Determine challenge of a fight

[samu]

Hi,

I'm Samuel and I'm new to this forum. Therefore I hope this is the right place for my question. We are playing The One Ring enthusiastically for a while now and I am loremastering. For quite some time now, there is one question on my mind concerning the creation of a battle encounter. Somtimes I find it hard to determine what's a challenging fight for my party and time and again I am off mark, creating either a fight that's too hard or finding a fight, that was expected to be quite hard, turning out to be too easy. Now, my question: Is there any method to determine the degree of difficulty of a battle encounter, for example similar to the Challenge Rating in Pathfinder or D&D 3.5? Sometimes this would come in very handy because fights are rare in The One Ring anyway, and when they happen they should be balanced as required.

Thanks in advance,
Samuel

[Hermes Serpent]

No there isn't and unlike D&D no-one expects a fight to be balanced. If it get's too difficult then running away is the best option.

[samu]

Well, okay, it was worth a try but I suppose you are right. Thanks for the answer.

[Rich H]

Hi Samu, welcome to the forums!

It's correct that there are no hard rules for determining the balance of a fight so a new LM has to tread carefully. What I'd recommend is taking a look at the starting adventure in the rulebook and, if you have it, the adventures found within Tales from Wilderland. Those are basically laid out in the order they should be played although some can easily be swapped about but reading them should give you an idea of how adventures can vary in challenges with regard to combat and how dangerous things can get especially when your PCs are outnumbered; such fights can be really dangerous.

However, use the following link: http://stuartrjohnson.co.uk/tor/palantir/ and search on 'balancing combat'. It will give you a whole list of thread links on the subject which you can read through to get lots of ideas.

If you have any other questions then don't hesitate to ask!

[samu]

Hey Rich,

thank you very much for the nice welcome and for the link. This is really helpful!

[Rich H]

No problem samu, really glad you're here and enjoying TOR so much.

Remember that it's all largely opnion and experience when balancing encounters so it's just something you kind of have to learn by trial and error. I quite like this though as I still get some fights that I run and are over very quickly to my surprise whereas others can be really taxing for the PCs. It makes the game feal more *real* because each fight isn't perfectly balanced. My players now approach every encounter with a mixture of excitement and caution which I think is a good place to be and for quite a modern game system gives a nice 'old school' feel.

[Glorelendil]

Welcome, Samu. Hermes Serpent is one of our resident curmudgeons but he's really a sweet guy. (Don't tell him I said that.)

Don't be afraid to adjust the story on the fly.

If you throw too much at the heroes and it looks like they are going to die you can:
- Save them with the timely arrival of an LMC they were to meet (think of Glorfindel saving Frodo, or the Eagles saving everybody from the trees). It's a good idea to have the reason for the LMC prepared ahead of time, so it's not just somebody powerful saving them and then disappearing...it should feel like it's part of the story. You could also have it be a neutral/suspicious saviour, so they go straight from combat into a social encounter.
- Trolls, especially those with Great Size and Favoured Armour can be really, really hard to kill. A common house rule is for trolls to attack whoever did the most damage to them last turn; that way their brutal output is spread around the party.
- Great Size opponents can also simply give up and leave once they reach zero endurance and are Weary.
- Likewise, groups of opponents might lose morale and flee once several of them have been killed.
- If the party does "die" they are actually unconscious; they might find themselves prisoners when they wake up.

On the other hand, if you made the fight too easy you can always bring in reinforcements. And make sure you're using special abilities (Seize Victim, Great Leap, etc.) intelligently.

[Wbweather]

My recommendation would be to start with 2 enemies per PC that are slightly weaker than your PC's. Then add one or two challenging enemies to make things exciting. That usually works well for me. For instance, if fighting spiders with 4 PC's I would have 8 attercops. If I wanted to challenge them I might replace a couple of attercops with hunter spiders. For a serious challenge, I'd throw in a great spider.

You can generally gauge how difficult the combat will be after a round or two. I will sometimes hold back a surprise if things are going too easily.

My players always seem to want to fight it out to the bitter end, but as stated above, sometimes when things are beyond what they can handle, the most prudent choice is to run away.

[poosticks7]

Well my band of heroes faced off against a few wolves and nearly lost. Then against 50 or so orcs in those that tarry, and they gave a really good showing before the eagles came. Killed 17 orcs including a few Uruks.

So combat is hard to judge at times.

[zedturtle]

However, use the following link: http://stuartrjohnson.co.uk/tor/palantir/ and search on 'balancing combat'. It will give you a whole list of thread links on the subject which you can read through to get lots of ideas.

I went ahead and added the most extensive thread that I could find on the subject to the new FAQ list.