I know I've seen discussion about this before but I can't find any threads right now. On average, how many encounters does a hero need to face before he's ready to take on the next level encounter? ie: how many greens before he can take on a yellow? How many yellows before he can take a blue, etc?

When I say "ready" I mean how many before he can fight it with a reasonable degree of challenge but probably win? I know this will depend on how many XP it takes to buy an experience token, so let's assume a 4 player game. (4 xp each, right?)

It all depends on the character you have and what equipment and allies you are able to purchase. Generally I aim to have one ally and one level before tackling a yellow encounter. I then aim to have 3 levels, 2 allies and 1 piece of useful equipment before I tackle blue encounters. Once I have 4-5 levels, 2 allies and 1-2 pieces of good equipment I can generally tackle red encounters fairly regularly... depending upon the character.

Range characters need the least help as they can attack first in a combat round, so generally can take on higher challenges than melee or magic focused characters.

By that same token magic characters generally require a little more time to get up to speed unless they can find a good range or melee ally to absorb some of the wounds in the early phases of combat.

With melee characters it all depends on how high their body skill is, how much damage they deal in melee and how many wounds they have. Those who deal 3 wounds can get on a roll and just race around the board killing everything.

For me personally I'm more concerned with gaining the right combo of equipment and allies than I am with leveling. The trick in Runebound is often to avoid taking wounds, earning gold "safely" anyway you can and then spending your money wisely on the right equipment and allies. The more strategy you bring to the game the quicker it will play as you'll spend less time getting knocked out and rebuilding.

Judd

With all due respect, I'm not looking for specific strategies in this thread, just averages. I'm looking for statistical probabilities, not tactics. I'm curious how many encounters a hero can expect to face before moving on to the next level with a reasonable chance at winning. I'm not particularly interested in how a hero might get there or what allies or equipment he might have when he does.

I think the point is that allies and equipment are a fairly crucial part of the puzzle. Without them, it takes much more leveling to face the same stuff. One good ally or piece of equipment makes a huge difference. Sorry, I don't actually have an answer to the original question.

In a standard game it usually takes about two "levels" to be able to face a yellow. So at the 4xp per bonus rate you originally mentioned, about 8 encounters. But good numbermancy with your character and the right weapon or ally can make it possible to take on a yellow with just one level up, which is 4 encounters. So average that out to 6 at the 4 per level rate.

Which is why we usually play with faster xp rules, even with fewer players.

I highly reccomend the new option for leveling provided in the rulebook for TFW. It says that an experience counter costs exp equal to the number of counters you have plus one. This gives faster leveling at the beginning but prevents the one level/turn phenom later on and allows characters who are behind to catch up easier. If you assume it's replacing 4 exp/lvl you hit equilibrium with seven lvl ups.

To make it a little more clear, 1 for the first, 2 for the second 3 fro the third, etc...

Much more enjoyable at the lower levels so you don't wander for ages trying to level up and means harder work to earn once you are uber-adventurer.

To respond to the original question, I'd say about three or four encounters before hitting the next level of difficulty, especially with the alternate exp rules I listed

bigmac said:

Nice, I like that rule. I don't have Frozen Wastes yet, but I think I'll definitely be trying that XP rule next time we play.

Thanks everyone for your responses, I think I have the answer I was looking for now. My own estimate was about 4 encounters before being ready to move on (assuming average equipment gets acquired), but I've only played 2 games so far so I wasn't sure if that was a true average or not. Particularly when moving from yellow to blue or blue to red. Based on this it sounds like it around 4-6 depending on equipment, possibly as many as 8 if you have shyte luck. Cool.