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View Full Version : [M&M2E] How to make appropriate encounters?



JMobius
2008-08-18, 10:49 AM
Is there any sources on how to generate encounters, both combat and skill based, that are of appropriate difficulty for a given party size/PL/point allotment? I had a trial run with two of my anticipated five PCs yesterday, and they pretty much waltzed through what I tried to create on the fly. I'd like some references before trying to up the difficulty too much, though. :)

Jerthanis
2008-08-18, 02:01 PM
When I ran for a group of four people, a comfortable level of challenge was having a single enemy at +3 PL, or several enemies at -1 PL. With Five heroes they could probably take a single enemy of around +5 PL, since they get five times the actions. There are crowd/mass combat rules somewhere in the book, but I never got the chance to use them, so I can't tell you how well or poorly they work.

The more important part of making appropriate encounters, I think, is coming up with the power sets that become iconic against the team of heroes. If we take Comic Books as our inspiration, villains usually have powers similar to those of the heroes, but in a different form. When Dr. Doom faces down the Fantastic Four, he has supergenius on Mr. Fantastic's level, power armor that gives him strength and durability like the Thing, Mechanical forcefields like Invisible Woman, and lasers to match the Human Torch. It's a rough comparison, but you can at least think about it. If you've got an Ice controlling guy, a guy who transforms into light, a robot, and a sorcerer, having an evil wizard controlling a golem army in a non-euclidian sphere of reality may be appropriate.

To my estimation, "Proper challenge" isn't as important in M&M as D&D, because villains who win, will monologue or put the heroes into an 'inescapable' death trap rather than just put bullets to all of them. Similarly, the PCs are superheroes, so if they never just completely clean up on anyone, they might get frustrated. Even Spider-man, a comic based primarily on torturing the titular character, will occasionally have him be like, "I'm F-ing Spider-Man!" and beat the stuffing out of a couple villains who thought they were awesome.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-08-18, 10:01 PM
Nope.

To start with, NPC PLs aren't like PC PLs; they don't set point totals. You spend as many points as you need to, and then set the PL according to the attack/damage and defense/toughness value pairs. Their power points may be significantly lower or higher than the "right" value for their PL.

You have to look at the actual abilities. Does the villain have an attack that can put all the PCs to sleep with one action, and none of them have more than a 50% chance to resist it? Is the villain's most powerful attack so strong no PC can save against it? Is the villain's Impervious Protection so high that none of the PCs can hurt it?

Even then, these aren't straightforward questions. A villain the PCs can't hurt with physical attacks may still be easy prey to a

Generally, keeping within a few PL of the PCs is probably a good idea, but even a PL 10 character can have some really obscene powers, like Duplication, that would let them beat the PCs hands-down (which is not wrong, and is a common feature of the superhero genre).

Creating things on the fly is not going to work well. Combat isn't usually the main or the only challenge in superhero comics and movies. Superman isn't challenged by big and tough enemies - he's challenged by difficult situations or unknown factors. You need plot, you need situations, you need all that stuff, and all of it is infinitely more important than the stats of the enemies.

Most of the time, villains should fall into one of two categories: enemies the PCs can beat up easy as anything once they overcome their single advantage (a superweapon, a hostage, a devious plan, etc.; see the Joker, especially in the new film, or Lex Luthor); and enemies the PCs have no hope of beating in a straight-up fight until they come up with some advantage.

This can vary considerably according to your subgenre and campaign, though. If it's Iron Age, deadly combat with a fair chance of losing is probably going to be important. Remember, though, that you'll always need to tool your challenges to the PCs. Every adventure should include at the very least one situation or encounter where each PC gets to shine with their powers, and one where each (or all) of them are specifically challenged despite their powers. (Leave specifically targetting the PCs' secret weakness every single time for Smallville, though!)