The Tao of Fate: Creating Challenging Opponents

When Fate players are ready to throw down with the opposition, the question arises: how do you as the GM make such an encounter challenging? Here are the tools that I use to create and tune enemy NPCs to provide a suitable level of danger for the PCs.

Glossary

I have three classes of NPC: "mooks", "named opponents", and "bosses". +Michael Moceri calls the middle group "lieutenants", which works as well.

General Guidelines

I generally present my NPCs' sheets to my players for inspection. I will leave off aspects or stunts which would reveal plot twists, but in general I've found that players who are on board with your program will go a long way toward producing an enjoyable combat, because you've set expectations up front about what their opponents are supposed to be like.

Number of Enemies

I populate a typical encounter with a number of NPCs between 2x and 2.5x the number of PCs. These will be brought into the fight in stages, between 1x and 1.5x the number of PCs at any given moment.

Michael Moceri's formula for a really tough fight, for N player characters, is N/2 bosses, about N named characters (or "lieutenants"), and between N and 2N mook units. This is between 2.5 and 3.5 the number of PCs.

Typically, you can use a 3:2:1 or 4:2:1 ratio of mook units to named opponents to bosses.

Mooks will make an appearance first, and named opponents or bosses will enter after that. This level of opposition gives a reasonably challenging fight and let the PCs move on without stopping to lick their wounds for too long.

You can use the Fate ladder to pick a specific number. Read down the ladder for a description of how hard the fight should feel ("Superb", "Good"). Divide the bonus (+5, +3) you see there by 2, and multiply by number of PCs in combat, and that's how many total NPCs (individuals or groups) you should plan for.

For example, a Superb challenge (+5) gives you about 2.5x (5/2) times as many NPCs as there are PCs. With four PCs, you'll have a total of 10 NPC units to bring in. You might decide this means 5 units of mooks, 3 named characters, and 2 boss characters. You might bring in 3 mook units and 2 named characters to start with, then add the others as combat progresses.

Aspects

Well-designed opponents have aspects that mesh with the PC aspects, the scene aspects, and the story aspects. There should be a clear emotional investment in the conflict, and a clear payoff for winning.

Skills and Approaches

I typically run games using FAE, so my text will say "approach" here. You can substitute "highest combat skill" for Fate Core.

If the highest approach rating your PCs have is "N", I give tough bosses a peak approach of N+1, named opponents N+0 in their area of expertise, and mooks N-1. For starting PCs, this would be +4 for bosses, +3 for named characters, +2 for mooks.

I build bosses as fully realized Fate characters, with stunts, approaches, and so forth. Named opponents outside of focus will be at N-2, and mooks will be N-3.

Stunts

Fights with named characters and bosses can feel "spikier" with some types of stunts, especially stunts that affect how the character does damage. For a smoother feeling in an attrition-style fight, go easy on assigning stunts.

Stress Boxes

The number and size of each NPC's stress boxes depend on their role:

• Bosses and named characters get 3 stress boxes (1, 2, and 3) as a general rule.
• Units of mooks have several (usually five) 1-point stress boxes.
• Armored or tough mooks will get 2-point stress boxes, which helps them last longer against big attacks. They can still be knocked down with a bunch of 1-shift attacks.

Groups of mooks use the Hits and Overflow rules, allowing a single "unit" of NPCs to absorb incoming damage with multiple stress boxes in a single attack. Named and boss enemies use stress rules as normal.

Consequences

I assign a full suite of Consequence slots to bosses and other named characters, but usually not more slots than a typical PC will have.

Consequences are double-edged for an NPC to have, because inflicting one gives a free invocation to the attacker. This helps fill the gaps at the end of the fight when the PCs' free invokes (or players' creativity levels) are running dry.

"Monster" Opponents

There are ways to create "monster" opponents that are tougher than even a typical boss.

