Sunday, March 12, 2023

Cypher Play: Road War, Part 4

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

The coyote-don (arms not pictured here, lol) is a level 6 monster that defends as a level 4 to magic and attacks all targets in immediate range. My priest and scout lose initiative; all they can do is board up their garage and take a turn to prepare.

The priest is on the garage floor while the girl and the scout climb up to a second-floor perch to ready his rifle. The priest cannot climb any higher, so the coyote-don bursts through the garage doors quickly and begins mauling our man of faith, running for his life on the first floor.

The scout opens fire, and shots bounce off the tough hide.

The priest smites the beast with a holy bolt and puts some effort behind the blast, taking away a third of the beast's health, which angers it more. The priest still gets mauled, and things are looking grim down there, and the scout fires again and gets an 18, which is a ton of damage with a level of effort thrown behind it - and the beast turns its attention to crawling up to the second level.

As the coyote-don begins to jump up to the upper level, the priest strikes it down with another effort-backed holy bolt and slays the creature on top of a broken tractor.

Multi-attacks and "frenzy" attacks that melee or ranged attack all targets in an area are critical to higher-level monsters. Do not be afraid to throw multiple attacks in for monsters of level 4 and higher, and above level 7, start putting three or four attacks in there. Armor and the player's ability to soak and heal damage is more significant than you think, and you want to give the players the idea that if they don't spend points on effort, they will lose them as the damage they take (and get nothing for it).

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Was the fight brutal? In some ways, yes; in others, no, but it doesn't matter. Encounter balance is difficult in Cypher, but don't worry about it - toss a GM Intrusion in there and add another monster or two to the encounter. That is one of the core rules of balancing Cypher combats; if you feel something is going too easy, it is immediately GM Intrusion time to ramp up the challenge - and no feeling terrible afterward if you don't.

But I didn't need to since the best dramatic focus wasn't a loss here; it was the significant burn of resources and another tough choice. The characters burned through about 20 points of abilities in effort use and damage taken, and all of their remaining rests for the day were burned through recovering - except for the 10-hour one. Now we have a choice:

Rest for 10 hours and recover everything?

Or press on into the night and get distance on the bandits that are chasing them?

Again, the Cypher system is forcing me to agonize about my choices in solo play! I weighed all the bad things that could happen if they stayed, the higher-level bandits showing up for revenge, and the dangers of driving into the night in a destroyed and monster-filled darkness into uncertain terrain.

So, in essence, the fight with the coyote-don did precisely what I wanted it to do: burn resources and give the group a hard decision. That gave me more narrative punch and drama than something too hard or possibly killing one of the group. That would have given me another equally dramatic decision, but this one felt perfect. Cypher is much like OSR games in that you constantly burn limited resources, making the choices increasingly tricky. In OSR, it is the dwindling pool of spells, hit points, torches, food, and time. In Cypher, you are balancing your pools and the remaining number of rests.

5E is too easy on resources, like an MMO where you can restore party ability to parity after each fight, and 5E isn't in the same genre of game as most classic RPGs. 5E has the same design goals as 4E, to be a videogame played on the tabletop. Pathfinder 2 is an even better videogame on the tabletop since the balance is so tight. Both are good but not classic resource management games with that constant threat and tension essential to the genre.

If I am sitting here in a solo game and feeling terrible about two equally bad courses of action, that is a good game that draws me in deeply. I don't get that in 5E or many OSR games since I know how to "game" those systems. In Cypher, it is all about the burn. Making fights "too easy" by burning effort will cost you later. And in some cases, the resources you need later will be the difference between life and death.

This is also why "balance" in Cypher needs to be looked at with a broader lens than in other RPGs. The first fights in a day may be easy, and you are burning effort like dollar bills tossed in a nightclub. But at the end of the session, when no good options are left, when all that frivolous spending catches up with the group, is the time you judge the challenge of all the previous encounters.

The better of the two choices was to press on, but if they ran into anything along the way, they would be in a terrible position to deal with it. So off into the night, they drove together, not knowing what was next.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

They press on with few resources left, and the priest is still pretty banged up. They load the ATV into the back of the pickup with a makeshift ramp and head off as the sun sets. They find a ruined town with no good places to hide or rest, and through some makeshift crafting, they find a few dirty tarps to turn a carport into a shelter.

They take turns on watch and fail to craft comfortable places to sleep, so I plan to pull a GM Intrusion the next day when the fatigue kicks in and they are hindered in all further actions. They find a few old cans of food and a little water, so the night isn't all a total loss. Still, not having a place to rest and recuperate will hurt them tomorrow, and while they may be fine for a while, that fatigue will kick in, and they will be in even greater danger.

Their vehicles are still damaged, the ATV is out of ammo, and they only have two forward firing machineguns on the pickup. Tomorrow they press on and try and reach civilization.

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