Fated power level

[bertmac]

Its a strange one. Bad things happen in malifaux the fated could just be the bad things that happen to the non fated they meet.

If you take combat out then maxing out social skills replaces maxing out combat skills and as much as you are advancing the story the character with 3 intelect or charm or cunning gets to auto deceive or convince or bewitch npc's and taking over a town between them is probably even less of a challenge than doing it by force.

[dgraz]

If you take combat out then maxing out social skills replaces maxing out combat skills and as much as you are advancing the story the character with 3 intelect or charm or cunning gets to auto deceive or convince or bewitch npc's and taking over a town between them is probably even less of a challenge than doing it by force.

That would be why FM's need to mix things up. If the party decides to include one player that maxes out their social aspects.......well, one; that player can't be everywhere all the time......for example, in the only session I've run, I had a Guild Guard walk up to the party and single out someone to question...in my case, that character handled it, but if someone with higher social stats had tried to step in the guard would have told him to shove off because he wasn't talking to them..............

 

and, two; they become a weak, exploitable link during combat. As Mason pointed out, greater numbers will be telling....the combat oriented players will have a hard time killing everyone while at the same time trying to protect the weak link.

 

As I said, I'm not too experienced with the system yet and it's been a long time since I actively RPG'd but I do know that if you want to challenge a party you should be able to do it. None of the characters are Superman....and even if they were, Superman has weaknesses beyond the obvious Kryptonite.....he can still be deceived, tricked, and misled.

The ongoing challenge is an interesting mechanic and I'm not sure I fully understand it yet, but making things time sensitive can increase the challenge. Example:

 

In my thing, the party overheard some guards talking about setting a trap outside the city for some tree-hugging Arcanists....one of the characters has a parent that had some Arcanist ties and the character wanted to hook up with the Arcanists. So they set off into the woods......I had an ongoing challenge to find them with varying stages of penalties based on their success level for the ongoing challenge.......if they maxed out they would get there before the trap was sprung and have a chance to warn the Arcanists before hand and earn their gratitude and potentially a favor.....a middling number would have put them there while the combat was beginning and they would have a chance to help out to gain some trust and open a dialogue......a poor success rate would have put them there at the end and all they would do is meet the Arcanists but the Arcanists would be un-trusting........and finally a catastrophic failure would have them arrive to find a recent battlefield but no one living around. They ended up getting there during the start of combat and were able to help out and make contact ending with a promise that someone would come speak to them at their address.....and in a later session I'll have that happen.

 

You can't just kill your way through something like that. I like to throw in things like that....like side-missions....they don't necessarily affect the story today, but could lead to a main story later....and something to give the players something to think about, maybe some suspense........(kinda like seeing Morgan walk through the woods for two seasons)......but they have a very real chance of failure, an opportunity lost. Then they would have to find another way to make contact with the Arcanists.

 

A plan to blow up an orphanage to harness the souls isn't something you can stop by just killing everything if you don't know who the bomber is or which orphanage they're going after.....and killing all the leads isn't going to get you any closer to stopping it.

[Omenbringer]

Now, that aside, there are plenty of ways to make combat work in TTB. The easiest one is to use more decent enemies of various types, rather than one or two amazing enemies. Weight of AP is a very real thing in Malifaux, and it carries over to TTB; your Fated might have awesome combat stats, but they've only got so much AP each turn. Four Fated against four Desperate Mercenaries is probably going to end up in the favor of the Fated. Four Fated against six Desperate Mercenaries and their three Guard Dogs is going to be a bit more rough.

 

Remember to use tactics, too. If your Fated have awesome ranged weapons, have them fight some fast enemies that can close to melee. If they're carrying around swords as large as they are, toss a gunline at them. Mix both, with snipers that don't randomize shooting the Fated while their heavily armored companions tie them up. Use magic; because NPCs don't flip cards, you can ensure that they always hit the TNs for their spells. Teleport the Fated around the battlefield, use illusions to confuse them, have NPCs use magic to heal each other. Make use of Elemental Magia to tag Fated with debilitating conditions, like rooting them to the ground, making them blind, or lighting them on fire.