1. You can create a single creature with multiple body parts, each of which can take action, be damaged, and so on. A kraken and its left and right tentacles is a typical example. Do this if you want the players to make tactical choices about where to focus their fire. +Randy Oest does a great writeup of this approach here: Tiered Opponents in Fate.
2. The scale rules from the Fate System Toolkit can give flat bonuses to attack, defense, damage, and armor.
3. Such opponents can have stunts that break the rules in ways that PCs shouldn't, such as every attack being zone-wide.

NPC Actions: Create Advantage

One of the big values for mook units is their ability to create unopposed situation aspects for their higher-level allies. How often they do this will affect how competent, organized, and deadly the opposing force feels. Barbarian hordes, beastmen berserkers, or mindless bug swarms will do this less often, preferring to spam Attacks on the PCs. Organized military units, experienced fire-teams, or hive-mind creatures will support each other by creating situation aspects.

NPC Actions: Overcome

Whether your NPCs should be overcoming PC-created aspects is a matter of taste. In general, I will have an NPC roll Overcome if I can think of a logical reason, and a logical method, for them to do so.

NPC Actions: Attack

If you want a "war of attrition" feel from your enemy units, have them mostly use Attack - this will gradually chew through PC resources at first, but will make them less deadly to the party. Enemies that are using smart tactics will let the highest-level unit in play (a named character or boss) roll the Attack.

A good rule of thumb for reasonably smart enemies is to have half as many Attack actions from your NPCs as there are active NPCs. Other NPCs should be rolling Create Advantage or Overcome to support their allies.

NPC Actions: Defend

Typically, very high Defense rolls from your NPCs will be boring. Fate by its nature already encourages people to stack advantages and unleash big attacks. Forcing the players to do even more of this deprives them of a feeling of progress in the fight. Instead, letting them win a series of victories against lesser opponents gives them a sense of satisfaction.

Victory Conditions: Compels

Many interesting fights can end on a Compel - in either direction. For example, a boss who compels "Endless Waves of Mooks" to force a surrender from the PCs, or players who invoke "I Will Redeem My Brother" to make an evil brother NPC repent long enough to take him captive.

Victory Conditions: Concessions

Some genres, like four-color superhero games, make concessions the preferred way out of a combat.

I try to use concessions as character-establishing moments for new NPCs. For example, in my scifi game the PCs wanted to blow up an enemy power plant. The sub-commander assigned to take care of them showed up and started sniping. As a dedicated and loyal officer, she did a couple of almost-suicidal moves trying to take out the PCs.

They finally managed to knock her down far enough for her to be at risk. I offered a concession: "she bites down on a poison tooth, and manages to tell you that only her allies have the antidote". Since the person who had been fighting her had a moral code against unnecessary killing, they left her behind to be found and rescued, and left the scene with the generator destroyed. It conveyed the impression I wanted - someone who was doing her duty, and refused to be taken captive, but who didn't particularly want to die and felt a degree of trust in the PCs' motives.

Conclusion

Play with the four major slider bars you have: "number of actions", "peak skill", "damage capacity", and "tactical acumen". Customize your characters. Try new ways of building monsters. Go nuts. Don't be afraid to cheat.

Thanks for reading, and please leave feedback or opinions in the comments!

Campaign and adventure design using fronts and the 5x5 system

"Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers." -- Making Money

I've tried different approaches to campaign and adventure design over the years, from fully improvised to meticulously plotted. Here's the style that I'm now using for a new Fate Accelerated game. It draws from three concepts:

1. Dungeon World fronts, described here.
2. The 5x5 adventure design method, described here.
3. The Five Room Dungeon model, described here.

Framing the campaign

Start with a set of "powers" - the big movers, shakers, and influences of the setting. I write these up using Dungeon World's fronts as a template.

----

The Star-Storm Attacks!

Power: The Star-Storm

Motive: Travel the star-ways, attacking, enslaving, and consuming to grow mighty

Progress:

1. Attacks on frontier worlds
2. Assimilation of provincial planets' populations
3. Conquest of a major star system
4. Assimilation of one Imperial Armada fleet's forces
5. Assimilation of a provincial capital planet

Endgame: The Star-Storm establishes a solid presence in Imperium space.

