[Balance - Worked Example] Your basic Orc encounter

[Nymdok]

What we're Working With and References

The PDF is Here

We will be using Mailankas Orc Warriors Found Here.

and we will be using 5 of the standard Example Party Memebers that I recomend. These arent meant to represent a real party, thery are simply a reference to use and something to hang numbers around, not unlike a dress maker's dummy.

 
Attack:16
DMG:1d+3
DR:3
AD:14   HT:12
HP:13   FP:13

Now based on these metrics and the sheet:

Monster(Axe) Vs Dummy Party Member
15 v 14 = 15%
2D+2 vs DR 3 = 6
Per Turn Expected Damage = 6*15%* 1.5 Cutting = 1.35 per turn per orc.

DPM vs Orc
16 v 10 = 50%
1d+3 vs DR 2 = 4.5
PTED = 4.5 x 50% x 1.5 (Cutting) = 3.375 per turn per party member

So one on one, a DPM can cut down an Orc in about 20x2/3.5 or about 12 rounds. Going the other way, an Orc can kill a DPM in about 20 rounds (13 x 2)/1.35. So in 12 rounds, the DPMs will win and sustain about 16 damage each putting them in the negative!

Thats a little steepr that what we're looking for, so lets look at 4 on 5.

5 DPMS doing 3.375 each against 4 orcs with 20 hp each

4 x 20 x 2
__________
5 x 3.375

Gives us about 10 rounds.


In that 10 rounds the Orcs do 1.35 x 4 x 10 = 54 points of damage. Divided by 5 means that each memebrs going to average about 11 Damage each.

Balance and Difficulty

So for Mailankas Orc Warriors vs The Dummy/Example Party Members

4 v 5 - Easy, will take about 10 rounds as few if any will risk Death or Unconciousness but some light healing will be needed.

5 v 5 - Moderate as it will take 12 rounds and 100% of the Parties HP and the average memebr WILL risk unconciousness, but not Death.

6 v 5 - Difficult and Will take about 14 rounds and almost 200% of the Parties HP. The party will take Roughly 24 Damage Each. and almost all will be at risk of Death!. For this encounter, the GM will need to make sure a strong healer is near by or that the party carries many potions.

My Party Doesnt look anything like the "Example/Dummy" party!

No problem scale like this:

Balance Points
Hit @ 50%
Party Skill is top line, Orc active defense is second line.

 
Skill 10 11 12-13 14-16 18 20 22 24
AD     3  7    9     10 11 12 13 14

Dmg of 4.5 per turn before wounding
Party Dmg is along top line Orc DR is second line

 
DMG: 1D+1 2D 3D 4D 5D 6D
DR  :  0   4  6  9 15 17

My party has an average of 68 HP each, How do I scale to match that?

Simple. Take the Orc PTED and scale it linearly to match by increasing the damage.

Avg HP vs Orc Damage

 
 7 13  20   26 33   39
.5  1  1.5  2  2.5  3

So if the Party has avg 26 HP then the orcs should be doing twice as much damage. Dont worry about fiddling the Skill/AD Knob, just tweak the damage to suit. So in this case, the 2d+2 vs DR 3 gives you 6. To get 12 we need 15 DMg vs DR 3 which means we need 4D +1. [4x(3.5)+1 = 15]

I dont Have 5 members in the Party.

Its the ratio here that really matters .8 orcs to 1 Party Member should be easy. Only have 3? THa gives you 2.4 Orcs. Since you cant have .4 of an orc, you can either round up to 3 for a more challenging encounter, or down to 2 for something easier.

My Mages Wont Last X Turns at full strength, they dont have the mana!

In that case, work the problem in 2 parts. Do the first several turns with the Magery and FP burn, the second part with whateer his next melee skill is. Or you could simply reduce the Number of orcs to make the encounter shorter.

DONE

So BAM! YOu should now be able to scale an encouter of Mailankas Orcs for a 50 point 8 peasant party, 2 Swashbucklers, a Knight and a Wizard in Dungeon fantasy, and any thing in between.

