Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Does anyone have advice for creating combat encounters for a single player?

I'm GM'ing a Conan campaign for a friend of mine, but he ends up recovering from wounds after each session. Even the weakest opponents injure him enough to require a period of bed rest.

How to Be a GURPS GM recommends making the enemies attacks roughly equal to the PCs' DR, but even a large knife exceeds the average DR of leather (+1). He has decent weapon skills (14?), but he took the Struggling disadvantage, so he doesn't have great armor--only on his torso and groin. Still, I've presented opponents with no armor, and they still hurt him.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Conan has cinematic endurance. Be sure to get related traits in outrageous amounts. The various cinematic combat options are probably also suitable for this kind of game.

Although Conan famously loses his armor a lot, there's no reason he can't find or earn armor even if he's got Struggling wealth. This doesn't control how much stuff you have.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I've run a couple of mini-campaigns like this, as well as single-character adventures during downtime periods of multi-character campaigns. A few things I found useful:

• NPC allies. This is the most obvious option! I don't mean capital-A Allies – the NPCs can be hirelings, or just untrustworthy or temperamental in a way no player would tolerate from Allies that cost points. Make sure the PC is just about always leading a force, being followed by admirers, guarding someone with powerful healing abilities but not combat abilities, etc. Even a big dog can help tank foes and soak hits. Optionally, let the player run more than one PC, if you and your player both feel up to it.
  
  
• Permit spending character points in combat. Switch on Buying Success (p. B347), Flesh Wounds (p. B417), and the more extravagant options in GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys in combat situations. You might use regular character points, but if you have that supplement, you could introduce another kind of points. These are limited resources, so they're not the same as an "I win!" button. Once they run out . . .
  
  
• Allow Second Winds. If you have GURPS Action 2: Exploits, this rule on p. 38 is a good way to deal with minor injuries.
  
  
• Everybody's a ninja when they're alone (or out of points). Set up quests so that frontal combat isn't always the right approach. Have combat skills serve not only to let the hero cross swords, but also to enable them to snipe, backstab, blindside, etc. with great effectiveness. This might be the only way to complete some missions, the safer alternative for others, or a fallback tactic when out of character points and/or FP for Flesh Wounds and Second Winds.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

These are good ideas.

I avoided some of the more cinematic advantages when I set up the campaign, but that might have been a mistake. I always allow my players to take a level of Luck, but often they don't avail themselves. Still, I need to start reminding him that he can buy successes.

Luckily, I have GURPS Action 2: Exploits. I just haven't explored all of it, so I will check out p. 38 for minor injuries. I don't have Power-Ups 5, but I can pick it up.

I need to re-acquaint myself with the Flesh Wounds and Second Wind mechanics.

Thanks again, Kromm and Stormcrow. This is helpful! 🙂

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I've been known to make Luck mandatory . . . I've run more campaigns where I've done that than ones where I haven't. People who want to play the "lucky guy" just take more than the baseline Luck level.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I'd suggest more NPC allies. Ultimately no matter what you do to toughen the character he'll face things that are dangerous and will be injured. Even if they're not combatnats, just having someone who's hiding during the fight and lures the enemy off so you can be rescued after you fall is a win.

Also expect that Conan will take a sword to the chest and it will take him out of the fight. Lots of Conan books had sections where he was recovering from an injury and dealing with more subtle intrigue. Have downtime stuff ready for when he's resting up to get back into the fight.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I need to start doing that. For some reason, my players avoid it otherwise.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

It's very interesting topic. Are there any chances of any possibility of something like "How to be GURPS GM: Solo Campaigns" to be published in the future? Not only for combat encounters, but generally about playing like that. It's somewhat hard "style" of gaming, requiring more effort from both GM and Player.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

This subject interests me! GURPS pours most of its energy into projects aimed at gamers who are many supplements deep and many years in – and given the extremely scarce resources GURPS has to work with, that certainly comes at the cost of support for players just starting to play the game. Expanding How to Be a GURPS GM into a series is a fascinating proposition . . . and your suggestion would make a reasonable part of such a series. Please let me think about it, and thank you for the idea!

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Realistically, fights result in injuries and injuries result in lots of down time. I don't think the problem is actually about single-player games, its about play style and genre.



Most combat heavy games either need "partial failure" conditions other than wounded, access to rapid healing tech, or to mostly be about fights you have good odds to win.



I don't think that changing the number of characters in a party actually fullfills any of those, unless the enemies aren't scaled as well. But if you have 5 close fights in a row, you'll probably come out of it all banged up.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

It occurs to me that the "genre" of Conan involves lots of downtime between individual short stories. All Ezra has to do is calculate how much time it will take to heal after an adventure and start the next adventure some time after that. The next Conan story begins...

