I apologize for not turning off the music during the stream. It is supposed to be part of the process, but I clearly missed it. I should really make a checklist.
Couple of thoughts for GM's who feel like they're struggling to challenge their players. As many tools as SW gives the players to succeed, you as the GM have plenty of things in your toolbox to give your players real uphill battles to make their victories feel even sweeter. Firstly, let me say I don't believe in adversarial GM'ing, but I also don't believe in pulling punches, fudging dice or handwaving rules to go easy on players either. If you're constantly going easy on your players, you're taking away from your players' feeling of achievement when they do succeed. Let's get into some examples of simple stuff that can help you get this balance right. If you want a TLDR: Know the Rules. Even if SW is supposed to be Fast Furious Fun, if you half arse your rules knowledge as a GM, you're going to struggle. Use challenge modifiers and tell your players up front what the penalty or modifier for a roll is and why so they know what they need to roll. 1: Use all the modifiers as intended in ranged combat (and combat in general). Range penalties, darkness penalties, cover penalties. These add up, and even if the max penalty is a -4, that's still a big change to ranged attack probabilities. Even with Marksman edge or taking Aim, they would still be shooting at a penalty if firing at medium range, light cover and dim light. 2: Likewise, not every trait test is a TN 4 either. Think about environmental or other difficulties for the players. Maybe there's a thunderstorm and their notice rolls and night vision gear are going to be affected (-3). Maybe corporate guards got wind of an enemy op and have upgraded their security and put in fancy new locks (thievery -2 to unlock). Sometimes it is a simple TN 4, or you give the player's situational bonuses. Point is, don't get lazy and just flat 4 every test. Reward creative play and ideas that help them overcome these difficulties outside of just spamming bennies at it. The more you hint and reward, the more they'll do it. 3: Read the first 5 pages of the Bestiary chapter and use that knowledge to modify simple enemy stat blocks to make challenging, interesting foes. In your example of the T-Rex that gets one shotted by a pistol, give the damn thing Heavy Armor so pistols and small arms (dad joke done) can't hurt it normally. Watch your players shit themselves as they scramble to stay alive long enough to figure out a plan. A player who takes a moment to do a Nature, Notice or Battle roll might learn that the beast has a weak spot from the right angle and a Called Shot to the eye or from under the neck might bypass that heavy armor, or better yet they might come up with an ingenious plan to overcome the beast using fun stuff from the environment. GM, are there fuel drums in the supply shed? You bet your ass there are! Also look up some creative combat design videos here on YT, there are many great GM's who have fantastic advice about creating interesting and challenging combat scenarios that don't rely solely on more and harder enemy hordes. Let your smart enemies act smart and not walk into a wall of player bullets. 4: GM bennies. You get one bennie per player at the table, your wild-card enemies get 2 bennies each and enemies that get a joker initiative card get a bennie to the GM's pool. Don't be afraid to use these from time to time when an enemy flops a damage roll and to soak some damage on heavy foes.
The T-Rex example was from a Rippers game. It was actually a T-Rex Skeleton in a museum reanimated by a nearby necromancer by accident. The stats were from the book. But overall I agree with what you are offering here. Thank you! I plan on making a sit down video about this topic because I see it all of the time, and I wanted to get more thoughts from other people actually trying to respond to this topic specifically before I made that video. So thank you again for your input.
Personally the hardest thing for me is that wild die really let's them do what they want but fighting things with a d6 fighting (which is to say, actually skilled with points spent) seems hard. Even with gang up, they seem like intangible clouds. So what should be viable threats like 12 goblins are more like... distractions. I also forget to use my bennies too much. Maybe I just don't like soaking damage and stealing thunder.
The general consensus I have seen is that you should only soak for Wild Card enemies, and only if they are going to die. Instead use bennies on wild card attacks in hopes of wounding your characters.
Great commentary. I'm a big fan of the players succeeding, too . . . most of the time. Under certain circumstances *cough* Night Train *cough*, failure should be just as interesting for the players. And the simplest way I know of to accomplish that is to be stingy with Bennies. But this tactic should be used sparingly at most.