Power: Separatist Armada forces

Motive: Resist the Star-Storm for the glory of the Imperium - at any cost

Progress:

1. Militarization of a civilian shipyard
2. Seizure or impressment of Imperium resources & citizens
3. Loss of civil rights on a threatened world
4. Ruthless suppression of protesters on various worlds
5. Imposition of martial law across the province

Endgame: Armada forces establish a totalitarian, militaristic government through coup.

----

"The Star-Storm Attacks!" is a campaign plotline. Each power within it can be hostile, friendly, or neutral to the other powers within the plot. A given power can appear in multiple plots. What the powers should have in common is opposition to the PCs' goals in some way.

The point of writing these plots is to understand your campaign's opposition as a character. What do your big players want? What means are at their disposal? What's their final objective, and how will they get there? Once you know these things, you'll have a good sense of when and how the PCs learn of their activities.

Framing the adventure

For each adventure, I draw out a five-by-five grid, with row and column labels, like this:

	Gateway	Challenge	Tension	Climax	Twist
Adventure issue
First sign of progress
Second sign of progress
First minor issue
Second minor issue

On the left are the issues that the adventure will include. I pick one that's specific to the adventure itself, and then two more that indicate progress by different powers toward their respective endgames.

For example, an adventure issue could be "stolen government documents": the PCs are tasked with retrieving these, lest some calamity befall the planet. The Star-Storm and the Imperial Armada are both making their first moves here as well: "attacks on frontier worlds", and "militarization of a civilian shipyard". I'll pick two other minor issues: the "disappearance of a diplomat's daughter", and a "bounty hunter that's been hired to take care of one or more of the PCs".

The elements across the top are drawn from the "five dungeon rooms" concept. They represent progression of the story, going from left to right:

• The gateway is what keeps people out. It's why nobody else has solved the problem, or what the PCs must do to get in the door, so to speak. This can be a minor obstacle to overcome, or just a roleplaying challenge, but should really serve to set the tone for the rest of the plot.
• The challenge is the first major problem the PCs must overcome. It won't fully put the plot to rest, but it creates the circumstances for that to happen.
• The tension is where conditions change, become more difficult, and so on. This can be a red herring, but should provide some sort of payoff even if costs the group something. It can also redefine the conflict, or reveal the real plot.
• The climax is where events start to accelerate and spiral to a cool conclusion. It can be the big (real) fight, the true boss, or whatever the real nature of your plot turned out to be.
• The twist should be more than just the conclusion following the climax - it should serve to move the larger story forward.

This is somewhat similar to the five-act structure in Shakespeare's plays, as masterfully smashed into words by Film Crit Hulk here.

In addition, it's helpful if elements of these plots connect to each other. For example, I've got the Imperial armada taking over a shipyard on the planet. Why do the PCs care? Because their ship is docked there, so they have to somehow get it back. The bounty hunter may be lying in wait near the ship and attack as they come out. And as the Imperial armada is taking over, it may come to light that the missing diplomat's daughter ran off with one of its officers. And so on.

Filling in the blanks

With all this in mind, let's fill in the table with some specifics.

	Gateway	Challenge	Tension	Climax	Twist
Stolen government documents
Star-Storm attacks on frontier worlds	PCs intervene when some refugees are hassled by authorities
Militarization of planetary shipyard	PCs are evicted from their own ship!	By hook or by crook, get access to ship
Disappearance of diplomat's daughter					Diplomat's daughter took the documents
Bounty hunter		Survive the bounty hunter's ambush

"But the table isn't completely filled in," you say. That's right - you don't need to pre-plan everything. What is the purpose of the table then?

The point of the table is to structure your brainstorming and improvisation. Rather than staring at a blank piece of paper and starting with nothing, I've got about 25 boxes to fill in with specific moments. As ideas come to me, I can add them to the table.

