Equipment & Power Balance - Running RPGs

Gear-centric games can be a lot of fun, but how do you judge and maintain balance in a RPG where the players can simply buy their power levels?
This is a common question for Skill-Based Sci-Fi games.

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Guest Starring The Gang

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#ttrpg #Cyberpunk #traveller

00:00 Intro
01:53 Equipment Catalogs
03:23 Talk With Your Group
03:43 Escalation
06:33 Escalation Will Happen
08:04 Always a Bigger Foe
09:14 Don't Always Have Their Gear
09:29 Legal Obstacles
10:38 Social Consequences
12:17 Suiting Up
13:25 Overall Thoughts
14:57 Closing

[gmradio]

I think the most important idea here is having an ongoing conversation between players and the GM, rather than just a session zero. I want to hear more about that.

[aliceroorback]

"Look, we can't have any firing in there. I, uh... I want you to collect magazines from everybody. "

[SSkorkowsky]

Heads up, there's a fantastic Cyberpunk Humble Bundle going on for Cyberpunk Red and Cyberpunk 2020. 23 PDF books for $25, including the Core Rulebooks, Night City Guide, the Chromebooks, and more. It ends Feb 24th, so there's not much time left.

[corvididaecorax]

One interesting way to handle part of this is to give the enemies a combat or equipment doctrine. In a world with power armor it makes perfect sense that an organization would have one member of every group of mooks that is given a clip of armor piercing rounds. They aren’t supposed to use that ammunition unless the situation calls for it, because that is expensive stuff, but they won't be completely worthless if armor does show up. Similar things can be done with scrolls, potions, grenades, or other small low use or single use items.

It does take some thinking ahead about the capabilities of the setting and the responses available from people in that setting on the GM's part. Because it feels much better if that doctrine, or at least the basic version, is in place well before it actually affects the players. That makes the world feel more real.

This then has a nice back and forth with the players, where they learn to priority target the mook with the extra equipment and then the organization responds by shifting doctrine as the players become more prominent as a threat. Natural in universe difficulty scaling.

[donnaldjohnson]

I understand that this comment is way late, and that nobody is going to see it, but here it goes. I am a hydrologic technician with the USGS, and as such, I spend much of my field days in waders, and it is just easier to leave them on when I go from site to site. At times, that travel period involves lunch at Wendy's or McDonald's etc. You get a lot of weird looks when you are in restaurants with waders on. I imagine that vac suits would be much the same.

[bohort]

what could be more fun than listing out the 487 items you always carry with you because of that one time your DM asked if your character had a lighter on its character sheet, and now it's on. no mercy

[PanzehVideos]

One of the big challenges in running Traveller is the difference between ship-scale money and personal-scale money so players will often end up kitted out incredibly powerfully because the opportunity cost is a fairly marginal upgrade to the ship.

[TranneLRK]

I once did the same thing 15:18 as a GM in my 5e Shadowrun campain. On one extreamly dangerous mission, my players got themselfs into, the employer supplied them with a verry strong military grade full body armor with radiation protection and a chemical seal, to use on the job and as part of the payment.
Afterwards I had a full party of runners with very serious protection and was very afraid, that they will try to brute force every encounter or heist. Luckily my players where to afraid of recognition and triggering special forces on their runs to do any of this, except in special circumstances where they expected dangerous enemys or they knew they coud get away with it.
In the end I was really happy giving them the armor. As they used it as a nice tool for special sircumstances which always felt really nice for them gearing up to "terminator" level.

[Soveliss]

In Metal Gear Solid 5, enemies at bases will respond to what weapons or skills you use most often. If you go for headshots, they wear helmets. If you go at night, they'll have infra-red, etc.

Makes the game very interesting

[jackhowe]

I remember when Shadowrun was 1st edition. The ref had D&D mindset, magic was all. So did most of the players (all magician types) except for one Company Man and myself, a Street Samurai. Anyway, big shadowrun, big payoff - a bunch of magic resources. We two non-magic-ers said "Hey, what about us?" The ref, distracted, handwaved a bunch of bearer credsticks in for us, with millions of nuyen. Yeah, multiple millions of nuyen. A throwaway, because he was used to D&D from the interval when no longer was gold=XP and before gold=buy magic stuff. The Company Man was from Ares, so we bought significant stock and became Stockholders. Luxury living in the arcology on permanent status. Our own herd of bodyguards. The ref would set us a mission, and we would hire our own shadowrunners to handle it for us. After just a few sessions the ref had to reboot the whole campaign, but he remembered "gritty and poor" on the second try.

[leonfire]

I remember being told that if you walk around armed people might excuse it as self defense, but if you go around with armor well you must be looking for trouble.

[ballisticus]

The imbalance between PCs is the biggest threat to the group as a whole. In our Traveller campaign, one of our crewmates has Battle Dress while the rest of us have various armor below the Combat Armor level...almost got my traveller killed in a firefight because of the escalation/balancing issue.

[rb]

I've always felt like this was an unspoken rule in these games, but it does make sense to just talk it out.

[russellparker]

Shadowrun 3e and Sniper Rifles. We drooled over them until we thought about being the n the receiving end of one. Our GM was great about this whole concept. My Ork Gun Bunny got his hands on a HMG a couple of months in… about 18 months of play went by before there was a situation where he could use it on a Run, but he kept Mathilda under his bed the whole time and dreamed of the day… 😂

[MarcGibson-xbxr]

For Cyberpunk 2020, I ended using social mores to discourage player characters from trying to walk around in their beefiest armor carrying rifles. "You're going to wear a helmet into a club? Good like trying to talk to women." But I enforced those same social rules for NPCs as well. You weren't typically going to find a gang member at the local club decked out in combat fatigues he was wearing jeans, leather, or something cool looking.

[kitsune]

In addition to the Cyberpunk HumbleBundle mentioned in Seth's comment, there's also a Classic Paranoia Bundle!

[Ron_Preisach]

My Traveller PCs are currently on Dostoevsky. Using Traveller map, I determined that it was winter in the southern hemisphere were the starport is. Each season on Dostoevsky lasts ~621 days. My idea is that every building has taken this into account and have elaborate "coat check" ante-rooms for all the stuff that the majority of visitors are likely to need to take off.

[DnDandVideoGames]

For an example for the 10:00 minute mark, where not everyone in the world are all the same feeling about weapons, just think of this: Walmart. In places like New Hampshire, there are signs that say "Firearms prohibited" on the doors of the Walmart when you walk in, whereas in Tennessee the signs say "please kindly refrain from open carrying within the store." Put that on a planetary scale, and there you go.

[IanBoyte]

I just want you to know, these are my most looked forward to videos in the TTRPG space.

[Corey.Coolidge]

Skill based games also have the drawback of characters hyper-focusing one skill or skillset. This can also throw off power balance. One character seems invincible, until anything happens that has nothing to do with their specialty and then they cry the adventure is too hard. It also leads to characters not doing anything at times that don't focus on their specialty. "I'm the sniper, not the talker, so I sit quietly as everyone makes plans with our employer." Which can give a player permission to 'check out' of certain encounter/scenes.

Great video as always.