Monster Design (Ares)

[sao]

I’m working on monster design right now for a game. Who wants to help? Some of the players involved may be reading so I don’t want to share too many specifics but I’m looking at four component ‘mooks’ in the 13th Age sense and one ‘boss’.

What’s a good way to balance NPCs versus PCs in Ares? Do you guys find it better to use combat code or to use a general NPC number for versus against PC numbers (I find this more cinematic but is it less accurate)?

I want to make a challenging, maybe even a brutal fight, and my players for this aren’t afraid of serious injury, but I don’t want it to just be… you know, frustrating. Victory should be possible but not a foregone conclusion, you know?

[Tat]

@sao

One important thing to know is that in FS3, NPCs auto-KO at a -7 damage mod. That means that one good incap can take them down regardless of their dice. It’s one of the reasons FS3 doesn’t scale well for Big Bads - it’s hard to manage a ‘death of a thousand cuts’ like you may want for a true Boss fight. The one time I think I did this successfully, I actually changed the code to remove the auto-KO (or raise it insanely high, I can’t remember which).

If you do use FS3, play with the ‘wounds’ modifier in your boss dice - this basically makes them take less damage (ie, it could knock that incap down to an impaired), which in turn lowers their damage mod.

As for doing it outside of combat, you definitely can, but it’s IMO harder to track and will definitely simplify things - for better and for worse. For example, FS3 tracks which defense skill and which attack skill you should use, etc. If you just do vs rolls, it may shortchange some players if you’re not careful what you’re rolling (and you’ll have to determine damage yourself) - but it would probably also give you more fine-tuned control, so if you really want cinematic that you can rely on, that might be better.

You might also consider creating some special ‘weapons’ for your big bad that let you use ‘explode’, because they let you target more people - otherwise action economy can eat you.

Beyond that, I think FS3 works best with ‘wave’ combat that lets you be flexible (think DA2), because it IS so hard to predict what the dice will do.

[Tat]

here’s the FS3 damage chart btw: https://www.aresmush.com/fs3/fs3-3/combat.html#damage

Damage Level Wound Modifier
Graze 0
Flesh Wound 0.25
Impaired 2
Incapacitated 7

[sao]

my monster is designed, but my players ended up getting life eaten so I still haven’t run the thing. Can’t report back! Maybe one day.

[Roadspike]

Admin on the game can change the Damage Level Wound Modifier – so for instance if you don’t want Incap wounds to auto-KO, you could set that to 5, 6, or even 6.5 and NPCs wouldn’t auto-KO from a single Incap wound.

I’ve found that it’s very difficult to balance boss fights because action imbalance is a thing (particularly with each attack, successful or not, providing a -1 attack to the target through stress). But if you do want to do a boss fight, I’ve found it very important to control the battlefield. I like to do this through the use of ‘teams’ to represent areas of the battlefield (“Team 1 can attack Team 2 with melee and Team 3 with ranged, but can’t attack Team 4”) and through the use of mooks to keep PCs busy while also letting them contribute to the ‘finale.’ Having the big bad retreat after a big hit and get treated by a mook can help control the flow of the scene too.

Suppress can be fun and interesting, but both Distract and Subdue can be very frustrating for players if used on them, and for GMs if used on their Big Bad.

Explosive weapons can be extremely brutal, but are great for controlling the battlefield.

Ranged combat is more dangerous than melee combat, because ranged combat is defended (by default) by Reflex, and melee combat by Brawn+Melee (or whatever stat+skill you use for melee).

Cover (and stances in general) is very, very important in personnel combat, especially for Big Bads.

But my biggest suggestion is: Try it out a few times first. Test the combat with your own character(s) and NPCs using ‘combat/start mock’ to see if it “feels” right.

[Tat]

@Roadspike said in Monster Design (Ares):

Admin on the game can change the Damage Level Wound Modifier – so for instance if you don’t want Incap wounds to auto-KO, you could set that to 5, 6, or even 6.5 and NPCs wouldn’t auto-KO from a single Incap wound.

It’s important to note that this is universal, though - if you change it, it affects the PC damage mod as well as the NPC damage mod.

Explosive weapons can be extremely brutal, but are great for controlling the battlefield.

Significantly less brutal if you keep shrapnel off. Shrapnel’s a killer, though.

[Roadspike]

@Tat said in Monster Design (Ares):

It’s important to note that this is universal, though - if you change it, it affects the PC damage mod as well as the NPC damage mod.

Yup yup! Good point.

Significantly less brutal if you keep shrapnel off. Shrapnel’s a killer, though.

Shrapnel can be brutal indeed (and you can change the stats on Shrapnel if it’s too brutal for your game), but the ability to attack 3 people without any penalty is huge for crowd control even without shrapnel.

[Tat]

@Roadspike said in Monster Design (Ares):

Shrapnel can be brutal indeed (and you can change the stats on Shrapnel if it’s too brutal for your game), but the ability to attack 3 people without any penalty is huge for crowd control even without shrapnel.

Right, yeah, that’s what I meant by suggesting using it as a way to cut down on the action economy issue. What I meant was that WITH shrapnel, you’ll probably do more damage than you mean to, if you’re doing it repeatedly. Without shrapnel, it can function pretty well as ‘a dragon swipes three people with his massive claw’ or whatever - which allows your big bad to engage with 3 characters rather than 1, and cuts down on your need for mooks.

[Roadspike]

@Tat said in Monster Design (Ares):

Without shrapnel, it can function pretty well as ‘a dragon swipes three people with his massive claw’ or whatever - which allows your big bad to engage with 3 characters rather than 1, and cuts down on your need for mooks.

That’s a cool use for it. I’ve also played around with BIG baddies being represented by a series of “enemies” representing their various body-parts. Like you might have a Dragon Right Arm, Dragon Left Arm, Dragon Body, Dragon Head, and Dragon Wings. Each would need their own series of hitlocations and type in the settings, but then you can offset the action imbalance by having one enemy represented by 5-6 targets. It also means that a single lucky hit can’t end the encounter, and that you as the GM can decide how many body parts the PCs have to defeat on the fly.

[hellfrog]

might i suggest frogs

[sao]

@hellfrog The monster I designed is actually a swamp-based biological robot construct boss with four frog “cassette” mini-bosses that exist inside it. Because robots, but also frogs.