One of the hardest parts of prep in D20 is getting encounters and trying to balance them. People tell me, well just balance them on the fly. Sure, that works at your table, but when you are making a system, it is not good form to just tell game runners to just wing it.
But in reality, building encounters has always been unbalanced in any system. But I do believe that BRP D100 does make it easier. Now, standard Basic Roleplaying is a pretty deadly system, and some of the offshoots, like Runequest, I have heard are even more deadly. For SagaBorn, heroes have double the normal BRP hit points, which puts it squarely in the “Heroic” tier of BRP games. With the heroes having a little leeway in health, does help encounter planning. The real bonus is that with skills and static HP, there is no level creep. Yes, skills get better. So does Armor Value (which acts as damage reduction). But there are not the massive and confusing jumps in power that are in the big dragon game.
A skill-based system with static health is so much easier to design with.
In D20, a level 8 character can have a +6 to hit. The target has an AC, lets say 15, that has to be surpassed. So if you take the average d20 roll of 11, add 6 to it, you know that they have an above average chance to hit. Ahh, but then there are spells, special abilities, advantage, etc., that all affect that roll. And that is just a 1v1 example.
I always told people with d20 just play and have fun, and you will get a feel for the game. But it really is frustrating trying to put together an encounter, let alone an adventure. Sure, there are a ton of tools out there, but that means more time spent trying to find a solution.
Now the Easy Part
In D100, we are working with percentages. Everyone understands percentages. Well, close to everyone. I can look at my group and know they all have about 75% chance of having a success in combat. I know that they are newer, so they have low AV, so hits do close to their average in damage. Setting up an encounter with 4 heroes vs. 4 baddies is pretty easy. Heroes have 75% chance of hitting and evading the first attacks. If I want a medium encounter, I drop a matching number of foes with 65% chance of doing the same. If I want a harder one, I put foes with an 85% chance. With hero HP being around 22-36 HP, I can easily look at the average damage output on foes and know how much it might damage a hero. There aren’t the big swings in health like d20 where a wizard may have 35 HP and a fighter may have 95 HP.
Now, I am also working on the Creature Compendium at the moment, as well as the general NPC guide, which can all be found on the Core System Site. The current iteration of this has been very playable in playtests, but having other input from gamemasters is always welcome. In the Creature Compendium, I list basic enemy stats that can be pulled as is and dropped in most situations. There are also quick rules for upgrading a creature to a higher tier.
A good example was a playtest I was running where the players were taking over a ship. Every NPC on the ship had the same stats, but I made one guard a champion (x2 HP and extra talents) and the Captain a Boss (x3 HP, higher dodge, a little more damage, etc). This was great, the heroes made there way through the sailors, who posed a threat, but the Boss and Champion where the real fights. I put together the successful encounter in a few minutes.
And that’s why I am so excited for people to try D100, it is great for players, and for the person who has to spend time sitting at a desk prepping for the next adventure.
Feedback
Now, as I said, the SagaBorn D100 system is still officially in Beta, so as people play and run the game, I am totally open to feedback. Just jump on our discord and let me know!
