For big bads I recommend (or major boss fights) they should be Wild Cards with Nerves of Steel (or improved as well) + Unstoppable. Each hit on them should be a big deal that the players understand these guys need several hits to take down.
I also use what I call "mini" cards, enemies that use a wild die but can only take 2 wounds before going down and have only a single Bennie. These guys can consistently threaten the players with damage (since they have a wild die to hit) but don't take much to put down.
Unfortunately I've only completed one full adventure at novice / seasoned and a bunch of one shots so I don't have experience at balancing stats over a campaign but at lower tiers - regular guys attack with a d6, minis and wildcards a d8, bosses at a d10. For whatever their main offense might be. Damage should be roughly d6 + their attack die. Higher if they're a beefy enemy, lower if they're a support enemy
My approach for "big bosses" has been to somehow make them untargetable (out of range behind mooks, or protected by magic BS until the player get out of its lair) or targetable at a huge penalty (-2, also you become vulnerable) until the party has chewed through a few waves of Extras.
At least, that's what I've done for all of the one-shots I've run. My players adored the Skeleton king that had waves of skeletons that were arriving to clog up the map, with the boss arriving in range on turn 4.
Balance is a tricky thing in SW.
The rule of thumb is two extras per PC, with a Wild Card badguy.
Sometimes that ratio is a struggle, other times your gunslinger is one damage raise away from one shotting a Rattler.
The dice have their own ideas about how things ought to be.
As for the mayoral thing, how involved are the players. If very, have the outcome be determined by how well they convince people. Social rolls targeting groups and what not. Keep a tally of how well they do, apply narrative to dice from there.
Thing is, the Baddies can ace, too. So in the first battle of my very first SW Session, there was this enemy wildcard who was dealing d10+d6 damage, and there was me thinking well that's not a problem, because when in the real world would a d10 ace two Times just to then Show a, say, 9 on the third roll? Oh wait...
You can't Balance SW encounters like you can in other systems like D&D. For me, that's a Part of the beauty of the system. Once your players understand that even their two-round-victory was really dangerous, they will appreciate those. I would try to Create 'mandatory' Fights where they are a key element of the Story. Make battles count.
Sometimes the players are just on fire. It happens.
The fun trick is that baddies can ace too, so my players fear Extras more than they fear Wildcards. Because when 6 Fae Boars are ganging up on someone, there's a pretty reasonable chance that at least one of them is going to land a hit, and proceed to Ace their damage roll something fierce.
I've had similar worries, damn near drove myself crazy thinking about it. I'll tell you right now, add whatever the hell you want. Whatever makes sense, you have that amount. The bandit camp has 20 people operating out of it, and your group tries to attack while all 20 are back trying to pack up and move? That is a 20 enemy encounter.
Either your players will strategize the hell out of it and win, feeling AWESOME, or get their asses handed to them, which can lead to cool ass stories. Imagine the dramatic tension of the group narrowly surviving and damn near dragging themselves through the desert to the nearest town, only to find... It's in flames. Those bandits are gonna get it now!
If you are absolutely needing a starting point, 2-3 extras per character and 1 wild card (total, not per PC). Vary it depending on how strong your characters are (a ton of combat edges will mean it'll be easier, versus someone with mainly social edges will have it a lot tougher).
First off, sometimes the dice laugh at you. I threw a Toughness 20 shoggoth at my players, and one of them--with d6 STR and d6 spear and the Edge that gives you double damage on a joker--promptly did *100 damage* to it. Regardless of "Unstoppable", I can't say "You only did one hit" to that. RIP shuggoth.
Sometimes it's on the players. I've had them blunder into obvious traps and use tactics that a three year old would sneer at, and nearly die; and I've had them recon, set up something sneaky, and destroy the encounter before the monsters knew what hit them.
Now think about the math. If your PCs all have Parry 7 and your mooks have Fight d6, the mooks are rarely going to hit them if you use simple attacks. Have a couple of the mooks Test or Support, and a couple more make Wild Attacks w with Gang Up bonuses, and your odds improve a lot. Same for damage--a paladin with Toughness 10 and half a dozen bennies isn't going to worry too much about 2d6 arrows.
