There's been a lot of chatter about how combat in Mythic Bastionland can sometimes feel a bit too easy - especially when you have a larger group of 4+ knights. In a mythical setting like this, you want some entities that feel seriously powerful, mythic threats that can single-handedly destroy an entire legion on their own. Sadly, some Myths that seem like they should deliver that feeling don't measure up.
This is something D&D-style games have always struggled with. Strength In Numbers is so powerful that all too often, the dragon you hoped would feel like a mythic beast ends up being a pathetic worm, barely able to land a hit as the players bully it with their superior action economy. Unfortunately Mythic Bastionland can fall into this problem too, with some solo mythic enemies Impaired and Repelled and Deny'd until they die without ever being able to do anything.
Chris McDowall has already posted some ideas on how to fix this, but I personally don't think they completely solve the problem for me. Here's the house rules I'm going to try to boost up some of these major enemies.
House rule 1: Giant Creatures Count as Warbands
Here's a simple one from Mausritter: Giant creatures count as warbands. That is: They cannot be damaged except by Blast attacks, other warbands, or a suitably large-scale effect.
If they don't already have a good blast attack in their stats, you can also give them this: Their attacks against individual creatures gain Blast and deal +d12 damage.
This should boost your giant myths up to make them as imposing as they should be. The Knights can still damage the enemy by using Smite to give their attacks Blast, but it'll be much tougher for them to handle. It encourages them to go recruit help to take down that mythic beast.
House rule 2: Desperate Gambits
Against powerful enemies, you must pay an extra cost to use gambits other than Bolster or Move. Choose one:
- Sacrifice an item or ally.
- Lose points in a Virtue.
- A narrative consequence of similar weight.
Use this for any threat that needs to feel mighty, or for desperate situations - like an individual knight fighting a warband. You can ask the players to describe what their knight is doing to trigger this gambit, and set the cost to something that makes sense for their action. Here are some examples of using this in practice:
- Stick your spear between The Wyvern's jaws to Impair its attack (losing the spear).
- Lose d6 VIG to Stop The Boar from moving as it charges towards you.
- Repel The Hound, at the cost of being infected by The Hound Within.
As always, follow the action procedure and make the cost clear before the player commits to their action. If the players have gained some major advantage in the fight, you can let them do the gambit without paying a cost.
I like this solution because it's simple, powerful, and supports the fiction. It's easy to scale up or down for more serious situations, and adjust as the battle goes on. Maybe sticking a spear in the Wyvern's mouth worked the first time, but now it's ready for you. If you want to Impair it again, you'll have to hold it back its jaws with your hands alone and lose d8 vigor.
House rule 3: Boosting solo enemy stats
Even with both of the above changes, you may find some enemies just need a little more bite in their actual statblocks. Check out The Lich:
He tries to hit you with a d10 stick. No ranged option. The players can just deny, repell or impair him all day, so there's no chance of him even scratching them. To me, that doesn't feel right - I mean, this is The Lich. This should be an unstoppable force representing the inevitable end of all things, a reckoning upon the land, the personification of death. It's totally fine for some enemies to be pathetic, but it doesn't feel like the numbers line up with the fiction for some of these myths.
One possible reason for this: It feels like enemy stats may have been calculated using the numbers from Electric Bastionland - even though the Knights are a lot more powerful than the PC's in that game. This post explains how to make enemies in Electric Bastionland, and the guidelines seem to closely match the enemies you'll face in Mythic Bastionland. That might explain why some enemies feel a bit weak.
I've done a bunch of testing, and here's what I believe a solo enemy needs to be able to stand up to a company of knights. X here means the number of players. So, if you have 4 players, VIG 3X means 12 Vigor. 3X+4 would be 16. These will hopefully give you a bit of an idea of what an easy, moderate or difficult threat looks like.
Minor Threat
A basic solo enemy that can survive long enough to take 0-1 actions and may scratch some knights.
VIG 3X, GD 3X
Ranged blast (2d6 blast) or melee (Xd6 long) or slam (d4 blast).Moderate Threat
A meaningful solo enemy that can survive to take 1-2 actions and may injure some knights.
VIG 3X+4, GD 3X+2
A2 (Mail, helm)
Ranged blast (2d8 blast) or melee (Xd8 long) or slam (d6 blast).Major Threat
A serious solo enemy that can survive to take 2-3 actions and may mortally wound or (rarely) kill some knights.
VIG 3X+8, GD 3X+4
A3 (Plate, mail, helm)
Ranged blast (2d10 blast) or melee (Xd10 long) or slam (d8 blast).
You'll notice that attacks like Xd8 (1 d8 per player) sound wildly overpowered compared to the enemies in the book - but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Every knight can have 1-4 armour, so up to half the damage results do nothing. Then, each knight can Deny, so the few rolls that do damage them can just be cancelled. This all adds up to a simple rule of thumb: A solo enemy needs to roll about 1 dice per player to have any chance of injuring a knight.
I tested a bunch of mock combats against these statblocks with fake players who just charged in and used Smite as much as possible. No tactics or clever plans. Even my basic players usually came out victorious against all 3 of these enemies. So, my personal lesson is that it's ok to go hard - knights are incredibly powerful. These stats at least give your enemies a chance to deal some damage and make your players work for it. You can easily take these stat blocks and add special abilities or other bonuses on top to make your enemies distinct.
Specific Myth Suggestions
Here are some specific myths, beefed up to be more of a threat.
