Balance... (Looking for tips or guidance)

[noldor]

Hello All.

I have only played two handfulls of sessions in a short campaign and we had this problem. Maby im just bad at balancing T&T but it seems that enemies are always either a walkover or a deathtrap.

If the MR is out of balance with 40-50 points that would mean about 40-50 points of damage to the other side. The party in my game got attacked by 5 carnivorous bunnies with 10 MR each. The party rolled 9 dice and added their adds of 53. This came out to about 84ish HPT. The bunnies rolled 10 dice and added their adds of 25. The bunnies got 60. The difference is 24pts so 2 bunnies were killed and 1 injured. The next round the bunnies would only roll 6 dice and add 13 (with only 3 bunnies left) making them a walkover.

Even If the bunnies maxed their roll in the first round they could only roll 85. Still only beating out the party avarage with about 1 point. So there was never any real danger. (i should probably have added another 2 bunnies but that was not in the adventure).

In another instance they fought 1 round with a 200 MR Tentacle-creature. The partys 105is HPT vs the monsters 170ish HPT had the party distributing 65 points of damage among the party members killing 2 of them in the first combat round. (!) I let the rest escape without using the rules of escape from the DT&T rulebook seeing as those rules require the party to sacrifice another member to escape or "not defending" themselves while escaping taking another 170 pts of uncontested damage and killing them all. This could probably have been solved using some sort of stunt granting them a improvised made up bonus or casting TTYF at 3 level causing 40ish points of damage before the fight to balance the combat out. But the delvers missing this and costing two characters seem a bit rough. Is there any good advice on this? Is there any formula for this? The only thing i have found was to ignore all of the MR-ratings i had written in my adventure and then make all of them up when needed to balance them to the party. The backside is that this feels...well.... fake. That way the delvers victories only comes from the GM "fixing" the MR values for the party...

I have the same problem with saves. 1st level saves are easily passed at a 4 or 5 on 2d6 but a 2nd or 3rd level save require a double or even two (!) to even have a chanse of success. Any middleground seems rare. This might all be from inexperience but the question remains. Are the any tips for this or are we just keeping the boat afloat by houseruling on the spot and making it possible due to gm fiat?

All of this might sound like i have something against T&T but i dont. I realy love the basic core of the system and the simplicity. It reminds me of when i roleplayed with friends with homemade systems when we were kids and had not gotten our hands upon any published system. I realy love the freedom and the simple combat. I am just starting to get a feel of OVER-houseruling. We have reached a point were the game is 40% houserules and at that point something feels off. We are going to run another couple of adventures and with time things might fall into place and i might get a better feel for balance when writing adventures but as it is now i love T&T but we play by rules that are 40% made up on the spot and consistency suffers.

[mahrundl]

First of all, welcome to you, noldor!

Balance in T & T is optional.  Really.  Unlike many systems, especially more recent ones, the game was not really designed to be balanced to a large degree.

That said, I do take your point.  A fight between (near) equals is much more gripping that one where one side is clearly better than the other.  So, while I don't claim to be anything special as a GM, here are some things for you to consider.

On average, an MR-rated monster or group of monsters should generate a HPT of around 85% of its MR. So a 'balanced' encounter will be one for which the party's HPT is close to that figure. You can vary the MR to match the party's strength - there are 7 characters in the campaign that I'm currently running, which is based on material that I wrote for an earlier party with only 4 characters (although those 4 were somewhat more powerful individually). They encountered a massive manticore (MR 1400), which would have wiped out the entire party unless they both came up with some brilliant tactics and had extreme dice luck. I dropped the MR to 900, and they eventually took down after a long, hard fight with some epic stunts involved.

Is it 'fixing' the MR to give them a hard but possible challenge, rather than a combat that they could do in their sleep or one that they have absolutely no chance in? Perhaps it is, perhaps not. Not all encounters have to be balanced - sometimes the players run into cannon fodder. For the ones where they are totally outclassed, and the characters are, in effect, the cannon fodder, consider: is your game one in which life is cheap, and people are happy to roll up a new character whenever one dies? Or do the players create characters to which they have strong attachments? 'Fixing' the opposition's combat ability is something that I'd be much more inclined to do in the latter case.

