[Gripper]

I ran through Humanitarian Aid from Sprawl Wilds with my group last night. I was really looking forward to running this. Role playing "The Ork from SMORC" was a stupidly fun, and we had a (secret) Technomancer in the group for added hilarity. Before they figured out what was going on, they came up with some great theories that I was really tempted to run with instead of the main plot.

But I digress. Players get to the island and fight off the first wave of Shedim. Then Dr. Aushlander (a force 8 Shedim) comes in and then proceeds to wipe the floor with their bruised, bloodied, and broken bodies. Around the second turn I realized that this guy was way too much for them. With some luck from the players (and some liberal interpretation of rigging rules), they got him down before anyone got killed.

This one was my fault. The good doctor was way too much for them, and I should have realized this before starting the adventure.

The question is this: Assuming they didn't get lucky in the end, how would you get your party out of it? Even if you have no problem killing off players for their own bad decisions, this one wasn't really their fault.  In this particular instance, I let the rigger have a bit of a larger dice pool than he should have in addition to one aptly timed dice nudge on my part (something I have not yet done). I also started pulling back on some of his offensive capabilities.

I'm a new GM, so this these sorts of things are all novel to me. How would some of you more experienced GM's have handled the situation?

[ZeConster]

That isn't really a new GM thing: there's actually a topic in the Living Campaign GM subforum where people discuss how to handle that particular encounter.

Anyway, the typical approach is "make some NPCs show up and help" - in this case, make John go berserk.

[Reaver]

SR is one of those games that it is REALLY hard to tell what is "overpowering" for a team.


some encounters that you expect them to have problems with, they will steamroll..... others that you think should be a walk in the park can end up in a near TPK....


leaving the "poor choices = drastic consequences" argument alone, the system I use mostly is fudging dice rolls. instead of getting 8 successes, the bad guy only gets 2.. or 3. I find this helps keep the tension up as the PC are still working for the victory (or they feel they are), and the opposition is still posing a challenge, but with out as drastic a consequence for a blotched roll (if they totally fail their roll, a stage up of 1 or 2 is much better then a stage up of 6 or 7 damage)

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I'm all for fudging dice to cut players a break, don't get me wrong.  If I'm convinced I simply threw too much... or the players through no bad decisions of their own, are facing death.. I think it's fair to fudge.


But since you can permanently burn an edge point to essentially survive any death, I'm not as inclined as I used to be in cutting breaks.

The recommendation for the GM to turn in 4s of dice pools for NPCs to 'buy' hits is, imo, another way to throw a bone to the players in 'downgrading' a tough opponent.  4 dice is 1 and 1/3 hits, not 1 hit.  'Buying' the 1 hit is doing the players a favor.

[Reaver]

yea, that is not a bad option too

[Crunch]

If I've misjudged an encounter in the direction of making it too hard, I'll often give the characters a way to flee or otherwise survive defeat. In my experience this can create some great roleplaying opportunities.

If the players win too easily the best way to deal with it is to let them win, but change the importance of the victory. Have it be a distraction rather than the real conflict.

[Gripper]

Long term, I think I'm going to do something along Crunch's option. I'll declare this a victory, but bring back the Shedim and the artifact* at some point in the future, say that he's improved since the last encounter and give him the stats for HA and have another showdown.

Thanks for all of your input by the way. I really like hearing about other peoples experience.

*It wasn't clear from the adventure what the ...thing... was. Has it shown up again in any of the other missions episodes?

[Michael Chandra]

Not that I recall. As for Auslander, he DOES come back. SRM04-08, Romero&Juliette, iirc.

[Gripper]

Ooh, Cool. Perfect. We'll definitely be running that at a future point.

As for the MacGuffin, I've got a fun plan for a return to Neah Bay. Our technomancer still hasn't figured out what's going on, and I really want to go into more detail for the towns talismonger (reading Moby Dick finally came in handy).

[Michael Chandra]

By the way, in R&J they go "he won't overcast unless (spoilers) and has only 4 Edge available", which is something I advise for SR5 anyway even with HA.