The LichVIG 3X, CLA 12, SPI 16, 3XGD
A2, A4 vs the living (ancient mail and helm)
Black Wind (d10 blast, all hit it grow 1 age older) or Kingstaff (Xd10).
For a serious challenge, give him a court of 1 undead knight per player instead of just 1.
The Demon, Ul-Huroc, Writher Within
VIG 3X+4, CLA 15, SPI 15, 3X+2GD
A4, bypassed by weapons drenched in Seerblood (twisted hide)
Rip (d6) and tear (d8) and lash (d10) and gore (d12)At the end of each of their turns, locks eyes with one knight: They become possessed and follow the demon's orders until it is slain.
The Spider, Lord of Hunters, Spinjack
VIG 3X+8, CLA 19, SPI 9, 3X+4GDA3 (bristly carapace)
Bite (Xd12, wound causes instant paralysis lasting until sunrise) or Web (2d8 blast, all hit are trapped) or Slam (d8 blast).Wants a good hunt. Retreats if Wounded.
Running High-Impact Enemies
Once you've boosted up your enemies like this, here's how I would run them in combat:
- When the PC's begin their turn, warn them what the enemy is about to do.
- If the PC's end their turn and they haven't stopped it, deliver on your threat.
Let's use this ability I added to the Lich as an example:
Black Wind (d10 blast, all hit it grow 1 age older)
Explicitly foreshadow this on the players turn. "You see The Lich conjuring a terrible black wind. Everything it touches seems to age and crumble, and it's about to blast through this whole room. What do you do?" I would even be so explicit as to say - "If this wind touches you, it'll deal 1d10 damage and you'll grow 1 age older."
Now it's up to the PC's to decide what to do with that information. Do they flee? Take cover from the wind so it won't touch them? Rush in and attack the Lich anyway? Whatever they choose, they knew the risks, so it's on their head. Once it gets to the Lich's turn, if he hasn't been stopped, deliver on your threat.
Giving the players full information is critical to running a high-impact enemy without making it feel unfair. The players need to know what they're up against and how much of a threat it is to make real decisions. Because they've been warned and had a full turn to react however they want to, it feels a lot more fair when the enemy does something terrifying. They knew the risks, they made their decisions, and now they're facing the consequences of those decisions.
Your turn is your saving throw
In Mythic Bastionland, the knights go first by default. They get a full round of actions to trip the enemy over, impair it, kick sand in its face, and generally just stop it from doing anything. So if it gets to the enemy's turn and it's still active, in range and able to fight, the players have already failed their saving throw. Deliver on your threat with full force.
For this reason, don't make enemy abilities conditional on saving throws or mortal wounds or anything like that. It's up to the players to use their actions to stop the enemy from doing whatever terrible thing they're about to do. Based on their actions, you can give them a save or prevent the effect entirely - but you don't need to build failure into the ability itself. If they didn't stop it, it just happens.
Also, remind your players that they can use their turn to flee if they need to! That's a critical part of sandbox play too. They should always have the option to retreat if a threat is too tough for them. I would be generous with retreats, and let them easily escape in most situations.
A final note on "Balance Doesn't Matter"
People often say "Balance doesn't matter" for games like this - but I think it's worth drilling down on what that actually means. To me it really means this:
In a sandbox game like Mythic Bastionland, you want a wide range of threats. Rather than every encounter being perfectly calculated to meet the company's level, you want the world to have everything from complete pushovers, all the way up to unstoppable enemies. If you carefully balance your world to always give the players challenging encounters that match their capabilities, that's actually a net negative for the game.
If you play Elden Ring you'll see this in action. Right in the first area you get the Wandering Nobles, who can barely slap at you and die instantly if you breathe on them. Then right next to them is the Tree Sentinel, an overpowered enemy that's way beyond anything a normal player is meant to handle in the early game.
Not only does it add a huge amount of texture to the world, it also lets players dynamically choose their own difficulty. They can choose what threats they want to go up against and how tough they want things to be. It pushes them to explore, scout, and make interesting decisions about what they want to engage with. When a threat is too tough for them to beat in a straight fight, it pushes them to engage with the other systems - seeking seers to get advice on hidden weaknesses, using clever tactics, or recruiting a warband to give them the edge in combat. When a threat is easy, that lets them celebrate and feel how powerful they are.
All this is to say: "Balance Doesn't Matter" does not mean it's ok for everything in the world to be a complete pushover that the players can blast through with no challenge at all. A world like that starts to feel like wet cardboard. There's no texture, and few interesting decisions. It's bad for everything to be precisely calculated to the party's level, but it's also bad for everything to be weak.
A better way to phrase this truism might be: "The world isn't balanced for your level." You don't want to spend time carefully considering your players resources and abilities to make sure every enemy they face is a tough-but-fair challenge. If the players get a warband, they shouldn't suddenly start only encountering warband-level enemies. Instead, you only need to worry about 2 things:
1. Make a wide range of threats. From terrifying monsters that the players have no hope against, all the way down to weird little gremlins that pose no threat at all. Follow the fiction and set the threat level based on what the enemy is - not what the players can do.
2. Give your players information. Foreshadow threats and make it clear what they're up against before they act. Let them know how tough things are so that they can make informed decisions. Always let them know they can flee.
If you do both these things, the players can take balance into their own hands, which the most satisfying experience of all. Hopefully these house rules will help you do that!
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