Nymdok

[Phoenix_Dragon]

It's an interesting idea, but raw DPS is only a small factor in the fight, and one devoid of any tactical options or choices on the part of either party. In fact, doing a quick comparison, I can't think of the last fight I've had in my current fantasy campaign where the PCs would have had superior DPS-positioning indicated by these examples. Going by this example, the party should have not only lost its last major fight, but lost horribly. Instead, they completely dominated the fight, despite the enemies having much higher defenses than indicated by this, and numbers being 2:1 in the enemy's favor (Three times what's suggested here). And the fight starting with the PCs in fire.

It also seems to overlook the tipping balance during a fight. Almost half the PC's hits in this example (Or, almost one quarter of their full-skill no-tricks attacks) will be major wounds. Any orc is only going to last 2-3 hits on average. Actually, fewer, because this average-PC-damage rather depreciates the worth of high-damage front-line fighters when including lower-damage supporting cast. Which means it's very likely an orc goes down in the first couple seconds, if the party is playing smart, and with a good chance they haven't scored any notable hits on the PCs yet (Again, frontline fighters are likely to have the higher defenses). Once it starts, the momentum builds.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

It's an interesting idea, but raw DPS is only a small factor in the fight, and one devoid of any tactical options or choices on the part of either party. In fact, doing a quick comparison, I can't think of the last fight I've had in my current fantasy campaign where the PCs would have had superior DPS-positioning indicated by these examples. Going by this example, the party should have not only lost its last major fight, but lost horribly. Instead, they completely dominated the fight, despite the enemies having much higher defenses than indicated by this, and numbers being 2:1 in the enemy's favor (Three times what's suggested here). And the fight starting with the PCs in fire.

It also seems to overlook the tipping balance during a fight. Almost half the PC's hits in this example (Or, almost one quarter of their full-skill no-tricks attacks) will be major wounds. Any orc is only going to last 2-3 hits on average. Actually, fewer, because this average-PC-damage rather depreciates the worth of high-damage front-line fighters when including lower-damage supporting cast. Which means it's very likely an orc goes down in the first couple seconds, if the party is playing smart, and with a good chance they haven't scored any notable hits on the PCs yet (Again, frontline fighters are likely to have the higher defenses). Once it starts, the momentum builds.

I admit freely that DPS is a somewhat thin metric around which to base balance, but I dont know of a better one. As to the PCs recent successes, I cant really speak to them without knowing more context, but congratulations to them!

Actually at 1D + 3 vs 2 DR and 20 HP hp NONE of them wil be > .5 HP so NONE of them will be major wounds.

Using the Average as a Balance actually increases Frontline Fighter value a bit as they will be above the norm to which the monsters are set.

I dont know how you mean 'Any orc is only going to last 2-3 hits on average'. It could be as many as 14 (Min damage of 2 x 1.5 cut = 3) or as Few as 4. (7x 1.5 cut = 10).

Your right, Frontline fighters DO normally have higher defenses and better DR, but not everyone in a party is (normally) a frontline fighter. At any rate, scaling to the party average, and keeping a ratio of .8 Orc warriors to 1 Party member should normally leave a party thats 40% frontline fighter with some decisions to make.

If your ENTIRE PARTY is frontline fighters, then scaling the orcs to meet them will actually result in a more difficult challenge.


Nymdok

[generic mook]

Shouldn't an orc be a mediocre fighter?

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by generic mook

Shouldn't an orc be a mediocre fighter?

Well it depends on how you build your orcs and what you mean by mediocre :)

If you make your Orcs mediocre does that mean low weapon skill? SHould they be mediocre compared to the world setting or to the players?

If you mean that they should have weapons skill < 12 , then for a party that has AD averaging 14, they'll hit less than 10% of the time, so unless they are packing HUGE damage and enough HP to buy them the time to fish for that haymaker, they simply wont be much of a challenge for a party. Now if they have Weapon skill 12 and the party has AD 10, then that is of course a much different story.

In short, the goal here is to be able to build monsters to challenge a party hopefully without killing them.

Nymdok

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by generic mook

Shouldn't an orc be a mediocre fighter?

Why?

If he lives in a society where social advancement and procreation is decided nearly exclusively by the warrior spirit one exhibits, no, he should probably be better in every way than an individual human.

Certainly, that's how individual orcs are in my world. Fearsome warriors, but worse at teamwork than the more individually weak humans.

[Ragitsu]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Why?

