Re: mechanics of surprise

On Mar 5, 7:35 pm, Russell Wallace <russell.no.s...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> John Morrow wrote:
> > 4. To have the NPCs/monsters to be roughly as powerful as the PCs.
>
> I've always found it odd how many people seem to want that. Personally
> if I cut loose with the most powerful weapon at my disposal I want bad
> guys to _fall down and die_, dammit! Not just "it's down another 10% of
> hit points". I'm okay with named villains taking more effort to
> dispatch, but that should not apply to nameless mooks, and all the other
> desires listed in this thread can be easily satisfied by giving mooks a
> lot fewer hit points (or less firepower) than PCs.

The term "mooks" as I recall references a concept where NPCs and PCs
do specifically use different rules, and not just the same rules at
different levels of power/skill.

I seriously doubt that any here in actual fact want completely equal
battles every time they sit down to their rpg campaign. They want a
challenge perhaps- but that is a different thing.

A challenge can be had with a battle that requires the players to do
nothing tactically stupid- i.e. make good use of their forces and
resources. A serious objective, but one far easier than winning 50/50
battle after 50/50 battle. For myself, I find the easist way to do
this as a GM is to use larger numbers of weaker foes with one or two
near equal opponents tossed in for favor. For a player group, that
seems like a serious challenge worthy of heroes (think the movie 300,
which may well be the ultimate example of this method).

It's part illusion, part reality for while the players have the edge,
they have to play well to use and keep that edge.

Players also tend to have very restricted ideas of winning. For
example, in some groups (or in some adventures) defeating one's foe
may not be considered a win if one of the PCs die while doing so. Here
the challenge isn't winning, but winning without loss.

In short, there's lots of ways of looking at the subject. And I think
how some people look at it, and what they actually are looking for-
may be different.