Topic: How to cope with marauding psychopaths...

[Greyaxe]

Let the psychopaths run.... and have a good time doing it.  Make it a tit for tat game of how uber can i make this villan. You get to strech your creative wings and they get to try monkey stomp your latest baddy.  Drop a few pints into the mix and you have a great evening.

[Arioch]

It's not like I have to do these games often, after all. We do only play once or twice a year at most, mainly when I can work up the effort to slap together a Rolemaster game (by which I usually mean me coming up with a plot, but my group's sometimes double-edged easy-goingness is the subject for a rant for another day!) I'm nominally planning one - subject to a plot! - for Christmas, when one of our key players is back.

Oh! So, since you play only a few times a year you don't want to have just a challenging session... you want to have a memorable one! 

Then IMHO you should really push this to the limit... Don't just make them fight time-travelling ninja monks: have an imperial starship blast their ship and, while they're trying to make an emergency landing on the first planet in sight, with techs busy in keeping the ship from falling apart... THEN make time-travelling-undead-ninja-monks teleport on their ship and attack them!

And don't use the "3.5 like" (stat+skills) method to make your monsters! Just give your "big boss" the HPs it needs and a DB of 50+the highest OB in the PC's party or something like that. 

[Skaran]

Have them fight each other, must be possible to come up with a plot or plots where they become each others antagonists. Certainly happened in a game I played in. One party member was a thief who stole from other party members, was possibly a little unfortunate that the other party members were all vikings!

[Dax]

Hue, strange combination: Jedi, super-spy snipers, archmages, klingon ninjas, X-Men style mutants ...

don't ask. Just...Don't. Ask

OK, I don?t ask

You are playing with this Killer-party once or twice a year.
(and I hope you also play in between.) And it seems to be still fun, so you don?t want to kill them, but to challenge them.

A new skill challenge:
One thing was already stated: Politics, but this is Roleplaying heavy, so perhaps no possible (I won?t feel competent enough for going that direction, although I own a board game about the politics at a royal court).
But this points to the right direction: Change the skill need.
Today the party succeeds in ground combat, if you change the campaign, you can introduce space fights. They don?t have an appropriate ship and surely not the skills.
(I have the vision they are cought with a tractor beam and have to free themselves by fighting through a Star Destroyer. On their way they might free other prisoners and get a new ship, better suited for space fights. Perhaps need some more. After that introduce Battlemech MIRCs then tanks, then ...).
But even with new skills the PCs with the higher stats would rule.


A new challenge in a firefight:
This is their kind of expertise, but instead of making the opponent stronger and stronger, make the PCs vulnerable. Don?t take away their armor and weapons, but give them dependants on their side. The PCs are stranded in he middle of a genozid, what sould they do (Jedi = defender of peace) ? And in the middle of the combat there are always little girls with big blue eyes and Teddy bears.

A new opponent:
Funny thing you have many opposing groups: The Galactic Empire, the Orc Fearcrushy (theocracy), two alien races, patty-grilling sponges, a time-travelling band of super-ninja monks, a supra-high tech alien robotic race, etc.
But one opponent is missing: Sith.
You have a Jedi, put in a Sith, capable of a nearly TPK (Total Party Kill), powers to stop bullets in the flight, explosion goes off the other directions and thank to Jedi-reflexes always (Always.) win initiative.
And after the group overcome the Sith, remember there are always two: a Master and an apprentice.
So send in the Master ...


(BTW There will (must) be a reason to kill that Jedi. A new hope for the freedom ?
The invesigation of the reason might lead them into the middle of a genozid or in the tractor beam of a Star Destroyer or ...)

[Aotrs Commander]

don't ask. Just...Don't. Ask

OK, I don?t ask

Trust me. You're really better off not knowing...

(and I hope you also play in between.)

Oh yes...though mostly D&D 3.5 otherwise.

A new skill challenge:
One thing was already stated: Politics, but this is Roleplaying heavy, so perhaps no possible (I won?t feel competent enough for going that direction, although I own a board game about the politics at a royal court).
But this points to the right direction: Change the skill need.
Today the party succeeds in ground combat, if you change the campaign, you can introduce space fights. They don?t have an appropriate ship and surely not the skills.
(I have the vision they are cought with a tractor beam and have to free themselves by fighting through a Star Destroyer. On their way they might free other prisoners and get a new ship, better suited for space fights. Perhaps need some more. After that introduce Battlemech MIRCs then tanks, then ...).
But even with new skills the PCs with the higher stats would rule.

