[4e] NPC vs NPC combat. How to balance?

[valadil]

I've seen posts about making PCs fight in 4e. The general consensus is that whomever drops the most dailies wins. But NPCs use different rules, so daily powers aren't an option. Has anyone tried having NPCs fight each other? How does it work out? Does it balance if you have even XP totals on each side of the fight?


Here's what I'm planning. PCs of mine, stay out!

Bear baiting. A bear is chained to the middle of a pit. Dogs are sent to attack the bear. People bet on whether the dogs or the bear win.

The PCs are in charge of throwing the fight, so the bear goes down in the third round.

Rather than simplify combat rules or just fiat how the fight goes, I've decided to play it out by giving each of the PCs a dog or two to play. (Ideally the dogs will have some interesting abilities. If it ends up being a series of attack rolls against AC, I'll just fiat the whole thing.) Anyway, I'm just not sure how to balance this. I've selected a Cave Bear (MM) to play the part of the bear. It's a level 6 elite brute. Throwing 20 Starved Dogs (FRCG) at it adds up XP-wise, but the dogs wouldn't stand a chance (not to mention being incredibly boring for the PCs to play).

Also forgot to mention, the dogs come in waves. The bear will kill 5-10 of them. Then more hounds are released. I suppose I should have an XP budget for each wave of dogs and treat them like separate encounters? That seems reasonable at first, but the bear isn't getting a rest between encounters (and if he did I wouldn't know what his surge value is - those are effectively built into his HP).

Any ideas for how to balance this? I'm also curious if anyone has suggestions for how to play it out. I'm not totally convinced my PCs will buy into it in the first place, so if anyone has ideas for how to hook them, I'm all ears.

[Yakk]

Honestly? The easiest way to balance it is to actually run the fight.

Throw 1d6+4 dogs per round at the bear, and see how many it takes to defeat the bear. Heck -- you could say that 1 of the dogs (per round) isn't a gimp dog like the rest.

Monsters in 4e are reasonably balanced -- within a factor of x3 of power -- but not to the degree where you can say "even XP = even fight". The ability for Players to pull out dailies (and lack of incentive not to use encounter powers) is more core to the balance of 4e than the precision in the strength of monsters.

[Vitruviansquid]

You should just fiat the whole thing. Even if the dogs or bear had "interesting abilities," you're still not involving the players in the match, so they'll still be as bored as if the match was composed of all rolling against each other's AC.

[valadil]

You should just fiat the whole thing. Even if the dogs or bear had "interesting abilities," you're still not involving the players in the match, so they'll still be as bored as if the match was composed of all rolling against each other's AC.

That's certainly a thought. I don't think they'll be quite as bored as you say, but I think the reaction will be mixed. Some players will jump all over it and others will immediately dismiss it. FWIW I was planning on having the combat as an option. They can play it if they want or trust me to fiat it if they don't.

Do you think it would be boring if their PCs still had things to do while the fight was going on? I was planning on having another group try to throw the fight much earlier. So during the second round they notice the bear bleeding from a wound it didn't get from the dogs, and now they have to figure out to react to that to keep the bear alive for a bit longer.

[Grynning]

This really sounds like a skill challenge to me. Nature checks to train and issue commands to the bear and/or dogs, Diplomacy, Bluff and Streetwise to rig the betting in the PC's favor, etc.

[valadil]

This really sounds like a skill challenge to me. Nature checks to train and issue commands to the bear and/or dogs, Diplomacy, Bluff and Streetwise to rig the betting in the PC's favor, etc.

Everything the PCs do is going to be a skill challenge. I suppose I could just say that how the dog/bear fight goes is determined by the SC instead of giving it its own set of mechanics.

[Grynning]

Everything the PCs do is going to be a skill challenge. I suppose I could just say that how the dog/bear fight goes is determined by the SC instead of giving it its own set of mechanics.

That's exactly how a skill challenge should be. If the results of the SC can change due to the DM rolling dice for NPCs, the players may be a bit disappointed by the overall result.
Have the outcome of the fight be based on what the PCs decide to set up. Successful checks in knowledge and physical skills contribute to making the fight go the way they want (training and controlling the animals), social skills make the betting go the way they want, and other random checks can go towards making the fight as entertaining as possible. Set goals for fight result, betting result, and entertainment value (which will affect NPC attitudes toward the fight and the PCs involved) and you can base the overall result on how well they do in each area.

[Hal]

I don't know the specific stats of your "monsters" in question, but in general I imagine NPC on NPC action suffers from the imbalance between damage and health the monsters have; that is, they do proportionally less damage than they have health (which is the opposite way for PCs). Many NPC-centric battles could last a long time just because they have health pools that have to be whittled away.

[Swordgleam]

If you don't want yet one more SC but think the fight will be too bland, try a mix. Do a separate SC in rounds like you would a combat, and every other round, switch to dogs-vs-bear.

If the players roll well for that SC round, their dogs get bonuses. So one player could go, "I'm going to have my dog do something showy " and roll bluff - with a loud cheer from the crowd after his dog's attack if he succeeds - while another might say "I want to rip that thing's throat out" and roll nature, with a bonus to his to-hit or damage if the skill check goes well. Failures mean their dogs get penalties or take more damage.

Let the bear attack as normal, just so it chews through waves of dogs. Instead of giving it HP, just have a vague idea what its HP is, and then do "damage" to it on a successful skill check that otherwise influences the outcome - bluff, etc. Once it's "HP" is down to zero, the skill challenge and the fight are over. Depending on how long that takes (since they're shooting for three rounds) they win or lose.

[valadil]

In case anyone was wondering, I ran this tonight. It went fine. The players opted for an abridged version. We skipped round one because it was inconsequential. Round two was played because they knew someone else was throwing the fight. Round three would have been played if the bear had many HP left, but it was low enough (and the druid had been swapped in for one of the dogs) that we called it. Four would have been skipped, because they didn't care who won after three.

Balance didn't matter one bit. I rolled single digits, they rolled double. My bear got beat to hell and just barely squeaked out a win. The only problem was that dogs had low HP while the bear was rolling badly. He killed two early. Those players sat there bored for a while. But that's how combat goes.

What made the encounter fun for them was sorting the dogs. They got into the kennel and arranged the dogs for each fight. They had to make round three powerful, without making it look stacked. I think they spent more time doing that than playing the combat.