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Hi, I have played a few games in the past as a player and am looking to start running a game, specifically Chaos Earth. I have several books including ones with monsters ex world book 30, but I must not have the right one for setting up encounters. How does one setup a encounter as a DM? If I have a group of 4-5 lvl1 players at my table how do I decide what types of monsters are a reasonable challenge at any given level? Obviously I would not throw a greater demon at them or have them armed with MDC weapons taking on SDC zombies, but beyond that it's really murky. Any help in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

I don't believe there are any formal rules for generating encounters. The old GM's screen has some Random Encounter tables, and the Rifts Adventure Guide has some suggestions, but it's all very subjective. It really depends on the composition of your PC party, what kind of adventure you and your players want to have, and the nature of the adventure itself (garrison duty, search and rescue mission, wilderness exploration, dungeon crawling, etc.).

For a party just starting out, it might be best to start small and go slow. Use one or two major villains/monsters (like a gang leader, necromancer, or Witchling) at the end of the adventure, and have the characters go up against a handful of weak minions/mooks until then (gang members, zombies, hang-jaw rats, etc.).

Don't be quick to dismiss pitting zombies against characters with Mega Damage weapons. Zombies can wear armor, and tend to swarm, so they can quickly deplete the party of its resources. You might also consider using a few Voodoo Xombies from Dark Conversions -- they're S.D.C., but have bio-regeneration and invulnerability to conventional weapons, similar to a Vampire.

There aren't any rules for building encounters. You might find something in one of GM's Guide, but I don't think that is the case (I do not own one, so I am guessing here, someone with one might be able to answer if they have one of these books).

As pointed out when constructing an encounter differs based on play styles and goals. An encounter should have a per-defined reason for occurring for the NPCs, unlike a chance random encounter. I would start the encounter size off at 1:1 level in terms of equal footing, and make adjustments from there.

Don't under-estimate Zombies, Mummies, or even Golems. As they all have damage modifiers that can help them survive longer than might be expected There is also the Nxla version of Zombies in WB12 that are natural MDC. Vampires and were creatures are in Rifts WB1.

Darkpoet wrote:Obviously I would not throw a greater demon at them or have them armed with MDC weapons taking on SDC zombies...

Both of those can be fun.

So I play tested some combat in several scenarios and it played out horribly . I am really having a hard time finding level appropriate encounters. Can anyone suggest some good resources for this? As is it will take me forever just to tune a single nights combat so it's reasonable for players to succeed in.

For building encounters. What are the OCC's of your characters? I am not going to throw the same encounter at a group that consists of 2 Chromium guardsman, 2 Silver Eagle pilots, and an Armored sentinel player as I would a group playing a Military specialist, an Intel-agent, 2 peacekeepers, and Field Engineer.

I am, players need to learn when to run.