Sadly, the party are actually very well rounded. They have an excellent pilot, a tank driver and about half the party are fair to brilliant shots with starship and vehicle weapons. And a medic, and two techs and an archmage and three characters with infliltration and stealth skills and a Jedi.

Hell the Jedi even has Midwifery, soley because the player thinks I might just place him in a situation where he has to use it. (I've no idea why - thought'd never have crossed my mind until he took the skill.)

A new challenge in a firefight:
This is their kind of expertise, but instead of making the opponent stronger and stronger, make the PCs vulnerable. Don?t take away their armor and weapons, but give them dependants on their side. The PCs are stranded in he middle of a genozid, what sould they do (Jedi = defender of peace) ? And in the middle of the combat there are always little girls with big blue eyes and Teddy bears.

I have done that in the past. It does, granted, make half the party a bit more careful. But Certain Elements who shall remain nameless are just as likely to shoot said defendants and deal with the reprecussions later...Espcially if the moral members of the party (i.e the Jedi and about two others) are not looking.

A new opponent:
Funny thing you have many opposing groups: The Galactic Empire, the Orc Fearcrushy (theocracy), two alien races, patty-grilling sponges, a time-travelling band of super-ninja monks, a supra-high tech alien robotic race, etc.
But one opponent is missing: Sith.
You have a Jedi, put in a Sith, capable of a nearly TPK (Total Party Kill), powers to stop bullets in the flight, explosion goes off the other directions and thank to Jedi-reflexes always (Always.) win initiative.
And after the group overcome the Sith, remember there are always two: a Master and an apprentice.
So send in the Master ...

Actually, I have used Sith before. The someway aforemention time-travelling ninja group who I mentioned once set up a group to specifically tackle the PCs did have a Sith...

Still, the problem is, the second I put them in against a single foe is the second that one or more of them will roll open-ended 3-4 times and beat whatever DB I've set up by about a hundred... (That particular occasion only went quite well because after using all their fluke on their counterparts - including the Sith Brother - the head Monk actually gave them pause for a round or two...)

So, "two there are" wouldn't really help that much!

Still, it's a thought to add grist to the mill, if not next time, perhaps a time or two ahead. Or maybe add a Sith or two to the aforemention Brotherhood/Greater Black Reaver ambush...

(Y'know, it is starting to feel a bit like, to quote South Park "Simpsons did it!" to many of your suggestions! But I suppose that is what you get for having a party around for a decade and a half (possibly more!)

[Phil]

Sounds to me like you've got a group who're having fun, so its important not to change too much - in my gaming group, at least, our goal is to achieve MGF: Maximum Game Fun. However, that has to include the GM too.

You say a lot about what the characters are like, but what about the players? Clearly, they enjoy combat, so you need to include some of that. But perhaps you can slightly adjust the balance of the scenarios to build up the social and political side, or to put in more puzzles and planning. Make the fight the single big pay-off at the end of a more convoluted adventure that has them unravelling a multi-partied plot to destablise the sensitive agrarian economy of a border world that is the main trading partner of a tourist planet that is most frequented by a race whose capital planet is strategically sensitive to the protection of the border with another race who themselves are being wooed by another race as a potential joint-host of the next pan-galactic olympics!

If you don't want to change the balance of the game, but really are just interested in making fights challenging, take some time to diagnose the characters' weaknesses. Or, as Jason Kenny, silver-medal winning team-mate described his 3-gold medal winning cyclist Chris Hoy, their strengths and their "weaker strengths"! It's entirely justifiable because characters on the scale you described will be well known and studied by the powers that be. So I concur with things like making the environment challenging, attacking with stealth. Hell, bomb them from orbit, so the characters need to run for cover and think about how they can counter attack. It's fair - if it was real life and someone told me to take down a group of elites like that, bombing from orbit is the only option I'd consider!

Another thing for you to do is to check out the top-level superheroes. Because, like it or not, your PCs are effectively superheroes now. Look at Superman and the Authority for inspiration: the former shows how frequently its the non-physical challenges that worry Supes the most, whereas the Authority shows interesting new ways of having uber-characters duking it out to the death.

I also wouldn't be averse to having them fight an opponent that they can't harm. A giant battle bot could conceivably have armour that is all but impregnable to human scale weapons, whether you roll 100, 200 or 600. So they have to find alternative solutions, which may involve *them* calling on the old "bomb from orbit" option. Well, at least it makes a change....

