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View Full Version : How do you balance the crunch and fluff of a fight?



Name_Here
2008-08-21, 04:06 PM
Now I made an awesome adventure that I think my group is really going to like. They barely make it off an exploding destroyer in time for their salvation pod to crash land into a chaos flagship. Assuming they survive the resulting hunt through the bowels of the ship I want them to end up on the assualt lander of the warlord in charge of the enemy campaign where they will hopefully do what is right by the Inquisition and assasinate the Warlord before he can fulfill his dark plots.

But that's where I'm coming to a screaching halt. I want the enemy to be killiable by a group of by this point very wounded Alcolytes but I also want him to be a reasonably skilled Chaos Warlord a position that is obtainable only by the strongest of the strong.

A couple ideas that I had were

1. Have him fight another attempt by one of his subordinates, Would be good to show how he doesn't have his bodyguards with him, because they died at the hands of the last attempt.

2. have the alcolytes interupt a ritual that will align himself with his demonic weapon meaning that he isn't only fighting the PCs but also his weapon, would also allow me to have him partially out of his demonic armor.

3.Have the demonic lackeys "trying" to "help" him by getting in between him and his attackers. They would do this because his defeat Fouling his strength and skill maybe enough to let the PCs blast through him and his deamons.

So how do other DMs deal with this kind of problem where the fluff just doesn't meet the crunch? Do they just go with a beatable encounter when the person never could have risen to the rank that he has or do they do something else?

Saph
2008-08-21, 04:13 PM
The problem with the players fighting the strongest warlord in the fleet is that the players aren't going to be particularly impressed by the guy if they, as a bunch of 1st-level-equivalent characters, can take him out in a single fight.

The way I deal with this problem is not to put them up against the big bosses in the first place. They don't fight the warlord, they fight one of his lieutenants (or maybe one of his lieutenant's lieutenants).

In the end, I don't think you can have it both ways. Either the BBEG is an uber-hard paragon of scarytoughness, or he can be reliably taken down by a bunch of noobs. Not both. You can come up with justifications (as you're trying to), but remember that your players will judge this guy based on how tough he in the few rounds of combat in which they face him. If they can take him down at their level, he's never going to come across as all that scary.

- Saph

BRC
2008-08-21, 04:20 PM
I would make it so that they indirectly kill him, they can't stop him from getting onto his assault lander at which point he takes off.

However, they CAN hijack one of the ships torpedo launchers or cannons or something, and use it to blow up the assault lander en-route. For the actual combat, they take on a gun crew, and promptly blow mister warlord to smithereens.
Alternatively, they get some explosive charges that they put on one of the engines, heck, maybe all they need to do is somehow contact the rest of the imperial fleet and identify the warlords lander.

fendrin
2008-08-21, 04:25 PM
One thing I've done is do things to impress upon the characters that this guy is not someone to be taken lightly. Let them see him totally obliterate an enemy, or recognize him and know stories about how insanely tough he is. Instead of a frontal assault, they might just get creative (*gasp*).

Who knows? Maybe they'll sabotage the lander and cause it to crash land, or overload/detonate the engines, or something like that. They can take out the big bad and be heroes to the Inquisition without you needing to make the warlord have a glass jaw.

EDIT: Yeah, what BRC said. :smallredface:

Name_Here
2008-08-21, 04:55 PM
I would make it so that they indirectly kill him, they can't stop him from getting onto his assault lander at which point he takes off.

However, they CAN hijack one of the ships torpedo launchers or cannons or something, and use it to blow up the assault lander en-route. For the actual combat, they take on a gun crew, and promptly blow mister warlord to smithereens.
Alternatively, they get some explosive charges that they put on one of the engines, heck, maybe all they need to do is somehow contact the rest of the imperial fleet and identify the warlords lander.

Well the thing is that I was planning for their primary concern to be getting off the Chaos Flagship with as few holes in them as possible, so they sneak aboard one of the closest landers, find a deamon slaved into the control panel and turn around to see the warlords retuine escorting him into the bay with just enough time for them to hide themselves.

And all of that would solve most of what I want to accomplish with my mission first is proving no matter how deep into the crap they get the universe still hates them, second killing a Chaos warlord will be a great capstone to the adventure and finally it'll get them off the flagship near imperial forces and into the milk run of their mission which is pulling their inquisitor's ass out of the fire after the raid on the Titan produciton plant goes to hell in a hand basket.

But I have awhile to rewrite that part of the adventure if nobody sees an elegant way to bring a chaos warlord down to a level where they can kill him.

Yakk
2008-08-21, 10:43 PM
Toys of some kind? Ie, have the players get ahold of some kind of weapon that would work well against the BBEG.

How about an unholy demonic weapon?

