Re: [HOE] Combiners

["Kai Tave" <kaitave@harborside.com>]

>Everyone seems to think that black hats are some elite fighting force...


No, but they ARE powerful.

>95% of the Black hats are stupid thugs with big guns.  They should be
played
>like that.

Black Hats are:

1). Wasteland scum.  We all agree on that.

2). TRAINED.  Maybe not to the level of super-elite soldiers, but they do
recieve some training upon going to Denver for their chip and equipment.

3). Equipped with enough military hardware to slaughter the average
settlement to the last man.

Let's assume that your average Combine squad is 12 men, with a couple jeeps
for fast transportation.

All of those 12 men will have grenades (possibly launched), powerful
automatic weapons with lots of ammo (possible even a SAW mounted on one of
the jeeps), and some scavenged armor (probably Kevlar vests or the like).

Your average settlement is going to have a collection of various weaponry,
ranging from handguns to the occasional heavy automatic weapon.  They're not
likely to have a lot of ammo per weapon, and armor is negotiable.

Your average party faces the same problem.  Black Hats don't need to be
crack shots; they can afford to spray ammo like crazy, because they can
always get more when they go home.  Your party can't.  Same goes for
explosives.  How many grenades does your average party use in a session?
"Close" might not count in horseshoes, but it does count in grenades.

Also, even the SIMPLE things, that even stupid thugs can do, help make Black
Hats a real threat.  Taking cover, using suppressive fire, those kindsa
things.  Using even the simplest tactics can be deadly when used by a group
of folks as well-armed as the Black Hats.

The BIG difference between your average settlement and your average party is
that your party is more likely to have arcane background-based characters.
Those can generally help even the odds a bit.

 Automatons are supposed to be
>intelligent killing machines.  Give them names, make THEM smart, have them
>talk.

Nah.  Automatons are robots with zombie brains.  It mentions that they're
about as smart as a lobotomized serial killer.  'Sides, it's scarier when
you see them sliently bearing down upon you.

>    A party needs some easy wins if only to make the difficult wins more
>dramatic.  When I run, I let my party go through the black hats like
they're
>going out of style, if only to watch their pride level go up.  Then when
>something happens, like someone calls an Automaton unit in to clean up the
>problem, The mood appropriately goes from "We're bad asses!" to "uh oh.  We
>HAVE a problem".


You know what I'D use?  Regular wasteland scum, ala Fallout's raiders.
Roving bandits armed with various small arms and melee weapons and some
light armor.  Those make good cannon fodder, AND allow the PC's to scavenge
a few things after the fight as well.  Especially large groups of these
raiders can make nice, semi-frequent antagonists (an example of this is the
Road Orcs gang mentioned in Road Warriors.  Large numbers of disposable
grunts, albeit ones that own vehicles.).

--Kai Tave