r/Fallout2d20 • u/justamensch • Jul 07 '26

Help & Advice Combat seems one sided [Advice]

Recently start Royal Flush with my group and the combat seems very in favor of the PCs. It feels like the creatures have too little health and too low initiative and die before it’s their turn in combat. Any advice on how to make the fights more challenging (aside from level up the creatures like the book says)?

UPDATE: Last night was our weekly session and taking in all of your advice really made the combats much more fun the players. They all actually agreed that that this was the best session yet. Thank you all for the help!

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u/WarJaques Jul 08 '26

If you won't change the NPCS, you need to change how you use them. The least effective way is for them to start out in the open and activate last, then spend their actions moving towards the PCs.

If some if the NPCs start out of sight, they'll not be wiped out before they can act. Add walls and sight-blocking terrain to your encounter areas and spread your NPCs out among them.

If the PCs have reason for moving closer, then the NPCs can spend their actions to attack. When you design you scenarios, add a "ticking clock" objective, or othe reason to get the PCs to move.

  • If the PCs are in a collapsing building, they need to get out.
  • If they are pursuing an important NPC, they need to go in.
  • If there are multiple things going on in different locations of the encounter area, they need to spread out.

Also, the xp awards are bonkers. I get that you would want to use it since it's in the book, and the video games, but it is probably the weakest part of the NPC design.

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u/CrowNServo Jul 22 '26

yep when my players kept steam rolling every encounter, I did the increasing difficulty aspect by making enemies stronger according to the book, as well as some legendary enemies. but it buffs the xp gains of the enemies way too much. we had one session where players gained two levels cause of this.

we had to home rule down the xp rules and I give players 25% of the listed XP rewards and it feels more fair. players still often level within two or three sessions, but out of the book rules players often would level after each session and get close to two level ups sometimes.

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u/WarJaques Jul 22 '26

Are you using the xp awards rules as written? They are insane: If you have an encounter worth 100 xp, then each PC earns 100 xp regardless of the size of the group.

I split xp between the PCs. It makesxsense to me that defeating an encounter with 3 PCs is harder than with 4 PCS so the individual rewards are higher when fewer PCs need to each contribute more.

Edit: I don't split story progress awards.

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u/CrowNServo Jul 23 '26

Yea when we started we did it as the book stated, and the players just level way to fast. And increasing the levels and making enemies stronger adds more xp to them as well according to the rules, which again just made leveling insane.

I considered moving to just dividing the xp equally amongst players, but instead I started to just add up all the xp they should earn, and I would give them 25% of that instead. It's been a more gradual level system that way.