Here's a question for you Deathwatch vets: how to you ensure that the difficulty of a combat encounter is balanced?

From someone coming from WOTC's systems, Deathwatch doesn't have the same level of organization when it comes to planning a fight so that it is the appropriate challenge for the players. I understand that circumstances in the game and the players' equipment will make a big difference in how things go, but has anyone developed any rules-of-thumb or guidelines to use as a baseline?

For example, 5 troops and 1 elite is an "average" encounter, a magnitude 60 horde and a 1 master is a "hard" encounter.

Mostly I am concerned about getting a foundation laid for our first session so I don't accidentally kill the whole team before we've learned all the ins-and-outs.

JMorgenroth said:

There's no substitute to playing things through in your head in preparation for a mission. You need to figure in how much of the encounter will play out as firefight and how much in melee. That makes a huge difference.

Alex

Hi JMorgenroth

I think page 358 of the Core Rulebook should help you balance the encounter.

Deathwatch adversaries come in tiers or groups (much like other games that use minions, elites etc.)

The tiers of enemies are 1) TROOPS 2) ELITES and 3) MASTERS

TROOPS - In general a medium group of individual troops (5-7) should be a match to a Battle Brother, however troops are better used in Hordes against the full Kill Team a horde of magnitude 30 should be a pretty standard kill team "Average" encounter adversary.

ELITES - In general 1 or 2 Elites should be a match to a Battle Brother, they are used mainly to accentuate their fighting style so a group of 5-6 should be a average encounter adversary.

MASTERS - Now these are the guys the Kill Team was sent to destroy, so a Battle Brother will be outmatched and 1 or 2 Masters should be a average encounter for the kill team.

Terrain effects and other skill challenges add to the challenge.

Finally mixing adversaries makes for a memorable encounter so the equivalent to 5 Battle Brothers should be:

Battle Brother 1and 2 - take on a small group of trooops (magnitude 15-20)

Battle Brother 3 - take on 1 Elite

Battle Brother 4 and 5 - hold on the master till the rest can join.

Have fun!

Walt

Thanks Walt, this was very useful!

One thing to bear in mind is that, once you and your players are more familiar with the way the game works, the need to construct balanced encounters lessens - an intelligent, proficient group with a solid grasp of the mechanics and a reasonable understanding of teamwork can handle a lot of things and the group will be greater than the sum of its parts in combat terms. Once that point is reached, it's often (in my experiences) more satisfying to largely do away with balancing encounters and simply focus on presenting situations for the group and seeing how they resolve those situations. Sometimes they might get in over their heads because of poor judgement, bad dice rolls or false intelligence (only use this particular complication sparingly, or the players will never trust the intel they get), but Fate Points exist to provide a degree of protection against those things, so they aren't particularly large concerns.

I do suggest that every Deathwatch GM tries this at least once - provide a set of objectives (a useful trick with designing objectives - have a secondary objective which is identical to, but more demanding than, one of the primary objectives - say, if the primary objective is to kill or capture a Tau Ethereal, then the secondary objective could be to capture that Ethereal, so they get a bigger reward from achieving an objective especially well), an overview of terrain, enemy movements and disposition, and other factors, and a pool of requisition points to pick from, and simply let your players approach it like a puzzle. It's up to them to determine which tools are the right ones, to choose which actions are the best course, and to adapt their plans to account for changing conditions and ill-fortune.

Good advice already given.

Indeed unlike WOTC "Balancing" encounters in Deathwatch isn't required as much. I mentioned in a differant thread to let the style, theme and mythos of your game and story arc guide you. Although for the first mission or two better to err on the side of caution. Sure your Kill Team will trounce the opposition a few times maybe. But that lets you work out what will and will not challenge them. Good example is the experienced group I play with (most of us with 20yrs of gaming experience and a couple more on that of 40K knowledge) can handle multiple well armed and armoured hordes with numbers of Elites in them with our 3-4 man Kill Team. We understand the system, we understand the universe and we like our RP to meld with the Setting mythos. Where as the Tuesday night novice group I run for , who are almost all new to the 40K universe and deathwatch, has a Kill Team of 6-8 and they get nervous when they see a platoon of Imperial guard who may be Xeno-tainted and twitchy when they spot a trio of Tyranid Warriors (both fo which are fairly easy obstacles for their larger than average KillTeam).

A few missions in and you'll get the feel for what your group can handle in what degrees without some arbitary numbers attached to creature blocks.

What has already been said about balance is very true. DW gives enormously potent tools to the players that can be used to great effect, even when they are caught by surprise, let alone when they have a chance to plan and prepare. I have a hard time keeping anything alive past the first round for my killteam of 3-4 unless I literally throw more targets at them than can conceivably be attacked. A group with an eye for a numbers and an affinity for tactical gameplay can take on absurd odds and prevail.

Fortunately for GMs of DW, between using and burning fate points players can get themselves out of almost any jam with brute force if things don't slide their way. When that happens you can get a feel for encounters that are strong without actually TPKing your party and ruining the night of gaming for everyone (assuming that your players aren't into blaze of glory deaths, maybe they like that, mine are more into "winning"). I find that mixing challenging encounters with fights that clearly demonstrate the enemy isn't ready for them or has underestimated them or is generally outclassed by suddenly facing the Imperium's finest seems to improve enjoyment.

So don't worry too much about encounters being too hard or too easy, roll with it and see what happens. The system is forgiving and players, in my experience, tend to enjoy stomping npcs like a boss from time to time.

Not to throw too much sand in themachine, but I want to make some additions to Walt.

I have seen that Troops in a horde of 30 to 40 magnitude are a challenge for one marine. So a an Elite with two hordes of Troops would make a fine encounter for a kill team of three marines.

Masters is a whole different story. there are two kinds of masters.

1. The big monster. They are capable of killing a marine in one stroke and killing it requires some good teamwork to accomplish. Notable examples are Tyranid big boys like the Hive Tyrant or Carnifex.

2. The puppet master. while not good fighters on their own and some may not even be able to kill a marine, they have their minions to the work for them and make them stronger while he is alive. these masters are at the end of a long line of minions and at that moment the marines must be bloodied and hove no rerolls left.

It is a good thing to remember that the healing powers in DW are far larger than in WOTC games. An Apothecary can almost always heal a marine to his full health after a fight. So you can send in more encounters. Suppose the first encounter is easy, you can send in more later, and you can build up the danger slowly. First they meet only some troops, then some troops led by an elite, troops with more elites, a group of elites and finally they meet the master, most of the times also flanked by elites.

Keep in mind that the terrain is just as much an issue as the number and strength of the enemies. Moderate spoilers for TEP mission 2 here. My Kill-Team dealt with the Alpha Legionnaires in the sunken city with relatively few wounds. The one CSM in the submarine, however, nearly killed not one, but two of the Marines because of his use of the terrain and the way the team decided to deploy. Sometimes a single Elite can offer as much of a challenge as a magnitude 50 horde.