Because quite a few (not all, but this is so much a given to almost not needed to be said) settings have orcs that are enemies which, barring the few truly skilled warriors in the tribe/clan, are easily vanquished. The threat they pose, then, comes in their numbers.

[SuedodeuS]

On OP: I like it. Oh, certainly, it ignores a lot of things like tactics (degrading defenses, flanking, etc), HT rolls to stay conscious (it simply assumes death at -1xHP), and party structure, but it looks like it would serve to be a fairly decent approximation of encounter difficulty.

On orcs: Orcs are generally mooks. Of course, my perception of what makes a "mook" is colored by the anime Noir, wherein they were highly trained assassins who nonetheless died in droves at the hands of the main characters. Orcs are very similar - they are exceptional warriors who nonetheless stand little to no chance against the heroes. Note the "exceptional" part there - they are going to be far stronger than your average human soldier. Average soldiers should stand no chance against an orc - but heroes are anything but average!
Note also that the first occurrences (to the best of my knowledge) of orcs as enemies are in the works of Tolkien, wherein even the heroes generally prefer to avoid combat with them. When the heroes do start hacking away at the orcs, it isn't same-old same-old, routine work - it's (at least a lesser) Crowning Moment of Awesome/Badass. It would be interesting to go back to this, but I think modern games kind of ruin this possibility.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by SuedodeuS

On OP: I like it. Oh, certainly, it ignores a lot of things like tactics (degrading defenses, flanking, etc), HT rolls to stay conscious (it simply assumes death at -1xHP), and party structure, but it looks like it would serve to be a fairly decent approximation of encounter difficulty.

I dont think I can account for strategy/tactics in a generalized form. The best I can hope for is that the GM will recognize tactically gifted players and assign a higher difficulty. In addition, Im relying on the GM to account for extra effort as well and figure that into the average if hes alowing those rules.

HT rolls to stay concious is sort of a self solving problem I think. See the clever bit is the unconcious part, you gotta make that check every turn. Even at an effective 14 HT, your not likely to make more than 7 in a row, and even if you do, you'll be taking damage next round which will push you lower causing penalties etc.

Party Structure I ALSO didn't figure up. I assume that GMS will use the tables to scale to their party Averages. Of couse the designers of old AD&D encounters didnt know the parties either, but they got it pretty close. :)

Originally Posted by SuedodeuS

On orcs: Orcs are generally mooks. Of course, my perception of what makes a "mook" is colored by the anime Noir.... Orcs are very similar - they are exceptional warriors who nonetheless stand little to no chance against the heroes. ....Note also that the first occurrences (to the best of my knowledge) of orcs as enemies are in the works of Tolkien, wherein even the heroes generally prefer to avoid combat with them. When the heroes do start hacking away at the orcs, it isn't same-old same-old, routine work - it's (at least a lesser) Crowning Moment of Awesome/Badass. It would be interesting to go back to this, but I think modern games kind of ruin this possibility.

I come from a 1ed AD&D Background where they were 1d-1 monsters that were pretty much fodder/mooks by the time a Fighter got to 5th level.

This is most certainly NOT the only way to do an Orc as they've come into some respectability in the last few years due to Warcraft I II and III, Blood Bowl, WOW, Magic:TG and other areas.

The point is that, using these tables, if your playing DF heroes and want Orcs as fodder, you can adjust thier stats to get you that, see this thread. If you want them to be Fantasy Worthies, you can use the tables to get that, and if your playing peasant adventurers or Hobbits and want a single orc to be a boss fight, you can do that as well.

The real goal in this thread is to try to prove out the mechanics of 'one encounter can fit all' if scaled the right way.

The Thread I linked to shows that I can get it about right for a one on one combat, but to be able to write univeral adventures, I need ot be able to get entire encounters that will be just as fun for 100 point charachters as they are for 800 point Charachters. Im hoping that by posting a few of these worked examples, I can get some people to playtest and see if I cant get a little feed back that will help me improve the model.

Nymdok

[Ragitsu]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

This is most certainly NOT the only way to do an Orc as they've come into some respectability in the last few years due to Warcraft I II and III, Blood Bowl, WOW, Magic:TG and other areas.

Originally Posted by Bruno

You can do orcs any way you like.

Yes. This is obvious. The point was brought up to explain WHY the average gamer sees them as cannon/blade fodder.