I just finished running a couple players in Illumination . It ended well (read: everyone survived) and they're ready for the next adventure and I'm kind of underprepared. The problem is that I've run mostly pre-generated adevntures so far (with this group and others). I'm not entirely sure how to build out encounters. I'm used to the D&D3/3.5 method which is handy, mathematical, and, for the most part, care-free. I'm curious what methods everyone uses to building out encounters. Do you have some formula you use? Or do you start with a group of X baddies and fudge it from there? Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I always have to make the enemies/adversaries harder than I originally anticipated, simply because my players are clever at avoiding traps and turning the tables on the enemies. So I have to prepare enemies that can challenge players head on. That´s not very easy when the group contains a biomancer templar Calix, a hard bitten arbitrator and a gunslinger...

Usually I just create the main bad guy and think "What underlings would this guy use", this of course depends on the chosen setting for the adventure.

Don't know if my ramblings made any sense, but then again, I don't have a method for these things.

Are you talking "encounters" like "random encounters" or like "steps in the adventure"?

The first one is something I do not use. I do use (what I call) non-story encounters (encounters that do not help the story along), but only to fill up "dead time" during investigations or travelling. Just to show that the world is "real and workinig on its own" and to give special skills a chance (survival against "bad weather"; i.e.)

Talking about "adventure design", I start with the question "what do I want them to uncover?" For example, the leader of a mutant rebellion. Afterwards, I start to imagine what the leader does to further his rebellion..and how/with the help of whom. This gives me goals and a network.
Finally, I add some idead of how the pc can encounter/find out "this and that"...and thats my basic way to design somehting

Besides that I sometimes start the otherway around (a hook, and what this hook might lead to...but this makes rather linear adventures...)

I suppose I mean random or non-story encounters. I'll give a little detail to help explain. Matt and/or Jason, stop reading now.

*SPOILERS*

The duo, an Arbitrator and a Psyker (sounds like we're running the same team, Storhamster) find themselves in Ambulon. They're looking for a man who can explain the single tarot card found at the end of the "Illumniation" final battle. He resides deep in the foundations of the city, out towards the edges. Normally this would be an easy, if roundaround, trip. However, the Ambulon gutscum has taken to launching topside raids recently. They haven't gotten too far into the city, but the edges see the worst of it which is exactly where our plucky little adventurers need to go.

My idea is to have them run into some gangers. How they deal with the gangers is up to them, but should they decide to engage them in a firefight, I'd like the event to last longer than 2 rounds, a difficult prospect to date. In one of the past sessions the Arbitrator drew the attention of 4 different enemies to him then let off a 3-round burst from his combat shotgun, dropping all 4 in a single round. I'd like to avoid that if possible (though sometimes the dice just roll in their favor).

The system I'm using so far is to take the stat blocks from the back of the core rulebook and assume those are Rank 1 NPCs. Since the PCs are both Rank 3, I'm aiming to have the ganger part average out to about Rank 2-3. To that end, I'm planning on having the ganger squad consist of one Rank 1, two Rank 3, and one Rank 3 (which averages to Rank 2).

I'm not sure how it'll go. I'm going to use the Scum stat block from DH (p.344) with a few additions/improvements to bring the gangers up-to-snuff to take on the acolytes. The game is this Thursday, so I'll let you know how it goes. Still open for suggestions, though.

*/SPOILERS*

One of the problems is there aren't any generators (that I know of) for mid to high level bad guys.

I understand why they didn't include stats for the bad guys in DotDG, but the way I work, I'd never use someone else's bad guys as my primary ArchEnemy. I make up my own ArchEnemies. What I don't have time to do is make up interesting subordinate bad guys, which DotDG baddies would have been great for...so I'm bitterly disappointed there's no stats for "The Burning Princess". As a result, I'll never use her or any of the others in my game and that's 15 wasted pages in the book as far as I'm concerned.

See, in D&D you have Monster Manuals etc and it's fairly easy to make up D&D enemies. DH it is tedious to make up mid-level bad guys who aren't totally generic. Who's got the time to go make up 10 mid-level Scum who are just going to die in 10-15 combat rounds?

ahh...don't mind me. I'm just in a pissy mood.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

See, I find myself in the same boat. Creating a Big Bad NPC is like rolling any PC. You want to spend some time on it, know the skills, talents, etc... But what about the rank and file? The minions? Christ, even the shopkeeper? I'm willing to bet any shopkeeper worth his salt in 40K has at least Basic Weapon Training (SP).

