Balancing encounters

I would argue that "balance" as D&D approaches it is neither possible nor desirable in Hero System. One of the things I love about the system is that you can have "low level" enemies that remain threatening no matter how many points the PCs have and "high level" enemies that can be taken down early with a clever plan. I generally plan my encounters to be interesting rather than balanced, with a few escape plans in case things get too hairy. Especially in superheroic, it's good to remember that, unlike D&D, the party can lose without ending the campaign!

That said, there are a few things you can check to get an approximate feel for how nasty a fight might get. Active points are always a good place to start: The PCs likely have a cap, and the higher an NPC goes above that the more dangerous they're likely to be. I also like to compare the NPC's total character points to the tier of the campaign: they don't have to land in any particular range, the GM has as many points as it takes, but I find that an NPC with way more character points than a character of their tier should have usually needs more limitations to make them interesting.

Also, I like to get a good feeling for the real-world equivalents for what my PCs and NPCs can do. If I know my heroes are all bulletproof, I know an enemy with a handgun is low threat right off. But if my strongest hero can only lift a bus, a villain with the stats to levitate a skyscraper casually is probably an extreme threat. Real world comparisons also just feel really immersive in encounters.

Finally, don't be afraid to experiment! A lot of my encounters are tests to see what works and what doesn't for future encounters. I'm come up with an idea for a power, a build, or a setup and start with a relatively safe version of it to see how the heroes handle it. The big bads of the campaign become the ones who actually do well and interest the heroes, instead of me trying to decide who that will be in advance.

It takes some time to get used to how to do it, but my extremely rough rule of thumb is that point values are roughly equivalent (more on that in a moment) for enemies vs PCs, and every 50 points represents roughly a doubling in power.

So, if a PC is 100 points and you throw a 100 point villain at them, then that's a fairly equivalent fight. If you have 6 PCs each at 100 points, you want six villains of 100 points or one villain at 200-250 points.

That said, remember, PCs are generally more clever at playing their character than you are at playing "insert villain here" on the fly. So they can, and will, be able to beat someone of more points than they are equal to. Offsetting this slightly is the way villains are built: no points go into non-combat RP stuff like KS: knitting, so they are more powerful than they look compared to the PCs, in a fight at least.

This has served me pretty well over the years of running games, and if you need a bit more, throw in a bunch of trash agents for the PCs to mow through, but be slowed down by.

Speed is also an important issue. Even the most powerful villain in the world is going to be beat down by PCs if they have a slower speed. That 4 speed might seem sufficient, but against 6 people, that's 6 moves for every 1 the boss gets, even if they all have the same speed.

How well do you understand combat in the Hero System?