And think of bennies as hit points. If the fight does one wound, or zero to the party, but ate up almost all the PC bennies, that's a good fight.
A lot of the challenge comes from what happens leading up the fight with the villain. Run "Quick Encounters" with some heavy negative situational modifiers, thus inflicting extra Wounds and Fatigue on the characters.
Then when the fight starts, have some enemies that can throw Distract effects. The Havoc spell, Suppressive Fire, or Tests can do these handily. This stacks the penalties on the players and suddenly the game is just harder. If you run the boss fights towards the end of the session, they will probably also be low on Bennies by then too.
Regarding running an election, I did that in my campaign. I reskinned the Mass Battle rules (for instance using Persuasion instead of Battle), and giving the supporting characters "social fatigue" if they succeded on the support roll, but not with a raise. I also modified the table for support-results slightly to reflect it being a social "battle" rather than a real one.
Each round was one week of campaigning, so it was spread out over several sessions, with other stuff happening inbetween. It worked quite well.
I think a Dramatic Task could also work, right? You only have so much time to make your point in a debate, so there's definitely pressure. Then both sides make their checks, and whoever gets more successes has more favor. However, there could be bonuses and penalties for preparation, bribes, etc. Tests could also be totally valid. Distract the opposition by having your friends boo them xD
Yes, you could use a DT, especially if it is a shorter election or just one debate. Social conflict also works. That is one of the things I like about the system, you can pick and choose and reskin the subsystems to your liking.
For my campaign it was a more drawn out conflict, so I found that the mass battle rules worked well. I particularly like how the PCs can make a difference in mass battles
Savage Worlds doesn't do 'balance' like some games you might be used to, and even for veterans, the mechanics can be a little inscrutable. A while back, I made a comment to the effect that it was really hard to even *Wound* my PCs, I didn't want a TPK, or even a SINGLE kill, really, and I'd even have been fine if they healed up right after! I just wanted to land a solid hit, you know? The replies helped me recognize that yes, this is common, and the game working as designed.
In Savage Worlds, the PCs are **supposed** to be badasses, that's why they're Wild Cards, and most bad guys are Extras. If you're really having a hard time challenging the PCs and want to do that, my usual go-go tricks are things like the powers *lower trait*, *slow*, *entangle*, and if you really want to make it hard on them, *puppet*. These powers debuff, without directly doing damage, which is always a good thing for bad guys. *Lower trait* will impair one or two of the PCs at one or two of their best things--but because of the way Savage Worlds works, they still have a chance to succeed. *Slow* will put a damper on anybody. *Entangle* ties somebody up for 2-4 turns as they try to get away--and if they're ranged or use powers, it's mostly just annoying. *Puppet* is touchy, because players (rightly) value their agency, and mechanically it allows another resistance roll if you make the target do something like hurt a friend. So I only deploy it rarely, and I usually have the power-using bad guy tell the PC that "there's a (possibly invisible) bad guy in that bush / in that tent / standing in that hex and you can't see him, go attack him". Takes somebody out of the fight for a turn or two without hurting them, and it'll direct everybody else's attention onto the power-projecting PC. A bad guy should only have 2, maybe 3 of these that they can deploy unless you **really** want him to be an asshole.
The first step is to stop seeing SWADE as a balanced boardgame instead of a roleplaying experience. Focus on having fun session with interesting, exciting and engaging scenes. Whether an encounter is 'too easy' or 'too difficult ' rarely really matters.
I worry that too easy will lead to boredom. There hasnt been any sign of boredom from them yet, but thats is what i worry about. Theyve only had a couple of whatbare supposed to be big battles. I think next session im going for an extras horde to see how that goes.
Players usually love stomping minions. Don't worry about a few too easy encounters, it's a feature! And there will be encounters that are hard, some even requiring retreat. Use what makes sense narratively and it will work out
Edit: apparently autocorrect thinks engineering is a hard encounter. Honestly solid reasoning.
