[HOE] Combiners

[Dusarat@aol.com]

Everyone seems to think that black hats are some elite fighting force...

95% of the Black hats are stupid thugs with big guns.  They should be played 
like that.Yes, stupid thugs with bug guns are enough to intimidate most 
towns.  Especially since Throckmorton has about a zillion of them.  Treat 
them as expendible, that's what Throckmorton does.  They're mean, brutish, 
bullies with all the ammo they could possibly want.  

More importantly, if the thugs are easy kills, it makes it more potent when 
The Combine brings in 'The Big Guns'.  Automatons are supposed to be 
intelligent killing machines.  Give them names, make THEM smart, have them 
talk.  Cyborgs are nigh invulnerable! Raptors.. don't even get me started.  
    And if you want to throw in a particularly smart Black Hat unit to show 
what they can do when they're bright (aka lead by a Red Hat), it's really 
only effective if the party has had an easy time with these guys before.  

If you make EVERYTHING hard, then you have nowhere to go when you need 
something to be tough.  I know this game is part horror, but in many games 
I've seen, when you make EVERY combat extremely hard, it becomes incredibly 
difficult to establish a villain as particularly tough.  
    A party needs some easy wins if only to make the difficult wins more 
dramatic.  When I run, I let my party go through the black hats like they're 
going out of style, if only to watch their pride level go up.  Then when 
something happens, like someone calls an Automaton unit in to clean up the 
problem, The mood appropriately goes from "We're bad asses!" to "uh oh.  We 
HAVE a problem".  

    It's all about drama and pacing.