I'm going into my fourth session tonight, and still scratching my head on Encounter Balance.

Part of the problem is that we have added a new player each session, so I don't have a clear balance of the party's powers. The basic question is this though, does anyone have a good handle on what a party of adventurers should be able to handle vs what makes a difficult encounter?

I know that coming from mostly running D&D 4th to WFRP 3rd is a big adjustment, but I'm looking for any real guidance on how best to challenge the PCs without killing them.

In my first combat encounter, the PCs (scholar and gambler) nearly got wiped. I pulled in a waywatcher to help them. They were facing a single townsfolk and a chaos cult follower (total of 3 skulls). My main take away from that fight was that by giving the two bad guys better weapons it completely changed their difficulty.

Next session, the waywatcher became a PC when by luck the new player chose wood elf and pulled waywatcher from the careers. The scholar used last sessions advancement to jump to Apprentice, though he was a bit reluctant to just start throwing spells around, so we gave each of his basic spells a couple extra purple dice to be reduced each time they were used.

During their evening of adventure and following up on some leads they stumbled into an ancient graveyard where two zombie henchmen groups attacked them. I estimated them as basically half strength (since they are henchmen). So that was a total of 3 skulls and this time the party managed to do fairly well, though the gambler still took some damage. So probably a little too easy.

Last session, we added a new player who decided to play a dwarf and pulled slayer. He maxed out his toughness and strength (he is a real meat head). So now when I throw two goblins, and two groups of snotling henchmen at them, they easily mow through it. The dwarf took some damage, but with his toughness, he will heal it all in one night's rest.

I guess in all I've learned that a couple of skulls per PC is about right for an easy fight, taking into account some PCs are more combat oriented than others. And if I want a fight to be a really tough one, then it would be something like 3 skulls per.

Just curious if anyone else had thoughts on encounter balance.

I got to say that I'm with you on that issue. I was reading the rules and it does not seem to say how the gm could ensure that it would be of an appropriate challenge level for the players. From the way that that present the basic stats + aggression mechanic, it appears to suggest that the challenge level starts low, and may be increased by the gm at will. However, the problem of overwhelming number of enemies still goes unanswered - there is a distinct possibility that the gm throws in too many enemies for the players to handle, even at the lowest challenge level.

FFG has stated that the skulls are only a way to gauge the relative difficulty level of one monster/opponent vs. another and are not used for comparison with the PCs. Balanced encounters as a concept don't work well in this system since there are too many variables. As others have pointed out, not too many creatures can cause criticals, and since you must be unconscious with crits exceeding Toughness to die, character death from a single encounter is not likely. However, since you always convert a regular wound to a crit when you go unconscious and crits aren't necessarily easy to heal, at least for starting characters, the bigger threat is from pushing oneself and getting into too many fights without proper recovery. Suddenly, even a group of weedy Gobbos can kill a character just by knocking them out if that character has too many crits carried over from previous combats.

What that means is that it's tough to determine ahead of time how hard a combat is going to be, especially if it is the second or third encounter of the session. Simply thinking that 2 skulls per character is always going to be an easy encounter won't work and could be easy one time and kill the party in another case. You instead have to be ready to modify things on the fly. Too easy for the PCs? Have some reinforcements arrive after a Rally Step. Too hard, maybe the morale of the opponents breaks when their numbers are reduced by half or as soon as they are outnumbered and they flee. Not all combats have to be conclusive. Throw overwhelming forces at the PCs, but they only have to hold out until reinforcements arrive or until the keep gates are closed. In short, be prepared to wing it more and not rely as much on pre-game prep.

Yup, that's what I did in the first session - I ran a game for just two players and when the dwarf slayer got too wounded and the enemies appeared too much of a challenge for the players, I made the bestmen flee after the wargor leader was killed.

Calculation is rather easy in WHFRP as damage potential is (almost) fixed. Enemy Str or Ag sets level of hit propability while damage output is Str + Damage. Take average player To + Soak and there you have it how many hits approximately is required to incapacitate / kill a PC.

