Topic: Encounter Levels??

[kevinmccollum]

I think one big issue is no two GM's run the same game. I don't allow transcend armor, I use the RMCII 200 point initiative system, I allow a character to parry multiple creatures, I allow hasted characters to parry with 100% of their ob and attack with 100% of their ob, etc. Other GM's do things totally different. Because of those great variances in play style, it becomes harder to set up a formula to create balanced encounters.

[Marc R]

Ecth,

IMO the parry is not a modifier but a usual tactical assignment during combat, which leaves things such as flank bonus, a good tactics roll etc., which are - unless way talk about "monsters" like a house cat - usually far lower than the OB+DB of the monsters.

I'll try to logic this out once more.

1) I think we can agree that negating your DB has the same effect as boosting my OB?

2) Assuming any rational non fanatic puts OB into parry (not always true) If I have OB/DB of 30/30, and you have OB/DB of 40/40, but choose to parry at Paas. . .now, I attack you from the flank. . .your 30 points of parry are negated, since they're not directed at me, plus I get my 15 bonus. . .so 30/30 vs 40/40 (or 60 vs 80) suddenly is 45/30 vs 40/10 (or 75 vs 50).

3) So what before the fight looked like +20 OB/DB in your favor, via a casual, happens every combat maneuvering tactic, has become -25 OB/DB in my favor. . .a swing of 45 points. . .or 150% of my starting OB, or 75% of my starting OB/DB. . . .

4) When your casual variance can fall into scales of 75-150% you're way into fuzzy terrirory. . . .

5) You'd expect this to moderate as you go up levels, but the effects of parry negation cause the variance to keep scaling up as the parry scaling keeps rising.

6) Flank attacking to negate parry is VERY common, in fact, it's the standard tactic of a party attacking a single large nasty monster. . .if the kobolds/goblins/orcs/city guard who are half your level but twice your numbers never return the favor on the PCs, then you're playing them dumb. . .if the monsters are assumed to always be stupid, while the PCs are always assumed to be smart, it eliminates much of the variations that might create problems.

Good luck and I never hated this idea, I just think you're going to have serious problems coming up with anything clean and easy that offers more information than merely comparing monster levels as is. <Shrug> whenever I'm up to something I prefer contrary feedback to people gushing about how wonderful my idea is, as critical comments are often far more constructive to making something work than agreement ever is. . .It's never meant in a hostile manner, but I guess what I prefer in terms of critical idea feedback isn't universal.

[dutch206]

Impossible to gauge a challenge rating unless we decide on a standard definition of what the rules are.  For instance, do you allow level bonuses in your game?  If so, which of the four options presented in Character Law does your campaign allow?  This one decision can have a HUGE impact on what your character's OB is going to be.

@Rasyr:  If your "standard party" doesn't include a priest who knows healing spells, first aid, and herbalism, they won't get very far. 

[Ecthelion]

1) I think we can agree that negating your DB has the same effect as boosting my OB?

Don't know. My reasoning is that a greater orc with an OB of 80 and a DB of 30, i.e. OB+DB = 110, is just as dangerous as a greater orc with an OB of 80 and a DB of 30 who parries 20 of his OB. The sum of OB+DB is still 110.

2) Assuming any rational non fanatic puts OB into parry (not always true) If I have OB/DB of 30/30, and you have OB/DB of 40/40, but choose to parry at Paas. . .now, I attack you from the flank. . .your 30 points of parry are negated, since they're not directed at me, plus I get my 15 bonus. . .so 30/30 vs 40/40 (or 60 vs 80) suddenly is 45/30 vs 40/10 (or 75 vs 50).

As I said before, I firmly believe that for determining a CR we would use standardized terms of combat i.e. no surprise, no flank attacks and such conditions which you mentioned.

Good luck and I never hated this idea, I just think you're going to have serious problems coming up with anything clean and easy that offers more information than merely comparing monster levels as is.

Don't worry, I have no intentions of doing this. I believe coming up with a good CR system would cost a lot of work. Additionally I believe it will be pulled to pieces here in the forums within seconds since there will always be someone who thinks he found what he considers a serious flaw.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Impossible to gauge a challenge rating unless we decide on a standard definition of what the rules are.  For instance, do you allow level bonuses in your game?  If so, which of the four options presented in Character Law does your campaign allow?  This one decision can have a HUGE impact on what your character's OB is going to be.

Any sort of system should use only the core rules - not options. Level bonuses are part of the core rules, and as such should be included.

@Rasyr:  If your "standard party" doesn't include a priest who knows healing spells, first aid, and herbalism, they won't get very far. 

1) Others can know herbalism and first aid.

