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bug: Pages numbered correctly in books/core

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Drew Malzahn
2026-06-06 22:44:37 +00:00
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books/core/293.html
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/book-page.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/book-page.css">
<h1>DESIGNING BATTLES</h1>
<p>As the Game Master, your role is to create battles that challenge the Player Characters and enrich the story. The following pages will provide you with a variety of tools and guidelines that will help with the mechanical side — but first, there are a few important points you should try to remember.</p>
<h2>HOW MANY BATTLES?</h2>
<p>In Fabula Ultima, battles will often take a heavy toll on the characters' resources. On average, a group of Player Characters can face any one of the following before needing to rest or recharge Inventory Points:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Relevant battles.</strong> A battle takes place when two sides are at odds and resort to violence in order to achieve their goals. Battles should be meaningful: they should build upon what previously happened in the story, add new interesting characters or plot elements and move things forward in some important way.</li>
<li><strong>People, not numbers.</strong> Characters are more than their stats. They have emotions, a personality, their own lives and goals — when they fight, they do so for a reason. Even the ones that aren't the focus of your story should be treated as more than disposable, faceless pawns.</li>
<li><strong>More than the sum of its parts.</strong> There are a variety of elements that can alter the threat posed by a situation — the options available to Player Characters, for instance, or the particular synergy between two monsters. Once you add the environment, the whim of the dice and the occasional use of Ritual magic into the mix, you can see that there is no way to foresee the outcome of a battle — and that’s okay. Being the GM has nothing to do with being “in control”, but rather with your ability to react to unexpected situations. Battles are just like that — sometimes, things will get weird, or the heroes will steamroll their foe. Don’t sweat it too much.</li>
<li><strong>Balance.</strong> While the advice in the coming pages is geared towards building a somewhat balanced challenge, remember that there’s nothing wrong with an easy battle every once in a while, or the occasional super-hard boss fight. Just don’t make those the norm, or they'll lose their charm!</li>
<li>Three easy battles.</li>
<li>Two normal battles, or one normal battle and one easy battle.</li>
<li>One hard battle.</li>
</ul>
<p>See the next page for easy, normal, and hard battles.</p>
<p>More importantly, respect the Players' expectations and what you discussed during session zero (see page 147), and design battles in accordance with what you agreed upon in terms of challenge and complexity.</p>
<h2>PARTY LEVEL AND ENEMY LEVELS</h2>
<p>When designing a battle, you should start by considering which Player Characters are present on the scene and calculating their Party Level.</p>
<p>The Party Level is equal to the highest character level among the Player Characters that will take part in the battle. For instance, a group that includes two level 10 PCs and one level 12 PC will have a Party Level of 12.</p>
<h3>Enemy Level Guidelines</h3>
<p>If an enemy's level is... Then that enemy...</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Take your time.</strong> When the heroes decide to fight an enemy for which you don’t have any combat stats ready, it’s perfectly okay to pause the game and take your time to design those creatures. The rules on page 302 have been designed specifically to make this process as smooth and fast as possible; once you have familiarized yourself with them, creating new adversaries will only take a few minutes.</li>
<li><strong>Lower than the Party Level:</strong> Is probably too weak.</li>
<li><strong>Within 5 levels of the Party Level:</strong> Should make for an easy fight.</li>
<li><strong>Within 10 levels of the Party Level:</strong> Should make for a challenging fight.</li>
<li><strong>Greater than the Party Level by 11+:</strong> Is probably too strong.</li>
</ul>
<p>The creature profiles in the Bestiary (page 319) are organized in five-level increments, which should give a good range of enemies for your battles.</p>
<p>And there’s always the Bestiary, of course!</p>
<div>Philip Forlenza (Order #)</div>
<p>Philip Forlenza (Order #)</p>