That said, I won't always adjust the monster's strength as I did above. In that situation, the characters had little choice about fighting - they were defending a town - and I'm disinclined to make that sort of situation a walk-over for either side. If the players choose to attack something that totally outclasses them though, rather than sneaking past or deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, it's on their heads. The same party as before was facing obliteration when they took on a cavern full of bears that heard them coming - I allowed one heroic Warrior to sacrifice himself to save the rest of the party, fighting to delay the bears at a choke-point while the rest of the party fled. Brave Maynard was avenged several sessions later, when the party returned much better prepared...

The same applies when the opposition has attributes rather than an MR, except that you compare the HPTs directly.

Missiles and magic make the calculations harder, especially when a well-placed Take That, You Fiend! or arrow can easily take out a member of one side or the other, and spells like Hidey Hole can change the HPT for one side significantly. The same general ideas apply, but the additional variables mean that sometimes there will be unexpected outcomes. That can't be helped, and you just need to handle those situations when they occur.

Does that help at all?

[zanshin]

Armour tends to be a big equaliser against tough monsters. If you are especially kind you could let the players distribute damage received to maximise armour absorbtion across the group, assuming that well armoured characters go to the fore.

The death spiral for overmatched enemies is a feature not a bug.

I also agree with everything mahrundl said.

[mahrundl]

I agree with zanshin's additions as well.

I let the side taking damage decide how it will be assigned, on a similar assumption to zanshin, unless some or all of the damage is intended for a specific combatant. So Take That, You Fiend! and missile weapons will hit whoever they are fired at, and the damage will not be shared. I'll also let the attackers assign some or all of the damage where they choose if they successfully perform a stunt to achieve that outcome. In a situation where one side is surprised by the other, the ambushers would generally be able to choose, at least to some extent, who they hit.

I'd generally expect that everyone on the losing side in melee combat would receive at least 1 point of damage (assuming that there are enough points to go around), just because they are in a melee, but since virtually all melee combatants would have some armour, it's rare that this would change the outcome.  If you are in melee without armour though, it's going to hurt...

[order99]

T&T wasn't really made for balance IMHO-Stronger, faster and luckier combatants with better weapons...tend to win, VERY often, just like Real Life.

There are several ways, however, to manipulate the raw statistics:

1) Armor-an AR is your friend, whether ablative in nature (1st through 4th Editions) or persistent (Advanced Combat in 4th, and 5th and later Editions) is the Endurance/Staying Factor that will let PC's ride out those bad rolls and get to more beneficial ones.

2) Missle Weapons-Get the best shots in before the enemy can retaliate! Run from enemies with crossbows and find cover! Get one of those brand-new Gonne things and keep your powder dry! Man an Arbalest and unleash sharp, pointy Death down that Dragon's throat!

3) Magic-Combat? Moi? But Moi is a WIZARD!!! Vorpal all your Allies' blades! TTYF the Necromancer! Oh Go Away the Orc reserves! Reach into your seething brain and pull the worst nightmare you ever had and Summon it onto the battlefield! Combat is what you do when your Allies are all dead and you can't run-or maybe you have just enough juice in you for some creative Illusions and a Bluff...

4) Tactics-Bluff the enemy! (CH SR). Look for tactical weaknesses (IQ SR). Buckle that Swash, surf your Shield down the gully, launch off the cliff and render that Iron-clad Giant with the Howdah full of Goblin Archers HELPLESS with a shot to the Giant's eyes! (DX SR). Retreat in obvious terror down that canyon while the rest of your forces start a Landslide! Buy the mercs off with Gold! Raid the supply wagons! Place Fly spells on the Elven Archers and use them as a Flying Wedge of Deadly Arrowstorm...

Combat favors the strong and swift-if you aren't the strongest or the fastest (or even if you are)...CHEAT.

[zanshin]

order99 has spoken and the thread just got turned up to 11

[d4caltrops]

Apologies for necroing the thread. I TPK'd my T&T group multiple times this session (but used GM fiat to change the outcome), so I went thread diving and sleeve tugging for expertise from experienced GMs, because I thought I had to be doing something wrong. I like the potential deadliness of the old school style, but killing my whole party on level 1 of a dungeon in every fight seemed like I was missing something.