If you have repeating enemy type, try first encounter with some less and then adjust dynamically based on these results.

I could be remembering the rule wrong and do not have the book in front of me, but I think I remember reading that once # of crits on a pc exceeds toughness the pc is dead. This means that the pc does not have to be unconcious to be killed. If a pc has enough crits on him and a particularly nasty hit inflicts 1 to 2 crits (from boons) the pc could be killed before going unconcious. This effect makes it even more important for the GM to be willing to adjust an encounter on the fly.

I have been playing the death rule this way in our game for two sessions now and the players love it. They realize that life and death is not based just on the Wound Points they have but also how "hard" they are hit. I must say that even if I have remembered the rule wrong, we will most likely keep playing this way, as it makes crits very scary.

Yep, you are remembering wrong. Per page 63 of the rules:

After a character is knocked unconscious and one of his normal wounds has
been converted into a critical wound, compare the total number of
critical wounds to the character’s Toughness. If the character has
more critical wound cards than his Toughness rating, he succumbs
to his wounds, and the player character is killed

So if you get a crit in combat that exceed your T, but remain on your feet, you won't die.

Disclosure: I have not put my thoughts to the test, so just take them as suggestions

I would look at two things from what I understand of the mechnics in advance of play. How many dice does the party generate per turn, how many wounds do they have, damage potential and defence/soak numbers. Because the system works on a whole number basis (number of successes, etc...) I would try to match encounter to a budget of one or more of these items and aim on the low side of the party's.

My sense is that encounters swing largely on how large the dice pool, and the challenge dice introduced from opponents having high attributes as well as whether the party being too stingy with their fortune dice (and you with handing them out), etc.... I haven't tried out the system yet and will be today. But I would interested in how I could guess encounter difficulty based on the expected dice pools before other factors become involved (like fortune/misfortune, and challenges from terrain, etc...)

I am curious about the mortality factor though. WFRP was always more prone to rapid death syndrome, but my read of current rules is that it seemed harder to die from a lucky shot. Overtime, though, it seemed like a critical can stick with you for a bit and you may find yourself succumbing to wounds if you don't have enough time between encounteres (or clusters there-of). WFRP was never much of an extended dugeon crawl game, but this would seem to prevent that.

If the character has
more critical wound cards than his Toughness rating, he succumbs
to his wounds, and the player character is killed

There is nothing in this sentence that states that the character must be unconcious to die. I grant it is in the same paragaraph which describes when a pc is knoked out from his wounds, but this sentence can and I think should stand alone. A pc who receives more crits than he has toughness should be slain on the spot.

I will continue to play it as I stated. It makes my players more careful of receiving crtical wounds.

hicksms said:

It's not just that it is in the same paragraph. The entire paragraph is the rule for character death. You are taking one sentence out of context and choosing to ignore the previous sentence:

After a character is knocked unconscious and one of his normal wounds has
been converted into a critical wound, compare the total number of
critical wounds to the character’s Toughness.

The rules do not say to compare the number of criticals to Toughness whenever a character receives a critical or at any other time for that matter. It very specifically and explicitly tells you when to make the comparison.

Now if you want to house rule it to be more deadly and play it your way, nothing is stopping you and more power to you, but at least admit that that is what you are doing.

The only thing that either of have to admit to is that our interpretation of the statment within the paragraph is different. If FFG clarifies the rule and I it does not support my conclusion, then yes I am wrong. If not we are of differing opinions and that is all. There is no way to "prove" that either of us have to admit being "wrong" unless as I said FFG clarifies the meaning.

As to house ruling, I believe I already stated that I would keep the rule according to my interpretation, as a house rule. I accept your interpretation and do feel you are "wrong" if I gave that impression, I apologize. I was only wanting to point out that there is more than one way to infer the meaning from both the paragraph and the sentence.