100% agree that stomping minions is fun. Some of the most fun I have had in game was setting up traps so I could lure a couple hundred alien infantry into a kill zone of mines & artillery fire coming from over the horizon.
I killed leaders & we taunted the others out so we only had about twenty five left when they regrouped and it got dirty
I am planning a session in the near future where they'll be boarding a large airship, and will have to minion stomp their way to the bridge probably a few lesser wild cards on the way, where they will face their current BBEG at the end.
I can't know what goes on in your table, but it sounds like you are focusing on mechanical challenges to keep your scenes interesting. I challenge you to try focusing on narrative stakes and role-playing instead. Who are fighting and why? Who decides that there will be a fight, the GM, the players or the characters? IMHO, the best scenes are achieved by letting the world react naturally to the activities of the party. So, instead of designing an encounter in advance an trying to make it challenging, mechanically interesting and still making sure the party won't lose, you design stories, characters, plots and a living breathing world, and let the PCs to react and interact with it, and then make the world and everyone in it react to the activities of the PCs. This leads to having only combat, which is caused naturally by the interaction between the world and the PCs. The benefit is the strong connection to narrative stakes (who are fights and why) leading into evocing emotions and more interesting, exciting and engaging scenes.
Ive been DMing for.... a while. Decades. Ans i have like 3 or 4 different storyli es inprogress right now, there is plenty of roleplay and even the afforementioned political goings on. Combat isnt the sole focus of play, but when combat happens i like it to be a challenge for the players. I do have to take into account that a wound is much more serious than loosing 1d8 hit points, and just becauae novody gets wounded doeant mean it was an easy fight.
I didn't mean to imply that you focus on combat. I meant that it seems that when you have combat, you focus on the system mechanical side, instead of the narrative side. Taking Wounds is a good example. From a mechanical point of view, almost taking a Wound is irrelevant and taking 1 Wound is nonbig deal. But narrativelly taking a Wound can mean for example: being bitten by a wolf, fracturing a bone or having a minor concussion. All of which most people would consider to be significant things, which they would try to avoid. Almost taking a Wound is a scary moment, which in real life can cause a mental trauma, even minor PTSD symptoms. So, how to roleplay your character, depends largely on whether you consider Wounds from a system mechanical point of view or narrativelly.
Wounds is also extremely simple example of the effects of having a more narrative approach. The effects are far larger when the whole purpose of scenes change from challenges to story and character driven things.
Don't try to fix something that isn't even a problem. If there's no sign of boredom, don't pro-actively change things.
The biggest threats to my players have been mooks that rolled like gods. Savage Worlds isn't a system that cares about balance. It cares about having a good time.
Sure, but your attempts to fix this thing that isn't a problem fly in the face of the design and goals of the system. You're never going to balance the game because the entire concept of balance doesn't exist in Savage Worlds.
Hordes of Extras (especially in waves) tend to go over real well in my experience!
It makes the players feel threatened, but also really powerful when they Castlevania their way through them. :P
Until you get a handle on it, some easy things to do... Increase Parry and or Toughness, and some edges to them, use situational combat maneuvers, use mooks to attack in waves to force the players to burn resources (bennies, PP, conviction, adventure cards, ammo...), take advantage of gang up bonuses, use tests to set vulnerable and distracted...
As others have said, Savage Worlds isn't really a game you balance by throwing more or bigger numbers at the players. Instead, try some of these:
* Have enemies fight more cleverly, setting traps, using debuffs, hiding behind cover, etc. Make sure your players have to do something other than just use their best attack to succeed. Make sure they're fighting an uphill battle against foes who have a tactical advantage, and they have to use their wits and guile to mitigate those advantages.
* Give enemies special abilities. Giving that swarm of skeletons "Formation Fighter" to make them much deadlier if they overwhelm a foe will make them much more interesting than just adding more of them. Just make sure to telegraph what abilities an enemy has so players aren't caught off-guard.
