Paradigm Concepts

[soullos]

I'm about to start a WH game and I'm wondering what are some good guidelines for determining appropriate challenges. I know the Core rulebook mentions this, using SP of an opponent relative to the PCs SP. But what is the assumed party size that factors into Easy, Average and Hard opponents?

The reason why I'm asking is that I'm only going to have 2 players in this game. I'm worried their small party size might mean that an Average fight might actually be an Hard one for them.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[hustonj]

With only two players, they are going to have a much harder time with every problem. Heck, even the little, simple logic or recollection issues are going to be harder because there are fewer people and thus fewer chances to get it right.

I would start them out with an Easy encounter, and see how it plays out. Depending on the players themselves and the character builds, even the easy encounter might actually be hard, or worse, for them. It is REAL EASY to do non-combat builds in this game, and two non-combat builds are going to have far more trouble.
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Valeriano Innocenzo Camillo de Larissa la Galletti

[soullos]

I was thinking the same, take it easy and slow on the PCs. I've minions down to a nice formula/guideline that I read in one of the Dark Providence adventures: Add the sum of PCs' most common combat dice pool together and divide that result by the Threat Level of the minion to determine how many minions are present for a suitable challenge.

I was also thinking to offset their small numbers, I could give them some bonus SP, maybe 15 to as much as 30 points. And learning from Savage Worlds, I'll be pretty lenient at handing out Hero Points. I'm sure small group like this could benefit greatly from those extra HP.

Now, I'm not too worried about non-combat PCs. My players like combat mixed in with their role playing, so I'm sure they'll make competent fighters that can truly take advantage of the swashbuckling theme. I'm more worried about one player in particular. He tends to play the independent, anti-society characters and I can see him being lured by Damnation all to easily, lol.

[jedion357]

You could also try running an NPC that would be a tag along.

I like to sometimes create an NPC with the capacity to cause trouble for the PCs- in an sf rpg the players rescued a crew member that had pretensions of being the galaxy's next great novelist. he tagged along and wrote down notes about their adventures without adding too much and when they got back to civilization he publish a novel of said adventures where he was the hero and the PC's contributions were minimized and it was made into a tri-vid movie. plan to have npcs say all sorts of things to the PCs- cant wait to get back to that game to see how it plays out.

point is that a tag along should have a skill that the PCs dont have that can be an aid but not too much and also fill in as comic relief if possible but almost certainly as the occassional pain in the butt.

[StatMonkey]

[soullos]

Thanks everyone for the great advise. I feel a lot less worried now and more confident with the rules. Witch Hunter will be the first RPG I will run that is outside of D&D, so I can't wait.

[StatMonkey]