Activity Forums General Information RP Guides Vanquisher Battle System Guide

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  • #101
    Illuminatus
    Keymaster

    Boss is my shorthand for the opposition to a group of Heroes. “Boss” may refer to a single, massive opponent, or a number of smaller opponents. The same stats are used for either type. It’s differentiated by your narration.

    Heroes are my shorthand for members of VI. Everyone is the protagonist in their own stories, someone important. Hero is simply shorter to say.

    Feel free to post here with your own ideas, too!


    Space combat
    Capital Ships
    To emulate combat between capital ships, you might use this option. Consider a capital ship to be under the command of a single captain. When their hit points are gone, the capital ship must be abandoned. You can use guild ranks to roughly equate to the importance of a ship, be it a fast corvette captained by a single Major, or a cruiser captained by a Magister. For example you might use the following as a rule of thumb:

    Trainee – Minimal starfighters, usually not equipped with shields.
    Veteran – starfighters
    Knight/Officer/Specialist – Advanced starfighters
    Master/Major – Fast freighters, corvettes, small frigates.
    Magister – cruisers
    High Lord/Master of the Order – battle cruisers
    High Lady/Grandmaster – battleship/dreadnought

    Consider the starship to be taken out when the pilot (starfighers) or captain (all others) is out of hit points. This means the ship is out of action and the hero must eject and then wait for pickup.

    Describing Different Weapon Systems
    You (or the heroes!) can describe attack actions any way they wish. But if you wish to use a consistent guide you might suggest that when a person makes a separate attack up to their maximum number per turn they are using the ship’s lasers. If they combine all their attacks into a single attack, perhaps they are using a concussion missile. Or turbo lasers. Or a railgun if it happens to be a captain in charge of a major starship capable of mounting such a weapon. If you want you might use a guideline like

    • 5 damage = lasers or blaster cannons
    • 10 damage = laser cannons, light concussion missile or ion cannon
    • 15 damage = laser cannon barrage, turbo lasers, heavy concussion missile or heavy ion cannon
    • 20 damage = some kind of spine-mounted weapon like a railgun or perhaps a turbolaser barrage.

    Many Stations
    Ships with multiple heroes aboard can do more things. For example consider an advanced starfighter piloted by an Officer. They might include another offer or veteran to copilot. This allows another person to participate in the battle right along with the pilot manning a turret or other system. The ship is still considered to be taken out when the pilot is out of hit points. However, other characters aboard that ship can help mitigate the damage by taking damage points instead. If such supplementary heroes are taken out, it just means their systems are no longer responsive and they cannot participate in the battle. Their character is still “alive” and can evacuate or eject when the pilot or captain does.

    If you are leading an event and wish to emulate a large, single starship as an opponent, you can do must the same. Grab one of the guild rank stats for your enemy captain and fit it out with a number of npcs at various ranks. When the ship takes damage, you decide which hitpoints to eliminate. Simply use narrative story logic and don’t be a slave to dice rolls or rules.

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Illuminatus. Reason: Adding tags

    a.k.a. Lumiani in The Old Republic:

    #102
    Illuminatus
    Keymaster

    Handling Boss Fights
    This turned out to be far easier than I had thought. Which is great!

    My philosophy is that boss fights should be exciting and fast! And I think I hit upon something that makes it so.

    What’s a Boss?
    Boss is just short hand for the opposition. You can depict the “boss” as a single, powerful monster. Or you can describe a main bad guy with minions. Or you can describe it as a group of competent agents, warriors, sith, zakuul knights, etc. However you describe the “boss”, you can use the same mechanism for statting them out.

    Hit Points
    Bosses don’t need enormous amounts of hit points to be a threat. They can heal and shield already. But to scale it correctly we must take into account the Heroes involved. We want it to be a fun challenge, not a cakewalk, nor certain doom. So use the following as a guideline:

    Hit points = Total number of Hero actions x 5.

    I find it simplest to break the boss up into sections with each group faced with part of the “boss”. So for example if you broke your operation up into three groups of four people, then the part each group is dealing with could be figured up independently.

    For example, let’s say your boss is defined as a group of soldiers attack a VI space station. Your Heroes are in an operation divided into groups of 1 to 4 people because that’s just how SWTOR handles operations. So you can turn your boss into a several minibosses that have hit points equal to 5 x (total number of Hero actions in the group). Each minibos probably represents an enemy squad.

