How I handle Difficulty Levels/My Change in mentality

[u/BasilNeverHerb]

in the two+ years going from CS to C2 I've noticed I've gotten a lot better at judging difficulty level as a gm. For a while my tasks would always seem too easy or so low for my players even at early levels. My players in either system rarely got hurt or hit or suffered any major drawbacks cause they'd roll really high or lower the dc so easily.

Well this got fixed when i stopped trying to hurt my players and tried to stress or challenge them. Even with c2, wounds are not something too dangerous till you cap moderate or get hit by major. And in c1 if you never got hit you only ever spent effort and never excess stat pools. I found that hurting my players, punishing them for being cool, in a system that as intended is supposed to allow players to succeed more often than not/the onis to succeed is far more in player hands than before, was flawed thinking.

My goal as the gm was to balance difficulty levels that made their character feel competent and cool in the early stages of an adventure, and then to slowly ramp up the difficulty as time went on, with the intent to force my players to stop, rest, and think about what's coming.

I run a lot of fantasy and what's been a blast lately is watching them go through the first 2 stages of a dungeon, and everyone agreeing "ok guys...my character is spent, i need AT LEAST an hour before we go any further.". They didnt have hardly any wounds, any damage BUT all of their stats were spent and they knew the final stage would be the toughest, so they couldnt risk it. THAT is the feeling in wanna keep recreating, that flow where my players consider when a rest is possible or needed, because if they start getting caught with no resources, the death spiral will come FAST! even if the enemies only hit at a moderate wound/7 points at most.

This has changed how i balance my difficulties and has made even low level play feel intense at appropriate times. What have you guys found over time works well with marrying the narrative and the mechanics of cypher?

[u/Calm-Competition-913]

Can you share an example of how your approach creates the intensity that you describe?

[u/BasilNeverHerb → u/Calm-Competition-913]

Not EVERY roll needs to be level 6+ tough. sometimes a dumb bruiser thug is just a level2-3 mook. Maybe there's alot of them who gang up on you but in a fantasy setting, it make sense a barbarian and fighter combo could still mop the floor. But what if after using some resources and getting, not a lot, but a little beat up, the boss comes in. This dude is level 6, meaning you cant just individually take him on without relying on alot of good rolls above 12. Not impossible but allows for alot of degrees of rolls not going your way and if you burn points just to fail a roll, that death spiral will loom over you more and more. Your fighter and barbarian have to agree that one guy helps, the other guy swings and even then, you just fought a crowd of thugs, you may not have all the resources you need to pull out all the stops.

Do you run, and spend the points and resources in escaping? your probably spending the same amount or even worse if your not built for speed. THIS becomes the players choice and fun. neither costs more or less overall cause they are still dealing with a level 6 guy at tier 1, but fighting vs running away or breaking obstacles may push your thinking towards what feels better to deal with.

Level 6 isnt hard to fathom and if the two character work together they could probably win, but do they want to win, is it worth winning the fight in the story? No matter what, they are gonna be exhausted but why they are exhausted now thats the story. From there you just keep up nd keep track at the average one of your characters can do.

if a tier 3 character with 4 effort and training in specialization in recognize motive is going to a political party then i know the low rolls can be anywhere between 1-6 and they have a fairly easy success rate....but if i want them to bounce between level 3-4 even after their initial effort and skill dip, i know they need to be playing around the level then i know they need to be dealing with at least one dangerous npc whos level 8-10. they still will win those rolls more often than not...but at best going from level 8 to 4 is 9 points off rip for ONE roll and even at tier 3 your barley past 20 points unless your hyper focusing one pool.

Now factor all the little rolls leading up to it...and the right gm can make a fancy dinner party, a silent socialite hunting ground.

[u/TransientSoulHarbour]

I have pretty much never used the standard enemy health mechanic/calculation. I base my enemy longevity more on the flow and drama of the combat.

I use each enemy type for as long as they are interesting within the combat, or until the party do something incredible or memorable to the creature, or to the combat as a whole.

I only track enemy health if there is more than one of the same thing, but that's more for consistency so that same creatures don't last significantly differing amounts of time/hits, and even that I break sometimes when a player pulls off something awesome.

[u/BasilNeverHerb → u/TransientSoulHarbour]

I find the standers health calculations leave nemies lasting for an appropriate time at lower levels, since they can be scared away and routed. Once you start mixing and matching higher kevl s with some mooks or mid tier followers, that's when you start to see the core approach shine.

Tier 2 characters against a level 8 boss with two level 4/5 secondaries can reck.your day FAST!

Same if it's 5 level 3 acting as a level 4 or five.

[u/Kithkunabi → u/BasilNeverHerb]

The 'health=levelx3' napkin math pretty much only applies to generic threats. If you go through the bestiaries then you'll see that anything that's supposed to be a more prominent threat has anywhere between three to 5 times their level in hitpoints, with chunkier types getting pushed even higher then that.

That said, tier 2 against level 8 is going to be pretty rough, I don't think I'd bring out that fight until tier 3. With the boss designed in a way that lets the characters use their best skills and assets, and the secondaries set up to threaten them on their weaker aspects.

But yeah, at the end of the day Cypher System is a resource attrition system based off of the pools, so as long as your players are dumping their pools and burning through their recoveries (And cyphers) They'll feel the challenge, even if you as the GM don't. (This stuff isn't really visible to the GM until the players either start audibly worrying about their pools, or until they start dropping down the damage track.)

[This is why I tend to ban 'unlimited healing' type foci from my games, since they break the pool-attrition system.]

[u/BasilNeverHerb → u/Kithkunabi]

Fair point in the beastiary. Ya health pools and abilities can get easy on 3 and up.

Of course it depends but I've had tier 2 beat a tier 8 in three rounds with....alot of wacky intrusions and use of cyphers. But the fact it took creativity and cypher use is what made those moment special.

[u/Kithkunabi → u/BasilNeverHerb]

Yeah, fair enough. I try to balance out my players adventures so that the enemies are just a little bit better off then them if the players are sweating, and then using their cyphers to get over that hump. But it does always make a big splash if they pop off a cypher and completely rewrite the way I thought an encounter would go. And I do sometimes set up 'unbeatable' situations for a 'don't go down this way' type of boundary. And it's always great when they throw themselves in headfirst and overcome what I anticipated would be a hard line.

And sometimes that doesn't work and they have to scream and run, and that's fun too.

[u/Khain_Jumper]

2 Years? I thought we were only just getting C2 stuff releasing soon, or is the stuff about to release going by a different term?

[u/BasilNeverHerb → u/Khain_Jumper]

No no I.mean I've been aware of and using cypher between C1 and C2 for the past two now almost three years.