OBSTACLES AND GIMMICKS

You may add extra complexity to your battles by including:

• Defenders. Some creatures might completely shield an ally from attacks; characters must either defeat these defenders or find a way to circumvent them (probably through a Clock of some kind, generally eight to ten sections).
• Limited options. Some adversaries might only be susceptible to specific actions until the heroes manage to alter the situation in some way.
• Gimmicks. Some battles might require characters to perform actions in a certain order or use specific damage types to disable their enemies' most powerful attacks. For instance, a golem might be unable to unleash its lightning beam if struck by bolt damage while charging its elemental coils.
• Waves. This is a common situation in video games. Each wave consists of a group of about three to five enemies; defeating one wave causes the following wave to arrive on the scene, turning the battle into a war of attrition. If you want to make things easier for the Player Characters, give them a round to regroup and recover between each of the waves.
• Reinforcements. You might have new enemies join the battle at the end of each round. These enemies should have simple attacks and be relatively easy to defeat. You should establish a limit beyond which no new enemies will be added to the scene until some have been defeated.

Regardless of which options you choose, you should design battles to challenge the heroes' ability to work as a team: don't shut down any of their Skills completely, but rather push them towards experimenting with what their characters can do in ways that are different from the strategies they previously adopted.

Philip Forlenza (Order #)