I'm looking at the Savage Worlds Test Drive and it provides a list of Hindrances and Edges. Do I have to take an equivalent Hindrance for each Edge or do I get some Edges for free?
[RPG] Does an Edge require you to take a Hindrance
savage-worlds
Related Solutions
Unless this makes the game boring for you as a GM, don't make it a goal in itself to have the players vary their characters. The players won't like being forced into roles they don't want to play, and the game can be a lot of fun even with a homogeneous group.
Draw your inspiration from westerns and other action movies where all of the characters are gunslingers, like Young Guns and The Expendables. Focus on combat, but don't be afraid to throw in other types of challenges every once in a while. Ingenious players will always find some way to solve a problem.
If the players are having a hard time getting past a noncombat obstacle you put in their path, consider tossing in an NPC with the required skills—and then have the bad guys attack him. While the NPC is doing his work, it falls upon the players to protect him. Dramatic scenes like these are usually enjoyed by everyone at the table, and the players won't feel that the NPC did all the work.
Finally, encourage the players to flesh out how their are gunslingers are different from each other. While their skills may be similar, there can be a great deal of difference in their personalities and backgrounds. If the players are reluctant to provide this backstory themselves, consider adding social encounters (like negotiations) or moral dilemmas (like hostage situations) into the game to have these differences form naturally during play.
Since there's no specific mention of the number of players, lets look at the challenges in the pdf. We'll go over each plot point, and see what dice/rolls are needed to succeed. There's a quick tl;dr at the end if you just want my opinion on party size. Potential spoilers below!
- Prequel: if players were drinking, they get +2 vigor and -2 smarts.
It will prove advantageous for most players to be drunk (unless they rely on smarts!) - 1) Common Knowledge at -2.
A d8 in Common Knowledge gives slightly better than 50% chance of success. However, a raise on this roll informs the PC that a legion of undead lie below. At this point, my PCs would probably attempt to set the entire catacombs on fire; ymmv. Regardless, they should be able to grab some quick supplies from above. I would probably have the NPC soldier join them upon learning. - 2) Strength roll to jump 2" (or build a bridge)
A piece of rope, a ladder, even a broken door can circumvent this challenge if no-one has the strength for it. - 3) Fight two rat swarms
Assuming your party has torches, this is pretty trivial. Otherwise, stomping them works well. - 4a) Fight eight zombies with a guaranteed surprise round.
How the group uses the surprise round will largely determine how difficult this is. Setting the zombies on fire will mean your group wins unharmed; charging in blindly might result in a few wounds. Since the backstory explains that the PCs have already encountered zombies, they should be familiar with the headshot weakness. - 4b) Vigor roll at -2 (zombie poison on death)
Good thing you drank that alcohol, right? A d6 vigor gives a 50% chance of passing this drunkenly, and I would house-rule that a PC can only be poisoned by the gas once. - 5) Fight Bone golem with N zombies
The first real challenge. A notice of 4 spots the golem's weakpoint, and a raise prevents the golem's surprise round. Once the weak point is spotted, a called shot at -4 will seriously wound the golem. A shooting skill of d10 gives a 50% chance of hitting the call shot. The GM can provide additional zombies (if any) based on the parties success this far. - 6) Fight Necromancer (novice)
The necromancer's main strength is his bolt and zombie powers. If you've prevented his ritual, he's a slightly buffed novice spell caster. If he completes the ritual, then he has 50 PP and gets more if he kills a PC. He's easiest to kill with arrows or a greatsword to the head, as his advantage is in firing long-range bolts.
So how does all this help? For one, we can see that most of the challenges require abilities easily obtained by novice characters. A d10 shooting skill is the highest required die for a 50% success chance, and passing that roll will make short work of the bone golem.
The combination of skills required isn't really varied either. One character focused on smarts (knowledge, notice, spellcasting), one character focused on agility (parry, shooting), and one character focused on vigor (tanking, melee fighting) should be able to pass all the challenges. A specialized gun-toting holy warrior could likely solo the entire challenge.
My advice, based on these stats and a little gut intuition, is to have a minimum of 3 party members and a max of 5. If the PCs make it to the final chamber with full resources, add some zombies to increase the challenge.
A lot of the difficulty will also depend on the experience of your players. Experienced Savage World players know the best way to position themselves on the board, take advantage of movement, and minimize area of effect damage against them. Newer players who are still learning these concepts will struggle more.
tl;dr: For this specific challenge, a party size of 3-5 seems ideal. Less characters will have trouble with some of the challenges, more will make them trivially easy.
Best Answer
This has changed as the rules have been refined over the editions.
Test Drive v6 (Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition era)
Edges are optional at character creation, and can be bought later when you've earned enough experience points for an Advance. However, at character creation you have the option of taking Hindrances, which give you either one or two points (which the Test Drive confusingly calls "advances": a related but different concept in the full rules), which you can spend to get Edges (or other things) before play begins.
There's no equivalence between Edges and Hindrances except that it just so happens that a Major Hindrance gives you enough points to buy an Edge. (Savage Worlds Test Drive v6, p. 3, "Edges & Hindrances")
In the Test Drive you don't get any free Edges—you need to take some Hindrances to get the points to buy Edges at character creation. In the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion, as well as in several of the Savage Settings, humans are distinguished from the other races by being "flexible", which translates into getting a free Edge at character creation. Otherwise, you start out with no Edges.
The Wild Hunt (Savage Worlds Deluxe era)
As of Savage Worlds Deluxe the official stance is that humans get the flexible racial attribute whether there are other races in a setting or not, so the new default is that characters get one free Edge to start with. This is explicitly called out in the core rules (under Races – Humans, p. 21).
The free quick-start edition of Savage Worlds is now an adventure with pre-constructed characters ("The Wild Hunt"), and no character creation rules. Notably, the pregenerated characters are all human and have either two Edges and one more d8 attribute than they normally would have (another use for two Hindrance points) or they have three Edges; this reflects the new standard that humans get one free Edge at character creation regardless of setting.
Giving all humans, even in human-only settings, a free starting Edge is not unbalancing and you can do this without trouble even if you're still using Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition or the old Test Drive quick-start rules.