Monsters and enemies in Final Fantasy games and other turned based games are often random, or unplanned. Role playing games on the other hand experience a far less plethora of them - however in the ZODIAC RPG, we are not limited to 20 levels or so like so many games in the past, nor are we awarded gobs of role playing experience or have systems that cater to such gaming styles. (such as White Wolf gaming)
No, in the ZODIAC system, it's turn based emulation of the consoles, where you get battles, and lots of them! I can imagine in the early levels of the game, you can expect to fly through three , four or more combats a gaming session. In fact, starting at level 1 sounds even implausible, many Final Fantasies start the characters at level 10!
So how many encounters do you expect to see a session? I see ten being a good number, especially if there's going to be a lot of fighting. After all, when you play a turn based RPG you wanna crunch baddies with your awesome techs and team tactics.
Consider this - you can make one good combat of really hard enemies which can wipe your party very easily. It all falls to how careful the game master is, and if he wants to smash you with status effects that will incapacitate you instantly and entirely too accurately in some instances. (Many characters do not take extremely high Vitality and Spirit simultaneously, so suffering status effects from even weak status touch is easy to take). But then if you have few encounters in a game, you can go gung-ho and smash out a whole bunch of Techs, wasting MP willy nilly on every encounter (thusly making techs far stronger than they really should be) and then spamming Chakra out of combat (if your GM allows such a thing to be done in repetition) until everyone is fresh for the next battle.
This is bad! It completely breaks the chain, or FEEL of how the game should probably be played. But I'll get into Chakra later, on another thread.
ZODIAC, like all turn-based RPGS works off the concept of 'allocation of resources'. In this case, it is HP, MP, and items which restore such resources. Characters shouldn't be blowing through all of their MP for the 'one fight of the game session' .. they should be conserving their techniques (typically) and even relying on normal attacks for a bunch of combats, shrewdly using their resources until they need to open up with the proverbial 'big guns'.. or fight those irritatingly hard-to-hit monsters, or even the elemental absorbant, physically resistant enemies that can only take damage from one element! Herein lies the planning a good GM must cope with.
'How many battles can I plan before the party wipes?' There are no save points in ZODIAC (unless you are really gunning for the console feel and describe little action bars, save points and the like where the party can restore themselves over a course of the game) so it takes more careful planning on the GMs part, and more thoughtfulness of one's own mortality on the player's part. Wiping the party doesn't mean you can restart at the last save..it can very often mean game over!
Smart players will know when to run and recoup. Dumb ones will get wiped. <— Not the best thinking, but in this case you're not going to get many rewards in ZODIAC if you don't. You need that XP to advance, and by nature of the system and genre of play, you want to 'push for that next level' as much as possible. Fortunately the GM can reign it in and make more story elements like a traditional RPG (phew! Damn my PCs have been grinding on random mobs and are now level 50, when I needed them only level 30! Heh, this won't happen.) so that each combat is a challenge.
Ideas for this is to set a number of random encounters in a given area, so they won't just attempt to run around and get into fights. (that would break story believability anyhow)
Example: Orcish Enclave — 3 Areas. Entrance chambers (up to 8 random encounters), Catacombs (3 traps, 14 random encounters in various rooms and passageways), Orc warleader chamber (No random encounters, 3 encounter streak — Lieutenant and 2 troops, General and 3 troops, Warleader and bodyguards)
These monsters can be easily leveled for the party, and will allow them to go through as fast or slow as they can. Some traps and chests on the map would do well for such a classic 'slay the monsters' encounter. Measuring the amount of XP each encounter will get is a good idea, you don't want your party TOO strong by the end of the mission.. and you don't want them completely out of items.. (or do you? That could make the final encounter that much harder! All it takes is some planning..)
Just some food for thought.