In addition to thread diving and necromancy, I've been working on house ruling combat down to being threatening and potentially deadly but not repeated insta-TPKs.

I got some great suggestions from people wiser than me, but I'm hesitant to steal their thunder, so I'll start with what I've been working on for tuning.

My first attempt was using the party's collective CON as a basis for tuning MR:

1. Start with the base 25 MR/Level estimation against the total party level, rounded up
2. Sum the party's total CON
3. Divide (total CON)/(3.5), where 3.5 is the average roll on a d6 -- this approximates the number of dice for the "tuned" MR
4. Compute the "tuned" MR by 10 * (approxDice - 1) to reverse the MR-to-dice computation
5. Compare the tuned MR to the base MR in Step 1, and adjust between as desired

As I was working on that, though, it occurred to me that part of the fundamental issue is that while damage generally goes to CON, Level is derived from any stat. My mind immediately jumped to combat adds: CON is roughly how much damage the party can take (disregarding armor for a minute), but adds derive from the stats other than CON most frequently invoked in combat: LK, STR, DEX, SPD. So maybe adds are an interesting way to tune MR.

1. Sum the party's combat adds
2. Apply a multiplier to produce a target MR: perhaps 2x for trivial, 3x for serious, and 4x for deadly
3. Derive dice from MR as normal: ((multiplier * adds) / 10)+1 + (multiplier*adds)/2

I have a party of 5 players, levels 2, 2, 2, 2, and 1 (sum: 9 / average: 1.8). Their CONs are 20, 16, 10, 8, and 6 (sum: 60 / average: 12). Their adds are 1, 2, 6, 6, and 27 (sum: 42 / average: 8.4).

The insta-TPK fights were MR 250, MR 260, and MR 200.

If the target MR were for the average level (1.8), the target MR would be a measly MR 45-50. MR 50 (6d6 + 25) almost never is a serious threat. anydice.com/program/1bc73

If the target MR were for the sum level (9), the target MR would be 225, right in line with the insta-TPK fights. Running the simulation, MR 225 is going to produce 2x total party CON (60) 100% of the time: anydice.com/program/1bc74

Well, holy fluffballs. So what about the other algorithms?

The Collective CON method would come up with 10 * ((60/3.5)-1) = MR 160, 17d6 + 80: anydice.com/program/1bc75 That's still going to hit for at least 1.5x total party CON 100% of the time.

That's still a lot closer, so maybe applying trivial-serious-deadly multipliers would help, maybe 60% CON for trivial, 80% CON for serious, and 100% CON for deadly. 60% CON gets us to 10*(((.6*60)/3.5)-1) = MR 92, 10d6+46, which hits for 62 points 100% of the time ( anydice.com/program/1bc76 ) -- still a little too much.

40/60/80? 10*(((.4*60)/3.5)-1) = MR 58, 6d6+29 ( anydice.com/program/1bc77 ) which now has only a 1% chance of doing 60 CON worth of damage in 1 round. 60% for serious gets us back to MR 92, and then 80% for deadly is 10*(((.8*60)/3.5)-1) = MR 127, 13d6+63 ( anydice.com/program/1bc79 ), definitely tough.

The Combat Adds method at 2x/3x/4x would get us to MR 84 ( anydice.com/program/1bc7a ) / MR 126 ( anydice.com/program/1bc79 ) / MR 168 ( anydice.com/program/1bc7b ). That's kinda too strong. However, 1x/2x/3x looks good in this example: MR 42 (actually trivial), MR 84 (actually serious), and MR 126.

I think I like the Combat Adds method best because it considers more of the character, and it will scale along with the raw fighting ability of the party and keeps the knife edge of danger especially for glass cannons with low CON. It also pins the danger to the stats players are most able to mechanically lean on to do cool things in-game. Linking to CON seems like it would work, but it feels a little bit too much to me like tying the level of risk directly to the damage the party can take rather than how they've outfitted themselves for adventure. I like the potential for deadliness because combat without serious risk of defeat isn't interesting, but it's also not interesting to be challenged with almost no chance of winning, either.

