Cinco: Abstract Opps & Encounters

Thank y'all so much for y'all's interest in the last one! Will respond when I can, just preparing for a (nice) busy week and weekend :) in any case, yep... they're back! Been using them. Just slightly different.

Bracket	Hearts	Power	Aptitude	Defense	Speed
Grunt	2	1	+1	11	3
Elite	4	2	+2	12	4
Champ	8	3	+4	14	5
Boss	16	4	+8	18	6
Minion*	1	1	+0	10	2

To translate each of the columns:

• Hearts: How much damage they can take.
• Power: How much damage they can deal per turn, possibly split into multiple attacks or spent on special effects.
• Aptitude: Attack bonus, or more generally for D20 checks if applicable.
• Defense: Roll against for D20 checks to attack.
• Speed: Initiative score to beat.
  

Then, you can quickly build encounters by spending heart budgets on opponents (hold off on minions):

Difficulty	Heart Budget
Easy	1/PC
Medium	2/PC
Hard	3/PC
Deadly	4/PC

Having used this to plan sessions and on the fly, it definitely meets my needs for designing opps and encounters without taking time or being annoying. There's some interesting stuff under the hood, though, that makes this possible.

The Math

Mostly making this because of a realization I had a while ago. Imagine a grunt and a boss, maybe the traditional porc and dragon who can take 2 or 16 hits respectively. You don't actually want the dragon to deal 16 times as much damage as the porc. That's both insane and, if you think about it, overpowered. The point of a more powerful figure is that they last longer than a weaker one, soaking more damage without becoming itself weaker. Here's some basic assumptions:

• N grunts have 2N hearts: Simply, each grunt has 2 hearts.
  
• Crew of 4 can defeat 2 grunts per turn: Alternatively, they deal 4 damage per turn. This is because they have higher to-hit chances and may individually deal more than 1 damage per hit.
• Grunts can deal N/2 damage per turn: Grunts have a to-hit chance closer to just 50%.
  

From this, we can imagine groups of grunts whose total hearts equal those of higher-tier opps. Then, we can find how many turns they are supposed to last, how much total damage we expect them to deal, how much damage they deal on average per turn, and translate that into potential damage per turn by accounting for their 50% to-hit chance:

• 8 grunts (~ boss) last 4 turns and deal 4+3+2+1=10 total damage, ~2.5 per turn (~5 potential).
• 4 grunts (~ champ) last 2 turns and deal 2+1=3 total damage, ~1.5 per turn (~3 potential).
• 2 grunts (~ elite) last 1 turn and deal 1 total damage (~2 potential).

This means a boss should be able to deal ~5 potential damage per turn, champs ~3, and elites ~2. You can see that I sort of fudged the final values, like giving bosses 4 potential damage per turn; this is because the lower number is compensated for with higher attack bonuses (+8 instead of +1, which is a lot!).

Let's relate this back to a similar analysis I had done for 1974 D&D. The reason why it "works" is because for every 3 to 4 hit dice you add onto a monster, they deal 3 to 4 additional points of damage—equivalent to another dice. This means that Eero Tuovinen's insight in Muster, that damage is logarithmic relative to hit dice (e.g.: 4 hit dice map to 2 dice damage, 8 hit dice map to 3 dice damage), is correct.

Minions* & Customization

I include minions as an edge case to demonstrate how opps can be manipulated to make encounters more unique. It's a bit of a strange rule, but makes sense in context: you can replace 2 grunts with 3 minions (1 heart, 1 power, +0 aptitude, 10 defense, 2 speed) because you're effectively trading 1 heart for 1 power (and 1 extra agent) in the encounter.

This is an edge case because it relates to how you can customize opps more generally: you can spend 1 power to make an opp's attacks more interesting. For example, since a dragon's fire breath is ranged (+1) and multi-target (+1), we can surmise and improvise that it might be fair if the attack dealt 2 damage (2+1+1=4) to anyone it hits.

However, since grunts only have 1 power, you need to customize individuals in the context of a larger group, so you might consider subtracting hearts to make up for their relatively increased power. So, for a group of 4 grunts, you may consider giving 2 of them ranged attacks in exchange for them having just 1 heart. Since that equalizes the field, you might also consider turning the remaining 2 normal grunts into 3 minions. In other words, 4 basic grunts are equivalent to 3 minions and 2 ranged grunts, which is a more interesting composition whose special effects and increased numbers are offset by decreased hearts.

Example Encounter

Who doesn't like bears? Let's say a grizzly is a champ, by itself a medium encounter (8 hearts) for a standard crew of four. That gives her 3 potential damage per turn, which we could split into two basic attacks:

• Bite (1P): Deal 1 piercing damage on a hit.
• Claws (2P): Deal 2 slashing damage on a hit.
  

We can also give her one special attack by spending 1 of her 3 power for an effect:

• Hug (3P): Deal 2 piercing damage and auto-grapple target (as bludgeon) on a hit.
  

So, basically, you choose whether the bear should bite and claw on her turn, or hug someone. To increase the encounter's difficulty and make it hard (12 hearts), we can just give her 2 teen cubs which fight as grunts and don't do anything special. Maybe you can make them 3 younger cubs. I don't generally support violence against animals to be clear. Probably they're evil bears who stole a village's toilet paper out of the pure malice of their hearts.

I basically don't stat encounters anymore. I can just say such-and-such character is a champ if things go violent, and if it's on the fly I can even improvise turn actions knowing that it all comes out in the wash.