hi all!

im starting my first DW campaign and im having a hard time figuring out making a balanced encounter. Im running a game that has 5 players at the starting 13K exp. i really having a hard idea trying to make encounters that are not to easy but will still not result in a total party kill. the book seems to offer little guidence other than the troop, elite, and master rankings. Like how many "troops" are a problem for 5 marines? Is a master enough by himself or should i throw in some troops or an elite or 2? Plus when the characters lvl up how do i scale the enemies to match them? do i just add more?

its a new system for me so any tips you guys have will be a lot of help!

Look through the Extraction mission in the book the get a feel by checking what they use for encounters there. Either way, a master will get eaten alive by himself. He needs hordes (and perhaps a few elites) to distract/soak damage/harass. A horde by itself is usually not that dangerous, unless it get a lucky roll in on one of the marines. But it differs from group to group and what kind of composition it is. If the kill-team got two devastators for example, 3 hordes will die in as many rounds, or less. No devastator and the horde killing potential lowers a bit.

KingCronan said:

Yeah, this is not an easy delema to solve. How much GM experience do you have under your belt? Unfortunately a lot of my answers for myself are 'gut feel.'

Tearer sums up some of it pretty well- I'd take a look at Final Sanction as well as extraction. A run through final sanction is pretty hardcore, pretty long, and pretty difficult. It's easy for marines to burn 1, 2, or 3 points across the team during the mission. They have the benefit of a power fist and some kraken rounds, but that's about all they have over starting characters (and starting players can get the kraken rounds)

Encounters can very wildly on difficulty based on situational modifiers- if the horde is in cover, if the hive tyrant is shielded by hordes of gruntlings, if the daemon prince uses stealth and or guile to engage the players, all make them more difficult enemies. Putting the enemies on an open field will make them much easier to kill. How many devestators do you have? How tactically sound are your players and do they take advantage of the environment?

I really recommend going through Final Sanction - I used that to get my feet wet, and told my players straight up we'd be tuning encounters and rules on the fly while we all got used to the system. They totally got into it and the pulled punches or increased difficulties weren't points of contention. Once we finished that adventure, I had a MUCH better idea of how the players worked, and how well that particular group stood up to enemy units.

First off, understand that your Kill-Team can put out a LOT of damage. Far more than you likely expect. This means the encounters need to be more than just "you fight this". You need multiple opponents, with multiple possibilities.

As the first adventure, I would work on ramping up as you go. Start with something you feel seems balanced, and see how it pans out. If its too easy, well no biggie, you know how to tweak the next encounter. If its proving to be too hard on them, then fudge it. Make the opponents miss more than they should, or have reinforcements show up, or something to balance it back out. Again, you'll know what you did.

When using Hordes, don't make the mistake I did early on and just assume one big Horde will do anything. Use multiple hordes and mix some Elites in. Same is true of Master level. 5 players can easily take down a Master with just their starter equipment. Make the Master have a smallish Horde with it, or even dangerous terrain for the fight.

Basically, don't be afraid to tweak things on the fly to make the story and feel of the encounter fit. This is part of being a Game Master. The important thing is to tell the story, not to murder the players (Unless they do something stupid).

cool thanks for all the input! it really helped!

My mates and I just finished the Final Sanction and it was really hard on the 3 of them. I let them recover 1d5 wounds after every combat and did random wipings on the hordes and so forth to speed it up or not overwhelm them. Genestealers can make a royal mess of Marines if they get into combat, Rending Claws are just evil. I "missed" alot with the enemies or the kill team simply would not have made it though the encounter. As it was they all had less then 10 wounds each at the end.

Never did get to see what the Broodlord could do in combat though.

Next time i think I will scale it down more or need a 4th or 5th marine for the bigger combats.

What kind of Marines did make up your KT?

Then also, how much Requsition points did they get?

Also in relation to Final Sanction, they are rather badly equipped and for some reason splurged every single req point on that Power Fist. Even with 4 Marine Final Sanction can play a number on your KT, if they only get the starting chars from that mission. There are simply far too many cool gadgets that would make their life a bit simpler.