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I'm not as certain.

No matter what your genre or style, the rules make it difficult for one person to defeat, say, five . . . but trivial for an adventuring party of 10 to beat the same five. In warfare, there's a very strong correspondence between odds ratios and casualties. This is why – all other things being equal (troop quality, leadership, terrain, etc.) – GURPS Mass Combat gives my 5:1 odds for the NPC enemies about 2.5× the casualties for the PCs and 0.25× the casualties for the NPCs as it gives my 2:1 for the PCs.

This is borne out in tactical combat, too. Five NPC foes, however lousy, can outflank a single PC and stab them in the back – and once a lone fighter goes down, there are no threats remaining to prevent a curb-stomping to make sure they stay down (it's difficult to explain why people who need 5:1 odds to feel sure of their attack wouldn't do that). Plus there's the effect of the weight of numbers on lucky critical successes which can render being worth lots of points with high defenses irrelevant. And then there's the fact that a PC with allies has infinitely better odds of having a pal with thick armor who can "tank," someone to watch their back, a healer, or all three.

My feeling is that unless you interpret "play style" as "never getting in fights" – which isn't likely to work in, say, a Conan game – numbers have a heavy impact on PC injury. Yes, one could run a game where there are no physical conflicts, or where enemies are always shot from ambush or poisoned, but that's not compatible with very many play styles at all. It certainly limits the player who doesn't want to play a talker or an assassin, but a straight-up warrior. As for genre, I think the number of popular gaming genres that support "no fights," "no warriors," or "everybody's an assassin" is pretty tiny.

So all told, I'm still convinced that single-player campaigns benefit from adding a team of NPCs to surround foes, protect the PC's back, tank hits, and heal the hero. If you have one of each (flanker, rearguard, tank, and healer), then in the case where an NPC foe takes a shot at the hero and their pals, you've already diluted the odds of a serious hit by a factor of five! The unlucky NPC can then rest and heal without slowing down the hero, who still has three other friends to dilute hits.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

That's a valid take. I believe to make it work, the GM needs to have enemies always charge frontally and/or attack one at a time, so the outnumbered lone hero isn't flanked and backstabbed, which with GURPS' lethality is much worse than "you'll need to heal some." This is easier with a "theatre of the mind" approach than with a battle map, because the GM can more easily have the time it takes the next bad guy to reach the hero be magically equal to the time it takes the hero to defeat the current bad guy. In tactical combat, it's much harder to explain why an NPC is just standing around taking Do Nothing maneuvers, and not circling behind the PC.

I suppose that's "play style" in a sense, though it's a result of there being a single PC, not a choice most GMs would likely make if there were several PCs, some with abilities that require a battle map to shine. Ultimately, it's still really about numbers, not style of play.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Now I'm thinking of Macaulay's poem "Horatius," where the Etruscan army, nearly a hundred thousand strong, is coming to conquer Rome. They can be stopped if the bridge over the Tiber is brought down—but there isn't time before they arrive. So the captain of the gate, Horatius, volunteers to lead three men to hold the far side of the bridge. "In yon strait place a thousand/May well be stopped by three./Now who will stand to either hand/And keep the bridge with me?"

And because Macaulay is emulating heroic popular ballads, it works. At the end the wounded Horatius swims the Tiber in full armor—but none of the Etruscans swim after him.

The other two guys on Horatius's left and right could be convenient NPCs. . . .

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Conan also usually has a huge discrepancy in the abilities of Conan vs his opponents. It may be 10 to one odds, but those may be 50 point soldiers vs the 500 point Conan. He’s got weapon master for multiple parries, and HT 20 to keep him up and fighting long after others would have dies from the wounds that do get through. And there’s still superior tactics so it’s rarely a situation where they are able to surround him and attack from the back.

Where there is usually trouble it’s from Magic or monsters that can’t be killed until you target their weak spot.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Single PC's are much more difficult to balance encounters for, I agree, and fighting lots of enemies gets easier when you have a buddy or two to watch your back.



So it terms of making it so that fights are more lopsided, adding NPC support helps a lot. You can also add more points to the character, though you end up with completely over-the-top competent and lucky guys that way.



But if the GM is aiming for close fights, I don't know that PC's get injured that less often.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I did a bunch of test fights in the somewhat-recent past. Even with high-point-level PCs against barely-trained mooks, you can take one enemy easily, sometimes two, but once you get to three opponents, there's guaranteed to be one at your back that can All-Out.