2) Recovering from a combat isn't part of the equation in determining whether or not a "standard party" can survive/beat a "standard encounter".

[rdanhenry]

pastaav, if the variation is so horrible, then please answer my question why experienced RM GMs can quite well gauge an encounter? Or are you not able to do so?

I would say that it is because the GM has a good measure of his *players'* abilities, which are at least as important as the characters' abilities in a game with as many tactical options as RM. To go back to the Navy SEALs comparison, their commanding officer doesn't expect them to win on the basis that each of them is worth, say, 3.8 third-world militia in a fair fight, it is because he expect them to use tactics and stealth to avoid getting into a fair fight. The "Challenge Rating" of the foe isn't very important to mission success. Their tactics, precautions, and alertness is.

[Marc R]

As I said before, I firmly believe that for determining a CR we would use standardized terms of combat i.e. no surprise, no flank attacks and such conditions which you mentioned.

I suspect, in the end, that's probably a basic difference of opinion as to the logical baseline that we'd just not agree on. . .I find that actual combat rarely resembles a "fair fight in the ring" and that the style of combat in play usually revolves around lots of maneuvering and plotting for killshots while avoiding getting killed. . .the only exception being mindless, murderous constructs like skeletons. Basing the logic on a hypothetical "fair fight" would seem contrary to me, since one of the first things I'd ever say to a noob player would be "RM is nasty dangerous combat wise, and any attack can kill you, so avoid unnecissary fights, and whenever possible exploit any advantage you can to kill the other guy. . .every fight is life or death, and fair fights are for suckers who want someone to sing a song over their honerable corpse. Trust me, your opponants will be trying to do the same to you, nobody wants to die."

Offering a logic based on a "fair fight" with one hand, while advising against fair fighting and warning that the enemy will fight smart and dirty with the other, feels to me like being purposfully deceptive or confusing. . .

It's essentially saying "Here's your odds if you boldly ride into town up the middle of main street expecting to meet the enemy waiting for you in the town square." then proceeding to lay out in the tactical advice how stupid it is to ride up the middle of the street, and how you could expect that if you did so, you'd be ambushed from cover, so you're much better off warily approaching the town, or sneaking in, and using tactical advantages to kill the enemy before they use those tactical advantages to kill you.

That make any sense?

[Der Graumantel]

Hi out there, I took a quick glance over the discussion and came to the conclusion that CRs are the wrong approach for Rolemaster. Why?

First:
Rolemaster combat varies very much on conditions. (rear, flank, number of foes, lighting and so on, take a look at the mods tables)

Second:
Rolemaster combat includes some hardly calculable factors (open-ended rolls, big result range, crit results)

Third:
Rolemaster is more skill driven than level driven (skill rank development is different for every individual character)

Solution:
So I think the way to solve this problem is writing a good in depth article on the topic wich helps the GMs to be aware and take care of the many aspects of an individual Rolemaster encounter and its differences to other game types (i.e. DnD). This could be part of a Express Addition or RM quarterly and should be part of a new Rolemaster edition in the GM part.
Just my five cents.

Greets
Ben

[markc]

 IMO the idea above about helping new players and GM's understand RM combat vs various types of combatants. Then the problem is going to be to get them to read it.

MDC 

[Arioch]

Sorry, but this make me smile everytime I read it: do you think that art is not methodical? That it has no rules? You couldn't be farther from truth.

They way I do art - yes to the first question and yes - no rules - to the second question .

Are you sure? You can compose music without knowing to read notes or without knowing what tunes are? Or draw without knowing anything about color scale or perspective? Composing poetry wihtout knowing anything about metric? Writing a book without knowing grammar? "Make art" in general without knowing anything about aesthetics?
Art is made of rules, and methodical application, construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of such rules.

[Ecthelion]

It's essentially saying "Here's your odds if you boldly ride into town up the middle of main street expecting to meet the enemy waiting for you in the town square." then proceeding to lay out in the tactical advice how stupid it is to ride up the middle of the street, and how you could expect that if you did so, you'd be ambushed from cover, so you're much better off warily approaching the town, or sneaking in, and using tactical advantages to kill the enemy before they use those tactical advantages to kill you.

That make any sense?

I understand what you mean. But at least a GM would have a measure for this kind of fair fight using the CR. Chances of course rise to win the fight if the PCs use terrain, cover, clever tactics etc. and not just "boldly ride into town".

[Marc R]

Sorry, but this make me smile everytime I read it: do you think that art is not methodical? That it has no rules? You couldn't be farther from truth.

They way I do art - yes to the first question and yes - no rules - to the second question .