Again these are good recommendations but the Fated still have an enormous advantage against Enforcer and below ranked Non-fated in the Static Resolution system. Any way you slice it, Fated can start with an acting value of 6 in their desired role, whether combat or social or what ever. Against average non-fated of Enforcer or below ranking they only need below average flips to win duels. This is without considering the ability to cheat. It is not unrealistic for a Fated to be able to kill off a Guard Dog (using your example) per Activation and at Range. Also consider that those Desperate Mercs and Guard Dogs are always TN what ever (probably in the 12- range) for the Fated characters to resist. As an earlier poster mentioned defense is where his Players are cheating, since they dont have to really worry about it on offense.

 

You can call it Hyperbole if you want to but that doesn't change the fact that the Resolution system is an easy system to Munchkin without even really trying. It isn't a new complaint it has been around since the backer play test when it was trivialized (at both ends of the resolution scale).

 

In my opinion the best method of addressing it is not to ignore it or act as if it isn't an issue, but instead realize it is was done that way to make combats fast and return to the story. If your players dont care about advancing the story in any way other than combat then it is probably best to look at another system that is more suitable rather than try to force them too.

[Claymore65]

To be fair, if it's really causing a problem, you can always just use the Optional Rules in the Fatemaster's Almanac to resolve battles as normal games of Malifaux.

 

Then, the FM flips cards normally for their opponents. That does get rid of the whole issue pretty much.

 

That said, I do agree that the Fated can trivialize combat if they try to. If you really wanted to prevent it, you could always put in a "Maximum Acting Value" rule for different amounts of sessions.

 

For example, let's assume you have 4 players, and thus around 20 sessions to work with. You could do something like:

 

Sessions 1-4: Maximum Acting Value of 5

Sessions 5-10: Maximum Acting Value of 6

Sessions 11-15: Maximum Acting Value of 7

Sessions 16-20: Maximum Acting Value of 8

 

Players could still increase their skills, but they couldn't actually reach a higher active Value until they have more "Levels".

 

I'll admit this hardly an ideal solution in any sense. It will seem unnecessarily punishing to players who want to be skilled at a particular thing. It also makes "levels" matter in a game that isn't really meant to track that.
 

To be fair, players would still have a feeling of advancement, as their characters still get a variety of cool abilities from their Pursuits. Plus, for the last few sessions you'd feel like a God.

[zeeblee]

I honestly completely spaced out on granting more than one exp, so my players are still quite manageable.

 

But ignoring that mistake on my and Mason's part, the rest of his advice from that post is rather fantastic.  Don't have Fated fight singular mooks (why does anyone ever have you roll/flip for singular mooks?)  The action economy is huge in every game, but Malifaux makes it's importance more obvious.  Though for you and your player's benefits I ask that you never make a fight out of 8 of the same enemy.  Mix it up with antagonists who synergize.  Look at what your Fated can do, and exploit the weaknesses.  I had a crew with absurdly low Willpower, so I set and ambush for them consisting of one Sorrow and one Insidious Madness.  I actually had to tone things down in order to not just kill them.

 

It's possible to make fun and difficult encounters in Malifaux.  It just requires a bit more work than more combat-focused games, and generally doesn't throw as many crit-fail surprises. 

 

I have a feeling a lot of the combat problems may start to get mitigated as more and more antagonists get published.

[Malsqueek]

I had good successes with my players doing several different things.

 

Fights that aren't "fights" - Some experimental mining construct with Armor 5 goes rampant and starts attacking miners. There's a crane and a grinder and the encounter started off with the construct putting  a girder through a group of 6 miners for maximum impact. The fated aren't going to be able to duke this one out. Do they rescue the remaining miners and kick down the ramp, or use the crane to try to disable the construct?

