Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

So, one of my favourite things about this system is the lack of formal "levels" - I like that it's a much more gradual progression through character, providing a much more fluid system. However, it does make it difficult to judge what level threat to throw at my party. I was wondering: how do people judge the "level" of their NPCs? How do you judge how difficult they will be for the PCs to deal with.

From my own games, I've discovered that soak and weapon damage are the two most significant factors in adjusting the combat difficulty levels of NPCs. The Adversary talent seems like a more subtle tweak - adding Adversary 1, I reckon, is less significant than adding +1 soak, at least mechanically. (Obviously soak doesn't present as many narrative options as a possible despair). But it's hard to be sure...

How does everyone else do it? Do you have a method for working out what the stats of your NPCs should be, based on your party?

Thanks in advance.

I was wondering: how do people judge the "level" of their NPCs? How do you judge how difficult they will be for the PCs to deal with.

By comparing dice pools. If the PCs are slicing, and the competitive slicer has the same dice pool, then it's a bit less than 50/50 that the PCs will win, because they need net +1 success. Same with combat. If you want the PCs to win, assuming equal numbers, make the opposition have 1 less in their positive dice pool than the PCs. It's a bit harder to scale combat when you have lots of low-end NPCs, because even the lowest-end minion groups can get triumphs, etc, but at least that's the rough ballpark.

Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

If you look around, you'll see most threads go off the rails, doesn't mean it wasn't a good topic to start

Adversary 1 is way more advantageous than soak 1, my guide would be err on the side of caution then if you find that the PCs find it too easy add 1 or 2 more minions per group, up the rivals WT or add adversary to rivals or nemesis

Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

<looks around nervously for Desslok...>

I was wondering: how do people judge the "level" of their NPCs? How do you judge how difficult they will be for the PCs to deal with.

By comparing dice pools. If the PCs are slicing, and the competitive slicer has the same dice pool, then it's a bit less than 50/50 that the PCs will win, because they need net +1 success. Same with combat. If you want the PCs to win, assuming equal numbers, make the opposition have 1 less in their positive dice pool than the PCs. It's a bit harder to scale combat when you have lots of low-end NPCs, because even the lowest-end minion groups can get triumphs, etc, but at least that's the rough ballpark.

Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

If you look around, you'll see most threads go off the rails, doesn't mean it wasn't a good topic to start

Thanks (for both comments). Comparing dice is definitely a good way to go, but I've found that even low-ranked NPCs can absolutely destroy my PCs if they've got a) high-powered weapons or b) ridiculously high soak. Even an NPC who's just rolling 2 Ability dice can kill a PC if they just won't die and if they're dishing out base 10 when they actually do hit.

Adversary 1 is way more advantageous than soak 1, my guide would be err on the side of caution then if you find that the PCs find it too easy add 1 or 2 more minions per group, up the rivals WT or add adversary to rivals or nemesis

See, that's not my experience. Adversary 1 adds a Challenge die, which might roll a despair, might cancel out a success (which is a bit better than soak - it reduces damage by 1 if the check is successful, just like soak, but also has a chance of preventing the success in the first place), but just as likely is the fact that it might roll a threat (reducing the chance for crits and other special abilities), or it might roll a blank. Like I said, it's more subtle - particularly the way it stops crits - but I think it's actually less powerful. Soak is just soak, however. My PCs are mostly Ranged (Light) combatants, which means they're running around with Blaster Pistols and similar. I've had to drastically reduce the soak of my NPCs, because when they came up against a Soak 6 nemesis (which didn't seem that extreme), they just couldn't drop him - I had to get him to retreat in the end just to end the fight!

(Of course my PCs are also stupid, and insisting on chasing the NPC even when I was trying to end the unwinnable combat, so that went on for another three rounds. Ah well).

Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

<looks around nervously for Desslok...>

I hate to ask, but would you mind not posting this kind of comment? That's the sort of thing that derails threads. Thanks.

Comparing dice is definitely a good way to go, but I've found that even low-ranked NPCs can absolutely destroy my PCs if they've got a) high-powered weapons or b) ridiculously high soak. Even an NPC who's just rolling 2 Ability dice can kill a PC if they just won't die and if they're dishing out base 10 when they actually do hit.

Of course. You start with the dice pools assuming everything else is equal, but then you have to factor in damage rates, soak, attrition rates, etc, which you can really only do by experience. D&D is more mathematically predictable, but this games takes some getting used to.