For now I am going to write up the Combat Adds method of tuning MR for my campaign and see how it goes. I'm undecided on whether weapon adds will factor in to the equation but I am leaning towards yes. It's also a reasonable consideration to include armor hits in the HPT for the CON method.

I'm happy to report back here with how this and the other combat house rules go. And I'm interested to see how well these methods scale so I might write up a more complete simulation of the outcomes, especially if there's interest.

Anyway, thanks for reading me thinking this through. I this is useful to someone else, too.

Edit: To summarize my conclusion:

I'm going to try Combat Adds-based MR-tuning with the target trivial/serious/deadly Monster Rating being 1x (maybe 1.5x)/2x/3x the sum of the party's combat adds, including weapons.

CON-based adds tuning would also probably work well, I'd swag at 40/60/80% of party's total CON converted to MR via the method above. Armor hits should probably be included, but I didn't decide.

Edit 2: In considering the HPT outputs for the multipliers, I forgot to think about the difference between the party's score and the monsters' score, so my multiplier estimates/reasoning are erroneously low. Also, mahrundl points out below a simple method to take the adds-based estimate one step further and use the average value of a d6 (3.5) to factor in the PCs' dice.

[d4caltrops]

One other thing that occurred to me after I finished writing up the thought experiment above is this: because the Combat Adds method for tuning MR is a linear function of less than the minimum damage a party does in a round (adds without considering dice), the GM can think of the multiplier as the maximum number of rounds the monster could get to swing at the party. So if the party's at full health, maybe 3x or 4x comes out.

If the GM is using the dice spiral where as MR declines, dice *and* adds go down, bump the multiplier up.

At a 2x multiplier, the monster's adds will be the same as the party's adds, meaning the winner of the round is entirely up to the quantity and quality of the dice.

That also means I'm going to switch the base multiplier to 1.5x from 1x for my experiment, because I want there to be a chance that the party can't just off the monsters in the first combat, even in trivial combat.

[mahrundl]

Some ponderings:

• What weapons are the party using? I can't see that in your analysis.
• CON is not a good indicator of a party's combat ability, since there is no difference in the party's Hit Point Total (HPT) between fighting with a CON of 1 and fighting with a CON of 50. It's only when you hit 0 CON that it affects things, because you've just lost a combatant and their contribution to the combat total in future rounds.
• Likewise, levels don't affect the result because they don't change the HPT (other than in special cases, usually involving magic).  HPT is based on attributes and weapons.
  
• Spite damage and armour worn don't affect the outcome much, since they mostly only change whether CON is lost.  Spite may make the win or loss quicker, but won't change the final outcome in the majority of cases.  Armour is good for preventing character death when your HPT is substantially under the average in a round, and to prevent losses from attrition before the monsters can be worn down.
  
• A quick way of estimating the MR to use: calculate the party's average HPT (total weapon dice used x 3.5, total weapon adds used, personal adds for those using the weapons, plus any additions due to magic (e.g. caster's IQ for a Wizard whose contribution will be Take That, You Fiend! spells). Divide that number by 0.85 (or multiply it by 20 and divide by 17, same thing)^[1]. That's the MR that you should use. You can use multipliers to make the combats easier or harder, but this is a 'fair' fight rating.
  

Let me know if that's of any help.

^[1] MR of X will produce an average HPT = [(X / 10) + 1] * 3.5 + X / 2.  Re-arranging that formula gives HPT = (8.5 * X) / 10 + 3.5, which is near enough to HPT = 0.85 * X for most purposes, so X = HPT / 0.85. ^[2]
[2] I apologise for inflicting algebra on everyone.

[d4caltrops]

May 22, 2020 18:59:30 GMT -5 mahrundl said:

Some ponderings:

• What weapons are the party using? I can't see that in your analysis.
• CON is not a good indicator of a party's combat ability, since there is no difference in the party's Hit Point Total (HPT) between fighting with a CON of 1 and fighting with a CON of 50. It's only when you hit 0 CON that it affects things, because you've just lost a combatant and their contribution to the combat total in future rounds.
• Likewise, levels don't affect the result because they don't change the HPT (other than in special cases, usually involving magic).  HPT is based on attributes and weapons.
  