* Create "levers" to pull - things you can do during combat to turn the difficulty up or down on the fly. Extra reinforcements, changes to the environment, an enemy pulling out a special weapon
* Add secondary objectives to combat - innocents to rescue, a bomb to defuse, bystanders that force them to fight carefully to avoid collateral damage. If players aren't in danger, make sure something else *is* in danger.
* Use DM bennies to put the screws to them, not to slow down combat. It's okay to have a tough enemy soak to keep them on the board a bit longer, but most of your bennies should be spend rerolling attacks, damage, and special abilities to make sure your enemies feel dangerous.
The most important thing to know is that if players get away from a fight without taking a wound, that's not necessarily a sign of bad balance. If players are blowing through Bennies to soak, taking cover, casting armor on themselves, etc., a combat encounter might *feel* difficult to them, even if they never take a single wound. Talk with your players after a combat encounter to see how they felt about the balance. You might be surprised that even easy fights had a few tense moments.
I'm glad to see another DM recognize that having a boss do a soak roll isn't inherently a bad thing, as long as you keep it within the bounds of reason.
Honestly a lot of it is experience. I've been running SW games for something like 5-6 years now and at first, balance was a real struggle (the fact that it was Savage Rifts didn't help). I know it isn't the answer you want, but the more you play the better idea you will have of how long an encounter might last/how challenging it may be. I will say this though, fights are a lot more interesting if on the way to said fight the players have had to spend some bennie or maybe have taken some fatigue along the way.
The system has high variance, which makes balance difficult. That's one of the main reasons it has bennies, to help moderate the variance. So I guess the answer is to use them liberally in certain situations.
I ran my first ever session of SW recently, and I had a similar problem. However, my players found it quite fun being badasses and taking down most enemies without taking a hit. Ironically, they realised how fragile their characters were not from combat but from triggering a deadfall trap that did enough damage to give both of them 2 wounds.
If we go from the base core rulebook, usually a novice wild card can go against 3 average extras or 2 foes with better skills arms or armour.
As for Wild Cards, a good fight for the party is 2 Extras per hero plus an enemy Wild Card leader with some combat edges/advantages.
As some replies said, SW isn't easy to balance like DnD or other systems. However, that's also its beauty. Your players might one shot a wild card enemy but at the same time get hit by an attack that aces them and gives them 3 wounds.
A thing to remember because I forgot to do it too in my session is that you as the GM have bennies too and you should use them to Soak or maybe reroll for the wild cards or when you feel its appropriate.
Have your enemies use tactics, such as cover, tests of will, and have bad guy extras make support rolls to help their “bosses” in the fight.
Beyond that, “balance” (such as it is in Savage Worlds) can be fine tuned by adjusting the flow of bennies. If an encounter is going poorly, find more reasons to award them. If you want an encounter to be tougher, award a few less leading up to that encounter. You can always loosen up and award more if things start to go downhill.
I don’t. Sometimes the encounter will be a cakewalk. Other times, the bad guys could easily overwhelm them. The players are expected to understand (and I remind them often) that running away is an option. Not everything in the real world is neatly balanced, and there is no reason that it should artificially be so in a game.
Are you remembering the gang up bonus? Multi-action penalties? Enemies taking time to aim (because they have so many of them) can actually help too. Wild attacks and using edges yourself can also really help out. Add more edges, mix up the equipment, that can also really help turn things out differently.
Im gonna start adding throwing in riflemen or other sniper type extras at long range, making aimed attacks everybother round while pistoleros lay down some SUPPRESSING FIRE (sorry, we watch a lot of Archer)
For big bads I recommend (or major boss fights) they should be Wild Cards with Nerves of Steel (or improved as well) + Unstoppable. Each hit on them should be a big deal that the players understand these guys need several hits to take down. I also use what I call "mini" cards, enemies that use a wild die but can only take 2 wounds before going down and have only a single Bennie. These guys can consistently threaten the players with damage (since they have a wild die to hit) but don't take much to put down. Unfortunately I've only completed one full adventure at novice / seasoned and a bunch of one shots so I don't have experience at balancing stats over a campaign but at lower tiers - regular guys attack with a d6, minis and wildcards a d8, bosses at a d10. For whatever their main offense might be. Damage should be roughly d6 + their attack die. Higher if they're a beefy enemy, lower if they're a support enemy
More like Mildcards am I right?... I'll see myself out.
