Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423305If you play a game with mook rules (weak underlings, easily despatched), how do you handle an encounter where they are the only antagonists? Just use the same rules, or is that going to make it too easy?

The short answer is I don't do that.

In more detail, Fantasy Craft sort of has two layers of minions/mooks. Standard NPCs are easier to kill, but they don't pop like soap bubbles like 4e minions do. You CAN get that effect by giving them the mook quality, but that's generally for things like kobolds and insects. You can vary the toughness of standard NPCs such that they are a challenges.

FATE is a bit simpler, but still pretty easy to make them a challenges. You can give them varying qualities, which can make them tougher, and can have large numbers of them gang up, which can definitely be a challenge for PCs.

So for the games I play with these features, the existing rules work as-is for me.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423404What i'm saying is that instead of determining combat by dishing out damage to hit point pools or some such, maybe a set of conditions that, if fulfilled, confer victory. I know in running combats there have been plenty of times where simply seeking to deplete the antagonist's hit points (or whatever, it doesn't matter) has become tedious. In such cases i've often had to decide that the antagonists were defeated before their HP were fully depleted.

Yeah, we had that in the old days. They were called morale rules.

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I'm not talking about morale at all.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423611I'm not talking about morale at all.

Maybe not, but morale can help provide "victory conditions." If a leader is killed, for example, it's likely that subordinates will break morale will flee. There are many other morale related conditions.

But it's just one example.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423404I know in running combats there have been plenty of times where simply seeking to deplete the antagonist's hit points (or whatever, it doesn't matter) has become tedious. In such cases i've often had to decide that the antagonists were defeated before their HP were fully depleted.

Part of the problem may just be giving things too many hit points, or too many safeguards against hit point loss.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423611So, as I said, the condition could be something like lure the enemy into a trap, or stall him from setting off the bomb till the cops arrive. Whatever.

I prefer, myself, if conditions like these are not pre-set. It's great to lure an enemy into a trap - as a player, it feels cheap if the situation is "Lure him into the trap for massive damage!"

Stalling a villain for whatever reason might be a viable or interesting tactic, but generally speaking I don't look at "I think we'll just let the police handle this one" is a desirable attitude for the players to take in most campaigns. In something like Call of Cthulhu PCs might be wary of just shooting someone because of legal repercussions, but in a large subset of these situations, the police aren't necessarily going be able to do anything either, unless the villain is already wanted for "tax evasion" or something.

As another poster said- the Mooks aren't the main attraction of any scene.  That doesn't mean that the main attraction has to be a Villain, though.  Instead it could be:

Getting (incompetent) civilians to safety (away from the Mook zombie hordes)

Defusing the doomsday device while the countdown clock is ticking (while fighting the robots left behind to stop you)

Quote from: BASHMAN;423860As another poster said- the Mooks aren't the main attraction of any scene.  That doesn't mean that the main attraction has to be a Villain, though.  Instead it could be:

Getting (incompetent) civilians to safety (away from the Mook zombie hordes)

Defusing the doomsday device while the countdown clock is ticking (while fighting the robots left behind to stop you)

Yeah, but in a traditional rpg you would has out to satisfaction the real end of the scene. You can't just get the win and skip ahead. You have to beat, drive off, or escape the mooks. Glossing over it can be a bit story-gamey.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;423611I'm not talking about morale at all.

You should be.

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