Fria Ligans forum

Do you beef up the monster's strength? Or their attack damage? Or do you only increase their initiative cards, as is suggested by the book?
And what about non-monster NPCs? Would you also give them extra action cards (or extra strength) to them as well?

In what way are the PCs overpowered? Attributes and Skills very high? Equipment too powerful?

Depending on how the party is overpowered, depends how I'd make changes to NPCs and monsters they face.. if they're all high strength, melee damage, I'd put in either heavier armour for the enemies, or give them more options to make ranged attacks, or attacks that damage different attributes. Attacks that damage empathy, or perhaps poison based attacks.

Alternatively, give them non-combat challenges to defeat, traps, puzzles, have them confronted by bad weather (either cold/snow or drought/famine conditions) to weaken them before confronting them with an enemy or two to fight - of course, this is assuming you want to defeat them in battle. You could have them face a social or political foe, that can out-fox them in a battle of wits.

Yeah, what is an "overpowered" PC to you?

Combats finish very fast in FL. Either for or against the PC. That's not overpowered, only the intend of a gritty game.

If that's the point, of course, if not, i wait for the answer about how are they overpowered, like the others on this topic. ^^

E.g. Rolling with multiple artifact dice, having Lucky 3?

I guess equipping npcs with the Executioner talent might help deal with the latter problem.

Multiple artifact dice are not a problem. If they come from talents: the players only have so many actions. If they come from equipment: equipment eventually breaks, can be stolen, can be taken away.

Lucky and executioner I actually do think are a problem at their highest ranks. I change them to work like this. YMMV.

Give all ranks a Willpower cost of 1.

Rank 1: Reroll take the highest.
Rank 2: Swap the numbers.
Rank 3: Move up or down 1 result on the critical injury table.

So, at rank 3 I roll an 11. Decide to spend 1 WP ro reroll. Get a 46. For a second WP I can make that a 64. And (assuming slash) I can spend a 3rd to up it to 65 turning a slit throat into a cleft skull.

Or

For Lucky, I roll a 62, reroll for 1 WP to get a 32. Spend 1 more to turn it into a 23. Decide thats fine considering a bleeding thigh takes less time to heal then a severed toe and a slashed Mouth would be worse. I have spent 2 WP and got a better result.

The cost combined with not being able to freely choose means each rank still does something interesting while not ever making the talent strip away all the risk.

Throw some non combat encounters on them. Either purely social stuff, negotiations and things like that. Or if you want to keep the risk of dying, stuff like a rickety bridge that might colapse at any second, traps they need to figure out how to disarm, things like that.

Or if you want to do it throught combat specifically, I'd wouldn't make each encounter harder; I'd throw more encounters on them. And they don't need to be difficult encounters, just a lot of them without chance for the PCs to rest upp between them. Have them deplete resources as the they go along.

Or... roll with it. Let the PCs be heroes. I know it's often more fun as a GM when the players fail, but as a player it's pretty fun to succeed. Let the crowds cheer and build statues to them. Have strangers buy them beer and toast to their health in bars. And then every once in a while throw them a curve ball, where they wake up and realize someones stolen their most precious artifact. And thus begin the non-combat investigative adventure.

Lucky and executioner are fine except at level 3. I’ve still never fully come to terms with them. Though for that matter, I’ve never seen them in play at level 3 either.

Personally, I think Lucky is OP at level 3 and I house ruled that only 1 PC could take it at Level 3; heading off the rush to have a full "Lucky" party.
The frailing sorcerer is the only one who has Level 3 now and it's honestly saved his life, what with missing an ear, perma-burnt skin and glowing blues eyes...

Just remembered that an NPC could also perform a coup de grace. Lucky can't stop that.

By extension, this would presume that monsters and unintelligent beings can choose to end the PC's life on their turn, Lucky or not.