"real-time" example for giggles

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Anecdotally, while I've mostly GM'd multi-player campaigns – where "multi" was in the 6-13 range – I've run a lot of side-quests where one PC went off and did stuff on their own. Those were usually during times when the other players were unavailable to play. To prevent social awkwardness of the "Why didn't my character know/see/follow/join in/come to the rescue?" variety, I set things up so that the active PC was someplace the other players couldn't easily argue their characters could observe or go. Thus, the active PC was essentially playing in a temporary single-player campaign.

Because these were spinoffs from multi-player campaigns, there were two elephants in the room, both related to numbers:

1. The player of the active PC was accustomed to using tactics that assumed the existence of allies. Not just in combat, either! They were used to having or being some sort of wingman or right hand even in stealth and social situations.
   
   
2. The active PC had skills that filled a particular niche for the party, and wasn't a generalist. Thus, there were things in and out of combat they simply couldn't do.

I quickly learned that these particular pachyderms weren't things my players found fun to experience or to work around. They wanted to be able to "do their thing" – use their favorite tactics and focus on their chosen niche – even on side-quests. I could've been unyielding and said, "Too bad! You can't!", but that's not my style. Also, it isn't a good way to retain players. So instead, I made sure the PCs quickly accumulated temporary companions.

The trick here is to suit the companions to the PC. Here are a few examples I used in actual play:

• When the necromancer went off alone, it was relatively easy: a bunch of zombies. In combat, these were an adequate screening force, keeping enemies at a distance while the mage cast spells. Out of combat, the PC didn't really need help; a huge IQ let them default or quickly learn most necessary noncombat skills at respectable levels. The wizard sometimes needed extra hands for noncombat physical tasks, but the zombies were able to carry gear and loot, and do manual labor (e.g., cut wood).
  
  
• When the general went off alone, it was also easy: I let him command a squad of soldiers (which I later insisted he buy as Allies . . . fair's fair). These let him fight much as he always did, and actually improved the player's fun, because he got to command, which the other PCs rarely let him do. Out of combat, these soldiers had had lives before taking up arms, and had adequate levels of skills like Carousing, First Aid, Streetwise, and Survival to be useful.
  
  
• When another wizard went off on her own, it was harder because she wasn't a necromancer who would logically have a force of undead. However, she was good with animals. She had a familiar – a huge falcon that could scout and hunt – and a trained horse with above-average IQ. Since the adventure was largely an extended research mission in the wilderness, that was all she needed. Between always spotting ambushers (falcon) and being able to ride away at high speed (horse), she simply avoided fights.
  
  
• And when the nobleman went off on his own, he had retainers. Some were guards, others were servants with practical skills. I let this slide without charging for Allies, as the PC had tons of points in Status and Wealth that hadn't mattered one bit up to that point. People who thought to waylay him for his wealth didn't live to regret it, because he just ordered archers to shoot them full of arrows (the irony here being that he was a master swordsman and probably could have beaten them . . .). He was a social god and thus had no difficulty at all out of combat.

In all cases, the important challenge afterward – not relevant to a true single-player campaign! – was to avoid obviating the importance of the other PCs when everyone was reunited again. This was easy: I just increased the challenge level of the adventures, so that animals, conscript soldiers, ordinary servants, or zombies wouldn't last two seconds. I justified this simply by saying that the group quests weren't narrow-focus missions undertaken by someone strong at those kinds of missions in the pursuit of their specialized interests, but broad-focus, epic adventures that demanded a crack team of diverse experts.

Take or leave those ideas as you wish!

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Which is why Book Conan, when he is fighting large numbers of opponents, makes sure to keep his back to the wall.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Since Conan is a cinematic character, I would not be surprised if he had DR 10 (Semi-Ablative, -20%; Tough Skin, -40%) [20]. He survives a lot of damage, but the damage does start telling on him after a while, so the above build would let him absorb 110 damage before his DR was completely negated. If you combine it with ST 20, HT 14, and Very Fit, you have a character that could take a lot of punishment.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I don't see how Conan has ablative DR10. He's certainly got some DR through Tough Skin, but not that much. Instead, he's got a lot of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue, not to mention a lot of Hit Points and Health. He's also got a lot of traits that help him avoid damage in the first place: he doesn't take lots of sword-thrusts to the abdomen that he just shrugs off.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

While there's a simulationist school of gamers who hate to "black box" anything, and who insist that a dodge must be stepping aside, a parry must involve weapon-on-weapon contact, etc. – and, reversing description and mechanics, who insist that anything described as a cut must correspond to injury and thus contact, anything described as avoided must correspond to no injury and thus no contact, etc. – I find the game more satisfying if one doesn't do that.