Okay, I'm sorry if I came on a little strong, but what do you need clarified? If, after a character is knocked unconscious and one of his normal wounds has been converted to a crit, if he has more crit cards than his Toughness he is dead. Again, the rules specifically tell you when to compare the total number of crits to the character's Toughness. Your interpretation requires you to take a single sentence in the section of the rules marked character death out of context and infer that whenever a character receives a crit, you should compare his total crits to his Toughness rating. The rules do not say this and what the rules do say disputes that inference.

hicksms I'm not trying to pick on you, but got to thinking on this some more. Let's assume for the moment that your interpretation that a character that receives one more critical than his Toughness score is slain on the spot, is a valid one. You base this on the third sentence of the paragraph entitled Character Death alone and claim that it stands on its own. If this is true, what is the meaning of the second sentence? The rules have already established prior to this paragraph that when a character is knocked unconscious one of his normal wounds is converted to a critical. What is the point of specifying in the paragraph on Character Death that after this happens, you should compare the total number of criticals to the character's Toughness? By your interpretation, we should be comparing the number of criticals to Toughness each and every time a critical is taken, regardless of source, so why call out this specific source? Why don't the rules just tell us to compare the number of criticals taken to the characters Toughness whenever a critical is taken? Seems like that would be far simpler.

Again, I'm not trying to pick on you, but you started off by saying that you may have been remembering the rules wrong. I noted that you had. You then changed your position and tried to make a case for your interpretation being possible and when I responded to disprove the validity of your interpretation, you dug in your heels and now insist that only a clarification from FFG can "prove" that your interpretation is wrong. It's stuff like this that gets us unnecessary FAQ entries and FAQ bloat just gives the haters more ammunition for their "poorly written/edited rulebook" argument.

Mac40k is correct on the death front. The sentence "If the character..." follows from the preceding sentence. What you have is a condition sentence (noted by the use of the logical operator 'If'), and the criteria for determining the value of the conditional is the precedeing statement: "...compare the total number of critical wound to the character's toughness." If that sentence ends there and doesn't then include the following, it is a completely useless conditional check - why compare something if you aren't told the criteria for comparison?

If FFG had meant the rule to mean anytime a PC's criticals outnumber his To, they would have preceded the sentence with something akin to "If, at any time, a character has..." Bring it to any English grammarian and they will agree. For clarity's sake, I imagine FFG will add this to their FAQ, but to be honest.

Getting back to the original topic, I am not sure that there is a hard and fast rule for balancing encounters in WFRP, I don't think there was in V2. Two identical parties of adversaries may bring entirely different results, depending on what has gone on before. As said before it is up to the GM to innovate on the fly, but also it is up to the players to realise that retreating to fight another day, may be the sensible option. Warhammer is definatly a brutal world where the wrong decision can get you killed. This is where skill cards such as Cut and Run, and Perform a Stunt, come into their own, in situations where, for one reason or another, the PC's find themselves overmatched. It might be a typical group of monsters they have beaten many times before, but if the dice go against them, they may have to do something different. if they are creative the GM can reward that, with suitable amounts of fortune dice on any tests.

I've yet to write an adventure for this game (I'll be running "An Eye for an Eye" tonight to get the group going) but I can see how the game balance can be easily affected in combat. We're probaly a little bit spoiled by games that explicitly design monsters in order to provide a "standard" encounter for any group of levels. I kinda enjoy that when playing D&D 4E but I'd like to make a point here:

It's actually kind of awesome that we can NOT standardize encounters easily. To me this means that every group will make every encounter THEIR OWN, by having to solve it in a different way.

Scared that the Minotaur is too hard for these guys ? Well, life sucks and there's no necessity for every monster or challenge being encountered to be "solvable" by the group. Warhammer is a Grim and Perikous world, remember? I think this brings something to the table in making this statement truer. Of course, the GM will have to keep an eye out and not make every challenge impossible for the team, or else it becomes boring and a character creation excersise for the players.

Also, the general tips and advice in the Tome of Adventure is a great guideline for story creation, I believe. The way I intend to tackle this is think a story first and then populate backwards with monsters, not the other way around. Sometimes I'll come up with encounters that may be too hard (hopefully not frequently) but maybe I'll just cheat a little if things get too out of hand. What I hope is that PCs will end up being more careful and pick their fights or find alternate ways of solving conflict