I’m surprised you did not mention the Unstoppable boss ability (or did you?). It might be indigenous to Savage Pathfinder, but it could easily be imported anywhere. An Unstoppable opponent can only take one Wound per hit, no matter how many Wounds were dealt. It needs to Soak ALL of the Wounds dealt to avoid that Wound, though. Also, a character who draws a Joker ignores this rule. The first time I used it, a clever player found a way to bypass it (used the Adventure Deck card that lets him act “as if he has drawn a Joker”, then Martial Flexibility (this was Savage Pathfinder) to give himself Mighty Blow, then proceeded to hit and Ace a bunch of damage dice). But that didn’t feel so anticlimactic (even though he did one-shot the boss) because it was so improbable and required so much quick thinking on the part of the player. Although that card sometimes falls out of my Adventure Deck on nights that feature Unstoppable bosses…
I think I mentioned it briefly, but I am still trying to decide how I feel about the ability. Part of me feels like its a cheap trick and takes away from player success, but at the same time, it does add some of that tension.
@@TheSavageGoose I think it goes a long way toward preventing a boss fight from being anticlimactic - although it is still possible to one-shot a boss if you are lucky and clever. It’s a good addition IMO.
@@TheSavageGoose thank you, that's really helpful. I had a friend who was convinced that levelling skills was pointless unless you can go straight to D12 because the exploding dice and wild die made it more likely with the D4.
@@kamorikioko There are some edge cases where that can be true, but mostly not. The most common case is that a -2 to check is more likely to be succeeded by a d4 than a d6, but it is a small difference, and is not true with other penalties or dice.
@@TheSavageGoose I always suspected as much. Hey I've got a video request, on how to help brand new players create characters for SWADE in different settings. Character creation itself is really easy and I really like it, but going through the edges and creating a concept for a character when someone is brand new to RPGs gets pretty overwhelming when compared to something like D&D. In that you obviously just pick your race, pick your class, pick you background and it's simple, everything is quick to understand. And with fantasy stuff SWADE can kind of use that as a base but for other genres there isn't that simple structure. I just thought it would be awesome to see you do a video on supporting new players with creating cool concepts in genres or campaigns they might not have much prior experience with. Either way keep up the good work it's great to actually have some consistent SWADE content, it's by far my favourite ruleset ive found.
I have enjoyed your show, but as an honest critique; turn off the music once you start talking. It was very distracting and I ended up letting it play for the algorithm, but stopped actively listening. Sorry.
Oh shoot! I usually do. I didn't wear my headphones this time since I didn't have a guest. Wish someone would have let me know. I'll see about reposting the one
I apologize for not turning off the music during the stream. It is supposed to be part of the process, but I clearly missed it. I should really make a checklist.
Couple of thoughts for GM's who feel like they're struggling to challenge their players. As many tools as SW gives the players to succeed, you as the GM have plenty of things in your toolbox to give your players real uphill battles to make their victories feel even sweeter. Firstly, let me say I don't believe in adversarial GM'ing, but I also don't believe in pulling punches, fudging dice or handwaving rules to go easy on players either. If you're constantly going easy on your players, you're taking away from your players' feeling of achievement when they do succeed. Let's get into some examples of simple stuff that can help you get this balance right. If you want a TLDR: Know the Rules. Even if SW is supposed to be Fast Furious Fun, if you half arse your rules knowledge as a GM, you're going to struggle. Use challenge modifiers and tell your players up front what the penalty or modifier for a roll is and why so they know what they need to roll.
1: Use all the modifiers as intended in ranged combat (and combat in general). Range penalties, darkness penalties, cover penalties. These add up, and even if the max penalty is a -4, that's still a big change to ranged attack probabilities. Even with Marksman edge or taking Aim, they would still be shooting at a penalty if firing at medium range, light cover and dim light.
2: Likewise, not every trait test is a TN 4 either. Think about environmental or other difficulties for the players. Maybe there's a thunderstorm and their notice rolls and night vision gear are going to be affected (-3). Maybe corporate guards got wind of an enemy op and have upgraded their security and put in fancy new locks (thievery -2 to unlock). Sometimes it is a simple TN 4, or you give the player's situational bonuses. Point is, don't get lazy and just flat 4 every test. Reward creative play and ideas that help them overcome these difficulties outside of just spamming bennies at it. The more you hint and reward, the more they'll do it.
3: Read the first 5 pages of the Bestiary chapter and use that knowledge to modify simple enemy stat blocks to make challenging, interesting foes. In your example of the T-Rex that gets one shotted by a pistol, give the damn thing Heavy Armor so pistols and small arms (dad joke done) can't hurt it normally. Watch your players shit themselves as they scramble to stay alive long enough to figure out a plan. A player who takes a moment to do a Nature, Notice or Battle roll might learn that the beast has a weak spot from the right angle and a Called Shot to the eye or from under the neck might bypass that heavy armor, or better yet they might come up with an ingenious plan to overcome the beast using fun stuff from the environment. GM, are there fuel drums in the supply shed? You bet your ass there are! Also look up some creative combat design videos here on YT, there are many great GM's who have fantastic advice about creating interesting and challenging combat scenarios that don't rely solely on more and harder enemy hordes. Let your smart enemies act smart and not walk into a wall of player bullets.