 

Gremlin ambush during a caravan using literally dozens of exploding pigs. You're already on a cart, and there's more than you can shoot. RUN! (Begin frogger-like tactical encounter with some shooting from pigback and avoiding obstacles in the road to keep the exploding pigs from blowing you up). This one was fun enough that they never really even considered hopping off the cart to fight. Plus, it opened with "in between flashes of lightning, you see some faint glittering off in the trees. Moments later eight sparkling streaks race towards the carts" They will shoot the ones coming for them, detonate the second piggy when the first one dies, and when the other three carts evaporate in forty foot pillars of fire, they get the hint. Queue awesome encounter.

 

Fights that are actually just skill challenges with a damage track - I had a giant pre-breach artefact which was birthing pods full of soulstone infused mud golems two dozen at a time. These groups only had 8 wounds per, but I treated them as a single entity which suffered a single wound per hit, plus one per blast. The artefact would continue birthing these pods until the fated found a way to disable it using several controls (or an axe to a main feed).

 

Use Doppelgangers to frame the players for being too trigger happy, put them in a position where people that they want pleased with them are unhappy and they have to get back in good graces using something other than combat.

 

Mystery! Nothing to fight at all. People they know just up and vanish and they have to skill test all over the building to determine that someone was experimenting with an aether projector and they have to undo the science to get them back.

 

I agree that combat in general is a troublesome thing in this system, but what you need to do is set the stage so that it is not the fighting that is the star of an encounter, but the scene.

[sephiroa]

^wht malsqueek said. 

 

also and this may seem "dumb" to say but. Malifaux is a TTG, a skirmish game, TTB is an RPG, in the skirlish game everything is in general well balanced (in general okay, no discussions on this) in the RPG its foremost a story telling setting and some combat can happen. 

 

the players are fated, strong, powerfull and can cheat fate! 

 

i had a battle.. that involved a 96x72 table, FULL with scenery. the nephilim invaded innocence. i had the setting they used on innocence but my players wanted a fully fledged battle/siege/invasion the players could easily manage 1 mature, 2 youngs and 3 terror tots.. they however, could not take 8 matures, 25 youngs and 50 terror tots in 1 stroke. this battle required cunning, scheming and a LOT of recources that they spend to deal with this. they managed to win, and they won good. and it was mostly because they where so strong and they have one of the strongest coherent parties i have ever seen. but this battle is something they still talk about and chat about. on how they managed to win this awesome battle. 

 

for me, combat is something for the players to calm their minds, to have this feeling of godlike status, to prove they are strong, so they don't have al the narrative, because only talking. is "boring" its a good thing to glue everything together. and if you really want to challenge the players. chellange them in something that can really kill them, a horde of gremlins, a horde of undead. a chase wich requires other skillchecks.

 

i do not neglect however, that the combat is highly in favor of the fated. especially with all the amor  

 

but eventually.. if you want a fated dead.. its not hard to kill

[wadesauce]

One thing I did as fate master was made NPCs sound scary, intimate the players. I could tell right off the bat how overpowered Fated would be, so the first encounter I put them in was against about 50 mindless zombies and about 5 punk zombies. The overwhelming number of zombies put serious wounds on the group, I had death marshals "save them". The guild then charged them a rescue fee, and they started their first day in malifaux in debt to the guild for about 6 scrip and respecting death marshals (even though the group would mechanically trounce the death marshals.) this set the mood for tread lightly.

I consistently reminded them that bad things happened.

Describe all of the opposing NPC's In graphic bad ass detail.

If you say ok the two ronin in the tavern want you to leave... doesn't sound too bad

If you say "two sword maidens approach one wears tattered denim with a leather vest her stark black hair cascades over her muscular shoulders, but not concealing the three kingdoms blade on her back. Her friend looks equally fierce in her raw hide duster and honey blond hair bound up into a bun, pined in place with two chop sticks. A nickel plated collier rests at her hip."

Now how easy of a decision is it to start a fight with the above description over the bottom.

