Encounter design for Rule of Cool's Legend

[Zaq]

Soooo I've been wanting to be part of a game of Legend, by Rule of Cool, for about seven years now. I could get into all the personal reasons why it's extra-meaningful to me, but they maybe aren't important right now. I finally put together a game with some close friends of mine, almost all of whom have been playing D&D with me for years.

It's my turn in the GM seat since none of us have any experience actually playing Legend and Legend is kind of my baby--I was the one who was pushing to get us involved with it. I'm not really good at GMing. Never have been. I'm okay at wacky encounter design (in a system I'm familiar with) but I'm really bad at prepping, narrating, making a story, etc. Whatever. We all struggle here and there. At least I'm able to adapt a canned module (it's D&D 2e, so zero of the mechanics translate, but that's okay--at least I don't have to make up the story).

Ran the first session yesterday. There was... discontent in the ranks. I want help.

So Legend states that a party of four level 6 PCs is Encounter Level 10. I set up an EL 9 fight (two level 7 monsters) as our inaugural encounter. My players felt that this was way too hard and ended up running away (admittedly, one PC did end up properly [Dead], and we're just gonna retcon that away because the first session doesn't have to count).

Now, I'm all in favor of accepting a calibration period. I guess I apparently need to tone it WAY the hell down. I thought that I had already deoptimized enough (I intentionally made some bad choices--left one save crazy low, bottlenecked up the monsters' swift actions, etc.) and that going for an EL lower than the party's EL would make this pretty easy. I suppose not.

My players are all seasoned D&Ders but brand new to Legend. There are some hiccups in their builds that I wouldn't personally have done, but none of them are flat out poorly optimized, to my eye. I'm also brand new to non-theorycrafting Legend but I've spent many, many hours over the years daydreaming about Legend, so I'm the "most experienced" in a manner of speaking. There are, admittedly, a buttload of moving parts in Legend (not everyone remembered to take advantage of ALL their actions every round, including their partial moves, for example), and I think that some of this is just lack of practiced familiarity with the system, which is fine!

***tl;dr start here:*** That said, as a GM, I need to know how to actually design encounters properly. Pretty much all of the encounters I'd prepped up to this point are designed in about that way--EL less than or equal to the party, made up of a smaller number of monsters that are about 1 level above the party. (I only once used a monster that's more than 1 level above the party, and that's intentionally designed as an overwhelming encounter that they should think their way around rather than fight their way around. They'll get clues to that effect.) That was my understanding of this combination of rules starting around pg. 218:

Four creatures of the same level have an encounter level 4 higher than the creatures’
level – so a party of a tactician, shaman, paladin, and rogue, all of whom are level 9, would be an EL 13 encounter. (Ed. Note: This should mean that a party of four level 6 PCs is EL 10.)
Two creatures of the same level have an encounter level 2 higher than the creatures’ level.
Generally speaking, a party of four player characters of encounter level X should be able to handle between three and five encounters of encounter level X before the end of the [Scene].
A difference of 1 between each side’s EL is a fight that statistically favors one side quite a bit.

That said, apparently it doesn't go over well to have two level 7 monsters versus four level 6 PCs. Anyone with experience GMing (or playing) Legend care to offer any help? Is this just a case where the players weren't ready because they're still learning the game, a case where I really didn't follow some crucial design principle or another, a case of something else entirely? Is it normal to use swathes of monsters lower-leveled than the PCs rather than a small number (greater than 1--solo boss monsters are bad juju) of monsters slightly higher than the PCs? Any general tips for Legend encounter design? Help me out, please.

[Bucky]

a group of four player characters of level X should be able to handle between three and five encounters of encounter level X before the end of the Scene
In other words, your 4xlevel 6/EL 10 party should be able to handle 3-5 EL 6 encounters in a row.

Monster EL = Party EL - 1 should be boss battle level difficulty. If the players aren't coordinating well, it's very easy for an individual party member to be overwhelmed and end up [Dead]. Losing one party member is just about the expected result if the monsters focus fire. That means, if you don't want to kill anyone, you need to adjust the monster tactics accordingly - have them split their focuses, and use crowd control over raw damage.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

In other words, your 4xlevel 6/EL 10 party should be able to handle 3-5 EL 6 encounters in a row.