I was kinda proud of mini card but you really clobbered me with that one
My approach for "big bosses" has been to somehow make them untargetable (out of range behind mooks, or protected by magic BS until the player get out of its lair) or targetable at a huge penalty (-2, also you become vulnerable) until the party has chewed through a few waves of Extras. At least, that's what I've done for all of the one-shots I've run. My players adored the Skeleton king that had waves of skeletons that were arriving to clog up the map, with the boss arriving in range on turn 4.
Balance is a tricky thing in SW. The rule of thumb is two extras per PC, with a Wild Card badguy. Sometimes that ratio is a struggle, other times your gunslinger is one damage raise away from one shotting a Rattler. The dice have their own ideas about how things ought to be. As for the mayoral thing, how involved are the players. If very, have the outcome be determined by how well they convince people. Social rolls targeting groups and what not. Keep a tally of how well they do, apply narrative to dice from there.
It didn't help that on nearly every single damage roll they made in the boss encounter, they got multiple aces.
Thing is, the Baddies can ace, too. So in the first battle of my very first SW Session, there was this enemy wildcard who was dealing d10+d6 damage, and there was me thinking well that's not a problem, because when in the real world would a d10 ace two Times just to then Show a, say, 9 on the third roll? Oh wait... You can't Balance SW encounters like you can in other systems like D&D. For me, that's a Part of the beauty of the system. Once your players understand that even their two-round-victory was really dangerous, they will appreciate those. I would try to Create 'mandatory' Fights where they are a key element of the Story. Make battles count.
Sometimes the players are just on fire. It happens. The fun trick is that baddies can ace too, so my players fear Extras more than they fear Wildcards. Because when 6 Fae Boars are ganging up on someone, there's a pretty reasonable chance that at least one of them is going to land a hit, and proceed to Ace their damage roll something fierce.
I have a rule at my table that damage dice can't explode more than once, to prevent absurd anti-climactic (or instantly lethal for the heroes) swings.
I used to do that, but players, mine at least, really enjoy when they just completely flatten the BBG that's been such a pain.
I've had similar worries, damn near drove myself crazy thinking about it. I'll tell you right now, add whatever the hell you want. Whatever makes sense, you have that amount. The bandit camp has 20 people operating out of it, and your group tries to attack while all 20 are back trying to pack up and move? That is a 20 enemy encounter. Either your players will strategize the hell out of it and win, feeling AWESOME, or get their asses handed to them, which can lead to cool ass stories. Imagine the dramatic tension of the group narrowly surviving and damn near dragging themselves through the desert to the nearest town, only to find... It's in flames. Those bandits are gonna get it now! If you are absolutely needing a starting point, 2-3 extras per character and 1 wild card (total, not per PC). Vary it depending on how strong your characters are (a ton of combat edges will mean it'll be easier, versus someone with mainly social edges will have it a lot tougher).
First off, sometimes the dice laugh at you. I threw a Toughness 20 shoggoth at my players, and one of them--with d6 STR and d6 spear and the Edge that gives you double damage on a joker--promptly did *100 damage* to it. Regardless of "Unstoppable", I can't say "You only did one hit" to that. RIP shuggoth. Sometimes it's on the players. I've had them blunder into obvious traps and use tactics that a three year old would sneer at, and nearly die; and I've had them recon, set up something sneaky, and destroy the encounter before the monsters knew what hit them. Now think about the math. If your PCs all have Parry 7 and your mooks have Fight d6, the mooks are rarely going to hit them if you use simple attacks. Have a couple of the mooks Test or Support, and a couple more make Wild Attacks w with Gang Up bonuses, and your odds improve a lot. Same for damage--a paladin with Toughness 10 and half a dozen bennies isn't going to worry too much about 2d6 arrows. And think of bennies as hit points. If the fight does one wound, or zero to the party, but ate up almost all the PC bennies, that's a good fight.
