How does one go about roughly balancing combat encounters in JCoM? I can’t find advice on that in the Core Rulebook.
Comparing it to my Conan rulebook, I was thinking something like this:
1] 1.5 - 2 times the number of Monsters as there are Player Characters.
2] 2 Minions = 1 Monster
3] 2 Monsters = 1 Villain
So, a party of four Player Characters could fight off 6 - 8 Minions or 3 - 4 Monsters or 2 Villains (or some combination of). It seems like Minions are a little weaker in this ruleset, however.
Interesting question. I hesitated answering this post until I had my physical copy of the game since I don’t tend to read PDFs all that much.
Looking at your final write-up above, I have to say that I’m wondering about this, too. Given that Minions can be knocked off by spending the Momentum earned on attacks to take them down, with good rolls four player characters could take down a lot more than 8 Minions. As for Monsters, I shudder to think of four player characters facing 6-8 White Apes or even 2-4 Apts. ::shudder:: Villains for me are the most problematic, to be honest, because they’re the climactic encounter where they go down or whatever.
The other concern, and I admit I’m not familiar with the Conan RPG, is the three types of damage in this iteration of the game system. Monsters and Villains can take Afflictions, and that complicates things somewhat, methinks.