Possibly they witness it being broken free of a holy seal by a scientist-type. Not being able to destroy it, they bring it with them to be destroyed and/or disposed of... (they can't very well leave it behind).

Then they run into the BBEG, who manages to corner them. They have a choice -- die, and let the weapon fall into the hands of the BBEG, or use the weapon against the BBEG, and suffer the corruption.

(You can cheat here, and bring a player in on it, to make the drama work out the way you want it. This cheating could be in the form of visions of self-sacrifice "you will have to turn against the light, then burn yourself to ashes, or the universe is doomed" type dreams.)

Now you have the player who is using the evil, corrupted weapon, fighting a duel against the chaos warlord, and the rest of the players fighting against the allies of the chaos warlord (who are, say, using rituals to bolster the warlord's powers).

By the end of it, the player who used the weapon has had the corruption leach into their very body. What happens next is a matter of conviction. Does the now-corrupted servant of the light destroy themself, or take up the mantle of chaos? Both serve as a great capstone to a campaign.

fendrin
2008-08-22, 06:43 AM
Toys of some kind? Ie, have the players get ahold of some kind of weapon that would work well against the BBEG.

How about an unholy demonic weapon?

Possibly they witness it being broken free of a holy seal by a scientist-type. Not being able to destroy it, they bring it with them to be destroyed and/or disposed of... (they can't very well leave it behind).

Then they run into the BBEG, who manages to corner them. They have a choice -- die, and let the weapon fall into the hands of the BBEG, or use the weapon against the BBEG, and suffer the corruption.

(You can cheat here, and bring a player in on it, to make the drama work out the way you want it. This cheating could be in the form of visions of self-sacrifice "you will have to turn against the light, then burn yourself to ashes, or the universe is doomed" type dreams.)

Now you have the player who is using the evil, corrupted weapon, fighting a duel against the chaos warlord, and the rest of the players fighting against the allies of the chaos warlord (who are, say, using rituals to bolster the warlord's powers).

By the end of it, the player who used the weapon has had the corruption leach into their very body. What happens next is a matter of conviction. Does the now-corrupted servant of the light destroy themself, or take up the mantle of chaos? Both serve as a great capstone to a campaign.

Speaking from experience you never want to give a player a 'die or become an NPC' scenario unless you know with absolute certainty that they are ok with it. Players tend to get attached to their characters, and can get rather upset if you don't give them some method of survival.

Yakk
2008-08-22, 10:35 AM
Ah yes. I should have said "you should cheat here, and bring the player in on it". Swear the player to secrecy, even, so the rest of the party doesn't realize that what is happening is semi pre-arranged! :-)

(In short: hey Jo, I have an idea. I can do a really cool scene, but it needs a PC to sacrifice themselves and become no longer playable. Want to play along?)

fendrin
2008-08-22, 10:44 AM
One thing I did in a D&D game was give a paldin the option of going evil... truth be told, she was enticed into it by a powerful artifact, which she then got to use for a while (hiding her evilness from the rest of the party). She later then gave up her evilness and (with a lot of assistance) went on a quest and destroyed the artifact. It was tough on the character to recover from having gone evil (no easy-peasy Atonement from me... She wasn't forced into it, she chose it), spending a while as a 'Fighter with no feats' a la Miko. The player had fun though, and was able to regain her paladinhood eventually (rescuing a goddess from a demon lord in the process).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that perhaps the corruption doesn't have to be permanent, or perhaps it's slow-growing... so the player has a chance to redeem his/her character. It can make for a whole awesome plot line in and of itself.

Name_Here
2008-08-22, 12:46 PM
The only problem with the redemption storyline in Dark Heresy is that there is no redemption in Dark Heresy. The entire game is set up so that your players are in a desperate race to do as much work for the inquisition as they can do before they become the villian because corruption just doesn't come off of a charecter.

Though the one time I did it in D+D it turned out to be great fun and a session that one of my players loves bringing up no matter how many times I tell her that she was a few action points away from becoming the villian and was really only stopped because the entire team wrestled her down and tore the artifact from her grasp. But no she just can't get over the fact that she made a dragon hop around on one foot for giggles.

As for the taking up of a deamon weapon to put them on equal footing. I'm not enamored with the idea but I'm not one to turn down an idea because I wasn't immidiately in love with it.

Vexxation
2008-08-22, 02:59 PM
Ah yes. I should have said "you should cheat here, and bring the player in on it". Swear the player to secrecy, even, so the rest of the party doesn't realize that what is happening is semi pre-arranged! :-)

(In short: hey Jo, I have an idea. I can do a really cool scene, but it needs a PC to sacrifice themselves and become no longer playable. Want to play along?)

Ah, but he doesn't have to become unplayable. He could come back as a Risen Martyr, and the circumstance is perfect for said class.