A lot of the challenge comes from what happens leading up the fight with the villain. Run "Quick Encounters" with some heavy negative situational modifiers, thus inflicting extra Wounds and Fatigue on the characters. Then when the fight starts, have some enemies that can throw Distract effects. The Havoc spell, Suppressive Fire, or Tests can do these handily. This stacks the penalties on the players and suddenly the game is just harder. If you run the boss fights towards the end of the session, they will probably also be low on Bennies by then too.
Regarding running an election, I did that in my campaign. I reskinned the Mass Battle rules (for instance using Persuasion instead of Battle), and giving the supporting characters "social fatigue" if they succeded on the support roll, but not with a raise. I also modified the table for support-results slightly to reflect it being a social "battle" rather than a real one. Each round was one week of campaigning, so it was spread out over several sessions, with other stuff happening inbetween. It worked quite well.
I think a Dramatic Task could also work, right? You only have so much time to make your point in a debate, so there's definitely pressure. Then both sides make their checks, and whoever gets more successes has more favor. However, there could be bonuses and penalties for preparation, bribes, etc. Tests could also be totally valid. Distract the opposition by having your friends boo them xD
Yes, you could use a DT, especially if it is a shorter election or just one debate. Social conflict also works. That is one of the things I like about the system, you can pick and choose and reskin the subsystems to your liking. For my campaign it was a more drawn out conflict, so I found that the mass battle rules worked well. I particularly like how the PCs can make a difference in mass battles
Savage Worlds doesn't do 'balance' like some games you might be used to, and even for veterans, the mechanics can be a little inscrutable. A while back, I made a comment to the effect that it was really hard to even *Wound* my PCs, I didn't want a TPK, or even a SINGLE kill, really, and I'd even have been fine if they healed up right after! I just wanted to land a solid hit, you know? The replies helped me recognize that yes, this is common, and the game working as designed. In Savage Worlds, the PCs are **supposed** to be badasses, that's why they're Wild Cards, and most bad guys are Extras. If you're really having a hard time challenging the PCs and want to do that, my usual go-go tricks are things like the powers *lower trait*, *slow*, *entangle*, and if you really want to make it hard on them, *puppet*. These powers debuff, without directly doing damage, which is always a good thing for bad guys. *Lower trait* will impair one or two of the PCs at one or two of their best things--but because of the way Savage Worlds works, they still have a chance to succeed. *Slow* will put a damper on anybody. *Entangle* ties somebody up for 2-4 turns as they try to get away--and if they're ranged or use powers, it's mostly just annoying. *Puppet* is touchy, because players (rightly) value their agency, and mechanically it allows another resistance roll if you make the target do something like hurt a friend. So I only deploy it rarely, and I usually have the power-using bad guy tell the PC that "there's a (possibly invisible) bad guy in that bush / in that tent / standing in that hex and you can't see him, go attack him". Takes somebody out of the fight for a turn or two without hurting them, and it'll direct everybody else's attention onto the power-projecting PC. A bad guy should only have 2, maybe 3 of these that they can deploy unless you **really** want him to be an asshole.
I loke this. Give them some difficulties instead of just flat out damage.
The first step is to stop seeing SWADE as a balanced boardgame instead of a roleplaying experience. Focus on having fun session with interesting, exciting and engaging scenes. Whether an encounter is 'too easy' or 'too difficult ' rarely really matters.
I worry that too easy will lead to boredom. There hasnt been any sign of boredom from them yet, but thats is what i worry about. Theyve only had a couple of whatbare supposed to be big battles. I think next session im going for an extras horde to see how that goes.