How do you figure out what goes into each of these stages? The end of each stage should provide propulsion and finality. Propulsion means "the plot naturally moves forward". If there was a wrong, it must be avenged. If there was a MacGuffin stolen, it must be recovered. And so on. Finality means "the PCs can't return to the previous status quo". Someone important has died, or a revelation has occurred, or whatever.

Even if you reach the session with some of the table unfilled, this is fine - let your players' actions suggest the missing pieces. What you have is a set of ideas around which you can let the action flow.

Reviewing what you have

After you've got a list of plots in play, go back and think about them in light of your players and the PCs. Do any of them sound like things the PCs wouldn't care about? If not, see if you can revise the offending plots to be more interesting.

Since I'm using Fate Accelerated, I look at each box in my 5x5 grid and think about the resolution that each one calls for. Can I do it in a single die roll, or should I use a Challenge, Contest, or Conflict? Should I do something unique? And do I have a plan if the PCs fail? Not every individual plot needs to reach its conclusion - if one ends early, you have others that are still active.

Review the NPCs that each plot calls for. Do they need stats? If so, do you already have appropriate stats?

Conclusion

In short: design the major players and their overall plans, then plug each step of those plans into your adventure as a plot line, mixed with a small-scale plot specific to the adventure.

Not every adventure needs this much complexity. "Skyjack That Shuttle!" can be very straight-forward. But for those adventures where several competing forces are in play, or that should feel like significant turning points in the larger story, this model seems like it will work well for me. Hopefully you will find it useful as well.

Worldspinner: Fantasy RPG Worldbuilder & Map Maker

Hello everyone!

Its been a while since I posted, and now I can finally tell you why! +Mike Lindsey and I have been working with the talented and successful +Darren Giles on his lifetime dream project Worldspinner. We launched the Kickstarter today, and you can check it out here.

The site is pretty sweet; you can make a variety of maps in different styles, each with some very impressive quality, and in a variety of sizes. Don't like how the first one turned out? Make another!

What's super-cool, however, is the way that fantasy world is generated. You get to set a range of initial conditions and spin it; over decades and even millenia cultures grow, interact, fight and conquer, eventually getting you to year 0 of your campaign. You can decide form a range of historical pastiche cultures and traditional standard cultures, and we are hoping to release a few more rather unique ones in the future.

Ever wanted rowdy dwarves and vikings side-by-side as they descend upon the unsuspecting populace? How might a world look where dark elves have all but eliminated other elf races and rule the planet? The cultures are coded with specific tendencies to make them behave in appropriate ways, and have a long list of naming conventions that auto-populates unique names for nations, cities, and even individuals.

Not only that, but each of the 500 or so years you just blew past are all documented within, ready for you to explore or mine for adventure seeds. Periodically a Legendary Hero will arise (and your character can be one with the right pledge) and those heroes throw a monkey wrench into what would have been a normal progression of history. When stuff happens, it matters!

Each of the cities and points of interest that appear on the map are easily moved, deleted, and manipulated as you want. Each comes pre-built with a range of adventure seeds you can hook your players into or overwrite with your own. You can annotate them as well to record what went down so you don't have to leaf through a bunch of notes from three sessions ago. You've spent a week prepping the political adventure in the capitol but your players decide to leave the city and explore the old ruin a few miles away - now you don't have to worry, there's three or four options to go with.

I'm very proud of what we've put together, so check it out and get spinning!

***

I Kissed a Pathfinder..and I Liked It (Pathfinder)

If you have been following this blog - and if you have, thank you! - you will be no stranger to my personal ambivalence towards d20 based games.

Why ambivalent? Well, like most of my generation, I started in this hobby by playing D&D; the original d20 game, back before d20 became a thing-unto-itself. So for me, d20 is the baseline by which all other games evolved outwards from. I can't really hate d20; d20 is my roots, after all. And within it are the basic building blocks for the hobby itself.

But...I've moved on, right? I have other, more advanced - more modern - game systems to play. Fate! Dungeon World! If I want a crunchy d20 game to play, I can spy Fantasy Craft right there on my shelf, waiting to be explored.

