Quote from: Corolinth on June 07, 2023, 10:17:21 PM
When you shoot someone, or magic mojo kaboom someone, the target number is 4, not their parry.

SWADE has a support/test mechanic which effectively provides either a +2 to your ally or a -2 to your opponent. It's modeling things such as throwing dirt in your enemy's eye, and other sorts of monkeying with the fight.

Otherwise, yes there will be lots of missing and not breaking toughness. This is because the PCs only have three hit points, and most NPCs go down the first time they take a wound. Survivability involves not getting hit in the first place, or grazing blows. This is offset by the fact that when a PC does take a wound, they start racking up wound penalties. SWADE is technically a death spiral system.

Typically, hits that break toughness deal a single wound, so you do see a fair amount of chipping away, but big hits definitely happen. Because of the wild die, you should expect the PCs to be the ones landing the big tide-turning hits more often than not.

Thanks. How liberally do you find it advisable to use Wild Card NPCs? The book seems to suggest that any NPC that is important enough to be named ought to be a Wild Card. If the wild die is the difference maker, that sounds like it might be overkill.

Other things to keep in mind for combat:
- Ganging up can give a bonus of up to +3 and the monsters typically outnumber the PCs
- A combatant can now only apply their shield bonus to half of the enemies they face
- Tests can help penalise your opponent, and support can help your ally
- There are Wild attacks (more damaging) and Desperate attacks (more likely to hit) that can also help
- Some enemies will have abilities or edges that make them even more dangerous, like frenzy or pack tactics.

Re how many Wild Card enemies, I would personally only usually have one or two WC enemies in a planned encounter - for example the BBEG and their key lieutenant / champion / vizier / what ever. One of the good things about SWADE is the rules for being hardy or large which add extra Wounds without the NPC needing to be a WC. For unplanned encounters, anything goes. If there players decide to attack the meeting of Vampire Princes you bet every one of those suckers is a WC...

Basically, the inverse law of ninjas applies, in my mind. If you face one ninja they will be a WC. A squad of ninjas are more likely to be Extras.

Start a bit soft ball then build up once both you and your players are familiar with the rules is the old advice that applies as ever.

The SWADE core book gives some advice for the number of wild cards in an encounter, but generally you're looking at 0-2. The example given is a pack of wolves, and you make the alpha a wild card.

Some monster entries like dragons and vampires are marked with a special symbol indicating they should always be wild cards.

The raw traits of monster entries are generally tougher than the PCs expected to encounter them. Attributes on average are a full die type higher across the board. In practice, the wild die that the PCs have is more than enough to overcome the inflated traits of monsters. However, if you make one of those monsters a wild card, giving it a wild die, its own bennies, and the increased hit points, that monster becomes nasty.

Say your PCs are fighting a group of ogres. You can make one of them tougher without having to fiddle around with stats. Just make one ogre a wild card, and that's the chief. If you wanted to add a second wild card to the encounter, give one of the ogres an arcane background, a spellcasting skill, and a handful of powers to make the shaman.

A lot of named NPCs are not wild cards, that comes down to a judgment call. Joe the Bartender has a name, but he's just some guy running a tavern. One-Eyed Willy Jackson who retired from his adventuring days to buy a tavern is likely a wild card. Just because somebody named Rick sits on a throne doesn't make him King Richard the Lionheart.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 07, 2023, 11:24:02 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on June 07, 2023, 10:17:21 PM
When you shoot someone, or magic mojo kaboom someone, the target number is 4, not their parry.

SWADE has a support/test mechanic which effectively provides either a +2 to your ally or a -2 to your opponent. It's modeling things such as throwing dirt in your enemy's eye, and other sorts of monkeying with the fight.

Otherwise, yes there will be lots of missing and not breaking toughness. This is because the PCs only have three hit points, and most NPCs go down the first time they take a wound. Survivability involves not getting hit in the first place, or grazing blows. This is offset by the fact that when a PC does take a wound, they start racking up wound penalties. SWADE is technically a death spiral system.

Typically, hits that break toughness deal a single wound, so you do see a fair amount of chipping away, but big hits definitely happen. Because of the wild die, you should expect the PCs to be the ones landing the big tide-turning hits more often than not.

Thanks. How liberally do you find it advisable to use Wild Card NPCs? The book seems to suggest that any NPC that is important enough to be named ought to be a Wild Card. If the wild die is the difference maker, that sounds like it might be overkill.

A Wildcard should be used as liberally as you need. SWADE isn't D&D - so in D&D where everything is a HP Sponge, and they stand and bang each other to death. SWADE will challenge PC's in numbers of mobs (that make D&D players sweat) and/or Wildcards. Wildcards should be special NPC's... the pack of wolves might have an Alpha with local story about it - that's the Wildcard. The city guards have that one Sergeant with the rep of whipping that ass with his trusty club - he's the Wildcard. Basically the Wildcards are the NPC's that for some reason are just a little more dramatic.

Just remember Wildcards are much more powerful than regular NPC's as they get 3-Wounds AND they get their own Bennies. So use them when it creates drama. I'll also uplift NPC's that aren't Wildcards into Wildcard status if circumstances make it cool - like I had a hobgoblin survive an encounter with the PC's and one of the PC's dropped him but didn't put him out of his misery. He came back later in the campaign as a Wildcard hellbent on revenge and lasted a long time after many encounters to become a very important NPC enemy of that PC and the party. (Which later culminated in a one-on-one duel to the death where the PC narrowly won! in the middle of a gigantic battle).