If you find your players are steam rolling the opposition or vice versa, you can always deal with it in phases or across multiple encounters. Assuming each encounter leaves the PCs a little worse for wear, instead of one big encounter you can have multiple small encounters. Let's say the PCs robbed a bank but they have to get across town to get to their ship, at points in the chase you can have ambushes set up or ways for the opposition to find them. Each small encounter might be enough to take down a PC, but once the other PCs deal with the threat they can patch up and carry on...minus some stimpacks and maybe still with wounds. That way you can decide on the fly whether or not to let them go or finish them off (never, of course, revealing your actual intent).

I hate to ask, but would you mind not posting this kind of comment? That's the sort of thing that derails threads. Thanks.

Maybe, just maybe, you should chill out about it.

When in doubt, go with small groups of manageable minions... If the PC's are cleaning up, then the Stormtroopers call for back up. Hell - give the PC's a chance to notice them doing it... and then backup shows up before combat is over, and keeps things going. If the PC's are holding their own, then no backup. If the dice roll against them, hopefully they're clever enough to run...

Which brings up an important issue - thematic 'rules' of combat.

Think about the movies for a second (and by the movies, I mean IV, V, VI). Can you think of a combat where the protagonists weren't seconds away from getting their asses kicked, and/or running away? Sure... when they freed Han and took out Jabba... but even that one was about taking out a few key objectives and then running while the getting is good...

This is EotE, not DnD, or any other combat heavy RPG. The characters are smugglers, scum, bounty hunters, and general miscreants. When Stormtroopers show up, they should be running. Shooting over their shoulders, sure... firing like mad at the tie fighters - you betcha... but that's just to slow them down until they can get to hyperspace.

Combat should rarely be to the death... it should have an objective, and that should generally be "run away"

Even if you're doing a AoR or FaD themed game - the opposition should almost always be overwhelming and almost unstoppable in a stand up fight. The PC's need to be smarter and faster than the opposition, not bigger and badder. And the Empire? IT'S THE EMPIRE! It's downright terrifying...

Just my .02

More Firefly, less

Basically what Bishop said. Tactical wargames like D&D has established an unfortunate precedent in a lot of players' minds, where when combat happens, it's always to the death, and running away is not only impractical, but almost impossible. And hey, even if a couple of people go down, magic is always there to get them right back up!

But that's not this kind of game. Combats should rarely, if ever, be a straight up blaster-fest. In a D&D-style game, if you're level 15 and you've got a couple dozen rowdy peasants threatening you with swords and bows, you're not going to be scared, because those peasants aren't going to able to do enough damage (if they can even hit) to actually be a threat. In Edge/Age/Force, ANY time someone's got a blaster drawn, someone could die. So while finding the way to balance the NPCs is good, but balancing encounters is probably more important. If your players don't get it, find ways to alter their thinking.

They're most likely acting like they're invincible, because they're the PCs and it's their story. And you know what? They're right. So shift the focus. In one of the encounters that my players loved, they were sent to catch a bounty and bring him back to their Hutt "friend." But they'd heard that this guy was wanted by a lot of people, and some wanted him alive, other wanted him dead. After they found the guy, a sniper came after them. He didn't make a single attack against the party, he focused all of his attacks on the bounty. The PCs didn't take a wound, but they were panicked as hell the entire encounter because they NEEDED this guy alive, and here was an opponent who was doing his darndest (and his darndest was pretty darn good) to kill him.

Another way to do it is give them an opponent they know they can't beat be close but unseen, and the encounters are basically speed bumps to getting away in time. Or another way is find some way to make their current location really dangerous (explosives are good here) so they need to get out fast, and they really can't afford to fight those Stormtroopers to the death.

Or remove blasters from the equation entirely. Make it known that the place they're in has sensors that'll detect a blaster shot and do something unpleasant, so they have to fight everything in their way with bare fists. They'll realize that they don't have the resilience to do that through a bunch of encounters.

But, in an attempt to provide tips that are directly on-topic instead of tangentially, the tips other people have given are good ones: start smaller, and add more enemies if things are going a bit too easy. The Destiny Pool is your friend: spend a Dark Side point to have more minions show up.

