next »

[Roy Killington]

Hey all, Roy Killington here, brand new to the forum and Anima.  I recently purchased a copy of the Core Book and I must say, I have been doing a lot of reading not related to my college classes! ^_^  I have a group of friends who are willing to play, three for sure and possibly a fourth with me as GM. Two have little to no experience with pen-and-paper games, but are willing; one has a considerable amount and has done some GMing with Pathfinder named Colin; and I have always done the reading, but I'm never quite able to find a group to do it consistently (though I did introduce the experienced one back with a DnD boxed set I bought!) He would be GMing if this was Pathfinder, I feel, but he never gets a chance to play and is not familiar with the Anima system at all, so I'm going to develop something and he's going to be a sort of plant to steer the other two in the right direction.

Background completed, on to the dilemma; I am having issues developing the specific encounters.  Right now, I'm thinking I'll follow a plot similar to "Seven Samurai" and get the characters up so that they can eventually take on a small army of sorts to show the versatility of the system. What I am most worried about is the very beginning encounters. In the Pathfinder books Colin lent me, it had the CR ratings and how develop difficult and medium encounters and such. I'm just having a hard time developing for a group of 3 Level 1 players whose classes I honestly am not sure of. Further, there may be a fourth and fifth, but they're iffy so I'm not really counting on them.

Right now, I'm looking at maybe having them fight a Samurai from the core book with a small retinue of two Militia (retinue totally optional). It fits well with the sort of plot I'm trying to get them to go down, and I know how to work it in - I'm just worried that they're going to either completely slaughter him by themselves or one of the PCs dies early, which would be very bad.

TL;DR - From the core rulebook, would a Samurai and two Guards be way too tough for a group of 3 Level 1 PCs, and if so, what would be a good replacement?

[tasuret]

It all depends on their character builds. I had a group of 4 lvl 2s beat my level 6 boss in five rounds, and a couple of level 9s beat a level 11 in a similar amount of time. Count on lucky shots from the players. I'd recommend sending the guards in first, and then if they handle that well, send out the Samurai. I generally gauge the combat by adding up the levels on each side; if I want it to be difficult, I'll give their opponents 3 to 5 levels above the players. Moderate combat would have the enemies right below their level.

[Sharpandpointies]

Alternately, expect the players on occasion to have SERIOUS problems with people you figure they should walk over.  The wide range of the dice plus the Open Rolls and the way that armor and the combat table works means an advantage of 15-30 points on Attack and Defend can lead to a lot of players hitting but not doing damage, then getting mobbed by a larger group of lower-level adversaries.

It's a tricky balance in Anima.  :)

[Roy Killington]

That's the method I've seen thrown around the forums, during the course of my lurking. What's worried me about that, though, are the examples I saw at the very end of the players section of the CRB. Namely, the ones that goes "one Level 6 Warrior versus 50 professional soldiers" as Difficult and the "one Level 4 warrior versus 10 professional soldiers" as Very Difficult which in and of itself just seems to defy math. This is definitely related to that tricky balance, my only guess being how DnD and its progeny seem to typically cap at 20, while you earn yourself a "Godlike!" in Anima by 10 (from what I remember).

I'll probably try and set up some sort of trick to beat the Samurai in case they have a hard time. And if things are really going bad, I'll use my special "GM magic" so that I don't kill all the PCs, because that's not the goal.

[The Dread Polack]

It's very hard to estimate how tough a battle will be in Anima. As has been said, there is a wide range of rolls, and with open rolls, just about anyone can kill anyone with a lucky roll. I've nearly killed PCs (no actual deaths yet) to standard guards, and I've lost major boss villains in a couple shots.

One thing to keep in mind: not everybody fights to the death, and not everyone is out to kill their opponents. If it looks like the PCs are in trouble, you can have your villain take the opportunity to escape, or you can have them surrender, offer to simply end the fight in a draw, or demand the same from the PCs. In real life, people usually aren't trying to kill eachother in fights, and when it looks like an enemy is willing to concede, most people are willing to accept that. After all, even if you're winning; the longer the fight, the more chances for you to get hurt.

This doesn't always apply to monsters, especially if they hungry, or particularly evil, but most rational animals don't like dying, or even getting hurt, so they'll give up when they realize their prey isn't worth the risk or the effort.

Do it right, and it won't even look like GM fiat

[Roy Killington]

In the words of Futurama, "If you're doing it right, people will wonder if you're really doing anything at all."  Or something of that ilk.  Which is how a GM should do things, agreed!  Thanks for the advice, Polack!

And besides, things like that will teach that this is role play, not hack-n-slash. Colin is kinda disappointed in his GMing because so many of is people couldn't make the transition from "KILL ALL THE THINGS AND GET ALL THE PHAT L00TZ!" in video games like Oblivion and Skyrim and such to table-top, mental RP. In his words, "Once they say 'I run up and attempt to slash open his gut with my sword!' instead of 'I move 5 spaces and do 20 damage' I'll be a happy GM."  And since my guys are fresh and Anima has no integral map-and-minis system, I'mma try and get them started on the right foot.

Again, thanks for the advice, it's quite nice since most of this campaign will be against human/humanoid enemies!

[The Dread Polack]

...most of this campaign will be against human/humanoid enemies!

My earliest GMing D&D was mostly using orcs as enemies. In those days it was generally accepted that you just killed all the orcs without thought. I later ran a Shadowrun game where the opposition was basically another hired team just like the PCs, and I think that's when it really hit me. "The PCs aren't willing to die for this job, why would the 'bad guys' be willing to die?" The players got a few lucky shots and badly wounded one of the NPCs, and so I had the NPC team throw their guns on the ground, put up their hands and say, basically "We know when we're outmatched. Let us get our guy to the hospital, and we can all just stop shooting eachother." I think we were all a bit blown away by this, but pleased. The players still "won", and I assured them they'd get all the XP from the encounter.

On a side note, one of the things I like about Anima is that you can be incapacitated and still have quite a lot of time before you bleed out and are just plain dead. In some games, when a character drops, it's a race to get them stabilized. That can create a lot of dramatic tension, but especially in a game where a couple of lucky/unlucky rolls can put someone down before they have a chance to think about retreat, it's nice to know you have a little wiggle room before you start going through his pockets and dividing up his stuff

[Sharpandpointies]

Interesting start-up game - I hope it works out for you, Roy.

Also, welcome to the forums!  :)