Building Encounters
The best encounters mix tiers. A fight against a single tier feels flat — a room of Grunts is a shooting gallery, a lone Adversary is a puzzle with one solution. Combining tiers creates varied, layered fights where the players have to prioritize.
Common Encounter Shapes
Leader and followers. A Threat or Adversary supported by Grunts or a Squad. The leader is the real danger; the followers provide cover, flanking, and action economy pressure. The players must decide: thin the herd first, or go straight for the leader?
Multiple Squads. Two or three Squads approaching from different directions. No single massive threat, but the overlapping fields of fire and divided attention create sustained pressure. Good for firefights and defensive holdouts.
Grunt screen with a Threat ambush. The Grunts are the visible opposition — easy to engage, easy to drop. The Threat is hidden, waiting for the players to commit before striking from an unexpected angle. Teaches players that easy fights can be traps.
Adversary with disposable support. An elite Adversary with a Squad of Grunts acting as interference. The Grunts are there to burn the players' Actions and Reactions, not to kill them directly, so the Adversary can operate freely. The players need to clear the chaff without ignoring the real danger.
Scaling to Party Size
There is no formula for encounter balance. The system is lethal by design, and a "fair" fight is one the players chose to enter on their terms. As a rough guideline:
- A party of 4 PCs can handle 8–12 Grunts, 2 Squads of 4–5, 1–2 Threats, or 1 Adversary as a challenging encounter.
- Combining a Threat with a Squad, or an Adversary with Grunts, increases the difficulty significantly due to action economy. More enemies means more attacks the players cannot contest with Reactions.
- The most dangerous encounters are not the ones with the strongest enemies. They are the ones where the players are outnumbered, outpositioned, or surprised. Starting Momentum handles this.