Topic: Combat styles unbalanced?

[black flag]

I use the Combat Companion with RMC because I think that is a real good supplement for RMC; I use the combat styles but no the new rules about "armour by the pieces".
The characters of my group are around level 6/7 now.
Battles after battles me and my pals begin to think that the Combat Styles are unbalanced. Why?
Even if we like the Combat Styles, this system can boost fighting capabilities of the character, like the DB (agile defense, block, defensive block...) but monsters now with these optional rules have low OB. Without these rules my players were afraid by Trolls, but now they laugh at them...
The OB for monster were calculated with other powers like crit size, magic and so, and so...but without stats (AG, CO, St...) or level bonuses for our beloved monsters it's hard to be balanced with character that use Combat Styles!
What do You think about this?

[Arioch]

Did you give combat styles to monsters, too?
Because my experience is almost the opposite of yours, with the introduction of CC a lot of monsters became much more feared by my players (for example I gave goblins a racial style with agile defense, bonus to initiative and a couple of maneuvers; orcs got shield training and killing strike, trolls got almost all grappling maneuvers, etc.)...

[black flag]

It's not really the problem. I do like you.
But with more high DB the OB of some monsters are too low.
The cleric of my group is a 7 level character with a style like this:
- single weapon focus (2)
- agile defense (2)
- Required Skill (1)
- block (1) with known maneuver, thus cost of 6.
With a base cost for weapon of 3 for clerics (the player has exchanged the cost with Directed Spell), we can see in the table 04-02 p 53 a real cost of  4/8. He has 12 ranks in the skill.
With the math, the character has +92 in the skill (thus OB).
With agile defense he can add +12 to his DB for 27.
If he uses Block: OB/2 + 3 by 2 pt of OB, thus +183 to his 15 of base DB= 198 with 100% activity.
Good luck for the 66 level fire drake with it's 125 HBI.

[Arioch]

Good luck for the 66 level fire drake with it's 125 HBI.

66th level drake have a base OB of 125HBi, and a base DB of 75.
Since the drake is a creature I'll assume that it has at least one rank/level in his combat style.
Fire Drake Style Options: Adrenal Defense (drakes wear no armor) = +75 to drake DB, which is now 150; Required Skill (Fire Breath, in which the drake has at least 66 ranks) = +20 to his OB, which becomes 145, Natural Weapon Kata (Bite)
Throw in a couple of maneuvers (block, defensive block, martial disarm or sacrifice strike...) and you have a quite impressive drake IMHO...

[thrud]

12ranks -> 54 rank bonus, Lv7 -> 7 rank bonus
92OB -> Stat bonus + weapon bonus = 31, is this normal for a Lv 7 Cleric?
15DB -> Stat bonus + Armour bonus
-10% holding agile defence
82OB, 27DB
100% Block
-> 0OB, 150DB

[Fidoric]

You can boost your monsters the way it is done in Harp by giving them "Survival Instinct". 1 rank per level and a combined bonus applied directly to DB. Monsters are survivors with natural high DB, allowing them to put all their efforts toward offense and that may be a factor making the PC invest a good part of their OB in DB.

[Nejira]

I never saw the point in adding to the PCs capabilities only to add the same or similar to monsters/NPCs. Isn?t that just going back to square one? EG: All PCS gets +20DB/OB but so do monsters/NPCs, so might as well stay where you started.

Why not, if you all feel they are unbalanced, simply stop using Combat Styles?

[Winterknight]

If combat styles were simply about math, that would be a solution - simply re-zero the playing field.  There is a great deal of flavor in that system, however, and it provides a great framework of mechanics for players to incorporate the stuff they'd like to do.

A relatively quick and dirty solution is to do a spreadsheet of OB/DB for 3 character types: Fighter, Semi-spell user, spell user. Extend that up to 100 levels (or 66, if that's where your critters top out). Add in level bonuses for the creatures: +3 for fighter, cap at +60, +1 for the semi - cap at +20, +0  for the spell user. 

Simply refer to that chart, using whatever progression you think is appropriate (and possibly based on the actual party members),  and use the level to compare to the creatures in the book.  If they're lower than your chart, boost them to it.

One of the companions of old did this, but I gave all my books away a few years back, so I don't have that reference for you anymore.

[yammahoper]

Th real answer lies in refiguring the level 66 dragons rediculously low OB.

Claw Attack; St Mod + Rank Bonus +level bonus (+3).

St mod of dragon; 80.  66 ranks (ev if in RMFRP); 98.  Level bonus; +126

305 OB (I round up).  This is using a low St Mod and adding no natural talent bonuses, etc.

[Nejira]

Its incredible how much Ad&D and Rolemaster resembles eachother sometimes

It was very hard to come up with a good challenge in Ad&d when you got to about the high levels (12+) because the majority of the monsters were too weak. I recall taking down the really tough dragons at level 10 which left you with a feeling of "bleh, was that it?".

Anywats, I digress. Why hasn?t the monsters calculated stat bonuses already? As I see that it would really easen the burden of the GM greatly.

[black flag]

Its incredible how much Ad&D and Rolemaster resembles eachother sometimes

It was very hard to come up with a good challenge in Ad&d when you got to about the high levels (12+) because the majority of the monsters were too weak. I recall taking down the really tough dragons at level 10 which left you with a feeling of "bleh, was that it?".