Also scatter the presence of a master once In a while, just to remind them there not the bad ass on the block.

My grave robber PC ended up working directly for Douggy Mcmournong, and Doug frequently discussed turning the PC into an experiment in front of him in open dialogue with his goons.

Make everything sound like it has teeth. And starve them of resources..

And my players thanked me for it the entire time, because they felt like they earned every bit of gain.

[011121]

The blue highlighted part in your post though, is another major annoyance of the system for me. The weapon customization rules add yet another level of Munchkin potential to an already weak combat resolution system. Why would "Folded Steel" make a bludgeon more lethal, when it gains it's damage from mass not cutting power? 

 

I wouldn't take it so literally.  Just assume that "folded steel" really means "extremely high quality" and it works just fine.  My Cruelty Kincade character (NPC uses a "folded steel" cudgel which is explicitly made of wood from the hanging tree.  

[Ampers&nd]

I would also add with weapon customisation- if you don't want your characters to have it then don't let them find an armoursmith or weaponsmith capable of working the effect, or at least make the players work for it. one of my characters wants a particularly nice set of armour from a sourcebook, but in the small town they are in there is clearly no-one capable of customising it to fit them, so they need to-

 

Find a supplier (ongoing challenge in downtime)

Pay the fee (one Lade 2 soulstone please, havent got one? there's a session for you)

Hire a whitesmith  to customise it to fit them (another ongoing challenge in downtime)

(if they had a tinkerer or Blacksmith then potentially another character could do this for them as an ongoing challenge in downtime)

go to Malifaux to pick it up OR trust it to the guild post (done in a session, can have implications, hell I may even make it a session with them chasing down some mail thieves to get it back)

 

one set of custom armour- two sets of downtime (if they don't fluff the ongoing challenge) and potentially two sessions to gain equipment that yes, will make them tough, but they will at least have earned it. 

[Omenbringer]

Great suggestion however some Pursuits can start with customized weapons for free. Also though there is a cost, Players can purchase them during character creation if they are willing to (and honestly there isn't much else to spend it on truthfully).

[Mister Shine]

You can always judge your players and adjust starting cash. Newer players can start with full/more scrip because they come from wealth/pulled a successful heist earthside/claimed a huge bounty whatever and veteran players can start with less having sold everything for their ticket/didnt have time to grab anything because theyre on the run etc

 

I mean, talk with your players about it first "Do you want a greater challenge?" but the kind of players that want to make combat beasts are also the kind to play Deprived in Dark Souls, so just phrase it right I guess

[princejericho]

I havent been a fatemaster for very long but I'd like to drop a penny for thought and see what people think. First off I personally tailor TNs to the individual for example your dabbler has a low wp well now youre in combat with an nightmarish creature, you've never seen this creature before your tn to resist its horrible pressence is probably 17-19 or 20 depending on your back story (I'll explain later) where as this guy over here whos parents where brutally murdered before his eyes ans he spent his life in the company of undead his TN might be 15-17 pending.

Now back story I've noticed can tell me a lot about someone and how they should be reacting to situations. Why is the dabblers wp so low? What happened to him/her, Does this person have a leg defect they were born with that might give someone a + mod to hit him? They were supposed to explain low and high stats, the back story I've noticed can be the best weapon at your disposal in finding challenges.

You could also make side effects for not passing a flip high enough. For example in my first session one of the fated where very much the same as you described and very cocky already the group was facing down 3 basic guards and a hunter, I had the guards engage in melee with the other fated when it was their turn and the hunter jump in and single out the dabbler firing the harpoon, the dabbler dodged thanks to a cheat but only managed to dodge by 1 point, so the harpoon fired at his head hitting him with the rod and sending him to the ground. Via the damage flip he took a total of 5 wounds and suffered a severe critical effect that caused blindness (until healed) so the rest of the fight carried on and they had to run they got away but not without paying several very large prices. This first combat not only served its purpose as a combat tutorial but also put a strong fear into them now most of them avoid combat when they can and they dont cast magic indiscriminately anymore.

