AncientGamer
Topic Author
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun 23 Jan 2022, 17:21

Combat Scaling

Sun 23 Jan 2022, 17:33

I am just starting a FL campaign with 2 characters. A Hunter and a Fighter.

In general with encounters how do you scale the number and type of enemies to make combat challenging but not too deadly?

So far they have fought a couple of undead, bandits and wolves which presented little problem. But with monsters they met (on separate occasions) a Death Knight and a Ghost. Both of which nearly killed them in a couple of attacks and they had to flee.

Whilst it is fine to occasionally have combat which is easy or that you have to run from. Most should be in a sweet spot which is winnable but at some risk. How do I achieve this? Would you scale monster strength down with only 2 PCs?
 
Farydia
Posts: 56
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2020, 13:29

Re: Combat Scaling

Fri 28 Jan 2022, 17:41

I think you have to adapt your expectations a bit. In my experience so far, combat in FL is very swingy. Meaning the same encounter with the same PCs can go very well for them, if they get an early advantage or be very deadly, if they are on their backfoot early on. In the same way, the situation can change with a single die roll. Example in a fight against a Troll: They did very well in the first round and it looked like a piece of cake - by the end of the second round, all of them were broken except one, who managed to defeat it in a last ditch effort.

With that in mind, it is extremely difficult to "balance" encounters for a middle ground, especially in advance. In most cases, the fight will veer between extremes. That makes every fight exciting in its own way - and can even lure your players into a false feeling of superiority. The only balancing I do is usually during the fight: If it's really looking like it's gonna be over too soon and I want it to be more epic or dangerous, I'll give enemies a talent to use, as they are often very powerful. Or reinforcments arrive. Or I just up the HP or armour of a monster a bit or give it an extra attack. It's usually easy to justifiy: A demon grows a new tentacle or whatever. But I will use that very sparingly, because due to the swingy nature, this can easily turn into unfair territory.

I hope that was helpful :).
 
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BytomMan
Posts: 111
Joined: Sun 02 Aug 2020, 03:00

Re: Combat Scaling

Fri 28 Jan 2022, 19:45

Maybe compare the cumulative Strength of the party vs. that of the opposition? My party of five took on a troll and beat it in three rounds with only one character broken.

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