Yep. I haven't played Legend myself, just followed its development back in the day, but the 2 CR X = 1 CR X+2 and 4 ECL X PCs ~ 1 ECL X+4 PC assumption is straight out of the 3e DMG, and there an encounter with EL 1-4 higher than the party level is a Very Difficult encounter where "one PC might very well die" and "may be more dangerous than an Overpowering one because it's not immediately obvious...that the PCs should flee." In Legend, where a gap of a single level is much more impactful than D&D, the difference would be even more stark.

[Zaq]

In other words, your 4xlevel 6/EL 10 party should be able to handle 3-5 EL 6 encounters in a row.

Monster EL = Party EL - 1 should be boss battle level difficulty. If the players aren't coordinating well, it's very easy for an individual party member to be overwhelmed and end up [Dead]. Losing one party member is just about the expected result if the monsters focus fire. That means, if you don't want to kill anyone, you need to adjust the monster tactics accordingly - have them split their focuses, and use crowd control over raw damage.

...What. Hang on.

So you're telling me that Legend, which is famous for its unusually careful wording in all of its rules text, which gave us the beautiful term "circle" so that we don't run into the level-level-level-level problem, which puts brackets around most defined terms so that we know the difference between a scene ending and a [Scene] ending, which sometimes goes so far into "we want these rules to do exactly what we intend" that it almost makes the initial intent hard to parse even if the outcome is elegant (looking at you, Simple Icon)--that Legend--wrote a sentence where they used "encounter level" to mean two extremely different things in the course of a single sentence.

So instead of saying "a party of four PCs of character level X should be able to handle 3-5 encounters of encounter level X per [Scene]" (or meaning, well, what I indicated in my first post) like would be freaking SANE, they said something that meant something EXTREMELY DIFFERENT, to the point where partykilling is basically inevitable.

I. Ugh. Really? Really?

I mean, thank you for telling me that. That's important info, if true. I'm flabbergasted and disgusted just because Legend is usually so damn good about its extremely precise wording. Comedically so, even. Exaggeratedly so. I'm beside myself.

So if the PCs are individually character level 6, I should be putting together "EL 6" encounters (like a pair of level 4 monsters) to challenge them with? That seems really low, but okay, I guess. Why do they even bother to give the example of the party of four level 9 PCs being EL 13 if you use individual partymember level instead of party EL for everything, though?

[Bucky]

Per the "Normal Encounters" subsection:

If you want encounters that challenge the PCs by slowly draining their consumables and per-scene resources, while allowing the PCs to “win” and continue moving forward in the campaign, you should use encounters with ELs one or two levels below the PCs’ encounter level.

This contradicts the recommendation at the start of the "Encounter Levels" section.

I think the actual sweet spot is a mix of Party EL - 2 and Party EL - 3 encounters - midway between the two recommendations.

[Zaq]

Per the "Normal Encounters" subsection:

If you want encounters that challenge the PCs by slowly draining their consumables and per-scene resources, while allowing the PCs to “win” and continue moving forward in the campaign, you should use encounters with ELs one or two levels below the PCs’ encounter level.

This contradicts the recommendation at the start of the "Encounter Levels" section.

I think the actual sweet spot is a mix of Party EL - 2 and Party EL - 3 encounters - midway between the two recommendations.

I thought that's what I did. What does "encounters with ELs one or two levels below the PCs’ encounter level" mean if not "EL 9 encounter for EL 10 party"? What does each "level" refer to?

What's an appropriate encounter for four level 6 PCs? Four level 4 monsters (EL 7)?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

So instead of saying "a party of four PCs of character level X should be able to handle 3-5 encounters of encounter level X per [Scene]" (or meaning, well, what I indicated in my first post) like would be freaking SANE, they said something that meant something EXTREMELY DIFFERENT, to the point where partykilling is basically inevitable.

Maybe I have an early copy of the rules, but my PDF does basically say that in the Encounter Level section:


Generally speaking, a group of four player characters of level X should be able to handle between three and five encounters of encounter level X before they need to stop the adventuring day,
[...]
As a rule, any creature has, by itself, an encounter level of its own level. A level 6 tactician is an EL 6 encounter.