• Spite damage and armour worn don't affect the outcome much, since they mostly only change whether CON is lost.  Spite may make the win or loss quicker, but won't change the final outcome in the majority of cases.  Armour is good for preventing character death when your HPT is substantially under the average in a round, and to prevent losses from attrition before the monsters can be worn down.
  
• A quick way of estimating the MR to use: calculate the party's average HPT (total weapon dice used x 3.5, total weapon adds used, personal adds for those using the weapons, plus any additions due to magic (e.g. caster's IQ for a Wizard whose contribution will be Take That, You Fiend! spells). Divide that number by 0.85 (or multiply it by 20 and divide by 17, same thing)^[1]. That's the MR that you should use. You can use multipliers to make the combats easier or harder, but this is a 'fair' fight rating.
  

Let me know if that's of any help.

^[1] MR of X will produce an average HPT = [(X / 10) + 1] * 3.5 + X / 2.  Re-arranging that formula gives HPT = (8.5 * X) / 10 + 3.5, which is near enough to HPT = 0.85 * X for most purposes, so X = HPT / 0.85. ^[2]
[2] I apologise for inflicting algebra on everyone.

Thanks for your reply!

• Right now, basic/introductory weapons, no magic items yet. It's a group of fresh characters. The best weapon is a 7d6 (might be 5d6 + warrior dice, not clear from sheet). Couple 2d6+3 daggers.
• I used CON because I wanted to start from "for my party, what MR is going to produce a HPT that is a guaranteed 1-shot TPK", since that kept happening. I think the combat stats are better.
• The MR estimation method with the dice average is a really good point, and I think it's the simple next step from where I landed - thanks! I'll run some more experiments with that.

Also, I made a mistake as I was thinking through the numbers in my post, because I forgot to use the difference between HPTs rather than the raw HPT. I'll fix my post.

[d4caltrops]

Ran some more numbers.

Here are the weapons:

• 7d6
• 2d6+3
• 2d6+2
• 2d6+2
• 2d6+2

Personal adds sum is 42. So PC team dice is 15d6+51. Maximum roll is 15*6+51=141, d6 average is 15*3.5+51 = 103, minimum roll is 15+51=66.

Using mahrundl's average dice + adds method, that's a max MR of 165 (141/.85) (17d6+82), average MR 121 (103/.85) (13d6+60), and a min MR of 77 (66/.85) (8d6+38).

Using the adds-only method at 3x/2x/1.5x that's max MR 126 (13d6+63), mid MR 84 (9d6+42), min MR 63 (7d6+31).

Here's how the PCs fare vs each:

Average Dice + Adds:

MR 165 (Max): anydice.com/program/1bc8c
MR 121 (Avg): anydice.com/program/1bc8d
MR 77 (Min): anydice.com/program/1bc8e

Adds-only Method (3x/2x/1.5x):

MR 126 (Max): anydice.com/program/1bc8f
MR 84 (Mid): anydice.com/program/1bc90
MR 63 (Min): anydice.com/program/1bc91

My conclusion from this is that ignoring player dice is unsurprisingly silly and mahrundl's technique is spot on. MR 121 computed from d6 averages is a nice overlapping distribution. MR 165 is dangerous but not impossible.

I'm tossing my earlier stuff and going with keeping a MR range based on my player range: deadly MR at (max HPT / .85), serious MR at (d6 avg HPT / .85), and trivial MR at (min HPT / .85).

Still, this is a LOT lower than some of the MRs I was using already.

Thanks again mahrundl -- this and letting me blather all over the message board helped a bunch working this out.

[mahrundl]

Glad that I could help!

The other things that I'd throw in to encourage PC survival are smart use of magic (even at first level, Vorpal Blade can help quite a bit, and Hidey Hole at second level halves the opposing HPT) and utilising combat stunts. Also, clever non-magical items can be quite worthwhile investments - one of the Warriors in my group has constructed a bandolier of flour bombs for revealing invisible opponents.

[zanshin]

One thing I will throw in is that if you use the spite rule, then speed bump monsters are attritional. Without it, the PC's only have to spend resources on overmatched fights, usually magic.