Topic: Skills for Monsters

[markc]

Ido Tamir,
 IMO you are asking the classic question how do I decide what this non-described or very little described game mechanic can do. For veteran GM's it is very ease to wing it but for newer GM's it is very nice to have some words on paper to refer to.

 If you have any more questions just post and people will try and help.
MDC

[Arioch]

but... if someone has never faced a hydra before, how would they know how difficult it is?

Well, I tell the maneuver difficulty to the players, to be sure that they understand what's going on. OTOH their characters don't know how difficult the task they're going to attempt is (they can only guess). Usually there is a lot of difference between what players know and what characters know, so what's the problem?
 

[markc]

 Sometimes I make them roll a lore:monsters or some type of lore spell to be able to know just what is the best way to fight it or do what ever they want to do to the monster.
MDC

[Ido Tamir]

From my experience, players like consistency. Also, they like it when there is a difference when their PCs try to accomplish a given task in different levels.

I know that as a GM I can decide that *right now* the PCs can avoid being spotted by the Hidra on a 'Very Hard' manuever, but then I need to remember it for the next time they try to do the same, and adjust for their level etc.

IMHO, If the PCs try to accomplish something and their opponent (monster/NPC) has a say about it (like sneaking on the Hidra), I need to let them roll and adjust the opponent roll accordingly. Its more 'realistic', in the sense that most of the time - you don't know how well you did.

I disagree regarding character knowledge and player knowledge. Most players can't handle this very good, and even if they do, its forced and unnatural. I prefer to let them decide with a clear head, and not effect their decision with 'real life' information.

Note that this is not valid for jumping over a pit - this is easy enough for the PCs to judge their ability to do so.

All I want is a quick method of determining the ability of a given opponent to do certain things. I agree with Arioch that modifing the PCs roll is the quickest way, but I think that method relies too much on the PCs roll and gives away too much information.

If you let the opponent roll as well, the PCs might roll poorly and still succeed in their attempt (The PCs rolled low in their sneak attempt, I give the Hidra an 'Easy' awareness manuever to spot them and it fails - the PCs did a terrible job sneaking, but the Hidra did a worst job in spotting them).

Wow that was long...

What do you think?
 

[markc]

Ido Tamir,
 I try and treat monsters as PC's when it is important to do so and I have to estimate the monsters skill ranks accordingly. So I think I gave you my two tier approach above. But now that I am thinking about it I guess I could have a lot more tiers being skills they are very good at= 3 ranks per level, skills good at =2 ranks per level, skills average = 1rank per level, and skills the just know =1 rank per 2 levels all other skills either 0 ranks or 1 rank to get ride of penalties.
 Most of the time I use the level x2, level X1 and level X1/2 but I can see where you would use the level X3 method.

Did that make sense?
MDC

[craggles]

I know that as a GM I can decide that *right now* the PCs can avoid being spotted by the Hidra on a 'Very Hard' manuever, but then I need to remember it for the next time they try to do the same, and adjust for their level etc.

If it's 'Very Hard' to sneak past a Hydra when the characters are level 1, wouldn't it still be 'Very Hard' when the characters are level 20? It just means that it's easier for the characters as they have more ranks in it at level 20?

I think the difficulty should change if the Hydra is a higher or lower level (a mature beast or baby for instance) or if it's surroundings are different this time (maybe the cavern is darker, more items are obscuring the Hydra's line of sign, there's a pervading odor of sulpha in the cavern masking out anyone's scent etc).

This is my understanding of the rules - but I'm very new on the RMFRP front. 
(and my head maybe filled with all those different methods which every RM2 companion seemed to have a different idea on)

Rasyr suggested a basic monster formula of 2 ranks per level as well as a +25 to +50 extra bonus for particular 'prey' creatures. It maybe a long winded way around (unless you already have a huge spreadsheet which the formula gets dropped in easily ) but it gives me a better idea (and a consistent way) of allocating that initial Static Roll difficulty. I have no problem factoring in the environmental modifiers - it's the Creature's skill that was a complete unknown for me (but not any more).

[Right Wing Wacko]

but... if someone has never faced a hydra before, how would they know how difficult it is?

Well, I tell the maneuver difficulty to the players, to be sure that they understand what's going on. OTOH their characters don't know how difficult the task they're going to attempt is (they can only guess). Usually there is a lot of difference between what players know and what characters know, so what's the problem?
 

Just that some players have a hard time keeping metagame knowledge out of the game! Even trying, some will subconciously remember the "mechanics" or "knowledge" that their PC wouldn't know, and base their actions on it... even when they are not actively trying to!
Actually, I see merit in both ways (GOF's and Arioch's) although I perfer GOF's...

[Arioch]

Just that some players have a hard time keeping metagame knowledge out of the game! Even trying, some will subconciously remember the "mechanics" or "knowledge" that their PC wouldn't know, and base their actions on it... even when they are not actively trying to!