Are you sure? You can compose music without knowing to read notes or without knowing what tunes are? Or draw without knowing anything about color scale or perspective? Composing poetry wihtout knowing anything about metric? Writing a book without knowing grammar? "Make art" in general without knowing anything about aesthetics?
Art is made of rules, and methodical application, construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of such rules.

Plenty of musicians who could never read music who could compose in situ. . .anyone who's read falkner knows a knowledge of grammer and spelling is optional to writing, there's loads of non metered or rhymed poetry. . . .artists have somehow managed to get by while still remaining ignorant of the mathmatical/scientific/logical rules and analysis of art (much to the irritation of art scholors every other generation or so).

That a GM, via experience and hands on, in the moment "feel" for their game, can use their brain to make near accurate estimates, is art. . .it's not a process that can be easily quantified, and the GM may not be capable of explaining all the why's and wherefores (many of which, like the GMS gut "feel" for their players, would be hard to express in numbers, unless you think we should include a myers-briggs test in the rules.)

There's an art to GMing. . .I've known plenty of people who try really hard, have tried for a long time, and still suck as GMs. . .it's not a simple, explicable and learnable skill, some people just don't have the "spark" that makes a good GM. (Though, with hard work, anyone can strive to at least be an adequate GM).

[Marc R]

I understand what you mean. But at least a GM would have a measure for this kind of fair fight using the CR. Chances of course rise to win the fight if the PCs use terrain, cover, clever tactics etc. and not just "boldly ride into town".

Thing is, my gut says that situations where both sides "play nice" and don't try to maneuver or manipulate the mods in their favor are vanishingly rare. . . .and that this is true in all highly lethal games. . .something that models the exception seems like an odd thing to make the rule. . . .the rule should be the norm, and the exceptions should be explained in the footnotes, not the other way around.

[Arioch]

Plenty of musicians who could never read music who could compose in situ. . .anyone who's read falkner knows a knowledge of grammer and spelling is optional to writing, there's loads of non metered or rhymed poetry. . . .artists have somehow managed to get by while still remaining ignorant of the mathmatical/scientific/logical rules and analysis of art (much to the irritation of art scholors every other generation or so).

Still their music is readable in notes, and non-metered poetry or "stream-of-consciousness" writing is born as a response/reaction to other aesthetic structures, etc. Without scholar's analysis, art simply wouldn't exist.

There's an art to GMing. . .I've known plenty of people who try really hard, have tried for a long time, and still suck as GMs. . .it's not a simple, explicable and learnable skill, some people just don't have the "spark" that makes a good GM. (Though, with hard work, anyone can strive to at least be an adequate GM).

Probably they haven't tried the right system. According to my experience everyone be a good GM, they just need to find "their" game.
"Gamemaster" is just the name we give to a set of duties and authorities, assigned by the game to a specific player, not an innate quality.
In RM one of these duties is encounter-building, and, to be considered complete, rules-set should tell players how this is done.

[Marc R]

Many artists might disagree that Art requires critics and scholors. . .they might feel it only needs artists, and those who experience the art. . . .in that particular chicken-egg, I'd say you'd need a large body of art before anyone could comment on it as a body of concept, therefore dictating the artists actually had to exist before the critics and scholars got into it. (I suspect, if you go poke one of the artists on the board with said logic, they might give you a similar response.)

We don't actually disagree, I just think you're oversimplifying the task. . . .sort of like a set of directions that just gave heading and distance. . .it might be handy to know that NY to LA is 273 degree heading, 2,446 miles, but unless you're firing a missile, it's insufficiantly detailed data for any practical use.

[Arioch]

We don't actually disagree, I just think you're oversimplifying the task. . . .sort of like a set of directions that just gave heading and distance. . .it might be handy to know that NY to LA is 273 degree heading, 2,446 miles, but unless you're firing a missile, it's insufficiantly detailed data for any practical use.

That's possible, I tend to be quite optimistic when I start planning/rationalizing things. 

There's just one thing that doesn't fully convince me, though: are we sure that in RM gamemaster are actually assumed to build encounters around the PCs' party, like in d&d?

[Marc R]

I tend to build a world, then let my PCs roam around in it, where there's no canton for 1st level characters, and no "when you hit 10th you can cross the bridge into super badass land". . .they learn not to mess with nasty things, and to sneak, run away or talk fast when they bite off more than they can chew. . .and to not smacktalk like a professional wrestler until they know for sure a friend has a crossbow pointed at the back of the guy they're mouthing off to.

OTOH every now and then some 5th level PCs go all dark knight and kill someone 20th level. . .there tend to be consequences to that though.

[pastaav]

Can we drop the discussion about real world art? It does not seem like that on topic...