And then there's VR. Anything can happen there

[Phil]

P.s. this also highlights one of RMs biggest weaknesses - it isn't good at handling really big fights. Some PCs just need to be put in their place - your group may not be the sort, I mean the kinda players who think that its ok to shoot any authority figure for the hell of it, and treat your beautiful campaign universe like the Wild West. And I'd do it simple.

They're dangerous. They've really p***ed someone off. That guy has money, contacts and resources. So send an army up against them. Grenades. Area affect weapons. 500 guys firing pop guns, even - because on average 25 will of them will roll open-ended every single round! Not 5 at a time, but all 500 at once. The principle that has worked against you - lucky dice brings down your Bosses in 2 rounds - works both ways, and we all know the effect of even a couple of rounds of stun. Kill 'em in a fair fight, bring them round in regen-tanks, and have them fight their way to their equipment and back out again. The end result is the same, but it might just remind them of their mortality.

Hints for handling mass combat vs PCs:
1. Don't roll to hit. Use probabilities. Calculate them in advance and you can actually say how much damage and crits each character takes per round, and then roll the crits.

2. Plan out the environment early on, so you can place a series of squads of 5 NPCs. No more than this if you can help it, or you'll have players using AoE to wipe out huge swathes every round.

3. Your players are so tough, make them roll to hit but assume that any reasonable score knocks a squad out. But allow occasional crit rolls, especially against elite units, to ensure they keep the fun of RM.

Oh, and one final thought. Years ago, I completely irritated my group of players in a superhero game with a villain who had both teleport and invisibility, and another group with a high level cleric who recognised how tough the PCs were and hid in his loft secret room and wouldn't come out. The idea will need to be different, the principle is sound

[jps]

One scenario idea:

As usual, your PCs are taking a whole army of ass-kicking cybe-rninja from outerspace. Sure, they are wining again. Then something goes wrong: the telephone line is out, their weapons turn out tu be fake ones etc. As one of them complain or just wonders what the heck is going on, you tell them they hear a voice coming backwards:

"Cut! Cut! What are you damned doing ? of course you don't have real lasers and do you really need me to pay for a telephone line to give a call ? "

As they turn around they see ... a studio, the director seems mad, the blood is no more and the ninjas they killed rise up, remove their helmet and have a coffee. One of them is muttering "loosy movie loosy losers".

The PCs have no super powers anymore they are average joes with wives, children etc. And guess what, their life is a mess. Of course no one would ever believe them: they are second rate actors playing in a second rate movie, they all had psychiatric problems.

The trick of the story is to make your players doubt: is it real ? are they really playing actors gone crazy ? Of course it is not real all this is a really devilish plan devised by some archenemy who put their mind in a fantasy world ala matrix. He wants the PCs to reveal something he needs and let them in this endless nightmare as a revenge. Luckily a PC's ally is trying to recue them.

I first made this story for a Mage the Ascension session and it was quite memorable ^^

[mocking bird]

Put them on a boat on an ocean.  DB doesn't apply to drowning.

Hit them where it hurts - the pocket book.  Trade bans so they can't refuel their ship, buy stuff or more importantly sell stuff.  When they resort to crime, again apparenlty, have trade guilds, law enforcement and criminal enterprises after them.  Cut off the power and plumbing to their.  Note in this scenario you don't have to kill them, just make their lives miserable.

[Phil]

Put them on a boat on an ocean.  DB doesn't apply to drowning.

Hit them where it hurts - the pocket book.  Trade bans so they can't refuel their ship, buy stuff or more importantly sell stuff.  When they resort to crime, again apparenlty, have trade guilds, law enforcement and criminal enterprises after them.  Cut off the power and plumbing to their.  Note in this scenario you don't have to kill them, just make their lives miserable.

Would all work of course, but it doesn't sound much *fun* for anyone involved! Maybe do all the above.... and then drop a load of cyber-ninjas on them for dessert

[yammahoper]

Hit them where it hurts - the pocket book

My experience has shown lose of gear is were it hurts the most.

There is a level 50 Arcane spell in RMC I called DISJUNCTION that destroys a magic item.  In Arcane Companion, there is a list that allows any spell to be cast into a ball, bolt, wall or fog form of elemental arcane power, making the spell cast unresistable.

So frag their gear with a nasty arcane combo...or have it teleported away if your the bleeding nice sort of GM so you can return it later.  Point is, the power level of a group is greatly reduced when stripped of their gear.

It could go a little like this; the group is seeking a bad azz dude when they get jumped and their gear fragged, right when they are about to face the villian.  The man who just fragged their gear laughs and says he hired the group for this vengence over (blah blah blah) and watching them die right now is what he was always really after.

