I was working on the MSC Topic for the last three weeks now. Even as it is not the most interesting topic for the most of you, I don’t want to waste my work by letting it get old in a drawer of my desk. So I decided to present it ... hopefully easy-to-read.
First of all, I like to thank thequester for the original idea to have it, and Count Mohawk for controlling and confirming the calculations.
Now, what is it, the MSC?
We wanted to find out how many Body Points a Hero loses in average, if he encounters one Monster. This value, once available, is easy to use as well for groups of Heroes and Monsters, as Morcar may plan his quest in a way that every Hero has his work to do in any given room.
Now, that was the easy idea, which turned out not to be easy at all. The loss of Body Points is depending on six values: AT and DE of the Hero; AT, DE and BP of the Monster; plus the huge difference of the initiative: A wandering Monster is somewhat more dangerous than a monster waiting in a room for the Heroes.
As I want this to be a help for Dungeon planners, I calculated the Standard Deviation as well. With it, you can avoid bad surprises – if you want that.
We're talking about a huge amount of calculations, so i was reducing the work a little bit. I was calculating only these Heroes:
Nevertheless, the Calculation returned way more than 100 000 Results. Many of them included fights with more than 100 Body Points loss on Hero side, so I threw them away, too. The resulting Excel Table is more or less useable, if you want, but for me it wasn’t sufficient.
The remaining fight results look like that.
It's quite overwhelming. Too many results. But luckily 90% of the results are somewhere in the lower left corner. Still, I wanted to filter really useable results. In order to make the Standard deviation a help, I added it to the average loss. The result is the maximum BP a Hero would lose in normal circumstances. It is not a guarantee; anyway, it’s just saying that about 85% of the fights would end below that border.
The remaining data to sort out is still more than 43 000 fights. Phew. How to do that?
I could continue like that. Remove all the fights that deal too less damage to be interesting and care only for the remaining 26k fights. Crunching them down by yet other criteria. But still, the “feeling” would be missing; worse, it could entirely miss the need as this kind of filtering is without set target.
I really wanted something easy to use and to which you can connect a “feel” to.
So I decided to go another way:
I took the monsters of the American game system fighting the “Standard Hero” with AT/DE 2/2. Then I found a way to filter all the other fights in order to find a comparable threat to another Hero. This gives you really a feeling.
One Example:
A Mummy (AT/DE 3/4) with 3 Body Points seems to be quite hard and overpowered to some. The fact is, that it provides the same threat to a 4/5 Hero like an Orc did to the basic 2/2 Hero. Everybody knows what an Orc can do, everybody has a feeling for an Orc, and this table provides you with the means of translating this feeling on a secured basis to Heroes which are a lot stronger.
If you put the superzoom on the graphic above, and then you mark some of the points to see details, you see what i mean. Here it is a Fimir for a 4/5 Hero and a Goblin for a 2/2 Hero providing nearly the same threat:
Yet, to find a fitting monster for each Hero proved to be more difficult.
Mostly it was Monsters with AT-DE-BP stats of 1-10-2 or 3-1-10 or similar unusable values fitting best. So I made a little program that invented a penalty and bonus system to choose the right monster. (and i didn't want to spend complete days zooming in and out)
My criteria were:
• Less difference between AT and DE was better;
• The lower the BP, the better. (less ingame bureaucracy)
• Extra penalty if the BP were significantly higher than DE dices
• A small penalty if the standard deviation was too high
• A small bonus if the Monster had a name different from “Generic”
• A really huge penalty if the average loss of BP was too far away from the target choice
With that, not always the theoretical best fitting monster has been chosen, but instead a monster with acceptable game stats which is very close to the desired value.
Here’s an example. I was on the search for Hero/Monster pairs that would cost 2,07 Body Points in the fight. That is roughly the effect an US Gargoyle has on a Hero with 4/5.
First, I note the MSC and choose the initiative. The black/grey lines show where the software will search for matches.
Then, I receive a table with proposed monsters. If I click on them, the line gets red marked and I get additional information. I was klicking on a 3/2 Hero to find out why the Fimir was chosen amongst 12 possible alternatives.
On the Y axis, I have my virtual bonus/penalty system. On the X Axis, I have the average loss of BP – for no reason except that I didn’t want to have them boringly all on the same line. There is more than one alternative. Only three real candidates were there. If i mark the three most promising points, i see that the Fimir has been chosen not because he is best fitting, but because he has the most sympathetic values. It works!
Finally, I put together the comparison tables.
The first sheet compares American game system monster to the basic 2/2 Hero. This is useful for the “lower” batch of Monsters. Obviously, a Gargoyle is not really fitting with a basic 2/2 Hero.
This is why I did the same table again, comparing the American game system monsters to the “equipped” 4/5 Hero. (Battle Axe, Borins Armor, Helmet). This is helpful if someone wants to downgrade a Monster, or if someone is searching an alternative because HIS Heroes are even stronger than 4/5.
Sorry, in the end, it is still an Excel Table. Can't help on that!
And finally, of course, I upload the complete unfiltered mega table. I even added the calculated value helping me to find “good” Monsters. This way, anybody might see beforehand if his Uber Bonetentacle Airquake Firewater Monster is maybe just too weak for his personal group of Heroes who happen to have the Doublebattle axe and two layers of Borins Armour each - well, you can choose values fitting your personal group of heros now, no matter the equipment, and it will be a tight fight!
If you don’t like to roll for Monsters with 10 defense Dices: Never forget, you can replace 2 Monster Defence dices by 1 White Shield Dice. A Monster with 10 Defence dice might as well have 5 Hero Defence Dice for the same effect.
Have Fun
Anderas
Download:
Comparison US Monsters / Heros
Complete Table - simple
and for Excel experts: (you need to know how to use the Auto Filter...
) Complete Table - with filtering Mechanism
If someone is interested - first, put MSC in the Headline. Then filter by a hero. Finally filter the 3-4 best fitting Monsters.
You have an Hero with 5/7 AT/DE? Give him an final monster that will take away roughly 3 Body Points (so it is hard but survivable).
You enter "3" in the MSC field above the filter and maybe "<=8" in the Autofilter of "Max MSC" if you want to borderline the risk of killing your Hero (to make it hard!);
Then you filter AT by 5 and DE by 7, plus don't forget to filter by the right Initiative. If the Monster waits in a room for the Hero, set the initiative filter to "hero".
Then, you can go in the MSC filter Column and choose the top 3-4 values from the Auto Filter.
There you have some monsters that will do the work and are perfectly adapted to your Hero.
