Game Balance

[jmanski]

And one thing to consider is that almost every movie has that one character who must take cover during the gunfight, but saves everyone later by fixing the radio or something. Playing this character takes more role playing which must be rewarded.

Rewarding roleplaying is important for these players as well as finding ways for them to make important contributions in the game.
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

If you want to call it that, fine. I prefer to think of it as a natural progression of causality. By modifying the Jedi to better fit what I see in the films, I increase the power level and effectiveness of Jedi and Force users relative to other characters. As a result, I also allow non-Force user characters to have expanded power and abilities by giving them extra skill dice and improved equipment.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[atgxtg]

As a general rule, I&m of the belief that balanced RPGs are not necessirly better. In fact, I often find them to be far worse. Players get used to the fights being rigged in their favor [take a good look a Challenge Ratings in D20 and what they really do], and start playing poorly since they know they can get away with more.

Now a GM should not throw the PCs into situations that they cannot handle each week, but the players should also be somewhat responsible for deciding just which foes they should avoid. I certainly wouldn't nerf Vader just because some PC decided to stand and fight when he should have ran away.

[garhkal]

Too true.. One gaming session i made it REAL clear to the group via news reports and other such stuff, that a 40 man contingent of Vader's fist was on the planet the PCs were investigating some recent rebel disappearances. And the group Still went to fight them.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[atgxtg]

What has been burned into my memory is something that came up A LOT in my FRPG campaigns: The players would roll up characters and get the infodump for the campaign setting. Typically there would be some location with a nasty monster that the locals would warn the adventurers about. Basically they would be giving the PCs a heads up about what to avoid, such as "Don't go near that mountain over there - a dragon lives there!"

Instead of avoiding the monster, the players would instead make a beeline towards the monster, figuring that since they were a first level group, there couldn't really be anything that tough. Then they would be shocked and surprised when the walked right into a dragon, vampire, giant, etc. Somehow it was my fault for daring to put such a creature into a "low level game". I suppose they'd have blamed me if they had blindly walked off a 100 foot high cliffand took 10D6 damage.

[garhkal]

I have noticed more of a tendency these days for people to get the impression if the DM/GM has a monster/encounter put into the game, even with warnings/hints etc, tht it STILL must be defeat-able by them, otherwise they would not have placed it.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Zarm R'keeg]

Likewise, I've encountered that ANY character that will converse with them or has any sort of personality whatsoever MUST be crucial to the plot or have the information they need, or else they would interact like a real person.

I think it comes from a videogame mentality; if there's a boss in the game, it's meant to be beaten. If there's a character that is just a bystander or there to add color, he'll only have two phrases that alternate with a press of the B button.
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Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!

[Fallon Kell]

[garhkal]

[Quetzacotl]

Personally, I think every encounter has to be solvable.

Unfortunately, many players confuse this with "we can defeat the enemie". It just means that there always has to be a way to solve the encounter, either by defeating the enemie, or by making something else that somehow stops the encounter or even by running away.
But unless the players did extremely obvious dumb choices, they should always have a chance to get out of the encounter alife.


For example, in our last "The Dark Eye" adventure, we had to fight agains a Shaman who summoned some nasty Undeads... the Undead weren't really a Problem. The fact that any attack on the Shaman left him without even a scar (and we tried really hard... normally you do around 5 to 15 Damage or so. Our Knight with magical weapons that are supposed to hurt even magical creatures that are immune to any ordinary damage, managed to make a hard hit and land 65 Damage on him... didn't do anything to him -.-). So we came to the conlusion, that we are not yet prepared. My character (a mage) remembered that there is a ritual that allowed you to put your soul and life into a stattuet that looked similiar to you, which made your body more or less invulnerable to any kind of damage. Only by destroying that stattuet, we could defeat the Shaman (or thats what we thought at the moment). So we made a tactical retreat, since the stattuet was nowhere to be seen.

So, the encounter was solvable, but not beatable. We now knew what we where up against, but we couldn't defeat the shaman. We ran away, narrowly escpaing (hords of undead were following us, but we were slightly faster ^^).

[Zarm R'keeg]

[garhkal]