Instead, many of a hero's "injuries" in a novel are successful defenses that mean no injury in the game, and just a symbol for "I've been in combat!", explaining why those wounds don't seem to matter one scene or chapter later. Likewise, when a hero who needs time to recover from combat in a novel despite no explicit mention of a particular wound, this is a symbol for "I've been injured!", and would mean missing HP in game terms. And you can read it the other way too: HP lost in game can be "black boxed" after combat as just the result of a strenuous fight with lots of frantic defending, while the hero who has lost no HP in game can be treated dramatically as having many injuries, none of them serious.

This helps avoid the need for strange traits that crank up injury-taking capacity, be those inhuman numbers of HP, ablative DR, or some other thing. For the most part, injury-taking capacity or its lack is rated by active defense scores.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I agree. It's realistic that a person will need weeks of recovery after a fight with even a pickpocket wielding a small knife. I think I erred by not implementing enough of the cinematic options. When I prepared this campaign, the grittiness of the Hyborian setting influenced me towards realism, but in retrospect, grittiness does not necessarily mean realistic. Conan is pulp, after all.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

One option is more based on GMing style than rules.
As the GM allow the player more time to gain the tactical or narrative advantage in combat. The advantage of having one player is that you don't need to split the focus, so you can let the player take as much time as they want to arrange the fight, stealth, pre fight positioning, intimidation and dirty tricks all can help.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

By the way: see also pages B496–7, "Keeping the Characters Alive." It's pretty much the Basic Set's answer to the question.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

I've played large amounts of combat-heavy games with single players, (even in The Fantasy Trip, where there are no defense rolls, and armor reduces your DX as much as it protects you, and death is at 0 or -1, and there is very little if any magic healing available, and it takes two days of bed rest to heal each point of damage not healed by first aid) without undue PC death or constant hospitalization.

The main things that I find work without forced balance and gameyness such as having the universe magically provide only opponents callibrated to lose have been:

1) Have the player learn combat tactics, in sessions where the player is told to expect to lose a lot of characters. e.g. Do some sample arena combats, or simple sample combat games, or "funnel" adventures, or whatever, until they learn what tactics work, and what gets you killed. Have them learn the importance, possibility, and ways of avoiding or greatly reducing getting seriously hurt.

2) Don't restrict the player group to only one PC. Let the PC join others, make friends, earn comrades, recruit or hire helpers, or run multiple characters (then if one does get badly hurt, they can rest while the other(s) do things) etc.

3) Encourage appropriate caution.

4) Accept that getting wounded some times, and healing, and having to stay alive in such situations, is an interesting part of the game.

And also, though it really doesn't come up a whole lot, except for the weaker NPC comrades:

5) Accept that the risk of death and serious injury is also a vital and interesting part of the game. If you expect to always survive, and not to have to figure out how to avoid death, and really have that be at stake, then you're undermining most of the challenge, interest, logic and point of the situations supposedly in play.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Apart from any "artistic integrity" concerns, giving Conan Ablative DR means he can't be knocked out with a blow to the head from behind out of combat, and so forth, which seems rather against the spirit of '30s pulp. If I desired to stat up "resilience points", I would probably look at a pool of points to be spent on defensive Impulse Buys.

("Damage Resistance as substitute hit points" also interfaces very poorly with armor divisors. There are many valid responses when a Barbarian Hero opposes you, but any set of rules that makes "switch to bodkin arrows" one of the best ones is problematic).

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

In the end, getting into fights, even if they're easy, will eventually result in bad rolls getting you wounded. Getting into fights where you feel a concern about losing will do so faster. This is not a distinctive feature of single player campaigns.

Re: Combat in Single-Player Campaigns
 

Conan is a extremely cinematic setting, it may seem gritty but that is in the descriptions, not in "the rules of the world".

Basically you can have a very cinematic game and explain things like "flesh wounds" as "The enemy cut your arm and you feel week for a moment from the pain but your willpower overcomes the pain quickly and you fight on with blood dripping from your arm" or whatever.

For me at least when reading Conan, i definitely got the idea that Conan had "plot protection". That is presented in Gurps with things like luck and buying success.

As for the single player combat:
-A combatant should find a way to not be flanked- be it terrain, mobility, npc allies or whatever.
-the single combatant should definitely have luck
-they should have abilities like weapon master to allow for multiple parries and such or high enough dodge to make it a viable defense.
-They should have some emergency. best likely to be limited, way to recover from bad things. so things like flesh wounds might well work as the character point burn definitely limits it.