Tiering.

[Grimace]

Ooo...Ooo....my turn!

And the answer, Bob, is NO!

Actually, let me elucidate.

The situation you find yourself in, garkhal is different than what most of us deal with. As with others, I usually advance my NPCs, not necessarily tier them, as you are mentioning. The way you have to deal with people, you're basically stuck having to do something like tiering, and the way you do it (the average) is probably the best way.

When I was running my long term campaign (fantasy, but still using D6), when a player character died, I had the new character start out not at the beginning, but at an advanced stage. I dropped the highest and lowest PCs, and then went with an average of the PCs who were left. You might do the same thing. So in the above example you gave: 3-5's, 2-3's, 1-8, and 1-12, I would drop the 12 and one of the threes. That gives you 3-5's, 1-3, and 1-8. Total of 26. Divide by 5, and you get a tier of 5. That gives you a baddie that is about equal or better than the majority of the group, but not so powerful that he'll smite the 2-3's with but a glance. Granted, you'll have to think of crafty things to keep him alive against the 12, but that's why bad guys have gadgets and henchmen and fortresses and stuff like that.

In fact, I think doing a simple chart like +2D to primary skill and three secondaries at +1D each is too vanilla for something like coming up with "good" bad guys. Your handy dandy chart should have things like followers, ships, organizations, pure intimdation, AND increased skills to give a really rounded NPC baddies. If you're not sure what I mean by "pure intimidation", just take a look at Vader, or anyone else you see in a movie where the mere presence of them makes people gulp with anxiety or want to be in another room entirely. Sometimes skill is overrated, and mere story points do a better job of making someone bad seem really rotten. Also remember that not every villian is a mastermind or exceptionally skilled, some just have money and can hire multitudes of thugs, or build armies of robots, or whatever. Some might even be kind of nerdy, and attack from the Holonet to clobber the funds of the heroes and ransack minor planetary banks to give them more wealth and power...all the while the "evil mastermind" is some nerdy, bug eyed alien who couldn't press 50 pounds much less fire a blaster at anything.

Also, if you toss the high/low and keep your villian slightly lower, you don't have to worry about fudging, and can keep your rolls exactly where they are. You'll just have to be more crafty as a GM so you can outthink the higher tiered PCs. As far as having the baddie know who of the PCs is more of a threat, I think that should be done, BUT only to the point of taking NPC knowledge of what is witnessed. Meaning, if you have a Tier 12 PC, but that guy is a pilot, and not a roughneck blaster toter, and you have a Tier 5 guy who is Rambo, chances are the Tier 5 baddie will view the Rambo guy (5) as more of a threat than the Pilot guy (12). Now, if the baddies escapes, and gets followed endlessly by the Pilot, only to have to face the whole gang again, the baddie might then realize that if he wants to escape to regroup his forces, he'll have to eliminate the Pilot (12) instead of Rambo (5) because now the Pilot is more of a threat to the baddie's long term survival.

So basically what I'm saying, is don't simply assume the bad guy would attack the 12 first, then the 8, and so on down the list. The bad guy should be smart enough to recognize threats and attempt to neutralize those threats, but he won't just automatically KNOW who is the more dangerous overall until the PCs exhibit the traits that pose a danger to the NPC.

If you could, I would suggest getting away from Tiers and resorting to more of a "Veteran Point" method, which is what I used in my fantasy game. I know you may be stuck with tiers, as that is what Sparks uses, so you may not have a choice. Veteran Points work with this system a lot better, as it is an actual count of Character Points that the PC has received over the course of its existance. That way you can simply allocate a percentage of average Veteran Points to the bad guy and "whammo" a bad guy who can stand up to the group.

[garhkal]

Kind of hard to 'get away' from it, as it is a long time established rule for Sparks. But one thing i have been doing, in nearly all my modules, is actually placing specific tiering to the npcs in it, and on rare occasions, to the skill roll needed for success at XYZ...
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Jedi Skyler]

[KageRyu]

[KageRyu]

Very well written post Grimace, especially:

[Firehawk0220]

I don't really do it. My players have been gaming with me long enough to know where their limitations are and I know where my NPC's need to be to beat them or at least challenge them.

Sometimes the players make meat pudding out of an NPC, and sometimes they get their asses handed to them. Even if the stats are skewed to one side or the other. That's why dice make the game interesting. You never really know how it might play out.