Enemies in a Winds of Fate Deck RPG

[spongeknight]

First off, and in all caps: DO NOT ARGUE ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU THINK WINDS OF FATE IS A GOOD SYSTEM.

I am trying to make a Winds of Fate system, and therefore do not care if you like it or not, or if you think it's a terrible system or not. It's the one I'm fucking using, so only bother to comment if you're going to be helpful. There are already a dozen threads to argue about its merits or lack thereof if you want.

Continuing: How do you have a large, diverse group of enemies on the MC's side in a WoF setup? It seems like it would take way too long for a MC to roll/draw and evaluate power sets for each enemy, especially if you had something like an encounter with a mage, thief, fighter and cleric with all very different stuff to throw down. An encounter with a single enemy or even up to 3 dudes seems very workable, but any more than that seems difficult.

Mooks can probably just deal with a combined mook deck or something, but individual enemies probably need something more. Any ideas?

[Blicero]

13th Age uses WoF-ish systems for some of their monsters. E.g., their chimera has the attack

Fangs, claws, and horns +14 vs. AC (3 attacks)—25 damage
Natural 14–15: The target is dazed until the end of the
chimera’s next turn from a headbutt.
Natural 16–17: The target takes 20 ongoing damage from
raking claws.
Natural 18–20: The chimera makes a fiery breath attack as a
free action.

It has the advantage of being relatively compact while still adding a bit of variability to a monster's output. I am not sure if anything more complicated is needed for enemies that are not intended to be relatively major adversaries. I guess it depends sort of on what style of game you are running.

[Omegonthesane]

You'd have a bunch of themed decks which overlap with the decks that PCs can select from, is my first guess.

So, e.g. Cthulhu would be drawing from the Dreams, Water, and Tentacles decks, while Yog-Sothoth would have Travel and Summoning.

[Grek]

Anything that isn't expected to be particularly intelligent can probably be handled by topdecking - they have a deck and you draw what they do on their turn. If it isn't applicable, they do a basic move + attack. More organized minions can be handled using a single hand which dictates the entire squad's tactics that round. Solo opponents get an abbreviated hand which has only one broadly applicable option per card instead of a pick out of several niche abilities.

[spongeknight]

You'd have a bunch of themed decks which overlap with the decks that PCs can select from, is my first guess.

So, e.g. Cthulhu would be drawing from the Dreams, Water, and Tentacles decks, while Yog-Sothoth would have Travel and Summoning.

But that's the problem. Putting together a bunch of different decks for enemies who might get only a round or two of combat is a lot of work, and keeping track of abilities for multiple monsters that change every round makes things confusing for the MC. Players, of course, only have to worry about their 5~6 abilities, while the MC might have to worry about 20~25 abilities. It just seems like too much work on the MCs part to run it like that.

[Grek]

Well, ideally if you were doing a WoF setup, you'd structure the action economy to avoid that issue. Just because D&D has each monster take an individual turn doesn't mean that you have to.

[Omegonthesane]

You'd have a bunch of themed decks which overlap with the decks that PCs can select from, is my first guess.

So, e.g. Cthulhu would be drawing from the Dreams, Water, and Tentacles decks, while Yog-Sothoth would have Travel and Summoning.

But that's the problem. Putting together a bunch of different decks for enemies who might get only a round or two of combat is a lot of work, and keeping track of abilities for multiple monsters that change every round makes things confusing for the MC. Players, of course, only have to worry about their 5~6 abilities, while the MC might have to worry about 20~25 abilities. It just seems like too much work on the MCs part to run it like that.

I was assuming a design paradigm in which Cthulhu is the only multi-deck enemy in the encounter where you fight him, his attendant Deep Ones getting the minions deck while maaaybe any other Starspawn in the area get the Tentacles deck.

Well, ideally if you were doing a WoF setup, you'd structure the action economy to avoid that issue. Just because D&D has each monster take an individual turn doesn't mean that you have to.

