r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/ShrimpitArt • 9d ago
Roleplaying New GM asking for Encounter Balance Advice
Hey guys. Me and some friends who have played various RPGs in the past, including older editions of WFRP and are currently playing 4th ed now. I'm running The Enemy in Shadows for them (Party of 4) and have gotten to Bogenhafen. The Characters are sitting around 300-400 xp and most of them have maxed out their first career but are yet to advance to the next.
Player party consists of a Guardsman, Pugilist, Warrior Priest and a Scholar. The Warrior Priest is dedicated to Morr and to give a little extra flair for his character I've decided that the Garden of Morr in Bogenhafen is in disrepair and currently infested with a few undead and potentially a necromancer.
We've been having a blast with the module so far and they have yet to meet much resistance combat wise (mainly just because of favourable rolls). I'd hate for them to suddenly come across an unfair encounter when trying to pursue extra content.
Anyone got any advice when it comes to stating combat encounters? Any formulas are common sense rules I should adhere to?
Thanks in Advance
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 9d ago
Here are a couple of posts from one of the developers. They are must read material for npc building.
http://lawhammer.blogspot.com/2020/01/trolls-trolls-trolls-trolls.html
http://lawhammer.blogspot.com/2020/02/lets-build-some-wfrp-orcs.html
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u/MattKingCole 8d ago
Foreshadowing is your friend. One thing you can do to help your players is foreshadowing threats. Let your players hear the enemy coming. Let them see footprints which give an approximation of how many enemies they are facing. Give other hints to your players about enemy strength, numbers, abilities, etc. If you do this, even if you have unbalanced the encounter somewhat, your players will still be in a good position to deal with the enemy either by avoiding or by seeking additional advantages.
Additionally, many enemies should make morale checks of some kind. Good points for morale checks are when the first enemy is killed, when a third of the enemy is killed, when half the enemy is killed, or when the leader is killed. I know the first two may seem like wimpy points to require morale checks from enemies, but I’ve read that often elite military units hit the break point at 33% casualties.
Lots of other great advice here. This is just a couple of my thoughts.
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u/clone69 8d ago
But would undead really run away due to morale? Even in the Wargame they have rules that protect them from panicking
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u/MattKingCole 8d ago
Good point. Morale shouldn’t affect undead the way it does everyone else. A way to make morale affect undead would be to use the crumbling where instead of running they die. I’d say once the leader is destroyed, or half are destroyed, then make a morale check with failure meaning destruction of the undead.
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 9d ago
First, just a reminder. Careers are not maxed out. You can spend unlimited xp in a single career. Players should not feel forced to move on or be allowed to willy nilly.
Second, as for balance, don't. The PCs have fate points, and you should focus on making the npcs stats accurately relfect what they are.
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u/Christopherlee66 7d ago
The best advice I can give you is to think about wfrp as Fabtasy Call of Cthulhu rather than D&D with Sigmar.
It's gritty and dangerous. Monsters aren't even remotely balanced, and characters are fragile. Lean into it.l with investigations, intrigue, and foreshadowing.
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u/Mundane_World_1763 6d ago edited 6d ago
Balance? Combat balance? Hehahohahihahhohahu... HAHAHAHAHA...
Kill'em all, and let the gods sort it out.
Seriously, lots of excellent advice in this thread.
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u/eisenhorn_puritus 9d ago
You got three good combat careers and an useless one, but your characters are low enough in xp that even the scholar should be able to defend themselves against a zombie or similar. There are no particular rules about balancing combat encounters, but I usually go for a combination of two mooks (zombies or skeletons) or something better (a skeleton with the first level of soldier career for example) for each combat capable character + 1 mook for something like a scholar.
In your case I'd do the necromancer to be an inexperienced one, so first full level career of witch + necromancy casting, and choose a couple of spells, avoiding direct damage. Go for fear, debuff or buffing the undead spells. I don't have the list with me right now, but there should be some spells like that. Take into account that your characters don't seem to have any ranged combat capabilities, so they'd have to reach the necromancer and engage in melee to deal with them.
Then I'd choose the appropiate undead depending on the battlemap. A cemetery could have narrow, serpentine paths in between the graves and mausoleums that would make it easy for the characters to use to engage in 1v1. If you put places where those paths could be blocked (boxes, decrepit tombs or similar) they could avoid some of the enemies.
I'd go for necromancer + 4-5 zombies or more depending on how min-maxed your characters are and one risen knight, a skeleton with the first level of the soldier career and chain and plate armor with the partial downgrade and see how they go and make use of the map. In the end you'd need to craft your encounters for your players depending on how smart they are at making use of the terrain and tactics.
I thought about an skeleton archer or two, but it makes no sense in my mind to bury somebody with a bow, particularly in that region of the Empire, but a skeleton spearman could introduce some variation too and a "long range" danger, being capable of attacking through rows of tombstones and such.
Once your players hit 65+ combat skill they'll past through regular enemies like they were made of paper, just remember to adjust the basic profile with a career level or two when placing intelligent enemies.