Heavy melee balance

[Kromp]

In our group, the heavy melee warrior (a Guard who also has a bunch of wounds and heavy armor) seems to be a little OP. He walks around doing 3/5/8 damage with an enlarged rail hammer while everyone else is going 2/3/4 or 2/3/5 damage with their spells/guns. He's pretty unstoppable in combat. He's dumb as a bag of rocks outside of combat, but that's another story for another time.

This guy can usually manage to take out 2 regular minions or an enforcer per turn while only losing 1-2 (out of 8) wounds. Other characters are put down to half health (or lower) after a single round of combat. We've been doing one shots in our group and even when the FM adds in the "extra challenge" enemies, that hammer goes through them like a knife through butter.

My question is about balance. Is this a balance issue? Have others found that heavy melee warriors are a little nuts?

Or is this a matter of how our encounters are being designed? Do we need to have bigger rooms with more ranged enemies and or heavier hitters? My concern then would be about the survivability of the other party members.

Any ideas? 

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

Ranged characters and cover, if the hammer can’t reach the target, it is no threat.

[Kromp]

Thanks, Steam. My friends and I are still in our first handful of sessions. This helps

[EnternalVoid]

Well when I Fatemaster it is one of the reasons I am not allowing Heavy Melee weapons to be Enlarged, they are already large weapons.  I mean the description of the rail hammer is that they are "Massive two handed hammers", anything larger does not sound feasible as a weapon.  Enlarge turns a normal sword into for the most part a Great sword's stat line.  To me Heavy Melee weapon's advantage is that they tend to have longer reach and higher damage, but all require two hands.  But to be honest I am kind of harsh on the modifications.  There is also the social issue even if you do allow it.  I mean he is carrying around a hammer that is so big people will not believe he plans anything good with it.  He carry that around Downtown or even somewhere halfway patrolled by guard and they might stop and question him.  And you know, haul him in if they don't like his answers *whether it is the honest truth or not*.  Means he has to be careful where he takes it or how, namely if he is not good at talking his way out of things.  Maybe the guild guards refuse to listen to his friends and tell them to butt out or they will get hauled off too *keeps them from covering his weakness to much*, make him burn his high cards on social challenges he is not good at rather than saving them for combat *which I suspect he can normally*.  If he suddenly has to drop that High Moderate and Face card before he even gets to combat it should slow his killing spree.

Another trick that I just used recently was have an enemy with a decent ability to cast Obey.  Rather than have them swing at their friends the character did things like make people drop prone or throw their weapons as far from them as possible.  A trick like this could throw him for a loop if he suddenly is Obeyed to throw his hammer out a window or drop prone before a couple thugs charge him.

Another curveball would be to include a single enemy enforcers with the talent from the Gunfighter pursuit, Debilitating Shot.  He needs two arms to use his Rail hammer.  Maybe have his reputation earn the foe hiring a mercenary gunslinger to help handle a potential problem as your character has built a rep of wrecking people.  As an enforcer it would have two fate points, it needs at least one to make Debilitating Shot work as it is a discard to trigger.  To try and make sure you hit you have two options; the first is focus and then shoot, it puts the player at a negative to defense making it more likely to connect.  The other is to spend the other fate point for a positive, which puts the player at a negative.  The fact the Enforcer only has two fate points means it cannot spam Debilitating Shot so it is not like it can disable your entire party, just take their safe bets off the table and force the rest of the group to make up the slack.

You don't have to plan to roll them, just make them realize that there are ways to give them problems.  All it takes is a couple curveballs for people to start considering rounding out a character or having other options *such as investing in a pistol or back up weapon like a knife*.  I been contending with a nasty character in my group, He started as a Drudge with a Pneumatic arm with the Enhanced Fist and a rank of 3 in Pugilism.  AV6 with a 2/4/5 damage spread. with Fist loaded to ignore a negative, and the Rabbit Punch trigger to possible get it again *His top suit is Mask as well*.  He has been the big damage dealer in the group, also he has 11wds currently thanks to the Drudge Talent and the General talent that gives extra wounds and has some armor to make it last even more.  But he has also been the one reduced below 0wds the most, as he tends to be in the thick of it while the rest stay back and shoot.  So far the things that gave him the most trouble was Datsue-Ba as she ignored his armor *and with Advesary that positive means he is at a negative* and things with Black Blood. 

[Le gob]

For enlarged 2 hand weapons, we apply the 1st edition rule: it gives the heavy ability to the weapon, ie 2 actions to attack. 
And so for our heavy hitter has been in trouble with black blood as well.

[Kromp]

Thanks, Void and Le gob. Those are really helpful. I'll send these along to our FM...I have a feeling our next session is going to have a few new surprises in it!

Thanks again -- really awesome.

[EnternalVoid]

8 hours ago, Le gob said:

For enlarged 2 hand weapons, we apply the 1st edition rule: it gives the heavy ability to the weapon, ie 2 actions to attack. 
And so for our heavy hitter has been in trouble with black blood as well.

Oh, I like that one

[Omenbringer]

First, I would talk with your melee-centric player. Through the Breach is not a good system for combat oriented games (or if you happen to have any "munchkin-type" players), it is much better as a story telling game.

Aside from the above you can always up the ante for that player. Single out the beater for a fight with a Henchman instead of Minions (waste of time) or Enforcers (barely the same as the average fated). A person that is exceedingly good at some thing tends to earn a reputation that frequently gets challenged (think Doc Holiday from the movie Tombstone). Things change dramatically once the target is always "flipping" 2-4 points higher than the average random card value of the Fated. Especially when the Henchman is always considered to pass their unconscious challenge (page 312). A rank value 11 Henchman should stop or at least significantly slow their shenanigans.

Be warned though it is a heavy handed approach that can really sour your players, especially when the beater goes down and the rest have to deal with the Henchman. As you pointed out in the initial post this can have dire consequences for the remainder of the party.

As I think about it, perhaps there is a method of adjusting the difficulty for just that player without potentially introducing an issue for your other players. Design "in story" reasons to keep that player awake, guard duty perhaps? Or maybe a long night gambling and drinking. Page 309 states that a character that doesn't receive at least 6 hours of sleep per night gains the "Dazed" condition until they sleep for at least that much. This provides an artificial increase for that player without impacting the rest of the party.

I would also ask if you consider any other heavily "specialized" fated to be an issue. For example a fated with high "social" skill values can make a mockery of engagements that hinge on those abilities, while a "ranged" specialist can do the same from relative safety (distance and cover make up for lower damage output). If these are issues, then I would recommend a forum search in the TTB sub-category to find some older recommendations on inserting more "randomness" for non-fated into the system. While these are "home-brew" rules adjustments or outright replacements they can even the field so to speak.

The resolution system of the game has been a nagging complaint of mine since play testing (both for the non-fated static resolution vs fated random generation, and the fated using a common deck).

[Le gob]

This game's rules can be abused and overbused. I know well, I did. 
The only thing stopping your players to have crazy damages, or crazy control abilities, or crazy anything really, only is the limits you, the FM put.
That's one of the reason, why I changed my character from a mage with OP damage shennaningans to an chemyst with "in taget" combat abilities.
The FM was unable to put up a chalenge without having to send unrealistic threats, so we agreed there need to be some realisme in comparison to the NPC's abilities.
What we decided, is that we players must stay in the boundaries wich are what our equivalents on the Malifaux miniature wargame would be able to do if they stay balanced with the rest of the game.