6.1 Setting Up Conflicts

Every conflict needs opposed parties who want different things, and the adversity represents whatever stands in the way of the PCs and what they want. If there is no opposition, then there’s no conflict. This also means that, contrary to many other roleplaying games, if the PCs attempt something that’s not opposed by actual characters, it’s either impossible (such as summoning a nuke) or the players get to determine their PCs’ success or failure.

The following section guides you through the process of establishing adversity. You can prepare adversity before the session or make it up on the spot.

You also can determine one or more goals that can be achieved during the conflict. You can have conflicts without goals, which tend to be duels or showdowns where all that counts is beating the other side just for the glory of it. But even then, adding a goal makes the conflict that much more interesting. The creation and advanced uses of goals are explained in the separate goals chapter.

In some circumstances, you can determine that starting conditions are in place. Conditions also have their own chapter that explain how to put them to use.

Once you’ve got all of these figured out, you can play out the conflict.

I’m going to create some adversity and give you some examples of conflict actions as we go along. We’re using Zadie and Rasheem as our example characters again.

Adversity

Creating adversity is relatively easy: you pick the adversity type of the opponent, determine the stats, and finally select the adversity’s special powers, if any.

Type

The opponents of the PCs come in 3 different types: individuals, squads, and swarms.

Individuals are powerful single characters. They can range from humanoids to demon lords to steam-powered robots. They have specific powers and abilities, and each time a wound is inflicted the individual is injured (or damaged).

Squads are multiple characters that act as a group. These can be reptile assassins that always work in threes, a small pack of demonic howlers, a special assault unit, or something along those lines. Squads lose members whenever a wound is inflicted.

Swarms are huge groups of similar creatures. A swarm can be an army of humans, a massive rush of crimson wolves, or a hundred vengeful spirits. Swarms lose members even during maneuvers against them, and wounds inflicted on a swarm represent serious blows to the integrity, morale, or leaders of the swarm. Still, wounds do not usually make swarms less effective, as they can only attack in small parts of the whole anyway.

The type of the enemy makes a difference for the effect of wounds inflicted upon it, as well as for the function of certain powers. Some powers and weapon effects are more effective against one type than against another. These differences are listed with the individual powers and effects.

After the character scene between Zadie and Rasheem, the next scene (the conflict) starts in the middle of the attack on the caravan. Zadie finds herself confronted by a horde of demonic critters that look like a cross between reptiles and warhounds. There’s a whole bunch of them, and the GM determines that they count as a swarm.

We’re also facing a squad of humanoid demons as well as one individual opponent, a huge ravaging bull-like beast. But I’m going to take care of my critters here first before worrying about those.

Stats

There are several stats that the GM needs to determine for each opponent. They are:

Action Pool: This is the number of action dice with which the opposition starts the conflict, and the maximum number it can have. A rating of 5 would indicate an opponent with little stamina, while a rating of 15 is quite dangerous. I suggest using the default value of 10 most of the time.

Charge Pool: If there is a limit to the number of charge dice that this opponent can store, mark that down as the Charge Pool maximum. Most adversity will start with an empty Charge Pool, but the GM can rule otherwise if circumstances make that plausible. The default limit is 6, as with PCs.

Competence: This is the number of basic dice the adversity gets for a maneuver. Unlike the PCs' Group Competence, this number is static and doesn't change during the conflict. A rating of 3 would be average, with 1 or 2 for easy opponents and 4 to 5 or more for challenging ones.

Defense: How hard it is to injure the adversity. A rating of 1 is weak, while a rating of 4 is as high as PCs go without charge powers. A defense higher than 5 requires powers, effects and/or goals that reduce the defense to be overcome.

Strike Pool: Write down the limit of how many strike dice the adversity can roll out of the Strike Pool if it’s not the default number, which is 6.

Wound Circles: How many wounds it takes to defeat the adversity. Just having 1 wound circle indicates a quick end in sight for this opponent, while 3 or more often make for extended conflicts (depending on the defense rating). A squad should not have more wounds than the total number of units in it.

The GM picks the following stats for the demon critters: a regular Action Pool of 10, a Competence rating of 3, a defense of 2, and 3 wound circles. Every other stat is left at the default value.

Powers and Weaknesses

Assign the adversity any of the PC powers or make up your own. You can also add a weakness, which are listed at the end of the Summoning section on eidolon powers.

The GM looks over the list of powers and decides that the critters can use Leap Attack when they swarm me. Great. He also gives them Soul Resistance, which won’t impact me, since I can’t use Life Drain on swarms anyway.

The GM also decides that my critters are weak to fire, but that doesn’t do me much good right now, as I don’t have any fire-based powers. I’ll have to see if I can make use of that in some other way.

Adversity that does not have any charge powers or other ways of using charge dice does not earn any charge dice. Instead, all 6s rolled during maneuvers turn into strike dice.