Hi,

I am pretty sure that somebody has already given thought on this matter and has come up with some tweaks and maybe even playtested them a bit. The group with whom I usually play consists of 5 to 6 people and a 4 player game does not get too often into our choise of day (altough Doom being a very awesome game).

I personally have run only two games so far: one with the default difficulty and with 3 marines and one with the easiest rules and with 4 marines. The first one was too hard for marines and the second one too easy. So I guess for my group it would be somewhere in the middle.

What do YOU think of the following custom rules for 4 marines + 1 invader game:

1. Multiply the amount of invaders in a discovered room by 1.25 when with 4 marines and by 1.4 when with 5 marines (apply common sense of course)
2. Invader player draws each turn as many cards as there are marines as per default difficulty
3. Starting health and armor of marines is as by the default difficulty
4. Starting ammo is as by the default difficulty
5. Marines get to have two marines skill cards as per default difficulty (maybe one card when playing with 5 marines)
6. Found ammo is multiplied by 2 to cover more marines and the bigger amount of invaders
7. Invader player gets to spawn twice per turn
8. Invader players max hand size is 9 when 4 marines and 10 when 5 marines
9. Invader player does not get frags by depleting his invader card deck as it would go through the dec too quickly
10. Weapons dont break when just playing as a standalone scenario but will break when playing a campaign

Last night my group had a session with 4 marines and 1 invader using the one and only official online scenario. We used the following rules:

• Marines had two skill cards
• Marines had starting ammo, health and armor as per default difficulty
• Ammo on the ground was as per default difficulty
• Invader draw 4 cards per turn (one per marine)
• There were no additional invader monsters on the map - only the ones that were specified by the scenario
• Invader used one spawn per turn
• Invaders hand was max 8 cards
• Invader did not use the frag option from going through the invader deck

So all in all it was pretty much the default difficulty level but with the additional 4th marine and in my opinion it was rather well balanced. In the end Invaders won altough 3 of the four marines got away.

We had good fun and the fact that some of the marines got away gave some satisfaction also to the marine players.

I still felt that invader was too powerful as I deliberatly held myself back at several occasions just so that the scenario would not end too quickly and that marines had a false illusion of almost gaining control of the situation.

Given those results, I would suggest returning the Invader draw to 2 cards per turn. Everything else seemed balanced, but having less cards will limit the Invader's options so you hopefully don't need to hold back to give the marines a fighting chance.

Agree with Steve-O on this... four cards per turn is very powerful for the invader player. With just two, things should be a lot better.

With four marines I would definately go with some extra monsters personally, but it doesn't seem your group needs that

Hi,

Yesterday I actually had another go on the same "official online scenario" but with a different group and this time Invader only draw 2 cards per turn. This time it felt much much more balanced altough I still removed couple of monsters from the final room (2 archviles, 2 imps and 1 dog less than the map intended). Invader still got 4 frags easily before marines could escape.

This is an awesome game in an awesome setting but I think that Invader has to keep track on what is happening on the map and adjust/tweak monsters/rules on the go to keep marines on toes but not slaughtering them. So it is up to the Invader player to keep the tension in the game and still make it fun and interesting to play for the both parties.

maamets said:

Don't forget that the Invader player is allowed to win, too. Of course you want the marines to have a fair chance at victory, but the Invader should have that same chance. The Invader isn't a dungeon master who's expected to "put up a good fight" and ultimately lose. I guess what I'm saying is that the sense of tension the marines feel should come from the fact that the Invader is legitimately trying to beat them (and doing so roughly 50% of the time), not from some false front that collapses in the end.

All in all it sounds like you've got a pretty well-balanced mod for 4-5 marines, which is awesome. I'll have to save this thread to a text file for future reference. =)

I'm gonna organise a 4-marine game as well tomorrow. 1 question for you though: did you add any weapons or ammo?

I'm thinking of using the first scenario, with just default rules for 3 marines. We'll see how that goes...

De Raketman said:

At the very least you should use the "Fully loaded" optional rule (I think that's the name of it) - all weapons come with one token of ammo. You should probably also double up the ammo tokens on the map. The primary factor that increases difficulty with more players is that the number of monsters on the map increases with more marines, but the amount of ammo and health doesn't.

If you want the monsters to increase accordingly, have the 4th player declare himself a colour (red, blue or green) and then double up all monsters of that colour that appear on the map (just put the extras somewhere beside the originals where there's room.) Playing 4 marines with the normal 3 marine compliment of monsters would probably still be an exciting game, but it might be a bit easier for the marines than the Invader.

De Raketman said:

Hi,

Actually I did add some additional ammo and even health pickups but I did not plan these addition in the beginning but rather I decided during the game. for example before revealing a new room I made a decision if one more health pickup or ammo crate should be added or not.

For me Doom the BG is like a dnd like role playing game where the Game Master is not playing against the players but rather drives the scenario and story. For me (as the invader) there was no goal to win by slaughtering marines mercilessly but rather to present a cruel world and a tough mission and to "guide" marines through it.

Aside from the usual rules that I used in my games presented in the beginning of this thread I also suggest the following:

• dont put double ammo crates on the map as then marines will practically never run out of ammo - instead give in the beginning of the game double amount to everyone
• consider allowing marines to use their default pistol (the one that everyone has from the beginning and they can not lose it) with unlimited ammo (in this case dont give double ammos at all)

Aside from that the game plays very well with 4 marines. I would even say much better than with 3 marines.