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Kalmageddon
2017-04-23, 09:01 AM
So I'm GMing a campaign that uses the Dark Heresy II system but it's set in a fantasy world.
Things started off ok, but as time went on, I realized I can't really challenge my players without breaking immersion. Let me explain.

- Right off the bat, the fact that DH2 doesn't have real classes and ranks means that there is no way to avoid characters overspecializing and getting to Tier 3 talents very quickly, as their requirements are very low compared to what they do and getting double aptitude is fairly easy as well. This means that those players that chose to make a pure fighting character are on a completely different power level compared to those that invested in social and investigation skills. So every time there is a combat, I either crush half the party or they breeze through it.

- Related to the first point, once a character hits an effective score of 60-70 in Dodge and Melee, there seem to be no way to stopping them without overwhelmingly large enemy numbers. See, in DH2 even elite enemies are presented as having a chance to hit of around 60%, which means that they will miss on their own a little less than half the times. But then, the character gets his dodge or parry roll, which on a specialized character will succeed around 70-80% of the times. Worst, it seems all powers and special manouvers are dodgeable or come down to an opposed weapon skill test, which means that by investing in two scores (Weapon Skill and Agility) a character can be made almost untouchable. And that's before considering Thoughness and the difficulty in inflicting meaningful damage without giving OP weapons to everyone.

-I said "elite enemies". And I can't, in good concience, make an encounter composed of only enemy officers and champions, can I?
And yes, I know a character gets only 1 (or 2) evasion reactions per turn but as soon as a character gets the talent that makes being outnumbered meaningless, even a 5 vs 1 situation becomes fairly easy to deal with. And the more NPCs I employ the longer the combat becomes. Between reacions for each enemy, various rolls to hit, I feel the system is too busy to properly handle large enemy crowds.

- As I mentioned before, this is not a WH40K campaign but a fantasy one. So this means that in general, automatic weapons are right out. But then, I realized that ranged combat in DH2 relies heavily on automatic weapons to compete with melee. Having single shot weapons like crossbows and bows, even if I substantially buffed them, means that they are very easy to dodge and do negligible damage. I've introduced a few homebrewed talents to give ranged characters unavoidable attacks to make their minimal damage output count somewhat more, but I'm still unable to properly balance things out.

- In general, and this is a problem I have with the system rather than with this particular campaign, NPCs seem very underpowered. They stand a very good chance of failing skill tests even at a +20 or +30 chance, which would qualify as very easy by the definition the system gives. And again, most enemy rolls that can meaningfully impact the game are going to be up against the characters' roll. Poor NPCs would fail frequently enough even without having to go up against optimized PCs...

- It seems that 2 weapon fighting is astoundingly OP. 2 Attacks with a good enough Weapon Skill score, able to strike multiple hits each, when most enemies can't even attempt to dodge the second attack is something I have a really hard time countering. Specifically, I'm forced to give what I feel are excessively high toughness scores to every enemy just to mitigate the damage per hit, or I have to buff their evasion roll to an unreasoanble degree just to keep them alive long enough to attempt to do something.
On the other hand, 2 handed weapons fall squarely in the useless tier because of this. Yes, they do more damage, but that won't mean much if the character/enemy never actually lands a hit.

I realize this is somewhat rambly but as you can see I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas on my own.
So... Help? I'm not against homebrewing more stuff in or just changing a few more rules but I feel like I don't know the system well enough to do these modifications all by myself.

Angelmaker
2017-04-23, 09:15 AM
I don't know the system you play in, but I have/had the same problems with about any D&D game out there. At a certain point, players become quite powerful, due to a multitude of options. Magic, feat chains, equipment, miscellaneous stuff, which some players handle quite well and efficiently, because they only have to focus on one character, instead of on the entire game world like you as a DM have to.

This usually leads to D&D groups easily tackle and deal with encounters 2, 3 or even 5 levels higher than themselves, sometimes with ease.

Power calculations are never easy in any system, plus luck or lack thereof of the dice does make it doubly as hard.

First) if your players are renowned champions, you should have no problem of finding enough reasons to either sent them against stronger monsters or have them challenged by tougher champions. Their reputation alone should by now be enough to scurry weaker enemies without a fight at all.

Second) make encounters come in waves. This way, you can slowly determine their breaking point and palyers can get a feeling of "i think it's time to retreat now" instead of being tpked without a warning. Imagine like in 300. footsoldiers first, then beastmen, alchemical wizards, cavallery, etc.