4: GM bennies. You get one bennie per player at the table, your wild-card enemies get 2 bennies each and enemies that get a joker initiative card get a bennie to the GM's pool. Don't be afraid to use these from time to time when an enemy flops a damage roll and to soak some damage on heavy foes.
The T-Rex example was from a Rippers game. It was actually a T-Rex Skeleton in a museum reanimated by a nearby necromancer by accident. The stats were from the book.
But overall I agree with what you are offering here. Thank you!
I plan on making a sit down video about this topic because I see it all of the time, and I wanted to get more thoughts from other people actually trying to respond to this topic specifically before I made that video. So thank you again for your input.
thanks for the time stamp! great vid, keep rolling aces :)
I havent even seen the video, just the title made me say... "great!"
I love when my players succeed. I just want them to feel challenged.
Personally the hardest thing for me is that wild die really let's them do what they want but fighting things with a d6 fighting (which is to say, actually skilled with points spent) seems hard. Even with gang up, they seem like intangible clouds.
So what should be viable threats like 12 goblins are more like... distractions.
I also forget to use my bennies too much. Maybe I just don't like soaking damage and stealing thunder.
The general consensus I have seen is that you should only soak for Wild Card enemies, and only if they are going to die. Instead use bennies on wild card attacks in hopes of wounding your characters.
Great commentary. I'm a big fan of the players succeeding, too . . . most of the time. Under certain circumstances *cough* Night Train *cough*, failure should be just as interesting for the players. And the simplest way I know of to accomplish that is to be stingy with Bennies. But this tactic should be used sparingly at most.
I’m surprised you did not mention the Unstoppable boss ability (or did you?). It might be indigenous to Savage Pathfinder, but it could easily be imported anywhere. An Unstoppable opponent can only take one Wound per hit, no matter how many Wounds were dealt. It needs to Soak ALL of the Wounds dealt to avoid that Wound, though. Also, a character who draws a Joker ignores this rule.
The first time I used it, a clever player found a way to bypass it (used the Adventure Deck card that lets him act “as if he has drawn a Joker”, then Martial Flexibility (this was Savage Pathfinder) to give himself Mighty Blow, then proceeded to hit and Ace a bunch of damage dice). But that didn’t feel so anticlimactic (even though he did one-shot the boss) because it was so improbable and required so much quick thinking on the part of the player.
Although that card sometimes falls out of my Adventure Deck on nights that feature Unstoppable bosses…
I think I mentioned it briefly, but I am still trying to decide how I feel about the ability. Part of me feels like its a cheap trick and takes away from player success, but at the same time, it does add some of that tension.
@@TheSavageGoose
I think it goes a long way toward preventing a boss fight from being anticlimactic - although it is still possible to one-shot a boss if you are lucky and clever. It’s a good addition IMO.
Can you share the link for the dice calculator you posted in the chat?
nicolas-van.github.io/sw_stats/
I will add it to the show notes.
@@TheSavageGoose thank you, that's really helpful. I had a friend who was convinced that levelling skills was pointless unless you can go straight to D12 because the exploding dice and wild die made it more likely with the D4.
@@kamorikioko There are some edge cases where that can be true, but mostly not. The most common case is that a -2 to check is more likely to be succeeded by a d4 than a d6, but it is a small difference, and is not true with other penalties or dice.
@@TheSavageGoose I always suspected as much. Hey I've got a video request, on how to help brand new players create characters for SWADE in different settings. Character creation itself is really easy and I really like it, but going through the edges and creating a concept for a character when someone is brand new to RPGs gets pretty overwhelming when compared to something like D&D. In that you obviously just pick your race, pick your class, pick you background and it's simple, everything is quick to understand. And with fantasy stuff SWADE can kind of use that as a base but for other genres there isn't that simple structure. I just thought it would be awesome to see you do a video on supporting new players with creating cool concepts in genres or campaigns they might not have much prior experience with.
Either way keep up the good work it's great to actually have some consistent SWADE content, it's by far my favourite ruleset ive found.
I have enjoyed your show, but as an honest critique; turn off the music once you start talking. It was very distracting and I ended up letting it play for the algorithm, but stopped actively listening. Sorry.
Oh shoot! I usually do. I didn't wear my headphones this time since I didn't have a guest. Wish someone would have let me know.
I'll see about reposting the one