Note that it says "four PCs of level X" and not "a party of four player characters with a total EL of X" or the like.


So if the PCs are individually character level 6, I should be putting together "EL 6" encounters (like a pair of level 4 monsters) to challenge them with? That seems really low, but okay, I guess. Why do they even bother to give the example of the party of four level 9 PCs being EL 13 if you use individual partymember level instead of party EL for everything, though?

As with the original 3e setup from which Legend is derived, an encounter of party EL = enemy EL basically gives the party a 50% win chance, the same way that pitting a level X PC against an EL X clone of itself is a 50% win chance (except that, of course, a group of 4 enemies can focus-fire a single PC out of a 4-person party).

The example of four level 9s equalling a level 13 is in the context of that party being an encounter for a PC party:


If you want a climactic pitched battle where there’s a good chance that the player characters will suffer casualties, pitting them against an encounter level the same as their own will likely produce the results you want. One example of a difficult encounter that will stretch the player characters’ abilities is a “mirror match,” where the opposition is a group of creatures each of whom is the same class and level as one of the player characters.

An EL one level higher than the party’s is pushing it, and should only be used occasionally for extremely difficult encounters.


I thought that's what I did. What does "encounters with ELs one or two levels below the PCs’ encounter level" mean if not "EL 9 encounter for EL 10 party"? What does each "level" refer to?

What's an appropriate encounter for four level 6 PCs? Four level 4 monsters (EL 7)?

"The PCs' encounter level" is exactly that, the EL of individual PCs, not the party's EL. You're right that it's a bit unclear, and that's probably because the initial design goal for the Legend EL system was basically "Keep the system from 3e but have all the CRs actually be accurate to within a narrow bound" so that was intuitive to the designers and original playtesters and the wording ended up being off.

So if you want to throw multiple encounters at the PCs in the same scene, an appropriate challenge for a party of level 6 PCs would be EL 4 or 5, so 2 level 3s or 4 level 1s or similar.

Seems low, I know, but keep in mind that "appropriate encounter" in this case means "fight that uses up roughly 20% of the party's resources" (so 5 of them would theoretically use up 100% of their resources and they'd be done) not "desperate fight for their lives." You can use mostly equivalent-EL encounters, again just like 3e, you just have to make sure you and the players realize that that's a situation where you'd have at most one such encounter per day and the PCs should be pulling out all the stops and not saving too much for later.

[Zaq]

How do you discount Mooks when gauging EL? Surely a level X Mook with no tracks is less deadly than the more elite versions with 1 or more tracks, to say nothing of a proper character with 3 or 4. How do you account for this?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

No idea, honestly; my copy doesn't have the mook rules in it, so it's definitely a pretty early draft. I know that Legendary and Minion creatures have effective EL adjustments, so maybe see if you can find an official adjustment for Mook creatures?

[Zaq]

No idea, honestly; my copy doesn't have the mook rules in it, so it's definitely a pretty early draft. I know that Legendary and Minion creatures have effective EL adjustments, so maybe see if you can find an official adjustment for Mook creatures?

I've read through the GM chapter several times looking for exactly this; it doesn't exist.

The book does say this:


If you want encounters that challenge the PCs by slowly draining their consumables and per-scene resources, while allowing the PCs to “win” and continue moving forward in the campaign, you should use encounters with ELs one or two levels below the PCs’ encounter level. Using three or four monsters a level lower than the PCs, or 5 or 6 monsters a couple of levels below the PCs, is a classic example of a monstrous “hit squad” that the players can defeat while still having to spend meaningful resources on winning encounters.

Generally speaking, you can reasonably expect the player characters to handle somewhere between 3 and 5 encounters of this type before requiring a full 8-hour rest.

Let's say the party is, as is my case, four level 6 PCs, total EL 10.

Three or four monsters a level lower than the PCs would be three level 5s ("Three creatures of the same level have an encounter level 3 higher than the creatures’ level," so that's EL 8) or four level 5s (EL 9). So I guess maybe that's the point? That's an encounter the PCs are expected to win, since EL 10 > EL 9. I guess that kind of makes sense, though it doesn't really explain why four level 5s would be THAT MUCH weaker than two level 7s (yes, a two-level difference is significant in Legend, but so is a two-action advantage). Guess I'll have to try some stuff there.