Plus, I've played a D&D 3.5 game, and I found the whole experience utterly lamentable. The basic problem was we had GM who was utterly committed to playing the game RAW with no exceptions: but really, if any game played RAW is a dull game, then it's just a bad game system. Right?

Right.

But...well, then there's Pathfinder. The sexier younger sister to D&D 3.5, with the beautiful art and presentation, with the legendarily well-written and flavorful modules ('Adventure Paths'), play-tested and fan-supported, all wrapped up in a cute little bow by local Seattle-area gaming studio Paizo.

Pathfinder always intrigued me. But not enough to play the damned thing. I flipped through the main book, and the modules, and the innumerable splat books with interest and appreciation..and then put them back on the shelf of my FLGS. Great stuff guys...but no thanks.

Flashback to 2012: looking for some gaming aids for my ongoing Fantasy Craft campaign, I stumbled across the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Complete with a playmat, some artful 'pawns' (cardboard miniatures), and set of dice, for just under $30.00? Sure..why not!?



And my gaming group used the hell out these tools: the dice rounded out my polyhedral collection well, and the map and pawns got plenty of use in our Fantasy Craft campaign. As for the rest - the character sheets and pregens, the Game Master Guide and Heroes Handbook- these stayed in the box as curiosity. Flipped through, but unread and unused.

Flash-forward to 2014. It's 8am on Saturday morning, and I'm packing up my stuff for Go-Play NW 2014. Gary has a supers game set for the day...but I've got nothing at all prepped to run. My eye spies the Pathfinder Beginner Box, and I think: sure, why not? If we have a spare moment during the day, I can run this. Easy-peasy.

Long story short: such a spare moment appeared, and I wound up running a game using the Black Fang's Dungeon scenario from the book. The result? I loved running it, and my group had a great time enjoying an old-school dungeon-crawl.

Before we go any further, note that I made some minor rules modifications before we even got started:

• I failed to bring the playmat and minis, so movement and range were made to be largely narrative: Close (melee range), Near (penalty-free ranged attacks) and Far (ranged attacks at -2). Characters were allowed to move one 'zone' for free, or two by giving up an action.
• Skill use was based on narrative justification: if you could justify the use of the skill, it was valid. If the book said 'Knowledge: Religion' was needed for the check, then 'Knowledge: Arcana' could sub as well.
• Penalties for firing into melee combat? Attacks of opportunity? All narrative: the GM says when this stuff matters. If it slows things down or makes the experience suck..it doesn't matter.
• You had to narrate what you were doing to do it. Attacking a goblin? Tell me how you are doing it! You succeed and kill a goblin? Narrate that shit: I want some cinematic flavor at my table, or it's all just boring numbers.

In short, I was running the game using Pathfinder mechanics to modify rolls, but acting like I was GM'ing a game of Dungeon World. And it worked like a dream, and fun was had by all.

What's the take-away from this experience?

For me, it's that any game system can be fun, provided that everyone - players and GM included - are committed to having fun. The minute that any rule gets in the way of that, that rule should immediately be abolished or ignored. 

Secondarily - but just as important - don't ever think of the players as agents that derail your story. They are there to contribute to the story. The players will do things not imagined by you or the module's designers: in this case, improvise!  

In the case of this module the scenario suggested either a resolution as a physical conflict or a diplomatic one: in reality, it was both with the players slaying King Fatmouth and interrogating a charmed goblin;  I chose as GM to provide the 'diplomatic solution' info via the charmed goblin, as this seemed the logical reward to this cautious approach. The story was thus adjusted based on player initiative, rather than being derailed altogether. 

So will I be running more Pathfinder games in the future? 

Sadly, the answer to this seems to be 'no'. My gaming group prefers the flavor found in newer - and more narrative, and flexible - game systems like Fate: as soon as I suggested we play Pathfinder ongoing the conversation led to talk of Fate Freeport being used for fantasy gaming. Which is great: I loves me some Fate gaming.