Third) is it a problem for your players? Do they like being powerful? You can either talk to them ooc and find out if it is a problem only perceived by you or you could them offer in game plot hook like this: " the king asks you to do one of two tasks. One is easy, driving off some marauding beastmen in one of his provinces and the other one is dangerous even to champions of their reknown. He can put his army to do one of the tasks, but not both." This way, you can easily gouge whether they deem themselves the bing heroes and can finally go all out on your enemies.

Kalmageddon
2017-04-23, 09:32 AM
I come from D&D/Pathfinder myself and I think that in DH2 the biggest problem in getting a sense of what would constitute a challenging encounter is that there are no levels. In D&D, as a GM I have far more control in how quickly the PCs gain power and competence. For example, I know that around level 6, even an unoptimized character is capable of X and Y and that therefore a challenging encounter has to conform to a certain standard.
In DH2, however, there are no levels. You have a pool of experience points, which you can freely spend on raising characteristics, skills or buying talents and spells. Which means that a character that forgoes all other aspects can obtain a legendary competence in combat after just, for example, 3000 xp (keep in mind that the system recommends around 400 xp each session), while a jack of all trades type of character is nowhere near as powerful.
The more powerful characters in my groups are equivalent to 20 level characters in D&D. The least powerful are somewhere around the equivalent of a level 7. You can see how this can be problematic to deal with.
Due to how aptitude and xp cost for everything works, it's also very hard to give a balanced amount of xp to everyone. What for some PCs would be barely enough to become competent at something can buy a Tier 3 talent and then some to another, more specialized character. Right now I feel like the PCs have reached something very close to an xp cap (8000+ xp) without me having realized how powerful they were becoming due to this. I knew for example that to stay relevant, PC 1 needed at least 500 xp this session. But wait, those same 500 xp made PC 2 even more OP because he can spend them more efficently.
So the power creep absolutely sneaked up on me and due to this campaign being fairly combat light, 2-3 session go by without me having a chance to understand how OP some of their characters were becoming. I have a very time consuming job and a girlfriend to take care of, so I can't possibly have the time or the energy necessary to review their characters before each session.

On the "fun" subject, I'm posting this exactly because the least powerful PCs are starting to get frustrated and I myself am starting to run out of steam due to the challenge of keeping things interesting for a group with such diverse power.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-04-23, 01:25 PM
Well, see, the problem you're running into here is that Dark Heresy is what we call a "bad system".

If this is still in the 40k universe even though it's on a fantasy world I suppose you could throw them up against some horrible warp demons or something and make them roll on the fear tables. That stands a decent chance of screwing with the powerful characters just as much as the weaker characters.

EnragedOxygen
2017-04-23, 01:31 PM
I am a DH2 DM myself. Unlike DnD this system is NOT combat focused, your "least" powerfull PC's should've been owning every social and investigation encounter. In my experience DH2 is about investigation first, combat second. Combat encounters are moments when these VERY narrow combat specialists must shine and feel powerfull, because they are not that usefull in almost every other situation.

Also, ranged weapons have a few usefull rules like Suppressing Fire, designed for social-oriented PC to use in combat. Fantasy does not really works for DH2.

And it sounds like every PC's wants to be a fighter despite having a social Role. Please, tell me about your campaign and what is the main goal your PC's are pursuing. Tell me about their key skills and abilities, maybe i can come up with a few interesting encounters for you.

EnragedOxygen
2017-04-23, 01:38 PM
Well, see, the problem you're running into here is that Dark Heresy is what we call a "bad system".

If this is still in the 40k universe even though it's on a fantasy world I suppose you could throw them up against some horrible warp demons or something and make them roll on the fear tables. That stands a decent chance of screwing with the powerful characters just as much as the weaker characters.

Would not call it bad, just different. If you're going to play DH with DnD mindset you're going to have a bad time, and vice versa, but i can see where you're coming from.

Kalmageddon
2017-04-23, 02:01 PM
I am a DH2 DM myself. Unlike DnD this system is NOT combat focused, your "least" powerfull PC's should've been owning every social and investigation encounter. In my experience DH2 is about investigation first, combat second. Combat encounters are moments when these VERY narrow combat specialists must shine and feel powerfull, because they are not that usefull in almost every other situation.

Also, ranged weapons have a few usefull rules like Suppressing Fire, designed for social-oriented PC to use in combat. Fantasy does not really works for DH2.

And it sounds like every PC's wants to be a fighter despite having a social Role. Please, tell me about your campaign and what is the main goal your PC's are pursuing. Tell me about their key skills and abilities, maybe i can come up with a few interesting encounters for you.

If you read carefully you will notice that I did say that the campaign is not combat focused and indeed my least powerful characters are having a much easier time dealing with investigations and social encounters, but those are much easier to balance, seeing how the rules are not that detailed and thus as a GM I have more control on how hard or how easy a given task is.