Yeah, I know but, to tell the truth... I don't care. Unless their actions are ruining the fun of the others (and in this case I just remind them that their character don't know about that) I let them metagame. After all the goal is to have fun, isn't it?
Plus, if you hide man. difficulties you would also have to hide a lot of other infos, like NPCs DBs, ATs, Levels, effects of the crits they receive and also PCs current hit points, since PCs cannot know exactly when they're going to pass out... I'm not saying that to do this is wrong or bad, just that as a GM I prefer to keep my job as simple as possible (expecially with RM!  ).

I know that as a GM I can decide that *right now* the PCs can avoid being spotted by the Hidra on a 'Very Hard' manuever, but then I need to remember it for the next time they try to do the same, and adjust for their level etc.

If it's 'Very Hard' to sneak past a Hydra when the characters are level 1, wouldn't it still be 'Very Hard' when the characters are level 20? It just means that it's easier for the characters as they have more ranks in it at level 20?

Yes, difficulty for same tasks should remain always the same, otherwise you lose coherence and gaining levels becomes meaningless. To increase difficulty you should change the situation: for example sneaking past a sleeping hydra is much simplier than sneaking past an awake one (or an hydra with more heads, or multiple hydras, or multiple awake hydras  )!

[Ido Tamir]

I think I'll try that approach in my next session.

It's probably going to speed things up (one roll of the PCs instead of two: PCs and then the monster) and will probably speed MY prep time as I won't need those Skills for Monsters..

If skill is a must, I will go for the Formula (2 ranks/level OR give a profession and use the Master NPC table).

But giving information such as AT and DB to the players.. I don't know. I might try it for one session, see how effects gameplay. Might as well roll my dice in the open.. (No more fudging, Pain is on sale today!!  )

I'll let you know soon enough! 

[Arioch]

Might as well roll my dice in the open..

I encourage you to do so (maybe using fate points instead of fudging...) 

[GrumpyOldFart]

but... if someone has never faced a hydra before, how would they know how difficult it is?

Well, I tell the maneuver difficulty to the players, to be sure that they understand what's going on. OTOH their characters don't know how difficult the task they're going to attempt is (they can only guess). Usually there is a lot of difference between what players know and what characters know, so what's the problem?

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a problem, more just a preference. As it happens, my players are pretty good at keeping player knowledge/character knowledge separate.

By saying things like....

"You realize it has several heads, right? It has more "range" than most things in hearing, sight and smell because it has so many eyes, noses and ears. And it doesn't appear to be just some mindless lump, it looks pretty alert. Still wanna go for it?"

....I'm still trying to give them a pretty accurate picture of what they're facing, but trying to keep it in terms of character rather than player. It may not "spoil anyone's fun" to do it a different way, but I do it the way I do in hopes that it makes it easier for the player to stay at least partly immersed in the character. Perhaps I've done too much stage acting in my life, it bugs me when I'm in rehearsal and someone says something that "pulls me out of the scene", so I try to avoid doing that to my players. Necessary? No, not at all. A politeness? Depending on the tastes of your players, it can be. Whether or not it's worth the trouble depends on how much you and your players want the game mechanics to be as "invisible" as possible.

[DonMoody]

What do you think?

We (the groups I have played in) have found that more rolls slow the game down, fewer rolls speed the game up.
And none of us have the time we once did for RPGs.

For example, we played systems with attack roll followed by defense roll.
Quite realistic in you saw the difference between two low skilled fighters (both hitting/defending less than 50% of the time first one to actually hit usually meant the fight was over) and very highly skilled fighters (hitting/defending in the 95+% chance meant a fight between them took a long time; think of the initial parts of the fight between Westley and Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride and you get the idea).
But it took *just forever* to resolve a fight (we used to joke that our sessions were 'roleplay until we got into a fight, then the rest of the session - and maybe more - was spent resolving the fight').

Now we do as much as we can to keep the game moving, and that means if we can change more rolls into less or even one roll, we do it that way.

DonMoody

[markc]

 I also give the players AT and DB info so they can look it up on their copy of the weapon chart but I do the crits so they do not know if there are any crit mod's.
 But most people let there players look up crit info.

MDC

[Arioch]

It may not "spoil anyone's fun" to do it a different way, but I do it the way I do in hopes that it makes it easier for the player to stay at least partly immersed in the character. Perhaps I've done too much stage acting in my life, it bugs me when I'm in rehearsal and someone says something that "pulls me out of the scene", so I try to avoid doing that to my players. Necessary? No, not at all. A politeness? Depending on the tastes of your players, it can be. Whether or not it's worth the trouble depends on how much you and your players want the game mechanics to be as "invisible" as possible.

Yes, I perfectly understand what you mean, and in fact I never said that it was wrong to do so, only that I prefer to let everyone at the table know how things works in game terms.
As a player I find easier to understand what's going on and to immerse myself in my character if I have this kind of references. But I know that others find being reminded that they're playing a game disappointing ...