[dgraz]

Having the fated get hit even if they cheat to defend kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the chance doesn't it?

[Omenbringer]

princejericho, on 25 Apr 2015 - 12:12 AM, said:

    You could also make side effects for not passing a flip high enough. For example in my first session one of the fated where very much the same as you described and very cocky already the group was facing down 3 basic guards and a hunter, I had the guards engage in melee with the other fated when it was their turn and the hunter jump in and single out the dabbler firing the harpoon, the dabbler dodged thanks to a cheat but only managed to dodge by 1 point, so the harpoon fired at his head hitting him with the rod and sending him to the ground. Via the damage flip he took a total of 5 wounds and suffered a severe critical effect that caused blindness (until healed) so the rest of the fight carried on and they had to run they got away but not without paying several very large prices. This first combat not only served its purpose as a combat tutorial but also put a strong fear into them now most of them avoid combat when they can and they dont cast magic indiscriminately anymore.

 

This especially would piss me off as a player and likely have me looking for something else to do. The character succeeded in dodging but suffered 5 wounds, was knocked prone and suffered blindness? Perhaps he should have just let the Hunter's attack thru instead, probably would have suffered less wounds and avoided the critical effect.

 

As Dgraz hints at above, a lot of these suggestions for "improving" the combat (truthfully even non-combat has an issue) resolution system seem predicated upon the Fate Master becoming majorly adversarial to the players desires. Perhaps it is just my experience but I dont know of too many groups that will tolerate that for long.

 

I am not a fan of attempting to shoe horn a product into something it is not. Rather than enacting inconsistent or draconian measures to try and keep the players off balance and from always resorting to combat, emphasize the Role Playing aspect. I have said often, TtB is a good story telling game, it is not a combat game (in short it is not the Malifaux TTG). If your players want that aspect then convert them over to Malifaux characters Stats (not difficult at all), build up some proxies and let them have at it there (though they are still likely to be a bit above the average "Stock" model in that system as well).

 

[zeeblee]

Gotta agree with the above.  I refuse to punish my players more harshly on success than they would have been punished for failure.  I also don't believe in setting TNs so high that it is unreasonable (or even impossible) to reach them except of very rare occasions where they want to try a truly impossible task.  But even then I prefer to give them an obtainable TN, describe a bit of progress if they make it, but also how they realize that is not the best route to take.

 

With combat I'll just reiterate the posts that I've made before:  Fated characters will always have an Achilles Heel, and it might be hard to shoot it, but it's there.  Yes, this means it's a terrible combat system if you want a generic bar room brawl to be difficult, but it works rather well for significant encounters.  And honestly, I really don't like the combat systems for DnD, Pathfinder, or Hackmaster much at all.  Really combat to me is one of the least entertaining parts of an RPG.  It's why when I plot potential combats I like to plot interesting ways around them.  This is one of the reasons why Dogs In The Vineyard is still my favorite RPG to date.

 

I'm not trying to say that TTB is an amazing combat game.  I just disagree that there is no viable way to deliver difficult and fun encounters to players.

[dgraz]

I think Mason said something like the Fated were like movie heroes......and honestly I'm fine looking at it like that. Was there really ever any doubt that Luke would get shot down by TIE's or shot in the face by a Stormtrooper......or that Rambo wouldn't kill the hundred bad guys coming after him? Of course not....but the battle scenes were still intense and exciting. I think, just like a movie director, the FM can engineer a combat to be exciting and have the feeling of danger...but it's an illusion, just like the entire game itself. If players are willing to immerse themselves in this fantasy world and embrace the illusion then I'm not really concerned that their going to turn off their imagination as soon as combat starts.