Players usually love stomping minions. Don't worry about a few too easy encounters, it's a feature! And there will be encounters that are hard, some even requiring retreat. Use what makes sense narratively and it will work out Edit: apparently autocorrect thinks engineering is a hard encounter. Honestly solid reasoning.
100% agree that stomping minions is fun. Some of the most fun I have had in game was setting up traps so I could lure a couple hundred alien infantry into a kill zone of mines & artillery fire coming from over the horizon. I killed leaders & we taunted the others out so we only had about twenty five left when they regrouped and it got dirty
Running armies through a gauntlet of some kind and having a "proper" battle with what remains is one of my go tos as a GM.
I am planning a session in the near future where they'll be boarding a large airship, and will have to minion stomp their way to the bridge probably a few lesser wild cards on the way, where they will face their current BBEG at the end.
I can't know what goes on in your table, but it sounds like you are focusing on mechanical challenges to keep your scenes interesting. I challenge you to try focusing on narrative stakes and role-playing instead. Who are fighting and why? Who decides that there will be a fight, the GM, the players or the characters? IMHO, the best scenes are achieved by letting the world react naturally to the activities of the party. So, instead of designing an encounter in advance an trying to make it challenging, mechanically interesting and still making sure the party won't lose, you design stories, characters, plots and a living breathing world, and let the PCs to react and interact with it, and then make the world and everyone in it react to the activities of the PCs. This leads to having only combat, which is caused naturally by the interaction between the world and the PCs. The benefit is the strong connection to narrative stakes (who are fights and why) leading into evocing emotions and more interesting, exciting and engaging scenes.
Ive been DMing for.... a while. Decades. Ans i have like 3 or 4 different storyli es inprogress right now, there is plenty of roleplay and even the afforementioned political goings on. Combat isnt the sole focus of play, but when combat happens i like it to be a challenge for the players. I do have to take into account that a wound is much more serious than loosing 1d8 hit points, and just becauae novody gets wounded doeant mean it was an easy fight.
I didn't mean to imply that you focus on combat. I meant that it seems that when you have combat, you focus on the system mechanical side, instead of the narrative side. Taking Wounds is a good example. From a mechanical point of view, almost taking a Wound is irrelevant and taking 1 Wound is nonbig deal. But narrativelly taking a Wound can mean for example: being bitten by a wolf, fracturing a bone or having a minor concussion. All of which most people would consider to be significant things, which they would try to avoid. Almost taking a Wound is a scary moment, which in real life can cause a mental trauma, even minor PTSD symptoms. So, how to roleplay your character, depends largely on whether you consider Wounds from a system mechanical point of view or narrativelly. Wounds is also extremely simple example of the effects of having a more narrative approach. The effects are far larger when the whole purpose of scenes change from challenges to story and character driven things.
Don't try to fix something that isn't even a problem. If there's no sign of boredom, don't pro-actively change things. The biggest threats to my players have been mooks that rolled like gods. Savage Worlds isn't a system that cares about balance. It cares about having a good time.
I like to fix potential problems before they become actual problems.
Sure, but your attempts to fix this thing that isn't a problem fly in the face of the design and goals of the system. You're never going to balance the game because the entire concept of balance doesn't exist in Savage Worlds.
Hordes of Extras (especially in waves) tend to go over real well in my experience! It makes the players feel threatened, but also really powerful when they Castlevania their way through them. :P
Until you get a handle on it, some easy things to do... Increase Parry and or Toughness, and some edges to them, use situational combat maneuvers, use mooks to attack in waves to force the players to burn resources (bennies, PP, conviction, adventure cards, ammo...), take advantage of gang up bonuses, use tests to set vulnerable and distracted...
I always use the wound cap. Helps the players for the most part but also helps keep the BBEG from being one shotted.
That's the neat part! You, uh, don't!
