[HoE] Balance of Power

["Steve Crow" <crow_steve@hotmail.com>]

As I noted earlier, just joined on to this list.  So perhaps this topic has 
been discussed to death before.  But as a problem which I've recently found 
to be somewhat irritating...

Does anyone have ideas/suggestions/formulae/whatever as how to balance NPCs 
vs. Posse members?

The problem I have noted in general, and one that occurs in some other games 
(anyone remember Torg - particularly Tharkold?), is that damage tends to 
exceed a target's ability to resist it by a pretty high degree.  Or to put 
it another way, you can put really powerful weapons (Miracles, Psyker 
abilities, just really big guns) on a relatively weak platform (any given 
character short of one in a Battlesuit).

Another problem, which is also similar to what I used to see in Torg, is 
that Posse types tend to have more in the way of "resistance" (Chips, or 
Possibility points + cards in Torg) then the NPCs.  All of a Marshal's NPC 
has access to (at most) 10 chips.  Meanwhile, _each_ Posse member can have 
up to 10 chips.

Another problem is that the NPC monsters that I've used to date tend to be a 
bit...well, weaker than the Posse.  Doombringers, for instance, strike me as 
rather weak, all things considered.  Their attributes aren't _that_ good, 
and their Miracles are okay, but typically the good ones are a bit on the 
slow side.

(And my Posse tends to do a lot better with Quickness/initiative/# of cards 
than I do as well.)

Now, I tend to err on the side of my Posse anyway (it takes me a lot longer 
to throw together 6 Doombringers then my players can put together six PCs, 
and they have a lot more invested in them).  But it tends to get a bit 
ridiculous these days.  An arbitrary "Just double the # of NPCs until PCs 
start dropping" suggestion is a bit more...blunt than I prefer.  And doesn't 
necessarily work anyway - how many Doombringers _are_ there towards the 
Mississippi (where my campaign is currently set)?  How many Lurkers can you 
throw at them?  How big can those Dogs O'War packs get?

I also don't have a problem with kicking up (for this example) Doombringer 
stats.  But again, any guidelines here would be appreciated.

Thanks.

---

Steve Crow

"Worm Can Opener Extraordinare"

Check out my website at:  http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/4991/


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