[princejericho]

I agree with dgraz, the combat was intended to scare them it served its purpose. That particular fated was healed of his critical effect after they ran, getting hit with a pointy end of a fired harpoon in the head is called death, getting hit with the side of the harpoon is called a ko. And lastly the fatemasters manual tells you to talk to your players to find out what they want and how the sessions was, my fated enjoyed what I had done for the tutorial. So in short my group enjoy it, yours do not, but Im not FMing for your group am I? Dont get hostile

edit:spelling

[dgraz]

 Dont get hostile

 

I didn't see any hostility....just opinions. Those who posted just didn't agree with your method......if it works with your group, that's fine. Most people are going to house-rule something.....if you house-rule the combat system to make it more dangerous that's you and your group's business.

 

Piggy-backing off my earlier Star Wars example to take it to the other end; Vader would obviously be a "master" and in episode 3 the group didn't have much chance against him...and in episode 4 it was obvious that Vader was just playing with Luke....Luke may have had a small chance to hit him but again, the outcome wasn't really in doubt: That's the difference between mowing down a bunch of Stormtroopers (Guild Guards) and going against a Master like Vader (Lady J)....or even a Henchman (Darth Maul.....who managed to kill Qui-Gon even though Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan just got done wrecking a whole bunch of droids like they were swatting flies without breaking a sweat).

 

The combat system in this game does that type of thing. You walk through the cannon fodder, but against the heavy weights, you might be better off just running or finding a way around them without actually going head-to-head. Was this the intended goal of the system? Or just fans trying to find the silver-lining? I suppose an answer to that might depend on your opinion of the lead designer. I lean toward silver-lining myself......I personally believe that the combat system is a catastrophe of bad design with it working the way I see it above as a happy accident...but does how we got here matter? As someone that really loves heroics (my RPG of choice for many years was Marvel Super Heroes) it doesn't really matter to me whether it's intended or accidental....I like the way it works and I'm happy to run it that way.

[Omenbringer]

I agree with the silver lining theory.

 

I also think your analogy of the movie heroics is rather apt. Even after the Heroes have gained plenty of experience though they will still struggle against a Henchman plus ranked non-fated due to the static resolution versus random communal draw of the Fated party (even with cheating taken into account).

[dgraz]

 Even after the Heroes have gained plenty of experience though they will still struggle against a Henchman plus ranked non-fated due to the static resolution versus random communal draw of the Fated party (even with cheating taken into account).

Good. Otherwise, what the hell would you throw at them later on?

[zeeblee]

Good. Otherwise, what the hell would you throw at them later on?

Five avatars at once.

[Omenbringer]

Good. Otherwise, what the hell would you throw at them later on?

 This is the issue though isn't it, there isn't a middle ground. The Fated either wade thru combats with the mooks or run in fear of the Bosses. Even seasoned Fated are unlikely to do much against a Henchman Ranked non-fated with average stats ("flipping" and endless supply of 10's).

[dgraz]

 This is the issue though isn't it, there isn't a middle ground. The Fated either wade thru combats with the mooks or run in fear of the Bosses. Even seasoned Fated are unlikely to do much against a Henchman Ranked non-fated with average stats ("flipping" and endless supply of 10's).

I haven't gone far enough to agree or disagree. In theory I'm thinking part of what was said earlier may swing this back the other way. One of the suggestions to make it harder for Fated (that I agree with) is greater numbers....the greater number of AP a party can throw against a higher ranked NPC should help the party (again, in theory).

[Omenbringer]

I haven't gone far enough to agree or disagree. In theory I'm thinking part of what was said earlier may swing this back the other way. One of the suggestions to make it harder for Fated (that I agree with) is greater numbers....the greater number of AP a party can throw against a higher ranked NPC should help the party (again, in theory).

AP numbers only go so far when your fated have a finite pool (at least until shuffling) of viable cards for success in the deck. Even a kitted out Fated in a group is going to struggle against a Master Ranked non-fated with average stats always flipping 12 (Average Df or Wp resist is going to be 17 whether the fated are attacking or defending). It goes similar with hordes of minion ranked non-fated against seasoned fated in combat (though it isn't quite so bleak for the minions since fated Df/ Wp is typically lower than 5).