that could help you out:
1. Defense: You want to minimize your losses and keep the units you have at peak operating capacity for as long as possible. I see many disposable units as a slightly better option here than simply making your standard number of units tougher. Each individual loss is a smaller percentage of your entire force, and the PCs only have so many actions. Hell, bait your PC wizards into area-attacking a clump of your fodder just to buy a round or two for your better-trained goons to get their licks in.
2. Offense: The quicker your units can acquire and engage new targets, the better. This pretty much always comes down to ranged weapons being your best choice, because your enemies have a much harder time running away from bullets and lightning bolts. Your guys can fire (or combine fire or set up maneuvers) on a new target without having to move It also speaks well to defense: if half your enemies cannot even engage you, you've cut their effectiveness by the same amount. If ALL your forces can engage the enemy, even better.
3. Reinforcements! This was mentioned upthread, and it may or may not work for you. There's something to be said for a good alpha strike by a shitload of Uzi-wielding thugs, but the more enemies on the field on round 1, the higher the chance your players are going to figure out a clever way you didn't notice before to severely mess them up in one fell swoop. Too many waves of reinforcements and each individual wave won't be any more effective than the previous. They'll just be waves breaking against the rocks.
Sorry if I'm retreading old ground here. It just kind of bothers me to resort to relying on the PCs' reluctance to kill bystanders. Seems to me we can beat those pesky wizards and summer knights with good old fashioned tactics! :)