It's kind of a pain, but I think I'm going to have to create a gang of NPCs as though I were creating PCs, fudge/tweak some pieces and go from there. Still, maybe I can figure out some method of easily generating NPC cannon fodder.

Okay, now you got your intention

So your dynamic duo wades through gang enemies? Well, perhabs I can give you some ideas for the gang fight you plan

Other archetypes
First, do not use the "scum"-archetyp. Well, at least not for all of the gangers. As far as I remember, the "Heavy" is a little better and should be quiete usable to portray the "tuff guys" in the gang. The real "fighters", not the "hang ons" (scum). To portray a "left hand of the leader" (or the leader himself), you could use a "bounty hunter". Just make sure to change the weapons/equipment to meet your needs/preferances

Other setup
Don´t let the duo simply "run into them". It is the gangs turf. If they are into ambush and stuff, they might have a "spotter/runner" who will inform the rest that "fresh meat is coming in". The other might set up a trap. Two or three "muscle" facing the guys directly to demand "tool", why the rest (another three or five) wait in side streets or perhabs on a roof top of a near derilict buildung. This gives your baddies a "suprise".

Other tactic
If one shotgun sweeped away four opponents, the four must have been rather close to each other. Make them spread out while approaching. Give them pump action shotguns as well.
Do not let them even ask for tool. Make them ambush them in order to murder them first and rob them later. How about so simple bomb at the start? A flask with noxious chemicals with a fume that make the eyes tear to the point of blindless...unless the pc run out of the spot. Gives you some extra shots / spares your guy from bursts in the first round. The duo has to use half action for moving, after all..

Gregorius21778 said:

Excellent! This is perfect. I had your setup in mind, depending on duo's tactic. If they wanna run in guns blazing, it's gonna get hot real quick for them. If they're sneaky, I'd planned to have runner, like you suggested. As for the 4 guys that got caught with the shotgun, yeah, they grouped up. It made sense for the encounter at the time, but gangers are definitely going to be smarter. They've at least seen a shotgun before (those poor, poor Voicers...).

The archetypes are what I was looking for, mostly. Scum seemed a bit underpowered, honestly. It makes sense, but was thinking I'd need 12-15 guys just to present a challenge and it's hard to justify 12-15 scummers finding weapons other than crowbars.

runners don't always help. I was plotting a encounter and was show ing one of my pc a runner, he didn't react even when i ask him "what do you do now" (and he was a mutant that was eating human flesh!) so i put 17(2d10) mutants and a entertaner (runner) after him

For my games, I';; take a look at the setting, and the main badguy the PC's are investigating, or his lackey in the area.
I'm currently running a modified version of Edge of Darkness with the stalkers being replaced by Grugs mules carrying huge loads of Spook in chest cavities, they manifest random powers on the fly, and last night one manifested Hammerhand while the PC's were sleeping ^^

Basically, the enemies are dictated by the surroundings. Also, I don't use random encounters in an MMORPG sense, the players won't be walking along and 3 thusg will suddenly jump them. More often than not, my players wil come a cross a situation requiring social skills over combat, since my group (though still only 1st career) have proven amazing at handling combat

Maxim C. Gatling said:

I totally agree with this. Obviously the main bad guy is going to take time to create, and that's fine - whether he be purely a creation from the GM's mind, or a rolled-up character with 10000 XP that the GM then spends, or whatever. (Although there appears to be no guidance in the rulebook for this at all). Then at the very bottom you've got the dross, from Dramatis Personae in the rulebook, or wherever else.

That leaves a gaping hole. I've got the hordes of nameless sidekicks who'll die in droves, and I've got the big bad guy, but that's hardly a sliding scale! There is some advice on "give encounter group leaders this or that" and it's easy enough to give one in every six grunts a bigger gun, but I was honestly hoping for more.

It's marginally better in WFRP where there are the "Boss" and "Brute" careers, etc, but it's still a pain - for example IIRC the book with Beastmen in gives stats for basic Beastmen, and that's it. Everything else you have to go and work out yourself, from career blocks given in other books! Would it have been so hard to provide stat blocks for champions, shamans and beastlords, all in the same place for easy reference?

Slightly OT here, but there are stats for shamans and beastlords etc in Tome of Corruption, there's every type of Beastmen there with careers for them as well ^^