Or something along those lines.  The backstabber gets away and the group should find a way to win, after which they get to go after the fellow who set them up.

lynn

[markc]

 I aslo think another thing has to be taken into account. The fact that the GM is a god in his world. Are the PC's going to be ticked off or feel cheated if you throw a 1000' ball of disjunction at them? Or place them in a spot where the anti-force is king and any use of the force gives the PC backlash? Some players will not have a problem with it but some will and sometimes its just better to let the PC's retire than to take them out.

MDC

[rdanhenry]

On hits.  When a creature has a hit multiplier, and meets another creature that also has a hit multiplier, I subtract the lowest multiplier from the highest, with the lowest now doing x0 hits and the stronger doing x?.

For example, a Troll does x2 hits meets a Titan that does x5 hits.  For this fight, the Troll delivers x0 hits and the Titan x4 hits.

Two men who do x2 hits fight.  Against each other, they do x0 (normal) hits.

Another house rule; normal sixed people only do half hits against large foes and NO hits versus huge/SL foes.  All hits from criticals are applied normally.  BTW, for the rare faries or worthless small races, I typically half the hits they deliver versus human sized foes. 

lynn

Normal damage is x1; x0 would be no damage.

[rdanhenry]

I would go with a scenario where combat is not the solution. If they love the combat, throw in some opportunities to blow away the latest group of cheap thugs who want them dead, but make it so that doesn't do anything to progress towards achieving their goal.

To challenged mismatched PCs in combat, you could split them up. With the low DB characters out of the way, pump up attacking OBs to deal with the high DBs.

And give that Jedi a chance to deliver a baby.

If you could arrange it, bringing in another group of players to play the antagonists could make for a really interesting contest.

[ninja]

I'm not sure if someone already has proposed something similar, but I was thinking in the lines of radically changing the world in which the characters exist. What if there was some kind of dimensional shift, and the PC's ended up in one of the different Pales, presented in Creatures & Monsters. Place them in a environment (from which there is a possible escape) that renders many of their skills either useless or non-functional. Equipment might not work if this dimensions magnetic fields are different from their own world. Demon magic could turn their minds against each other and make them start killing sprees within the group.
   The Pales have different and sometimes severly dangerous demons who could turn out to be deadly and terrifying enemies when their supplies, equipment, skills and sanity runs out. Picture the marines from the movie ALIENS, turning from a kick ass battle team to a scared, raving and partly dead group of freshmen.
   Since demons are from other dimensions, they might also be utterly non-understandable. They might (and probably will) function completely out of every established concept of logical, emotional and intellectual thought processes. You could give the PC's a nightmare ride, screwing with their minds and making them paranoid, not trusting anyone, and let them dig a deeper and deeper grave as they try to solve everything the ordinary way.

Thats what I thought of anyway... 

/ninja

[Aotrs Commander]

Since demons are from other dimensions, they might also be utterly non-understandable. They might (and probably will) function completely out of every established concept of logical, emotional and intellectual thought processes. You could give the PC's a nightmare ride, screwing with their minds and making them paranoid, not trusting anyone, and let them dig a deeper and deeper grave as they try to solve everything the ordinary way.

Thats what I thought of anyway... 

/ninja

You mean like the Vlathachna...?

Yes, they've done that too! (Admittedly, it was ten years ago in one of their earlier adventures - that particular game stands out as being my first two-parter (for my eighteenth birthday) where they teamed up with their other characters form another party we played. So perhaps it's time I had another go...)



For the record, their past adventures read something like this:
The first adventure brought them into contact with the Kra'Vac (alien race from the Full Thrust wargame background), employed by a human who would become a recurring nemesis.

The second one I ran (someone ran a quick one-shot inbetween) they ran into Zhainmoth, leading into the third quest which was the aformentioned cross-over/Vlathachna/Zhainmoth game.

Their forth had them fleeing their nemesis, now revealed as an Imperial agent and Imperial forces, running to pirates, stealing their ship and crash landing on the capital world of the Army Of The Red Spear (Undead).

After escaping that, but being captured, their fifth adventure had them unwilling helping the Aotrs against the super-high tech technological might of the Blasted Legion - or Blastaron - Empire.

Somewhere before this point the Jedi did a quick solo adventure, rescuing his fiance from the cluthces of the Empire and the party's nemesis.

They then ended up fighting off aliens immune to energy and projectile attacks in a subterran cavern complex to rescue the Jedi's fiance (again - she joined the party after this - it was safer!) and dealing with two Brotherhood Monks in adventure six.

