Quick way to stat opponents

[khorboth]

I've seen this question a lot in many different forms. "How do you balance a combat encounter?" "How do you rate combat effectiveness?" "How tough shoud a boss/minion/mook be?" I've seen lots of answers and even tried myself, but never been satisfied. Then, last night, inspiration struck. Maybe it's good or maybe it'll get flaws exposed, but here goes.

First, track a few stats for all PCs (you're probably doing this already):
Dodge
Highest active defense
Highest weapon skill
DR
HP

For a weak foe, just grab the minimum value from the party for all values. They should be able to handle a small crowd of these without great problems.

For moderate foes, use the median* values. The party should be able to handle an equal number of these with some difficulty.

For a credible threat, grab the maximum value for all values. A party of 4-6 will have a hard fight on their hands with one of these.

So... what do my fellows think? Is it fast & easy? Does it scale right? Seem reasonable? I haven't playtested yet, but... it seems right to me.

*median is simply the value in the middle. If you have 5 PCs, take the 3rd highest for each value. If you have 6, go between places 3 and 4. This is usually really easy to eyeball.

[Gnome]

Just from first glance, in a typical fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue type party, the fighter will have highest in all of these, so a single enemy with all max values won't be much of a threat. I would say a typical "boss" is far superior to the PCs in some interesting way, and perhaps in all ways.

[Stormcrow]

This is very similar to the way the Rune RPG by Robin Laws works. You write down the characters' main stats in columns, then circle the second-lowest values for each stat. This collection represents an Equal foe. If you're fighting Equal foes, these are their stats. If you're fighting something harder or easier, you apply a table of bonuses and penalties to fight anything from Pitiful to Terrifying.

Of course, the point of the Rune game is combat for its own sake, and everyone plays a "fighter," so it's fairly easy to compare the usefulness of stats. Furthermore, the designer of an encounter has to budget encounter points for stronger foes, so there is more to consider than just whether they think the challenge is too great.

As a first-order estimation of purely mundane combat, this might do. It doesn't consider HT rolls, spells, or most exotic or supernatural advantages. For instance, if a character has weak weapon skills and low hit points but possesses Substantiality that allows you to Affect Substantial things, your system doesn't take that into account at all.

D&D encounter strength calculations (at least the older ones I'm familiar with) assume that a character's level is representative of the strength of ALL the abilities that character may possess. That's why it does have some validity as an encounter-strength meter. GURPS has no such correspondence.

[copeab]

Fudge the numbers, but not in an obvious way. Always worked for me.

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Just from first glance, in a typical fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue type party, the fighter will have highest in all of these, so a single enemy with all max values won't be much of a threat. I would say a typical "boss" is far superior to the PCs in some interesting way, and perhaps in all ways.

This is an excellent point. Even if the party has multiple fighters or if a rogue-type has a better dodge or active defense, the overall effect will be very close to matching a fighter at the party's power level.

Perhaps party-low is right for mooks, party-high (with no tricks) is right for minions and... we need something else easy for boss-level threats.