Large groups and a singular challenge

[FishStampede]

Reading through the book, there's a section on how to scale a challenge for an entire group. I have a pretty good size group (though due to Real Life, actual attendance varies) and if I follow that model if I want them all to take on one creature I should be hitting them with a -30-35 refresh monstrosity.

Holy jeebus, is that right? I mean, sure, the dogpile effect can do wonders, but man oh man, that's a sumo-class heavyweight.

It's probably safer to have them fight a group, or set up multiple challenges that force them to deal with it separately, but if I want one big epic throwdown with a singular bad guy, is it really a good idea to put them up against something that Our World refuses to give hard stats for?

[Mr. Death]

My advice would be to soften them up with other encounters first. A fresh party will tear apart even a high refresh villain, but if you send that villain up against a party that's already dealing with several consequences and has used much of its resources, it's a much better challenge. Hell, it's what Butcher does--how many fights does Harry get into that can be summed up as, "He would win easily, if he wasn't tired and beat to crap"?

In my game, that's basically what I've done for the last big fight of this scenario--threw ghouls, vampires, and cultists at the party first, so now they're facing one reflavored Toad Demon and an injured sorcerer, but the wizards have already soaked up half their mental stress, one of them's got two consequences, so does the tank, and their enchanted items are nearly depleted.

Alternatively, instead of inflating refresh, inflate the stats.

[admiralducksauce]

Every single foe I've thrown against my group has been quickly overwhelmed too. I'd be interested in advice on scaling single threats as well.

Right now my best half-assed options seem to be:
1. TONS of FP to act as a sort of ablative metagame shield so the Big Bad at least gets to fire off some actions.
2. Zone-wide effects for when they DO get to act.
3. High defensive skills.
4. Blatantly cheat and give the Big Bad multiple turns each exchange, so they can engage multiple PCs. Don't combine with the zone-wide attacks thing.

[ways and means]

Zone Wide attacks are very good though high level opponents committing to an area attack can easily lead total party kill. Physically Immune opponents (especially to magic) and total speed flankers (mythic speedsters or beyond) can provide some challenge. So can a bad guy who sits back watching the party fighting an overwhelming number of his thugs (30-40 over several zones). Chase combats are quite fun.

[Praxidicae]

I've found that when putting the party up against a single 'boss' opponent. It's best to do something that's going to divide their attention in some way, the aforementioned waves of minions that they have to trawl through before he will deign to notice them are a good example, along with waves of reinforcements that are individually weak, but nasty en-masse. But you can mix it up by adding an environmental danger, or by adding some non combat imperative that can draw members of the team away from the combat (disarming a complex bomb or rescuing a hostage, closing a mystical portal through the outer gates, enacting a 'counter-ritual' to the actions of a seperate NPC) this way you can cut down the number of direct combatants facing the 'boss', raising his potential difficulty level.

[Orladdin]

The best way to do this, done in other FATE games, is to give the boss multiple actions or make it a "modular" creature-- it's narratively a single creature, but is built like multiple characters and has multiple actions.  A classic example is a Dragon.  You'd build its' tail, it's maw, and each of its arms/claws as separate characters.  They each get an action during each exchange (maintaining action economy) and they (probably) share stress boxes between them (at the cost of remaining in the same, or nearby zones as you'd expect).  Stat the skills of each piece as makes sense. 
Maybe each piece has different Aspects and players can declare which they're attacking for max benefit.  "The tail has the Aspect, 'Not Being Watched,' right?"
Maybe the claws make grapples while the tail maneuvers or establishes blocks and the maw bites or uses a "breath weapon" of some kind.

Dragon (4-part)
Physical Track:
_{(Claws provide:)} [][][][] _{(Tail provides:)} [][] _{(Maw provides:)} [][] (+ Extra for the Endurance skill rating each piece might posess)
etc.

Already tougher, and it hasn't even taken Toughness (on any of its pieces), yet.
Perhaps allow people to take out pieces of it as you go along-- after all, if they hack at the tail exclusively, it's gonna get chopped off / wounded beyond use, right?

Be creative -- Think outside the box.

[admiralducksauce]

OK, that's pretty sweet.

It makes a lot of sense for a huge creature like a dragon there, or a chlorofiend or big old Gruff, but what about a master vampire or sidhe assassin or something, you know, more regular-sized? Just give 'em extra actions?

Actually, based on this post and the OP that started it:

In general, we've avoided "extra action" stuff with Fate, even with things like the supernatural speed powers of Dresden, due to the rather warping effect extra actions have on a sense of folks getting fair "spotlight time". I would favor alternative approaches, though that's not to say someone can't come up with a clever extra-action implementation that works fine for a specific build of Fate.

Fred
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/message/20961

I totally agree with that... for PCs. Thinking about this "the single Big Bad gets ass-whooped before he gets a shot off" problem, I don't want to just handwave every single enemy my PCs face into blatant cheatery. So I'm thinking that I need to rationalize a Big Bad getting multiple actions so it seems fair. Seems fair is all I'm going for here, I'm not worrying about balanced and fair.

So, I'd rule a Big Bad can spent a FATE Point to gain an additional action (to a maximum of 1 less than the number of players, I'd say). I'd probably either roll initiative separately for each action (for those of us who like rolling initiative) or simply move each action down one step in initiative. I don't think having all the actions fire at once is cool, they should be interspersed between PC actions when possible.

