A Holiday Get-Together: Building An Untold Encounter

Well, as Jennifer so clearly pointed out, I've been doing a lot of character builds lately. And apparently so much so, that I've run that topic into the ground. So, we're going to change gears a bit and go to a different subject: Encounters. As a GM, I understand that encounters make or break a campaign. If they become too numerous or too large, players may become frustrated. If they are too far between, the players may become bored. So, you need to strike the right balance. Are you running a meat grinder? Or a puzzle solver? But this post isn't going to cover the quantity of encouters in a campaign, as that can be a fluid number. Instead, we're going to tackle the quality of encounters.

Quality encounters can be difficult, as you REALLY have to plan for them. But, luckily with Untold, planning is very easy. I would consider most quality encounters to consist mostly of minions, reinforced by complimenting powers. A quality encouter should also pose a definite threat to the Characters. This doesn't mean that it should a TPK, but rather should be capable of inflicting significant damage on the party. So, bearing this in mind, let's start to build our encounter.

First, let me preface this with saying that you should work with minions and powers you are comfortable with. You need to be intimately familiar with the abilities of minions and powers that you'll be employing, to help answer any question and clear up any problems that your players might possibly encounter. For me, I am most comfortable working with Flux Horrors and Flux Horror powers. In almost every campaign, I employ atleast one major section with Flux, because I love the Lovecraftian feel of Flux Horrors. But I strongly encourage you to use the minion cards that you like.

Alright, so let's take a look at the minions I'm going to be working with are going to be Flux Horrors. This encounter is going to be a major encounter, but not the final one. This is actually intended to be an early boss fight for characters starting at 50 UP. Now, as cannon fodder, we're going to be using four Infested Churls. When compared to other minions, especially other Flux Horrors, Infested Churls are really minor annoyances. However, if left unchecked, minor annoyances can become game changers. Remember, even a pawn can capture a king. The next minion we're going to be using is one of my favorites, the Howling Horror, and we'll be using three of these. Howling Horrors can be really powerful, and very obnoxious. They inflict the Despair bane, but when stacked, Despair can become Insane in one round. I'm going to bolster them a little, by giving them all the Horrible Foes card. Horrible Foes inflicts a penalty equal to the cards MAG to any rolls made by non-Externals. This can be a real pain. Plus, they give you a +4 Initiative, which can give you a definite edge.

Now, we're going to move on to the heavy hitters. We're going to have two real powerhouses in this encounter. A summoned Rift Ripper, which is trouble for anybody. Rift Rippers have the ability to rip chunks of MAG out of its victims, in the neighborhood of 32 MAG per round. If that wasn't bad enough, I'm throwing on a Flux Warp 2 and an Insane Aura 2. Flux Warp can inflict Impaired, and Insane Aura drains Mind boost and can drive a target Insane. Rift Rippers are just bad news. But the real threat in this encounter is going a Weaver of Despair. Weavers are really unsuspecting minions at first glance. They have the IP: Dread Fate, which can either drain a Character or inflict Despair-Insane on a target. I prefer the second ability, but its a personal preference. However (and this may be a typo), the boost is for Body. Well, whatever. Weavers are real dark horses, because once they get going, they don't stop. And they are difficult to kill. I'm going to reinforce this Weaver with Feed on Chaos. Feed on Chaos will provide a very problematic healing ability. I'm also going to throw in the Hot Swap Feed on Sanity which has a similar ability. Finally, we're also going to use the Hot Swap Eye of the Beyond, to reinforce the Weavers IP. So, we have two big baddies. The Rift Ripper is very much the offensive beast, but the Weaver allows the GM some battlefield control (by creating chaos, ironically). The Ripper is the blunt hammer meant to shatter a party physical. But the Weaver is meant to break the party's moral.

To wrap this up, this encounter would go pretty rough. With good leadership and decent rolls, a party could probably carve through this encounter and come out relatively okay. Less experienced or more blunt characters might have a tough go of things. But keep in mind this is just an early boss fight. A turning point in the plot line. But it does what it is required to do, which is instill fear and worry in the Characters for the next encounter. And they say GM's can't have fun! I guess my final comments would be to really put some thought in your encounters, atleast your major ones, like this. Not every encounter needs this much planning and forethought. Random Encounter #37, with a pair of Crag Crawlers and an Apoc Mountain Goat doesn't need a lot of planning. But on the other hand, it took me all of five minutes to throw that encounter together.

So, that'll wrap it up for this week. Not sure what we'll tackle next week. Once again, taking suggestions. If you liked this installment, please let me know. I would love to more in the future. Until next time, thanks for reading and have fun!