One of the players ran the next game, where they faced off against the Acrodinians (aliens) and Liam was kidnapped.

There followed a short side adventure, rescuing him from the clutches of the New Eire, who wanted to turn him into a potato clone - a mindless slave whos only function was to grow potatoes - for high crimes treason against the potato, where they once again, breifly encounter Imperial, Brotherhood and Blastaron forces. (I told you you'd be better off not knowing!)

(I think they may have been one or two more adventures other folks ran between them and my next one.)

The seventh quest I ran had them chasing purple-people eaters and avoided the Imperials (tracking them after last game) and the Brotherhood and their monestary of Monks specifically created to the kill the party. (Gillman was turned in at the start of this game.)

I think there was another game between that one and my next one, which had them chased down by the Blastarons and where they found a Sienetic Harbinger base. A bit of exploration later, they found something (a teleplat chamber) that might lead them to an even larger facility...

Meeting up with the enemies of the Blastarons who might be able to work out where the new facility was, they endured a lengthy set-piece chase scene (played mostly for laughs, but with just enough seriousness that at least one of the player really thought I was going to wipe them out) where they were chased by the Entire Blastaron High Command, the Empire, the Brotherhood and Megatron. Yes, Megatron! They then ended up exploring another small Harbinger base, leading clues towards the mystery base they encountered before.

Their next adventure pitted them against Klingons in a bid to avenge their Klingon ninja's father's murder -and they ended up unwittingly helping the Aotrs once again.

Then another Harbinger base, this time the culmination of the Harbinger arc.

After causing this much rucus, the party legged it to the fringes of the galaxy, ran into Liam and Gillman again, the pair were pirates attacking an unknown alien frieghter. The PCs followed the frieghter and found a strange alien facility (which in the end Liam ended up snapping and starting a fire-fight in.) The follow-up adventure found another of the alien's facilities, but revealed nothing more about their motives or what sort of being was pulling the strings behind the technoligcal/magical/psionic constructs they encountered.

And finally they went in search of lightsabre crystals (thanks to a delightfully lousy Weapon Tech roll, the Jedi now has a tick-sabre, which sounds like and has the colour of urine...) and ran into Orcs.

To sumamrise then, they've fought Kra'Vac, Imperials, Undead, Blastarons, Acrodinians, Klingons, androids, Harbinger robots, alien constructs, Orcs, pirates, Brotherhood Monks (including one Sith), Zhainmoth, Zhainmoth Cultists, amorphous clouds of purple people-eating gas, invulnerable-to-all-but-melee aliens, people with an unhealthy potato obession, a few law-enforcement types, numerous alien animals and at least one Vlathachna and one Decepticon...

So you can see they've had a fairly broad history of encounters and enemies. (I wasn't kidding about the "Simpsons did it" much, was I!)

Still, all this has made me think it's about time I dusted off a few more of those old adversaries for next time!

[markc]

 Taking on a little of Ninjas idea if you can find Inferno which takes the PC's through the 1st to 9th circle of hell is allways a fun time. A while ago a person on the forums said that there was a remake in the works.

MDC

[Karizma]

Have they battled their creators yet?  If all else fails, have them take on a bunch of roleplayers that knows all their strengths and weaknesses!  Then once the roleplaying mob has been eliminated, Make them go back in time and stop themselves, then having to fight their own characters?

Hey, you've got a wacky party, I'm throwing a wacky idea!

[Phil]

Have they battled their creators yet?  If all else fails, have them take on a bunch of roleplayers that knows all their strengths and weaknesses!  Then once the roleplaying mob has been eliminated, Make them go back in time and stop themselves, then having to fight their own characters?

Don't know about this specifically, but the toughest villain I've ever had to face down was when one of the PCs turned out to be the master villain of the adventure that the GM had planted from the start. There's never anything tougher than a dedicated knowledgeable player - while the GM has to worry about 101 things, that players can just plot how he's gonna stick it to the rest of the group. I wouldn't use it all the time, but as a one-off surprise, it's a belter!

[Aotrs Commander]

Taking on a little of Ninjas idea if you can find Inferno which takes the PC's through the 1st to 9th circle of hell is allways a fun time. A while ago a person on the forums said that there was a remake in the works.

MDC

I am still watching that, waiting impatiently. Last count, the cahp re-writing it was nearly done and had his lap-top and back-ups stolen (fortunately he had most of it backed up elsewhere.) Inferno might be a bit big for a day quest mind. I'd run in D&D 3.5 if it ever gets off the ground...