Imaro
Legend
I agree that fear spending is probably the most important determiner of combat difficulty... however that makes it seem odd that max fear doesn't also scale in some way with number of PC's...
Daggerheart General Thread [+]
- Thread starter overgeeked
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
Strictly speaking the max Fear shouldn't need to increase, because you can, at any time except in the middle of a PC's action, just spend Fear. So whilst you can let Fear cap out (I know I have), that's pretty much always a choice. If you hit 11, just spend it as you get if you're concerned.
The trouble with letting the cap go higher than 12 is that it probably wouldn't make the game play any better. I mean, you could increase it, but what are you achieving, exactly? What's the goal, exactly? My reaction to seeing that was also "why doesn't that scale with group size" but on reflection the answer is "because that wouldn't help anything". It's just going to cause longer periods when the DM doesn't react, doesn't spend Fear, and then longer periods when the DM does. Especially because you still hit a cap, it's just you have to start spending at 14 or 17 or whenever instead.
Imaro
Legend
That doesn't help in a combat where there are more PC's to account for and spend Fear for...especially in a climactic or big battle.
You're allowing the GM a chance to build up an adequate supply for that big encounter they want to run as well as to dole out more interesting narrative complications and/situations in between combats.
Right now I often feel like I can only really focus on a few of my players outside of combat because I have to also be really careful to retain some for combats... meanwhile because hope does have a higher chance of being produced and there are more players... it can often feel like (be??) an imbalance.
It doesnt matter how many players there are, they are still rolling action rolls one by one. The only difference is they have more potential aggregate Hope storage for Tag Team / Helping.
But you also have more adversaries to prompt rolls, etc. I might bias towards ones with area effect attacks; contemplate adding in the +2 damage modifier by default; or playing around with HP counts per the Homebrew Kit.
But you also have more adversaries to prompt rolls, etc. I might bias towards ones with area effect attacks; contemplate adding in the +2 damage modifier by default; or playing around with HP counts per the Homebrew Kit.
Imaro
Legend
Players act as a default but barring failure on their part I have to spend Fear for activations... having more enemies but the same amount of activations doesn't really help mitigate against a higher number of players.
John R Davis
Legend
This is our Sablewood frame so far
Remember that you start out with Fear that scales by PC count, and your Long Rest fear gain is likewise d4+ PC count. If you feel like you're not getting enough Fear to act, you could consider scaling the Short Rest from 1d4 to 1d4+1.
Do you have the rules yet? Have you read through the "how much Fear per scene" and stuff guidelines?
Keep in mind the ratio of actions stays the same regardless of how many players there are because it's based on the hope/fear dice and not the number of players all getting a turn. The increased difficulty from a larger group comes from the larger total HP/Stress/Hope pools that the adversaries have to chew through.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Exactly. It's a self-balancing system. More players means more rolls. More rolls means more referee spotlights and fear. More referee spotlights and fear is limited by how many monsters (and what kinds of monsters), but...thankfully...more PCs also means more monsters. The dice will vary and the stats will vary, but the action economy and relative HP/Stress pools will always be roughly balanced against each other.
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