I will say that the rules for Mooks just plain don't take this into consideration, though, so again, any insight from those with actual experience would be fantastic.

The rules do say that "Each mook counts as a single creature, even in the case of Myriads." (That's in the section about how to calculate group EL.) But it doesn't say anything about the fact that Mooks are going to be weaker than full characters and what effect that has on how you calculate EL.

I do have access to an early (the only?) printed Legend adventure module made by Rule of Cool, Osaka Street Stories. OSS assumes a party of "three to five level 4 PCs." So I'll just call that four level 4 PCs, EL 8. Here's the encounters that OSS presents, in order:

One Elite lv. 3 mook (1 track), one regular lv. 3 mook (no tracks), and one additional lv. 3 mook (no tracks) per PC. So assuming four PCs, that's six level 3 mooks (one of which has a track), so I guess that's maybe about EL 8ish? Maybe? Seems heavy for the "five or six a couple levels lower than the PCs" (since this is five or six one level lower than the PCs), but again, there's one track among all of them. That's gotta be an effect there.
Three lv. 3 mooks. That's at most EL 6, and that would be if they had tracks, which they don't? So maybe this is supposed to be a pushover, even though it has rules for if the PCs cut and run.
"Two Yakuza Grunts per [Round] for four [Rounds], totaling eight Yakuza Grunts." Each Yakuza Grunt is a lv. 3 mook. No tracks, but one feat (that makes them nasty when they die); mooks don't typically have feats, so this is either an artifact of an earlier ruleset or else an intentional exception to add pressure. Anyway, eight lv. 3 mooks is a lot of mooks even with no tracks, but maybe we can ad-hoc knock off a point from the EL because they don't show up all at once?
A weird encounter with rules for a "sniping skill game" (seems kinda cool but I don't quite grok it) against a level 6 [Legendary] full character (three tracks, items, consumables, the works). Not sure if it's even possible to try to take them on hand-to-hand instead of through the sniping skill game? Either way, this is clearly a big deal.
Two level 5 full characters (three tracks, items, etc.) who are set up to get an ambush and who have abilities that synergize well with each other and make each other stronger. This feels a little bit harder than my equivalent encounter (i.e., two monsters each one level higher than the party) because my monsters weren't specifically set up to boost each other.
Two lv. 3 mooks (no tracks) + one lv. 4 operative mook (no tracks but two feats? and one unexplained ability?) + one lv. 5 elite mook (one track, no feats). Dunno how to calculate this exactly.
Four lv. 3 mooks (no tracks) + one lv 5 elite mook (one track, two feats) + one lv 6 miniboss mook (four tracks, two feats). Clearly a major climactic battle, I guess? This is probably a very challenging encounter.
One lv 5 [Legendary] full character with a buff round (four tracks, three feats) and possibly one of the level 5 full characters from that ambush encounter mentioned above. Also the [Legendary] character can summon minions. So that's probably at least EL 8 or 9? Not because of the minions but because of the [Legendary] and the fact that she gets a buff round to prepare.
In the penultimate encounter, the PCs are explicitly healed to full HP before the start and have their per-[Encounter] abilities refreshed if there's fewer than five PCs. This is explicitly a challenging encounter. Two EL 5 [Legendary] full characters (three tracks each, items, feats). That's at least EL 9, I think? Do you add the bonus to EL twice if you have two [Legendary] opponents?
Final battle! Again, the PCs are explicitly healed to full HP but aren't given any ability refreshes. One level 6 [Legendary] full character (three tracks, items, feats, consumables). I think that's just EL 8 but hey, maybe not?

This does indicate circumstantially that GMs are expected to rely pretty darn heavily on mooks, I guess? Can anyone confirm if that's true in your experience?

Still struggling with just how much to discount mooks by, though. Especially given that you can staple up to four tracks on a mook, each one adding power proportionately (and, indeed, I think a mook with four tracks is arguably more powerful than a PC with four tracks because they have one fast and three medium rather than one fast, two medium, and one slow--though the lack of feats makes a difference). That clearly affects things but I just don't know how to gauge that yet.

Any help is appreciated.