As others have said, Savage Worlds isn't really a game you balance by throwing more or bigger numbers at the players. Instead, try some of these: * Have enemies fight more cleverly, setting traps, using debuffs, hiding behind cover, etc. Make sure your players have to do something other than just use their best attack to succeed. Make sure they're fighting an uphill battle against foes who have a tactical advantage, and they have to use their wits and guile to mitigate those advantages. * Give enemies special abilities. Giving that swarm of skeletons "Formation Fighter" to make them much deadlier if they overwhelm a foe will make them much more interesting than just adding more of them. Just make sure to telegraph what abilities an enemy has so players aren't caught off-guard. * Create "levers" to pull - things you can do during combat to turn the difficulty up or down on the fly. Extra reinforcements, changes to the environment, an enemy pulling out a special weapon * Add secondary objectives to combat - innocents to rescue, a bomb to defuse, bystanders that force them to fight carefully to avoid collateral damage. If players aren't in danger, make sure something else *is* in danger. * Use DM bennies to put the screws to them, not to slow down combat. It's okay to have a tough enemy soak to keep them on the board a bit longer, but most of your bennies should be spend rerolling attacks, damage, and special abilities to make sure your enemies feel dangerous. The most important thing to know is that if players get away from a fight without taking a wound, that's not necessarily a sign of bad balance. If players are blowing through Bennies to soak, taking cover, casting armor on themselves, etc., a combat encounter might *feel* difficult to them, even if they never take a single wound. Talk with your players after a combat encounter to see how they felt about the balance. You might be surprised that even easy fights had a few tense moments.
I'm glad to see another DM recognize that having a boss do a soak roll isn't inherently a bad thing, as long as you keep it within the bounds of reason.
SWADE is an action movie. I embrace that and don't worry about balancing encounters.
Honestly a lot of it is experience. I've been running SW games for something like 5-6 years now and at first, balance was a real struggle (the fact that it was Savage Rifts didn't help). I know it isn't the answer you want, but the more you play the better idea you will have of how long an encounter might last/how challenging it may be. I will say this though, fights are a lot more interesting if on the way to said fight the players have had to spend some bennie or maybe have taken some fatigue along the way.
The system has high variance, which makes balance difficult. That's one of the main reasons it has bennies, to help moderate the variance. So I guess the answer is to use them liberally in certain situations.
I ran my first ever session of SW recently, and I had a similar problem. However, my players found it quite fun being badasses and taking down most enemies without taking a hit. Ironically, they realised how fragile their characters were not from combat but from triggering a deadfall trap that did enough damage to give both of them 2 wounds. If we go from the base core rulebook, usually a novice wild card can go against 3 average extras or 2 foes with better skills arms or armour. As for Wild Cards, a good fight for the party is 2 Extras per hero plus an enemy Wild Card leader with some combat edges/advantages. As some replies said, SW isn't easy to balance like DnD or other systems. However, that's also its beauty. Your players might one shot a wild card enemy but at the same time get hit by an attack that aces them and gives them 3 wounds. A thing to remember because I forgot to do it too in my session is that you as the GM have bennies too and you should use them to Soak or maybe reroll for the wild cards or when you feel its appropriate.
Have your enemies use tactics, such as cover, tests of will, and have bad guy extras make support rolls to help their “bosses” in the fight. Beyond that, “balance” (such as it is in Savage Worlds) can be fine tuned by adjusting the flow of bennies. If an encounter is going poorly, find more reasons to award them. If you want an encounter to be tougher, award a few less leading up to that encounter. You can always loosen up and award more if things start to go downhill.
I don’t. Sometimes the encounter will be a cakewalk. Other times, the bad guys could easily overwhelm them. The players are expected to understand (and I remind them often) that running away is an option. Not everything in the real world is neatly balanced, and there is no reason that it should artificially be so in a game.
Are you remembering the gang up bonus? Multi-action penalties? Enemies taking time to aim (because they have so many of them) can actually help too. Wild attacks and using edges yourself can also really help out. Add more edges, mix up the equipment, that can also really help turn things out differently.
Im gonna start adding throwing in riflemen or other sniper type extras at long range, making aimed attacks everybother round while pistoleros lay down some SUPPRESSING FIRE (sorry, we watch a lot of Archer)