So for now, Pathfinder will have to live in inside of it's little Beginners Box, unloved and hardly played. But we did have a moment, once.

And I liked it. 

***

Four-Color FAE: Supers Gaming via Fate Accelerated (update)

Hello dear readers! Its been a while since I posted here, and for that I apologize. That being said, the Games continue to be played! We're 10 issues in on our Supers game, using the Four-Color FAE guidelines, and we plan on posting a great deal more about it soon.

In the interim, I'd like to share a very well-written series of posts by one of the players in our group, +Bill Garrett. Bill has distilled down many of the core tenants of not only creating a Supers game, but how the genre works in general - with the unique lens of Villainy. Its a great read!

You can find his thoughts and analysis here: Not only is it educational, but he has a very fun style.

Four-Color FAE: Supers Gaming via Fate Accelerated - pt8

In part 8 of the series, I present the idea of using Fate's Concession mechanic liberally in our game, rather than 'fighting to the death' like is standard in traditional RPG's.

• See the whole Four-Color FAE series here

***
Concessions before Consequences

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

The hero enters into a conflict with the villain, but before anyone takes any real and lasting injuries, the villain gets away scott-free with whatever their goal was (usually some form of loot, mcguffin or maybe a hostage).

What, you've heard it before?

Well, of course you have: it's a staple scene of heroic fiction. And as superhero comics are an extension of heroic fiction in general, in comic books this sort of scene happens all the time.

In Fate terms, this sort of scene would be the result of the hero (or heroes) offering a Concession; a means in Fate by which one can end a conflict before anyone is 'Taken Out':

http://fate-srd.com/fate-accelerated/ouch-damage-stress-and-consequences#giving-in

http://fate-srd.com/fate-core/conflicts#conceding-the-conflict

The world of four-color heroes involves lots and lots of dangerous action, but the participants are rarely (if ever) permanently harmed. In our game, this would be modeled via Fate's system of offering concessions.

It's great to keep this mechanic in mind as we play. Although it may not feel right at first to 'fail' in a particular scene ("Wait - I can't give up; they have the magic idol AND my girlfriend!"), it's common in the fiction to fail-forward; and this sort of thing is fully supported in Fate.

If you ever seem in danger of taking a lasting (Moderate +) consequence, feel free to offer a Concession, take your Fate Points, and keep things moving forward.

You might not stop them at the museum, but you might stop them at their secret lair; you might not stop them at their secret lair, but you can stop them at the docks. Show up with a big pile of Fate Points, and sooner or later, things are going to go your way.

You are heroes, after all. That's how it works.

***

Fate Random Tables II: The Randoming

I'm back with more random Fate tables!

Beat Cops and Hired Goons

Goons. Hired goons.

When you've got a bunch of mooks, you can use this table to quickly spice up a few of them. This works well if the PCs need to interact with one (like in an interrogation, or to get past some guards), just to give the poor mechanical speedbumps a little personality. You can adapt these entries pretty easily to fantasy city guards, sci-fi mercenaries, or what have you.

	0	+	+	+	+
0	Snitch / Undercover	Too Dumb to Quit (takes an additional consequence)	One Good Cop / Honor Among Thieves	Hungry Rookie	Don't You Know Who My Father Is?
-	Hiding an Addiction	Looking Out For Number One	Family Man	One Last Job / 2 Days Till Retirement
-	Loves This Job	Nothing Personal	Trapped By Gambling Debts
-	Sadistic Psychopath	Hates This Job
-	Catastrophically Incompetent

Random Quirks

In the same mold, here's a table for quickly determining distinguishing features for random NPCs, so it looks like you planned it all along. Yeah, planned it all along. That's the ticket.

	0	+	+	+	+
0	Crying Game	Bald	Ridiculous Hat	Bad Plastic Surgery	Supermodel and Knows It
-	Ginger	Skinny	Brawny	Tats and Piercings
-	Limp	Twitchy	Ponytail Express
-	Rat-faced	Scarred
-	Shop Class Accident

Putting it Together

Let's give it a few tries and see what we get.