Anywats, I digress. Why hasn?t the monsters calculated stat bonuses already? As I see that it would really easen the burden of the GM greatly.

+1
That is the advantage of HARP versus RMC: the monsters have stats and professions.
Like old topic about "stats for monsters/ and or skill system for them..."

[Arioch]

Its incredible how much Ad&D and Rolemaster resembles eachother sometimes

Actually, since RM was born as a series of optional rules for AD&D, it's not so surprising 

That is the advantage of HARP versus RMC: the monsters have stats and professions.

Well, IMHO using for monsters (and NPCs) the same stats/professions that are used for PCs is absolutely NOT an advantage. Quite the contrary, it's impratical and burdensome for the GM. It's one of the things I dislike in d&d 3rd edition and other games, like GURPS: it takes forever to build decent monsters (expecially high level ones) and you end up with a lot of informations you'll never use... I think that monsters and NPCs should have only a minimal amount of stats, to allow the GM to make them in a few minutes.

But... yes, monsters in C&T (and in RMFRP C&M) are often unbalanced and I think that we truly need a set of coherent rules on creating new ones...

[runequester]

to be fair, Ive run a lot of GURPS and Ive never bothered "designing" an enemy. In just about any game ever, I tend to give each enemy a "skill" rating.
They roll that for anything they should be decent at. Lower it a bit for skills that are known, but not mastered

[Arioch]

to be fair, Ive run a lot of GURPS and Ive never bothered "designing" an enemy.

Yes, because if you followed the rules and designed enemies like a GM is supposed to do by the book you'd spent more hours writing adventures than actually playing them.
The fact that you choose to ignore/change the rules points out that they're broken and cumbersome

[runequester]

to be fair, Ive run a lot of GURPS and Ive never bothered "designing" an enemy.

Yes, because if you followed the rules and designed enemies like a GM is supposed to do by the book you'd spent more hours writing adventures than actually playing them.
The fact that you choose to ignore/change the rules points out that they're broken and cumbersome

I never really got the impression that your supposed to build NPC's the same way PC's are built, to be honest. The only advantage is knowing their points value, and thats not really important.

Nothing broken about it.

[black flag]

Its incredible how much Ad&D and Rolemaster resembles eachother sometimes

Actually, since RM was born as a series of optional rules for AD&D, it's not so surprising 

That is the advantage of HARP versus RMC: the monsters have stats and professions.

Well, IMHO using for monsters (and NPCs) the same stats/professions that are used for PCs is absolutely NOT an advantage. Quite the contrary, it's impratical and burdensome for the GM. It's one of the things I dislike in d&d 3rd edition and other games, like GURPS: it takes forever to build decent monsters (expecially high level ones) and you end up with a lot of informations you'll never use... I think that monsters and NPCs should have only a minimal amount of stats, to allow the GM to make them in a few minutes.

But... yes, monsters in C&T (and in RMFRP C&M) are often unbalanced and I think that we truly need a set of coherent rules on creating new ones...

For the first point: I think monsters are tough enough in AD&D but often characters are Monty Hauls (in my old days of AD&D fan: characters hunting Dispater or killing with a smile Yeenoghu....)

For the second point: I'm not agree with You on HARP: monsters are handled with simple rules! but a whole system of simple rules can be thinking about stats of monsters with archetypes in RMC:
examples:
- animals with bonuses in specials skill categories
- same for dragons, demons, elementals....like professions but without the math of the characters: for monsters we need only stats and some skills for encounters, like Perception for animals, social skills for intelligent monsters (duping, diplo...)...and with stats we'll built Combat Styles...if the ICE team think about a united system for after 2010, I think that a crossover of HARP/RMC will be a good one...I have got the two games and I like very much the two!

[Arioch]

The only difference between creating a PC and a NPC in GURPS is that for PCs you have a fixed amount of points and for NPCs you don't.
NPCs have the same number of stats, use the same skills, advantages and disvantanges used for PCs. Most of the time, great part of these informations is useless, so a lot of GMs don't bother to calculate them (I do the same thing you do when I run GURPS), even if playing by the RAW they should.

BTW with my comment above I didn't mean to attack GURPS, HARP or d&d 3, they just happen to use the same stats for monsters and PCs...

[Arioch]

For the second point: I'm agree with You but a whole system of simple rules can be thinking about stats of monsters with archetypes:
examples:
- animals with bonuses in specials skill categories
- same for dragons, demons, elementals....like professions but without the math of the characters: for monsters we need only stats and some skills for encounters, like Perception for animals, social skills for intelligent monsters (duping, diplo...)...and with stats we'll built Combat Styles...

What about:
- No Stats
- Base Attack and Base DB bonus +X per level (depending on monster type)
- Occupational Skills (skills in which creature is very good): get +Y each level
- Everyman Skills (skills in which creature is quite good): get +Y each other level
- Restricted Skills (skills which creature is unlikely to have developed): get no bonus
- Every other Skill: get +Y every 3 levels

Skills would not be listed in creature's description, when the need of knowing a skill bonus arise the GM would just decide to which category the skill belongs and make it on the fly...


Should we start a monster creation thread?