WOIN [NEW] some questions re rewards and encounter balancing

This is the first time I've run a non-D&D game. I'm having a tricky time with some GMing stuff.

The crew was hired by an anonymous "benefactor" and is performing missions for him. He gave them a basic ship, which is largely used for transport (I'm focusing on away-team action more than ship combat).

The party consists of an android "tank" who is made a SOAK/melee build,
A Felan scavenger,
A Felan ex-military heavy weapons user,
A Venetian psionisist/medic.

The first problem I'm having is encounter balance. There have only been two major combat encounters so far, and both times the enemies have a hard time doing any serious harm to the crew, especially the android. I'm worried that any enemy capable of being a serious threat to him would be able to one-shot any of the other crew members. Further, I have a hard time eyeballing enemy stat blocks (from the Beastiary website) and knowing which enemies would be a good threat, how many of them to use, and so on. So far the encounters have been a cakewalk, even when I doubled my planned number of critters and had a "boss" type encounter. The only time a character took significant damage is when the medic accidentally moved into a vulnerable location and got surrounded briefly. What numbers should I be looking at to figure out how threatening an opponent is supposed to be? The players are pretty experienced min-maxers and strategic thinkers, so maybe I need to crank things up a few notches?

My second issue is one of rewards... I may have over-rewarded them for the first mission... Their benefactor gave the group 10k credits for their first mission. In D&D there's a huge list of magical items that all cost tons of gold, so I'll frequently give a new party a bit of cash early on so they can pick out a few items to customize their characters. But all the equipment in the NEW book is fairly cheap... all the weapons and armor are largely a pittance. The most expensive equipment is mostly level C and D, which I'm disallowing for campaign purposes. The players are having a hard time figuring out what they're saving up their money for. They can get higher quality items, but at the grade they're at, they can't use the extra dice yet anyway. They actually left the post-mission shopping trip with thousands of credits in cash because they couldn't think of anything they wanted to buy. I did look through the rulebook but I can't find any guidance on giving out rewards. I don't have a good idea how much credits-worth of equipment characters are expected to own at different grades. I'm also a little worried about using money to motivate the characters if they can't think of any equipment they want to save up for.

I don't want it to sound like I'm complaining about the system. It's playing very well so far, and after just 2 sessions the players are already pretty solid on the rules and mechanics, and they seem to be enjoying the campaign. I just want a few pointers. Thanks for reading and replying!

The game is not designed to require certain amounts of equipment at certain grades. That said, 10K for a starting mission seems very excessive. I'd have gone maybe 1,000 total at the highest end, probably less. But it depends on the feel of the game you're after. Remember that higher quality gear gets a lot more expensive, but they shouldn't be thinking about that at starting grades. Later, upgrading their ship is where money might get soaked up.

There's a ton of threads on encounter design here. I should find one of them and sticky it. Basically, the following principles apply:

1) Use tactics. There's an extra bunch of dice you can roll if you aim, get good position, crossfires, and so on. Weak enemies can eviscerate strong PCs if one side is being tactical and the other isn’t, and vice versa. The combat system has those tactical assumptions baked in.
2) Attack weak defences, not high defences. How are their Mental, or Vital Defenses? Use ion or electricity attacks against androids.
3) Max dice pool equal to the PCs is an easy fight. Two higher is a tough fight. Three higher is deadly. One less can be brushed aside contemptuously and should be used when you want to let your heroes show off and feel awesome. Try to equal the total max dice pool of the party, bearing in mind that any single foe with a MDP three higher will be deadly. I like to use one two higher and fill out the rest with slightly weaker foes.

Oh, and double check your players are stacking SOAK right.

You’ll be able to eyeball it pretty easily soon enough!

Thanks Morrus!

I did look at the SOAK stacking rules in the errata. I'll double check the bonuses he found and make sure they stack correctly.

MerakSpielman said:

Thanks Morrus!

I did look at the SOAK stacking rules in the errata. I'll double check the bonuses he found and make sure they stack correctly.

Click to expand...

What’s his SOAK?

OK he took the Android exploit Armor, for 5 SOAK.
From Marine Tour career, he took Battle Scars, which is a natural SOAK bonus of 2. Specifically says bonus (bonuses stack) but doesn't have the "+" callout (which is supposed to indicate a stackable bonus).
From Street Thug career, he took Street Tough, which says you gain a natural +2 SOAK. This one does use the + indicator, which means it's supposed to be a bonus that adds to existing natural SOAK.
He picked Tough as Nails Trait, for +2 SOAK, which specifically says it stacks any other SOAK scores.
He purchased a Helmet, which gives +2 SOAK. (Uses the + so I assume it's stackable.)

This gave him 13 SOAK at start (grade 5).

He uses a longsword, which is very cheap and does more damage than the laser pistols the rest of the party is using. His tactic is to leap into battle and engage as many enemies as possible in melee, which gives the other enemies (if they're using ranged) a -2 dice penalty to hit him, which is as good as cover. If they do hit him, his SOAK absorbs the damage.

There have been only two major combat encounters so far (a couple minor ones that were so trivial I shouldn't have bothered including them). And these ones were against fairly unintelligent enemies. The next part of the adventure involves fighting through a pirate base, and I'm planning on having the pirates be far more organized and strategic.

It IS fun though. They gathered intelligence at a nearby space station and learned the pirates are based in an old asteroid mining complex, which was abandoned after the asteroid's diamond core was extracted. They've set up anti-ship batteries, making a frontal assault suicidal. But an old asteroid miner told them about a secret tunnel he and his friends used to sneak in booze, so the crew went in through the tunnels. This was a fun zero-G sequence. Now they're getting ready to assault the pirate base proper from the rear. They were clever enough to plant rumors of a soft, wealthy target in a nearby system, hoping to draw out some of the pirates and make the assault easier.

They might be sneaky enough to get through the base without an alarm going off, which I guess is the reward for proper Sneakery -- easier encounters. More likely, though, the base will be alerted to their presence and organize a proper defense. I was looking at the stat blocks for Thugs, Bandits, and Captains for a quick way to get some quick, rough-and-ready stats for them. But from what the PCs have demonstrated so far, I'm going to need to kick things up a bit, use different damage types, maybe include roles in the pirates as though they were an opposing adventuring party, really make it varied and interesting.

Armor SOAK and natural SOAK don’t stack with each other though. You use the highest. His armor SOAK is 7, or 9 with the helmet. His natural SOAK is 6. You’d use the armor SOAK as it’s higher.