The PCs roll up to the club's side entrance. It's guarded, but there's only one guy out there. Two rolls of 4dF give us a -1, +1, 0, 0, followed by a 0, 0, 0, -1. The guard's a ginger who's looking out for "number one". Maybe he'd angle for a bribe right away, since he's looking out for himself. Maybe if the PCs put on a strong enough show of force the guard won't stick around.

Let's do it again, this time with a +1, 0, 0, 0 and a 0, -1, 0, -1. The guard on the side door now has a limp and is "Too Dumb to Quit". He's probably not going to just back down from the PCs, but they might be able to trick him pretty easily. If they resort to violence, the guy will be tough but with an easily-spotted physical vulnerability they can take advantage of.

I'm not a fan of letting random tables guide the entire story, but when it comes to details that might have otherwise been overlooked or glossed over, I think they can guide your game into places you might not expect. Have fun!

Random Tables in Fate

A random table

When you bring up random tables, you can easily find as many advocates as detractors. I find a little bit of
randomness spices up a game - it promotes improvisational thinking and interest. After all, who doesn't want to see what the results of the treasure table/grevious wound chart/star system generator turn out to be?

Fate's a system that, on the surface, doesn't seem like it's too conducive to randomness. There's a strong bell curve, players have a measure of narrative buy-in, and if that fails, they have fate points to modify the results. A few people took on the challenge, explored that random table space within Fate, and the results were promising. If you're not familiar with David S. Goodwin's Fate triangle table, Mike Olson posted a quick summary of why and how it works. Fred Hicks then posted a variant of the same table that reads each individual die. I took their work (as many others have done) and made a few tables of my own.

Random Ritual Components

I use this table for my monster-hunting bikers game. It provides a lot of flavor to what otherwise might just be a Create Advantage roll. Furthermore, some of the strange combinations demand attention, and promotes play based around getting the components. Hilariously (perhaps), "powdered love" has ended up as one of my group's staples for magical rituals, and after some disgusting but inventive ways to obtain ingredients that would pass muster, they've all agreed that crushed-up Viagra should do the trick in the future.

				First Word	Second Word	x/81
+	+	+	+	Noneuclidian	Dreams	1
+	+	+	_	Small Animal’s	Night	4
+	+	+	-	Rotten	Hate	4
+	+	_	_	Oil of	Heart	6
+	_	_	_	Imaginary Animal’s	Love	4
+	+	_	-	Target’s	Blood/Fluids/Flesh	12
+	+	-	-	A Drop Of	Food/Booze	6
+	_	_	-	Powdered	Hair/Clippings/Feather	12
_	_	_	_	Innocent	Math	1
+	_	-	-	Caster’s	Salt/Silver/Iron	12
_	_	_	-	Deity’s	Gasoline/Fuel	4
+	-	-	-	Devil’s	Daylight	4
_	_	-	-	Geometric	Bones/Ashes	6
_	-	-	-	Dead Man’s	Grave Dirt	4
-	-	-	-	Living	Cardinal Direction	1

Operation RANDOM SHENANIGANS

This table's more for flavor than anything else.

				First Word	Second Word	x/81
+	+	+	+	DONKEY	PUNCH	1
+	+	+	_	THUNDER	FIST	4
+	+	+	-	VENGEFUL	SAVIOR	4
+	+	_	_	BLAZING	LIGHTNING	6
+	_	_	_	HUSKY	CLAW	4
+	+	_	-	FLAMING	SWORD	12
+	+	-	-	BLACKEST (OR PICK A COLOR)	EAGLE	6
+	_	_	-	STEADFAST	SHIELD	12
_	_	_	_	LAZY	PANDA	1
+	_	-	-	ENDURING	THUNDER	12
_	_	_	-	BROKEN	VENGEANCE	4
+	-	-	-	RAGING	CROWN	4
_	_	-	-	EAGLE	LION	6
_	-	-	-	CRESCENT	NIGHT	4
-	-	-	-	THROBBING	PRINCESS	1