I feel like this would take the sting out of having single bad guys just magically getting to go a bunch of times every round for no other reason than the GM wanted them to. Basing them on FP means the Big Bad has a tactical decision to make: does he act many times or save up FP for single, effective actions? Does he alpha strike with FP-boosted multiple actions or parcel them out, saving some in case he needs to make a retreat? Because he won't be able to keep up his cheatin' ways forever.

[Orladdin]

I feel like this would take the sting out of having single bad guys just magically getting to go a bunch of times every round for no other reason than the GM wanted them to. Basing them on FP means the Big Bad has a tactical decision to make: does he act many times or save up FP for single, effective actions? Does he alpha strike with FP-boosted multiple actions or parcel them out, saving some in case he needs to make a retreat? Because he won't be able to keep up his cheatin' ways forever.

I understand your desire to say "GM Fiat is Bad, Mmmkay?" But that isn't the reason he's getting more actions.  You're not giving him more actions to "beat" your players.  You're giving him more actions because:
A) It makes sense for his concept as something above-and-beyond a PC that needs to pose a challenge to a number of PCs.  Some ancient vampire gets more actions because he's an ancient vampire.  He's an ancient vampire, not a munchkin.  Him having more attacks shouldn't make your PCs cry foul or wonder why they don't-- it's part of what he is that they aren't.  If they do complain for some reason: "If you become a vampire and live a thousand years, sure, you might have extra attacks, too; just not in the scope of this campaign." 
B) Your job as GM is to create a challenge for your players.  NPC villains don't follow the exact same build restrictions as players do for this reason.  To create a valid challenge, you can either make a super-bloated singular creature that might accidentally TPK the group because it's too strong, or give them an opponent that's balanced but has more attacks to do it.  Guess which of the two I recommend?


To sum up: It's not "because I'm the GM and I said so," it's "because this creature is ridiculously powerful and this is how we can represent it in a fair, fun and balanced way."

[InFerrumVeritas]

This is why I created a Hydra, actually.  It allowed me to make actions against multiple characters and keep the fight going long enough to be a challenge.

I'll see if I can dig up my final write-up. 

[ways and means]

I have done something similar with a villain who used telekinetics to wield multiple weapons at once. Also having your villains focus on the more dangerous and squishy wizards is a good way to extend fights especially for speedster who can hit them first before their magic obliterates half the villains stress (this can seriously annoy wizard PC).

[pokken]

The best way to do this, done in other FATE games, is to give the boss multiple actions or make it a "modular" creature-- it's narratively a single creature, but is built like multiple characters and has multiple actions.  A classic example is a Dragon.  You'd build its' tail, it's maw, and each of its arms/claws as separate characters.  They each get an action during each exchange (maintaining action economy) and they (probably) share stress boxes between them (at the cost of remaining in the same, or nearby zones as you'd expect).  Stat the skills of each piece as makes sense. 
Maybe each piece has different Aspects and players can declare which they're attacking for max benefit.  "The tail has the Aspect, 'Not Being Watched,' right?"
Maybe the claws make grapples while the tail maneuvers or establishes blocks and the maw bites or uses a "breath weapon" of some kind.

Dragon (4-part)
Physical Track:
_{(Claws provide:)} [][][][] _{(Tail provides:)} [][] _{(Maw provides:)} [][] (+ Extra for the Endurance skill rating each piece might posess)
etc.

Already tougher, and it hasn't even taken Toughness (on any of its pieces), yet.
Perhaps allow people to take out pieces of it as you go along-- after all, if they hack at the tail exclusively, it's gonna get chopped off / wounded beyond use, right?

Be creative -- Think outside the box.

This is awesome. I can't believe I didn't think of that one. I have taken the approach of having my infrequent 'big bad' things have multiple actions as needed (say, claw, bite, breathe fire) to keep things exciting and spread the damage around.

Giving different 'actors' different stress boxes! Great.

[Sanctaphrax]

The suggestions here are workable, but they aren't my style. I prefer to run NPCs on the same mechanics as PCs.

So, here's what I do:

First of all, I completely ignore the guidelines in Your Story. They're not useful.

Secondly, I ensure that singular opponents are hella tough. I favour defence over offence. The guy needs to absorb the best Evocations the players can throw, and the combined attacks of multiple characters. I find that size powers are both mechanically and thematically suitable.

Thirdly, I find a way to spread the baddy's attacks across the party. A villain that straight-up kills one player each turn is no fun. So use zone attacks, spray attacks, and whatever else you can to get more than one player at once. This often means custom Powers. Extra Appendages, Dangerous Aura, Damage Shield, and the various area attack powers are good for this.

[AstronaughtAndy]

Minions. All of them. BBEG dont get to be BBEG without a horde of minions.

In Spirit of the Century, minions act in groups, gaining a bonus to their rolls based on their numbers (its like +1/3-4 in a group I think). A BBEG can attach himself to a group of minions, getting the bonus for being in a group, and the minion's stress boxes fill up before the BBEG's.

Another idea I had was to make "things" into characters. Maybe the BBEG has a cloud of dark energy that surrounds him that lashes out at his enemies, maybe he has an enchanted sword or shield that protects him. These "things" would have their own stats and stunts and initiative all while being part of the background. Smart characters could find ways to target and neutralize these.

[Orladdin]

As an aside, and I hope this doesn't derail the thread too much, but AstronaughtAndy, I'm curious:

(click to show/hide)

Why do you have a picture of Bono as your forum avatar? 

[Becq]

There is never a blanket answer to an ethical question.  This includes questions about Bono avatars.