SO just use your common sense. Wildcards should be your special NPC's not just there to make life hard for the PC's. But you'll figure it out as you play.

Maybe the Extra/Wild Card dynamic is a weird one for me because I tend to overdevelop NPCs. In my games, an NPC is most likely either just "the bartender", or they have a fully written bio, agenda, personality, romantic preference and shoe size. I probably ought to curb that tendency a bit.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2023, 05:37:13 PM
I'll also uplift NPC's that aren't Wildcards into Wildcard status if circumstances make it cool - like I had a hobgoblin survive an encounter with the PC's and one of the PC's dropped him but didn't put him out of his misery.

That actually calls to mind another question. The SWADE core rulebook contains the following:

"If it's important to know what happens to Extras who were Incapacitated during a fight, make a Vigor roll for each. Those who succeed survive and must be cared for, taken prisoner, or released."

This could be read as saying that by the R-A-W, players may not choose to execute downed opponents after a battle, and I've seen some people say that in rules of the game. I just wonder if anyone plays it that way?

Why would it stop PCs from executing downed opponents?

Savage Worlds isn't a game that's heavy on "rules-as-written". It has rules, because the game needs to have rules that everyone understands and agrees on, but the rules are there to serve you.

The pitch is "fast, furious, fun". You don't waste time rolling death saves in the middle of the action. Extras are just that. Once they go down in a fight, everybody kind of forgets about them. That quote out of the core rulebook makes the implicit assumption that the GM is going to do precisely that.

But maybe you need to know later on. Nobody really specified what was happening. Presumably you're going all out in the fight and not pulling any punches, but that doesn't mean everybody dies. Maybe your players didn't think about it in the thick of things, but now that the fight's over, they want to question one of these banditos. Sure hope one of them survived! That's when you start rolling the vigor checks.

If you're doing any straight conversions from DnD, including OSR material and B/X. Then Savage Pathfinder is a must have. It's basically cheating as they've converted most of the DnD stuff you're looking for and made it all very compatible with Savage Worlds. I'm running Keep on the Borderlands using Savage Pathfinder and it's going great. I barely have to convert anything. Mostly just tables from KotB

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 10, 2023, 06:57:33 PM
Maybe the Extra/Wild Card dynamic is a weird one for me because I tend to overdevelop NPCs. In my games, an NPC is most likely either just "the bartender", or they have a fully written bio, agenda, personality, romantic preference and shoe size. I probably ought to curb that tendency a bit.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2023, 05:37:13 PM
I'll also uplift NPC's that aren't Wildcards into Wildcard status if circumstances make it cool - like I had a hobgoblin survive an encounter with the PC's and one of the PC's dropped him but didn't put him out of his misery.

That actually calls to mind another question. The SWADE core rulebook contains the following:

"If it's important to know what happens to Extras who were Incapacitated during a fight, make a Vigor roll for each. Those who succeed survive and must be cared for, taken prisoner, or released."

This could be read as saying that by the R-A-W, players may not choose to execute downed opponents after a battle, and I've seen some people say that in rules of the game. I just wonder if anyone plays it that way?

I will usually narrate the the death of NPC's Wildcard or no. If a player has no desire to kill someone - I have no problem with them telling me so even after the fact (but it has to be immediately, or preferably they tell me beforehand).

RAW shouldn't get in the way of the intent or vibe of the game. That's the GM's job to cultivate and curate the theme of the game. If I'm running a gritty sword-and-sandals type game, then drawing a weapon almost always means "to the death" - unless for some reason it's apparent there is active intent to *not* kill ones enemy. If players don't care - then I'll happily kill/not kill NPC's as I see fit when they drop. if the PC's want to insure death, they can coup-de-grace them without effort afterward, or administer first-aid (assuming they know how) at will.

Quote from: dbm on June 08, 2023, 03:49:22 AM
Other things to keep in mind for combat:
- Ganging up can give a bonus of up to +3 and the monsters typically outnumber the PCs
- A combatant can now only apply their shield bonus to half of the enemies they face
- Tests can help penalise your opponent, and support can help your ally
- There are Wild attacks (more damaging) and Desperate attacks (more likely to hit) that can also help
- Some enemies will have abilities or edges that make them even more dangerous, like frenzy or pack tactics.

I want to note how important using these things are is for SW combat to not be that festival of whiffs. As a GM, using numbers of extras to get the gang up bonus and getting around shields helps present a threat to high parry PCs. It also lets them shine - if they went deep into edges and fighting to make them cool, let them see that they can take on a half dozen goons in melee. The converse is also true, though. When the characters come up against a master swordsman, they'll be the ones needing to gang up on him, and breaking out the desperate attacks, and using all their tricks to make him distracted and vulnerable to be able to be able to reasonably hit his otherwise too high parry.

Want to really fuck up a character with high Parry? Gang Up + Grappling. Yes Tests are a really good way to challenge those PC's that are built for combat.

I will put the fear of Maglubiyet into any PC with a lot of regular goblins a couple of Wildcard leaders.