Don't know. My reasoning is that a greater orc with an OB of 80 and a DB of 30, i.e. OB+DB = 110, is just as dangerous as a greater orc with an OB of 80 and a DB of 30 who parries 20 of his OB. The sum of OB+DB is still 110.

Actually I would say that the suicidal greater orc that does not parry is more dangerous since this kind of stupid behavior turn the combat in russian roulette.

As I said before, I firmly believe that for determining a CR we would use standardized terms of combat i.e. no surprise, no flank attacks and such conditions which you mentioned.

Just out of curiosity...
if your play group of say 5 encounter 7 orcs...will the two extra orcs stand back and let the players finished their comrades before they attack?
I think the problem here is that I can not for any reason understand how we can ignore flanking situations. I mean...even if we limit ourself to saying that CR ratings only apply to cases when the number of enemies are equal to the players a stun or downed character will add the flanking situation back into the game.

In real game one of the sides will manage to to take out opponents or stun them and if this side thus not take advantage of their greater number then there is something seriously wrong. If the opponent uses adrenal defense, armor, retreat or special abilities to defend themselves means lots and lots directly when circumstances mean one side temporary has a numerical advantage.

How can we possibly ignore the tactical properties of using flanking or rear attacks?

Don't worry, I have no intentions of doing this. I believe coming up with a good CR system would cost a lot of work. Additionally I believe it will be pulled to pieces here in the forums within seconds since there will always be someone who thinks he found what he considers a serious flaw.

Seems quite likely since we are loads of people who finds serious flaws with what is described. I would love to be wrong, but nothing I have seen in this thread indicate your version of CRs would be of any use. A CR that require the orcs to be standing in line to be executed and not engage the players before they are personally attacked is so far from any realistic gaming situation that the exercise is pointless.

[pastaav]

I readily admit that I very rarely plan encounters that has the wrong CR for my players. On the other hand I firmly believe that this is because I have a good grasp of CRs of different types of tactical encounters and not because every monster has some kind default CR that tells how it will perform in combat.

Save if you tell me you firmly believe that, given the exact same tactical situation, a group of 1st level orcs are as dangerous as a group of 20th level balrogs, sorry, but it is because "every monster has some kind default CR that tells how it will perform in combat", to which you merely add CR modifiers (such as "when in native lair, adds +1 to CR", or "if ambushing, adds +50% to CR")

That argument breaks down because why should the balrogs be using the same tactics...take ordinary orcs and level them to level 20 and they will also have tactical options that the level 1 orcs does not have.

When I am saying the tactics is essential I don't mean a ambush from demonlord and level one orc is equally dangerous, obviously the OB or approximate level of the monster does matter.

Instead I am saying that if I have an encounter with level 3 monsters then the danger of situation will not change much if I change to some other level 3 monsters. On the other hand changing the tactical situation will change the danger lots...depending on the situation the same level 3 monsters can either be harmless or a potential TPK.

There are of course some monsters with special powers that make them very much more powerful, any monster with stone gaze like a basilisk is much more dangerous than their level. Yet I do think that these monsters are the exception.

If you ignore positioning, spells, special powers, skills the players will use, surprises etc then you could as well IMHO just tell them to look at the level of the monster and be done with it. Your version of CR would not match how the monster is used in actual play so how can it be more useful than the level of the monster? 

Because a monster's level is not a direct indication of its effectiveness in combat (though it's probably tied) but rather of its resistance to external influences (since a monster's level foremost matters for resistance rolls consideration).

I totally agree...my point was exactly that the CR of the monsters would be of similar limited use as level to determine how dangerous the monster is in actual play.

Both level and CR tell something that in some situations can be useful,. The problem is that the CR concept in itself, mostly because of it use in D&D, suggest it tells more than what is true. Looking at the rare monsters that has special powers that make them much more dangerous than their level then full analysis of how this special power can be exploited in actual play is essential.   

[pastaav]

I think the basic way to proceed is that a number of short articles are written that explain how to make combat encounters in RM can be made interesting with hands on examples of what a certain monster, spell users or circumstance mean in a particular situation. The reason why I think this can be done is that it sounds quite fun to write and read, we can draw from our experience as GMs and does not need to run loads of mock up combats with artificial limitations on what tactics to use.

This of course does not the cover the actual monsters that can be used. For these I propose that some kind of community vote is made. If we RM fans are presented with evaluating the combat potential of a Plasma Dragon from Creatures and Monsters I am pretty sure there will be loads of opinions. Suppose everyone can add one sentence that describe how dangerous the monster is, and that ICE select their favorite quotes. I think such a resource with a possible link to longer accounts of use of the monster would be more fun to read and much useful than some arbitrary challenge rating. 

The above ideas needs to be polished, but I think it is needed to think outside of the box.