“But for on the fly combat, I’m experimenting with doubling the baddies chance to hit, but turning them into Mooks. ”

This is a really good idea. They still hit and can put a little fear in the PCs, but they also get taken out easily and keep the combats short.

@karazax – “Perhaps not over the long haul, but for an evening, having everything go right can make the players feel like real heroes. ” That is definitely true. One of my GMs hated most of his games because we played well. We loved them, because we played well.

@Scarecrow -I’d love to hear how subsequent games have gone for you.

But you are right on the rest of it. Time limited scenarios are good too. But higher level characters might have devices that stop/slow time (talk about major problems with the power curve)!

But, yes, change up the type encounters so the players have to try use something different than their same ol’ overly used and trusted techniques.

The irony is I’m in a 4th edition game where I have a player with some ungodly plus to his diplomacy check. This causes a strange situation where every word is practically a charm spell. What I realized by having the player in the group was that I was depending on the diplomacy skill for too many things and I needed to mix in many of the other skills (bluff, intimidate, streetwise, insight, etc.). I quickly have found that my diplo player didn’t maximize those skills as much as that one.

Now, I’ve recently switched to HackMaster Basic as my game of choice and it adds some other elements to it which is nice. The “Threshold of Pain” mechanic combined with penetration (exploding dice) makes it so even a low level monster/opponent can take down a high level character on a lucky shot. I heard of one group who recently had a PC take a 31 hp hit from a goblin with a dagger due to some lucky rolling on the GM’s part. Now, some might not find this fun, but it adds a level of challenge and danger to the game no matter who your opponent is, and I like that because I don’t like the idea that a higher level character is invincible to “normal people”. That’s how my games work anyway…

I noticed you were running Saga Edition Star Wars. While Saga has many good features, encounter balance is not one of them. It is very difficult to get the challenge level right in SWSE.

I have been running SWSE for nearly two years. There is a free PDF floating around that lets you use a budget system for Saga Edition that is similar to the system in D&D 4e. That PDF has helped me a great deal, though it isn’t perfect by any means. The advice listed in the corebook is bogus. The advice listed in the online document at WotC isn’t the right answer either.

Google for Encounter by Budget System for Saga Edition. If you can’t find it, visit RPGnet or RPGSite and send a PM (with your e-mail in it) to PaladinCA and I’ll send it to you. I hope that it helps you with SWSE.

Challenging players can be a tough task, especially when the system has some built in design flaws that increase that difficulty.

In Warhammer FRP and Dark Heresy, the chance to hit is often very low, 20% to 40%. A standard round can result in most or all the bad guys missing. There are plenty of rules on improving the odds: point blank range, ganging up in melee, and so on.

My problem would be the players are worried about maximizing their PC’s chance (or helping another PC). They get a round to think. I don’t. They are also good at noticing when I’m doing things to improve the bad guys’ odds, and work to break it up.

Sometimes I plan an ambush, and it all works out.

But for on the fly combat, I’m experimenting with doubling the badies chance to hit, but turning them into Mooks. The Mook part keeps the combat short and balanced, but the chance to hit means players are taking damage. Dark Heresy has a concept of a 2HP Mook, where if you don’t cause a lot of damage with the first hit, the Mook lives on until it takes a second hit.

For BBEGs, I like to play Jack in the Box. When the BBEG goes down, and the party isn’t beaten up enough, then the real bad thing cuts loose. However, should the party have stumbled, and just barely survived the initial BBEG, the GM can just not bring out second act.

Examples: The BBEG’s deamon sword fractures: releasing the deamon. The rival bad guys who were hoping the PCs would take out their competition now reveal themselves and act to eliminate the weakened PCs. As the BBEG’s blood flows into the ground, he rises as an undead. The deamon who was possessing the BBEG is unharmed, and takes up the fight. And so on.

@Scott Martin – My players always jumped passed the level of monsters rather easily. In D&D 3.5, I think the nature of PC powers is always scaled above the nature of things out of the monster manual. I took to using NPCs of races for fights, but came across the problem of always losing track of all their unique powers. I started using much higher level adversaries and toning down one or two factors when necessary.

@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – “Be both sensitive and a hard-ass.” I love that. Most of the GMs I’ve talked to are the type who want to see the party succeed. Maintaining that “I can kill you with my dice” aura, while reveling in the party’s success can definitely be challenging.

Don’t be afraid of “combined arms” just because you don’t like a certain class or type of critter. I hate casters (too much research and prep), so I tended to hit the party with a bunch of fighters or One Big Critter. When I got over that hang-up, life for the party got really interesting.

Come up with tactics ahead of time. Find and exploit synergies in the system (necromancer + undead + Desecrated area = win). Find the weaknesses of the PCs. After all, they’re probably famous at this point, and bad guys do research, too.

Be both sensitive and a hard-ass. Be sensitive to your players’ needs (as it sounds Scarecrow is), but be enough of a hard-ass to make them fear what you just might do. It’s a balance I wrestle with pretty regularly.

I’ve had some trouble with my PCs breezing past appropriate+ fights (in 3.5)– I’ll borrow several of your suggestions and see if they restore tension to the game. It’d be nice if there was a mechanical way to incorporate “succeed at cost” and “yes, but” successes. I’ll have to research and see what looks good.

Know the consequences of failure, and if they aren’t interesting consequences don’t call for a roll. As the D&D DMG says, “encourage the players to take 10 (i.e. settle for an average result).” Related to the advice in a previous article (What a GM must never say), try to say this with in-game messages. “The lock looks tricky, but nothing you haven’t seen before. You’re confident that it’ll give way if you give it a bit of effort.”

Call for a roll if there’s a time limit, or if failure will cause irreparable damage (to the pcs or something or someone else). Let them roleplay through most situations and be creative. When you call for a roll, there’s tension on it. Then the tough part: every now and again the players miss a roll (even if it’s just rolling a critical failure, or whatever your system has). Then you have to follow through. Failure for a roll should carry consequences dire enough that the players have to at least modify their plans or try a new line of attack, but not so dire that messing up a single roll destroys any chance at succeeding at their main objectives (messing up a whole SERIES of rolls is another matter).

If you have an evil party (and I think they’re more common than orthodoxy admits), you just need to pick something else that they’re afraid of losing.