    In another example, you could say your boss is a giant Rakata war machine. It’s so big that it can threaten the entire operation! You can still divide it into sections — thorax, legs, arms, head, for instance and figure hit points as above. As each section is taken out, you can describe it having different effects. It might lose mobility if the legs are taken out. Maybe without the head it cannot target people visually. Etc.

    A third example could be something that isn’t a giant mobile threat, nor a small army. Instead you might depict a powerful enemy such as a Sith Lord that is surrounded by apprentices, a battlecruiser, etc. In this case perhaps you do want to total up the number of actions the heroes have across the entire operation. But! You need to make sure that a bad guy of this scale gets to act after every group of Heroes.
    Actions
    Bosses get 1 action per number of heroes in a group. Bosses always get to go one time per group of heroes, regardless of the number of heroes in the group. When they act, they can use any or all of the actions they have at that time.

    For example, you have a boss that consists of groups of agents that are attacking your Heroes. You have arranged your operation into one group of four individuals and one group of two individuals. The boss should get to go once when the first group goes, and the boss will have 4 actions at that time to use. When the next group of 2 individuals gets to have a turn, then the boss will get 2 actions to react to them. Who gets to act first, either the boss or the heroes, is up to the GM and should depend on the circumstance. Generally, the encounter will be a bit harder if the boss goes first.

    Action Points
    Bosses get 6 action points per action. This makes them a threat because a single strong healer or defender will be unable to counter or mitigate all the damage that could be done. In addition, since some bosses may be allowed to shield or heal as well, it makes them a more significant challenge.

    But mainly? The imbalance between the Heroes and the Bosses action points means there can be no stalemate in a battle where a lot of healing and shielding is going on. Someone is going to fall sooner or later and we will have a resolution to the conflict.

    This also helps event things a bit. It’s common to have a group of 4 heroes have as many as 8 actions or more spread among them. The boss will never have more than 4 actions per group of heroes.

    It is VERY possible and very easy to use some tactics to totally crush your heroes by concentrating all boss actions on a single Hero at a time.  Don’t do that! It’s pretty easy to know what your Heroes can take and what they can’t. So if you have some veterans and a trainee in a group in a boss fight, (1), avoid targeting them with so much damage they can be one-shotted. If someone is taken out in a couple shots, that happens and it’s okay. But it’s not cool or awesome to charge into battle and then get shot in the face and taken out of the fight in 1 minute flat. So if you are targeting trainees and you know they have no shields up and just 10 hit points, don’t target them with 2 actions worth of damage (since that would do a total of 12 damage if it hits — and there is nearly a 60% chance it will). If you have a Veteran, you know he’s got 15 total hit points, so don’t target him with a 3 action hit that could do 18 damage. Spread it out a little.

    (1) You should consider always putting higher ranked people in with lower ranks. Higher ranked people are tougher, and more importantly they can heal or shield others. This system is designed to get all ranks working together. If you ignore this concept, your events aren’t going to be as much fun as the lower ranks get mowed down and higher ranks hog all the glory to themselves.
    If you have tougher people drawing the attention of your boss, and they have 20 or more hit points to start with (that would be Knight/Specialist/Officer ranks and higher), then yeah! You could do a big attack that could inflict 18 points. Because they will have one turn to respond by putting up a shield or getting healed, etc. If they choose not to do that and get another big hit, well that’s not the fault of the Dice Roller. That’s the fault of their own choices.
    Defense
    Boss defense is always 50+.

    Why? Because it’s easier to predict. The number of hit points we give bosses DEPENDS on that defense being a 50+. If it is different, then you are going to have to fiddle with boss hit points ENDLESSLY to avoid utter smackdown situations.
    Closing Notes
    Q: Can I use the same stats we give Heroes to our “boss” opposition?
    A: Yes, you can. Just build your opposition with similar ranks and numbers of individuals. Try to balance things slightly in the favor of the Heroes in general to avoid the tyranny of bad dice rolls. Doing it this way adds a lot of detail, but it will also add a lot of bookwork to the GM’s job.

    a.k.a. Lumiani in The Old Republic:

    #104
    Illuminatus
    Keymaster

    If the above is too many words and your vision is going blurry, here is the quick business:

    Boss HPs = 5 x total number of Hero Actions
    Boss Actions = 1 action per Hero
    Boss Action Points = 6 per action
    Boss Defense = 50+

    a.k.a. Lumiani in The Old Republic:

    #278
    Illuminatus
    Keymaster

    I have also published a list of sample less-than-boss challenges you can put together to create a varied and even more interesting encounter.

    a.k.a. Lumiani in The Old Republic:

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