Also, damage is very important to regulate. Most characters aren't going to have defensive pools greater than two or (maybe) three dice, most likely only Difficulty dice, with the possibility of a Setback. So most attacks are going to hit, so high damage is going to wreck face. If you're planning a fight to the death (or you don't think your players have got the memo), then you should have only one high-damage weapon per two or three PCs. Especially with PCs described as favoring Ranged (Light) weapons, they're going to need three or so hits to take a decent rival or minion group down, so that NPC will get two to three shots before going down. Unless the PCs focus-fire, in which case the other adversaries in the encounter will get a free chance to ruin the players' days.

With regards to adversary its subtle but it does make a big difference, however it scales up, adverdary 1 not making enough of a difference, then apply adversary 2, if that's not enough ramp it up to 3, its the prfect equaliser and,once you get used to it you will get a good idea of how much to use. Also have alook at the adversary rules in the GM kit.

I adjust the difficultty in big encounters due to these meassurements:

1. The number of minion(group)s a rival gets to his dispossal.

At the beginning I used at max 2 groups with 2 henchmen (or one with 3-4);

Today while my Players grew, I can use two rivals and 2-3 Groups of minions with up to 5 henchmen

2. Talents for rivals and nemesis,

If an officer of the Empire comes in with a squad of stormis, he should have some talents to boost his men up, while impereal valor keeps him on his feet. (if you don´t see any leadership talents in the trees that are good enought to counter the strenght of the player, you may just invent something.

this also works on beasts in the wild - rival or nemesis beast as an Alpha-male and/or female, and some minons as theire pack. a talent like "Furious Howling" - Hardleadership check - if sucsessfull all pack members get a boost dice for this encounter or until the alpha is dead.

that way the beasts will be much harder.

Of course a good nemesis Should have some ranks in Durability (espacially if your players are glowstick swinging psychos that don´t give a s**t about beeing seen...)

3. Using Advasary-Talent

At first glace it just seems to bring the thread of a despair but it can do more than that: e.g. You told us your players like to use range(light) so I assume they´ll try to get on short range to have just an easy check (1Purple) well with Advasary 2 this change to an medium check with the change of despair (1Red+1Purple) Advasary 3 would rise the change for despair again and so on.

4. Weapons and Armor

This is where it can become tricky... you should only use armor that is listed in the books (except for nemesis here you can do whatever is in your liking or needed to survive at least 1-2 rounds) For minios soak shouldn´t be higer than 5 or 6 (if you have to deal with glow sticks you can ignore that... since they will ignore it too)

use as weapons in the beginning only weak weapons (light blasters for most minions and carabinas for stormis) if its to easy for your players raise the stakes by bringing in a Heavy blaster or a rifle... one at a time otherwise your players will bite the dust very soon

(I´m talking out of experince... first time I used Stormtroopers ... was a desaster... two groups of 4 stormis with an blaster rifle...and then there was silence...and the beginning of an "how to get out of prison" story arc)

5. Enviorement and external circumstances.

Also a good way to take influence on the difficulty is to add some external issus... fog/ darkness/ many artifical blinking lights/ a horde of wild running harbivours/ extrem cold & heat / uneven ground / earthquakes / rain & wind / innocent people / indestructable and destructable obstacles and so on will add some nice setback dice to the pools.

and you can chooses that the enemy comes prepared for this or not to adjust the difficulty.

for an extra kick you can mount the enemy... an enemy on a speeder bike can move within short to long range with just one maneuver (so a rival with stamina could come close, shot and go back to long range with 2 strain) and to hit him the PC hast to use "aim at a specific place" or will otherwise hit the bike (which won´t be destroyed so easy by normal weapons)

of course if you players are more or less staring chars you can scale the most thinks to the otherside:

enemys use unprecision weapons, players got the right equipment against the weather while the enemy has not, NPCs are standing next to plasma-barrels, or an wild beasts interupts the battle and for some reason thinks that the white-canned-guy looks yummy, an officer is a dumbass that will only command to concentrate fire on the player with the best defence/ position/ woundthreshold or is just using his men as a shild and giving the squad a setback for dicuragment and so on.

If you find your players are steam rolling the opposition or vice versa, you can always deal with it in phases or across multiple encounters. Assuming each encounter leaves the PCs a little worse for wear, instead of one big encounter you can have multiple small encounters. Let's say the PCs robbed a bank but they have to get across town to get to their ship, at points in the chase you can have ambushes set up or ways for the opposition to find them. Each small encounter might be enough to take down a PC, but once the other PCs deal with the threat they can patch up and carry on...minus some stimpacks and maybe still with wounds. That way you can decide on the fly whether or not to let them go or finish them off (never, of course, revealing your actual intent).

