Level 1 encounter budget¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
How to size a fight for a Level 1 party when you cannot know the party. This note gives a party-agnostic recipe, the corrected Level 1 numbers behind it, and the method used to derive them. All coefficients are marked [PLAYTEST]: they were tuned in simulation against a benchmark party and want confirmation at a live table.
The problem: you never control the party¶
An encounter cannot depend on the classes that show up, because the designer never controls them. A four-Character party can field four Knights, four Squires, or any mix, and the raw combat weight swings enormously. Four Knights roll a combined Pool near 16 dice behind a deep wall of Retainers. Four Errants roll four fragile dice that grow, with no Company at all. Four Chancellors roll near 28 dice behind twenty-four bodies. A fixed pile of monsters that is fair for one of those is a joke or a massacre for another.
Almost all of that swing, though, collapses into two numbers a GM can count in ten seconds at the table, whatever the classes are.
The two numbers¶
Party Pool. The total dice the party rolls in a round, summed across every Character and their Companies. This is the party's kill clock: how fast enemy Hit Points disappear. Count each Character's personal die plus one die per living Retainer, and add them up.
Party Depth. The total effective Hit Points an enemy must remove to drop the whole party. Sum every Character's Card plus every Retainer's Hit Points, because damage lands on the Company first (core-rules, Part Ten). This is how much killing the enemy has to do to win, and it is where composition bites hardest.
The benchmark party used throughout this note and in the 08-adventures encounters is Knight, Skirmisher, Ranger, Witch at Level 1. It fields Pool 14 and Depth 43 (23 across four Cards, 20 across ten Retainers). It is a yardstick for writing concrete numbers, not an assumption any encounter depends on.
The recipe¶
Build the enemy side against Party Pool:
- Enemy Hit Points ≈ coefficient × Party Pool. The coefficient sets fight length. See the table below.
- Enemy dice ≈ 1.2 to 1.4 × Party Pool. Weight them mostly to weak Tiers with a couple of stronger bodies and at most one leader.
Enemy dice run above the party's on purpose. Monsters roll once, with no push, no Blitz, and no Combos (core-rules, Part Fourteen), so a monster die is worth noticeably less than a Character-and-Company die of the same range. Matching raw die counts leaves the enemy limp. Out-numbering or out-Tiering the party's die count is how a single-roll side stays dangerous.
The corrected Level 1 coefficients [PLAYTEST]¶
| Feel | Enemy HP | Rounds | What the party pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisk, challenging | ~1.8 × Pool | 3 to 4 | one or two Retainers, a Life only rarely |
| Hard | ~2.3 × Pool | 5 to 6 | two or three Retainers, a Life sometimes |
| Boss-length grind | ~3.0 × Pool | 7 or more | several Retainers, a Life likely |
At Pool 14 that is roughly 25, 32, and 42 Hit Points. The three 08-adventures encounters all sit near 27, the low end, because they are the first fights a table will run.
The coefficient rises with level. At Level 1 the Pool is nearly all narrow dice: only personal dice hit on 4-6, every Shieldbearer and Archer hits on 6 alone, and most Retainers on 5-6. The party clears Hit Points slowly, so a little enemy Hit Points goes a long way. As parties level and their dice widen (Bond 2 Sharper Edge, second personal dice, class unlocks), they clear faster and the same fight length needs more enemy Hit Points per Pool die. Treat these numbers as the Level 1 anchor, not a constant.
The Depth dial: shallow versus deep parties¶
Party Pool sets the recipe, but Party Depth decides how the fight kills. The lever is the enemy's reach: Archers at Range 8 and Speed-7 flankers land straight on exposed Cards, while a slow melee wave has to grind through the Company first.
- Shallow, Company-light party (Errant or Squire heavy, low Depth): cut the ranged and fast bodies. Range 8 and Speed 7 reach unprotected Cards and can spike that party into a real wipe. Keep the threat in a slow melee wave they can meet head-on.
- Deep, shield-rich party (Knight or Chancellor heavy, high Depth): add reach. Their whole defense is the Company screen, so the bodies that matter are the ones built to get past it.
Where the recipe breaks¶
No formula survives the true edge cases, and the GM guidance should say so plainly rather than pretend the dial covers everyone.
- Four Squires field no attack Pool of their own at all; they assist hosts and have no hosts. Not a real adventuring party, but worth naming.
- Four Errants are four fragile burst-damage dice with no Company; their effective Depth is just four Cards. Fights end fast and swing hard. Size down and expect variance.
- Four Chancellors carry enormous Depth behind twenty-four bodies; a normal fight barely scratches them. Size up and add reach.
For these, count the two numbers and trust them over any body-count intuition, then adjust by feel.
How these numbers were derived¶
The coefficients came from a Monte Carlo of the engine run against the benchmark four: mixed-range Pools, the full bank-and-push loop with a myopic push policy (push while the chance of a bust times the banked pile stays below the expected new hits), Blitz chains, Company-soaks-first, monsters rolling once, Rend, Piercing, a light Guard model, the Unaware surprise strike, and an engagement schedule for Range and Speed. Twenty thousand trials per build.
Two limitations bound the results, and they pull in opposite directions.
- The simulation under-models the party: no Ranger Focus, no Witch Mana or whip Slow, no Knight Oaths or Rally, no Intercept, only a light Guard model, and Combos flattened to a plain plus-one. Real players clear faster and survive more, so simulated rounds and Fall rates are an upper bound on difficulty.
- It under-models enemy cunning: no focus fire, no disarming an Archer, no coordinated back-line dive beyond a simple targeting rule. Real GMs push harder.
Treat the figures as directional, not precise. The live playtest is what turns these coefficients from calibrated guesses into numbers.
The frame that matters most¶
In Hynafol a Character who Falls spends a Life, not the fight (core-rules, Part Twelve). A fight the party wins while one Character Falls is a success with a cost, not a defeat. The real currency of a Level 1 challenge is Retainers lost, Lives spent, and rounds endured, not the win or loss line, which for a competent party at these budgets is almost always a win. Size fights to bleed the party, not to end them.