To provide context for the campaign, the setting is Eberron and the campaign is pirate themed. I was going to use Rogue Trader at first and indeed naval combat is heavily based on Rogue Trader's, but for the characters I felt that Rogue Trader didn't really convey the idea of being pirates, seeing how in RT you are supposed to be filthy rich even at your poorest. DH2 seemed like a good idea, given that the subtlety mechanics are appropriate for wanted men and that it's generally on a less grandiose scale.
And outside of combat this worked out fine and I'm fairly satisfied with the campaign.

Anticipating the question, we are not using D&D because I don't really like how magic items and magic in general is handled and I always felt that they were a bad fit for Eberron, where magic is handled much like technology. And again, outside of the effort required to homebrew a large amount of Spells and magic items, it's working out as I intended.

Aneurin
2017-04-23, 02:38 PM
To be honest, I think you're trying to get DH2e to do something it's not all that great at, e.g. lots of combat. I know you said this is low combat, but low combat by D&D standards is still pretty high compared to what DH2e usually does (for a given value of 'usually'.


But more to the point:

Play enemies tactically. That's going to help lots. It means they can stack modifiers, rather than just relying on raw stats - because relying on raw stats is a pretty good way to fail miserably.

Instead of having one enemy per PC, have the enemies gang up on the most dangerous-looking PCs and ignore the others.

Three WS 30 goblins can become an almighty force when they outnumber a PC 3-1 (for +20), and take time to aim their attacks (+10). Suddenly they're attacking at WS 60, and have a good chance to land two attacks between them - and your PC can only try and dodge/parry one of those. So they're going to take at least one hit. This has the side effect of letting less combat capable PCs shine, since they're going to tip the scales as their friends struggle to survive being mobbed.

Have enemies make use of high ground (+10 WS), ambushes (surprise rounds either penalize or remove player reactions - I can't recall which off the top of my head), stunning (can't dodge if you're stunned, and you're easier to hit!) and wear armour (it'll make 'em a lot more survivable, since none of the low-tech weapons have any Pen to speak of).

For ranged weapons: remember that their wielders are staying the hell out of melee, which is pretty nice. They also get lots of bonuses from aiming, short range and single shot which really help - they're going to be very accurate.

Kalmageddon
2017-04-23, 03:06 PM
I'm not putting too much combat in the game, it's just that an action scene is usually the most satisfying and climatic way to end a particular quest chain and, regardless of how you feel the system should be played, combat is the most developed section of the entire system, with most of the rules, equipment and talents dedicated to it, so saying that DH2 is not made for combat doesn't seem true.
Regardless, combat is going to happen, sometimes because of player initiative, sometimes because I planned it, and when it does happen it should be satisfying for everyone myself included. Even if it's once every 3-4 sessions.

EnragedOxygen
2017-04-23, 07:25 PM
I'm not putting too much combat in the game, it's just that an action scene is usually the most satisfying and climatic way to end a particular quest chain and, regardless of how you feel the system should be played, combat is the most developed section of the entire system, with most of the rules, equipment and talents dedicated to it, so saying that DH2 is not made for combat doesn't seem true.
Regardless, combat is going to happen, sometimes because of player initiative, sometimes because I planned it, and when it does happen it should be satisfying for everyone myself included. Even if it's once every 3-4 sessions.

Try to give your players a set of actions they can do to make their fight a bit more interesting, like having a broken down vehicle that can be reactivated by tech-use, or maybe social pc's might try to convince nearest thugs to join the fight on their side. Include some contraption that can be operated to change terrain or battle conditions. For example once PC's fought on a construction site, and the only pieces of terrain were rockrete blocks suspended on cranes that had to be operated by social PC's. Another time they were ambushed by a river-raiders on boats, so they had to jump from boat to boat to survive, as fire slowly consumed boats behind them. Magnetic floors made steel weapons and armor useless, leaking gas pipes had a chance to blow up from a nearby gunshot, lucky shots (on double's) broke small metal bridges were most attackers were situated, fights in a COMPLETE darkness with WS and BS bonuses to players with the most cunning plan to detect their enemies.

Also you can mix pure combat with skill cheks and social interactions, 2 pc's might have to fight vs overwhelming odds, while the other 2's are working to stop that fight. For example: activating a hidden trapdoor with psyscience and tech-use so they can escape, or convincing a spoiled noble to stop the bloodshed. 1 round of combat alternates with 20 secs of dialogue and maybe 1 bluff, scrutiny or charm skilcheck.

If you've done all that, and fight's are still frustrating for some players. You may introduce repeater crossbows or full-auto lightning wands or whatever, to emulate automatic and semi-automatic weapons from DH and give less combat capable players a crutch to rely on.