Good suggestion. Thanks.

Think about the movies for a second (and by the movies, I mean IV, V, VI). Can you think of a combat where the protagonists weren't seconds away from getting their asses kicked, and/or running away? Sure... when they freed Han and took out Jabba... but even that one was about taking out a few key objectives and then running while the getting is good...

This is EotE, not DnD, or any other combat heavy RPG. The characters are smugglers, scum, bounty hunters, and general miscreants. When Stormtroopers show up, they should be running. Shooting over their shoulders, sure... firing like mad at the tie fighters - you betcha... but that's just to slow them down until they can get to hyperspace.

Combat should rarely be to the death... it should have an objective, and that should generally be "run away"

I think I need to remind my players of this. They have a tendency to see a fight and go "aha, a fight - now I must fight", instead "oh no, we're in trouble here..."

In one of the encounters that my players loved, they were sent to catch a bounty and bring him back to their Hutt "friend." But they'd heard that this guy was wanted by a lot of people, and some wanted him alive, other wanted him dead. After they found the guy, a sniper came after them. He didn't make a single attack against the party, he focused all of his attacks on the bounty. The PCs didn't take a wound, but they were panicked as hell the entire encounter because they NEEDED this guy alive, and here was an opponent who was doing his darndest (and his darndest was pretty darn good) to kill him.

Nice. I may steal that.

3. Using Advasary-Talent

At first glace it just seems to bring the thread of a despair but it can do more than that: e.g. You told us your players like to use range(light) so I assume they´ll try to get on short range to have just an easy check (1Purple) well with Advasary 2 this change to an medium check with the change of despair (1Red+1Purple) Advasary 3 would rise the change for despair again and so on.

I had forgotten that "upgrades" translate to "increases" once you've upgraded all the available dice! You're right, adversary 3 - turning 1 purple into 2 reds - would make a massive difference. Thanks.

In one of the encounters that my players loved, they were sent to catch a bounty and bring him back to their Hutt "friend." But they'd heard that this guy was wanted by a lot of people, and some wanted him alive, other wanted him dead. After they found the guy, a sniper came after them. He didn't make a single attack against the party, he focused all of his attacks on the bounty. The PCs didn't take a wound, but they were panicked as hell the entire encounter because they NEEDED this guy alive, and here was an opponent who was doing his darndest (and his darndest was pretty darn good) to kill him.

Another way to do it is give them an opponent they know they can't beat be close but unseen, and the encounters are basically speed bumps to getting away in time. Or another way is find some way to make their current location really dangerous (explosives are good here) so they need to get out fast, and they really can't afford to fight those Stormtroopers to the death.

Or remove blasters from the equation entirely. Make it known that the place they're in has sensors that'll detect a blaster shot and do something unpleasant, so they have to fight everything in their way with bare fists. They'll realize that they don't have the resilience to do that through a bunch of encounters.

But, in an attempt to provide tips that are directly on-topic instead of tangentially, the tips other people have given are good ones: start smaller, and add more enemies if things are going a bit too easy. The Destiny Pool is your friend: spend a Dark Side point to have more minions show up.

Also, damage is very important to regulate. Most characters aren't going to have defensive pools greater than two or (maybe) three dice, most likely only Difficulty dice, with the possibility of a Setback. So most attacks are going to hit, so high damage is going to wreck face. If you're planning a fight to the death (or you don't think your players have got the memo), then you should have only one high-damage weapon per two or three PCs. Especially with PCs described as favoring Ranged (Light) weapons, they're going to need three or so hits to take a decent rival or minion group down, so that NPC will get two to three shots before going down. Unless the PCs focus-fire, in which case the other adversaries in the encounter will get a free chance to ruin the players' days.

Slightly worried about starting another thread after my last one went completely off the rails, but...

So, one of my favourite things about this system is the lack of formal "levels" - I like that it's a much more gradual progression through character, providing a much more fluid system. However, it does make it difficult to judge what level threat to throw at my party. I was wondering: how do people judge the "level" of their NPCs? How do you judge how difficult they will be for the PCs to deal with.

From my own games, I've discovered that soak and weapon damage are the two most significant factors in adjusting the combat difficulty levels of NPCs. The Adversary talent seems like a more subtle tweak - adding Adversary 1, I reckon, is less significant than adding +1 soak, at least mechanically. (Obviously soak doesn't present as many narrative options as a possible despair). But it's hard to be sure...