It'd feel a bit odd if only like 3 of the squad of 20 orcs get to perform actions, however I can get behind "The minions get the Minion Deck and any of them who can't make an applicable attack can go fuck themselves" or even just "WoF resources are for PCs and Named Enemies, mooks get the basic attack only".

Although as alluded to above I'd at least go for an intermediary tier of "you get exactly one thematic deck plus the minion option" between minions and enemy PC-equivalents.

[Grek]

If you're going to have 20 orcs show up, it would be nice if you could somehow condense those 20 turns into something with the same challenge and net effectiveness, but less individual bookkeeping. In WoF that's even more necessary than usual. So hopefully you're looking at something like...

Orc Squad (CR 3)
20 Minions
Hit Points: 5 each
Speed: 30'
Attack: 1d20+1, 1d6+1 axe
Defenses: AC 13, Fort 12, Ref 8, Will 10
Moves:
1. Charge!: All orcs may move an extra 15' toward the nearest enemy as a swift action.
2. Throwing Axes: All orcs not currently threatened may make a 30' ranged attack with their axe.
3. Second Wind: All dying (but not dead) orcs return to 1 hit point.
4. Fighting Retreat: All orcs may move an extra 30' away from the nearest enemy as a swift action. They do not provoke AoO for this movement.
5. Savagery: All orcs deal an extra 1d6 damage this round.
6. Fearlessnes: All orcs are immune to fear this round.

And they all act on the same initiative and have the same numbers and have the same card drawn.

[spongeknight]

Boss monsters and mooks aren't difficult. As suggested, mooks can share powers and act in concert (which is a better system than having them act individually anyway) and bosses obviously have a full suite of abilities that you'd want to put together.

The problems come from "mirror matches." When you have a similar number of opponents that should really have some abilities but where a full deck or matrix would be way overkill, how do you handle that? It's kind of shitty to run them with different rules than the PCs, but I don't see how you can realistically put in the same amount of effort and prep with each enemy that you do with a real character. The MC couldn't be expected to handle that kind of load. So I'm looking for some sort of compromise where the opponents act enough like PCs that it doesn't shit on their verisimilitude but simple enough that the MC can run 4 or 5 of them without bogging down the whole fight.

[PhoneLobster]

First off, and in all caps: DO NOT ARGUE ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU THINK WINDS OF FATE IS A GOOD SYSTEM.

And yet your entire premise, and I think the discussion you need to have with yourself here, is even in a system with winds of fate should you use it for ALL the characters.

Now of course, the well known correct answer on how many characters over all in a system should use winds of fate is... not what you want to hear, but the answer on whether NPC enemies in an RPG should use winds of fate is significantly clearer and something that maybe you can handle.

WoF was.. intended... to meet specific goals that predominantly apply to player characters. NPC opponents do not NEED the (very costly) enforcement of variety in their actions because individually they don't get very many compared to PCs, NPCs last on average less than one combat encounter each. When you need more variety in your enemies you just have some new enemies, because generally you are doing that anyway.

So the answer to the whole WoF for NPC enemies thing is pretty simple. The best solution is that they basically just don't WoF. Mooks get one or two actions, fixed never rerolled or redrawn WoF style, "special" troops get maybe one extra that does their special thing, and even major villians intended to be the equivalent of a PC can and very possibly should get away with a single preset fixed "draw" of actions equivalent to just a single round of WoF action choices for a PC.

Enemies need to be fast and simple to adjudicate, and if you DO encounter the same mooks again they should be predictable NOT randomly drawing a different entirely unseen set of powers from combat to combat, much less from turn to turn.

[GnomeWorks]

There are already a dozen threads to argue about its merits or lack thereof if you want.

Mild derail, but... could somebody post links to some of these? I've read a few threads about WoF, but imagine I've probably missed some discussions on it.

[Koumei]

Here are a few of them:

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52150

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51229

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=82657

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51469

Early in the first of those linked threads, DragonChild links to the latter three.