Adversaries - Index
Units, Special Units, and Ultimate Units
The Adversaries Index is part of the Story Guide’s toolkit for engagement preparations.
There are three basic types of Units mechanically, these include units, special units, and ultimate units.
This index includes the basics about running units in an engagement.
If, as a Story Guide, you are using a Character in an engagement in stead of a Unit, the Character follows the mechanics players use.
Facing Mortality
High Stakes makes combat intense. Nearly every fight is a fight to the death, a fight to stay alive. There is also the other side of the coin. The power game fantasy where the enemies go down easy because the character is just that guy. Making their way through the villains compound one quick fight after another.
Adversaries
When we look at the game from a purely mechanical perspective, our enemies have hit points and other stats. On a whiteboard the bigger sword wins most times with the dice being the only chance for the underdog in most situations. The fight scene regardless of how powerful your players are or the foes they face mechanically, can feel like a struggle with good use of the environment and tactical potential.
Running Units: Tactical Action Pattern
Unlike characters, Units follow an Tactical Action Pattern (TAP) if they have multiple actions to choose from. As a Story Guide you’re not required to follow these suggested patterns, but should at least use them as a guideline. Tactical Action Patterns tend to have conditions stated as well.
The Story Guide’s Full Round
Our Units, Special Units, and Ultimate Units do not follow the Active Phase Cycle. Instead, each of our units has a number of Action Points to spend during each Full Round. The majority of our Units only have 1 or 2 Action Points. These Action Points fuel all of the actions and effects of Units and Special Units. Once those Action Points are spent, the unit goes into dormancy.
Unit Actions: Units have their regular action list and triggered actions. While a unit may activate an action at any time, including in the middle of a player’s active phase, we recommend only using triggered actions during any given player’s turn.
Acting in the Active Phase Cycle: The best time to activate is during a period we refer to as turnover. This is when a player spends their last Action Slot, before we call for the next player’s Active Phase to start.
Action Dominance: Few units have 5 or more Action Points to spend each Full Round, especially Special Units. We often want to burn 2 or more Action Points in between every player’s active phase with these units. Running engagements with more than one or two of these units massively increases the difficulty of the fight due to action economy. These units hit like a truck, move like a rabbit, and worst of all, are often immune to low tier Focal Targeting.
Ultimate Units: Ultimate Units follow specialized mechanics in the Tactical Action Pattern. While they do have Action Points to spend, they are also granted actions during the Active Phase Cycle and during re:Cycle. Their Action Points are typically used with triggered actions, and we suggest not worrying with action burn as there is no need to push the Ultimate Unit to use every Action Point available to them each Full Round.
Special Story Guide Actions
Mob Move: Once per Full Round we can activate a Mob Move. During Mob Move we can move all of our units up to their Movement. We suggest doing Mob Move early in the Full Round, usually right after the first player’s active phase. We can set ourselves up tactically to dish out our actions and burn a few action points after shifting the board. This also provides a chance for our players to burn some action slots on actions which require an adversary.
Mob Fight: Anytime during the Full Round we can activate Mob Fight. Any unit we activate this way activates one of their attacks and may get placed into dormancy. This is especially handy early on in an engagement when we may have too many extras to move things along efficiently. While Mob Fight does not inherently use our unit’s action points, with weaker units we can turn them to dormancy as they’ve done enough for the round to keep the fight alive and moving.
Note: Remember that characters sometimes have effects which apply Stun Counters or other enfeeblements which prevent units from participating in these group actions.
Running Units: Focal Targeting
Focal Targeting is a threat tier system which allows player’s actions and effects to help determine the target for unit’s hostile actions.
This does not force the unit to use an action which is hostile.
Units may still choose to flee or use support actions.
Units will still join in on combination actions with their fellow units even if it doesn’t target the Focal Target.
Units may also still use Trigger Actions against other targets who cause the qualifying trigger.
Finally, if using an action against a Focal Target is not possible for good reason, such as they are out of range or line of sight, a unit will still use a hostile action against another target they can reach.
Hostile Actions: We use a loose definition for hostile actions. Actions which deal damage or cause enfeeblements and other negative conditions generally fit the description of Hostile Actions.
The tier system is simple and we usually only need to go as high as Tier 3. The higher the tier determines the Focal Target. Two targets at the same Focal Target Tier will be treated as at the will of the Story Guide.
Developer’s Notes: When at the table and working on enmity and threat as a mechanic, it is easy to accidentally overrule the Focal Target system. Keeping up with who is focusing on what is a ton of work since we use it as an active mechanic. We suggest only putting it in play as it is written in for the abilities of our player’s characters. Keep in mind with the nature of games which have a dedicated tanking role, threat and enmity is the core feature of their character creation. On our side of the table, we’ve made Focal Target effects have narrow targeting for good reason.
Tracking Focal Targets: We love our tokens. If each player has a token which shows where the adversaries focus is, we add a nice dynamic. We can also assume what direction an adversary is looking with focus tokens.
Difficulty Ratings
Difficulty is simple. It is a total level. For instance, your group of five are all level two, the group’s difficulty is ten. Your party has three level fives, their difficulty rating is fifteen. Just add up all the levels of the characters on each side. If difficulty is close to even, it’s a relatively fair match. Their are outliers to this rule, but we work with this formula in development to create an easy slider during prep.
As for notes, difficulty ratings can also be misleading when combined with complex environments, home turf advantages can exponentially complicate an otherwise easy match up for the party.
When it comes to determining experience, an easy fight should be worth an experience point, or if it is too easy, maybe nothing. An evenly matched difficulty rating to party level should boast three or four experience points. Any match up with a difficulty ten or higher than the party should wipe the floor with them whatever outcome you choose. I would give them the full 10 experience for their level. The conditions of victory in those cases may be complex or nearly impossible. I wish your table the best of luck!