How does everyone else do it? Do you have a method for working out what the stats of your NPCs should be, based on your party?

Thanks in advance.

Hey, you got fine answers and your topic was basically resolved before it became a discussion about … semantics mostly, because I am sure Mr. Pinguin has enough experience to not throw the towel right away when his PCs are not acting as expected. ;-)

Anyway, on to that delicious topic.

The most important thing about balancing NPCs is not their statline, but managing the situation in which those NPCs face the PCs. The second most important thing is most likely gear to use. Last important is the actually statline.

Let me elaborate: John Doe Harmless with Soak 1, and all 1 is a bigger challenge than Palpatine himself you place palatine in front of the players quad-laser turret and John Doe behind that very same turret against a ground based group. Circumstances are everything. Which is the main reasons many, many GMs will reward creativity of the PCs to create circumstances which are beneficial to them instead of just running head-on without a plan into the enemy. The head on approach is what I would call the DnD playstyle, but I am a notorious DnD hater, so don't take me too serious there. ;-)

Again, back to topic. When designing an encounter think first about what your NPCs are all about and what your group is good and bad at. Even something as simple as 2 mildly skilled (agi 3, ranged heavy 3, 2 ranks of true aim or maybe crippling blow) sharpshooter rivals with sniper rifles (optical scopes, maybe suppressors on top) at extreme range against PCs on open fields become a deadly threat IF the PCs have no means to cover the distance easily or at least shoot back. At the same time they become easy prey if the group has vehicles ready or access to jetpacks or similar toys.

If you want your NPCs to be though and your group to be creative then both sides will try to get as much information as possible about the opposition and try to play to their strenghts and weaknesses of the enemies. You as GM are in the privileged position to know "everything" and build your encounters in a way that they can become thrilling no matter what gear, skill, soak, or whatever.

And again getting back to your original question: Soak can be very strong if your group as no easy means to get around it. Adversary and dodge can be extremely strong when outmatching your group. Examples: My ace is using a gun with pierce 6 and 16 damage, our ataru expert is using two lightsabers with breach 1 and 9 damage. Any realistic achievable soak value will not even annoy our group, but instead just make us happy that we can finally are able to use our weapons to their full potential. 3 Ranks of adversary on the other hand are a solid way to at least reduce our damage output. If you use the squad rules and give each nemesis a few goons to redirect hits too those ranks of adversary and/or dodge / sidestep are getting even more use.

Isolating then one of us and chase him with 4 nemesis black sun security guards … gives a thrilling chase and caught us completely off guard without any chance to really get into that combat in a way which would not alert even bigger threats of our presence.

So it really depends on your game, your group, and your creativity.

I have a very simple method for making NPCs scary that I believe has not yet been mentioned; the vicious quality. Vicious adds +10 to crits, and weapons with vicious 3 or 4 can devastating. For example, in a game I was GMing our high-powered fighter character got his hand shot off by an NPC who only had agility 3 and ranged light 1 or 2 because the NPC rolled a high crit. Since crits are the only way to die and or get long-term injuries in this system, the threat of a high crit is much scarier than the threat of simply going beyond your damage threshold. So if you make it clear the NPC has a weapon with high ranks of vicious, this will often cause the PCs to avoid the conflict altogether.

Oh! And another thing that's really important that I can't believe I forgot to mention: if your NPCs are a bit much and things are going poorly for your characters, spend your advantage and threat sub-optimally.

I know, what?! But this isn't D&D where if you roll in a creature's threat range a crit MUST happen. And it's certainly not old-school gaming where it's Players vs. GM. You're entirely welcome to not inflict that fifth critical injury to that character and instead have a couple of minor things happen elsewhere in the fight. It'll keep things tense without being overwhelming or seeming unfair, and make the memories of the encounter that much sweeter!

Also, if the entire party is incapacitated, they're not dead, they're captured! Being captured is awesome, because then you get to run a daring escape scene! And remember that being incapacitated from strain or even wounds does not necessarily mean that you're unconscious. It can, but it could also mean you're still aware just not able to affect the combat. But you can still give advice or heckle the bad guys entirely in character. Think the person slowly creeping across the ground to the fallen gun. You know the bad guy's gonna step on their hand before they can get it and use it, but they're still conscious. They're just a non-factor in the fight any more.

Another story from my campaign that puts all these elements together:

lots of great advice here, I suggest using different pieces of it in different encounters to mice things up all the time.

One fun encounter to put PC's into is one that seems to go on for a long time. By keeping the number of NPC's low each round goes quickly, but maintaining a steady stream of reinforcements while they try to achieve something entirely unrelated to combat. In this scenario the NPC's are expected to go down quickly, but it becomes a strain management encounter quickly as the PC's push themselves and the difficulty slowly ramps up. It's super tense and with short rounds lots of fun for the Players.

Another fun encounter is with a huge mob of minions, something like 15 of them, with some kind of Nemesis leader. Give the Minions no ranks in combat (perhaps Brawl or ranged Light with weak weapons if you want to up the stakes). But do give them an initiative skill and perhaps Perception. Because grouped Minions raise skill RANKS and 5 is the maximum number of ranks in a skill anyone can have then the dice pools is not out of control. But best of all the dice pool won't go down until a large number of the minions are killed, by which time they probably want to run away anyway.

Yes, things need to be frequently “miced up”.

The most important thing about balancing NPCs is not their statline, but managing the situation in which those NPCs face the PCs. The second most important thing is most likely gear to use. Last important is the actually statline.

Let me elaborate: John Doe Harmless with Soak 1, and all 1 is a bigger challenge than Palpatine himself you place palatine in front of the players quad-laser turret and John Doe behind that very same turret against a ground based group. Circumstances are everything. Which is the main reasons many, many GMs will reward creativity of the PCs to create circumstances which are beneficial to them instead of just running head-on without a plan into the enemy. The head on approach is what I would call the DnD playstyle, but I am a notorious DnD hater, so don't take me too serious there. ;-)

Again, back to topic. When designing an encounter think first about what your NPCs are all about and what your group is good and bad at. Even something as simple as 2 mildly skilled (agi 3, ranged heavy 3, 2 ranks of true aim or maybe crippling blow) sharpshooter rivals with sniper rifles (optical scopes, maybe suppressors on top) at extreme range against PCs on open fields become a deadly threat IF the PCs have no means to cover the distance easily or at least shoot back. At the same time they become easy prey if the group as vehicles ready or access to jetpacks or similar toys.

If you want your NPCs to be though and your group to be creative then both sides will try to get as much information as possible about the opposition and try to play to their strenghts and weaknesses of the enemies. You as GM are in the privileged position to know "everything" and build your encounters in a way that they can become thrilling no matter what gear, skill, soak, or whatever.

And again getting back to your original question: Soak can be very strong if your group as no easy means to get around it. Adversary and dodge can be extremely strong when outmatching your group. Examples: My ace is using a gun with pierce 6 and 16 damage, our ataru expert is using two lightsabers with breach 1 and 9 damage. Any realistic achievable soak value will not even annoy our group, but instead just make us happy that we can finally are able to use our weapons to their full potential. 3 Ranks of adversary on the other hand are a solid way to at least reduce our damage output. If you use the squad rules and give each nemesis a few goons to redirect hits too those ranks of adversary and/or dodge / sidestep are getting even more use.

Isolating than one of us and chase him with 4 nemesis black sun security guards … gives a thrilling chase and caught us completely off guard without any chance to really get into that combat in away which would not alert even bigger threats of our presence.

So it really depends on your game, your group, and your creativity.

This is great advice - thanks!

lots of great advice here, I suggest using different pieces of it in different encounters to mice things up all the time.

One fun encounter to put PC's into is one that seems to go on for a long time. By keeping the number of NPC's low each round goes quickly, but maintaining a steady stream of reinforcements while they try to achieve something entirely unrelated to combat. In this scenario the NPC's are expected to go down quickly, but it becomes a strain management encounter quickly as the PC's push themselves and the difficulty slowly ramps up. It's super tense and with short rounds lots of fun for the Players.

Another fun encounter is with a huge mob of minions, something like 15 of them, with some kind of Nemesis leader. Give the Minions no ranks in combat (perhaps Brawl or ranged Light with weak weapons if you want to up the stakes). But do give them an initiative skill and perhaps Perception. Because grouped Minions raise skill RANKS and 5 is the maximum number of ranks in a skill anyone can have then the dice pools is not out of control. But best of all the dice pool won't go down until a large number of the minions are killed, by which time they probably want to run away anyway.

I like the idea of large groups of minions with no combat ranks - a good way for a situation to seem scary without being out of control. Cheers.

Yes, things need to be frequently “miced up”.

I'm not even fixing that it's too funny