Can I hit players harder? Can they take it?

I GM'd my 3rd game with Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space: The Roleplaying Game last night. This was Game A's second session, bringing their first adventure - chasing militant Silurians through the British Museum - to a conclusion. (You can read a narrative account of their first session's adventures here).

There are a few things that are hard to gauge, being a newbie GM. It's hard to know how hard to stat the NPCs (non-player characters); it's hard to know how oblique to make the puzzles; it's hard to judge how determined the enemy are to pummel the Player Characters into liquid-storage component parts.

But, Game A's group managed to get through the entire adventure without taking a single point of real damage. Not only that, but by the end of the adventure they had used very few Story Points. In Adventures in Time and Space: The RPG, Story Points are the players' way to alter game events which would harm their character or to turn things in their favour. They can be used to reduce damage, avoid death, reveal clues, or even add plot events so dramatic it changes the whole outcome of the plot.

Must have run out of "Adventures in Time and Space" Story Points.

This is down to a number of factors.

• 2 of the characters hid behind cover for the duration of a battle. A legitimate character choice.
• The group settled very nicely into the "Doctor Who" way of resolving conflict, many of them trying to talk their enemies down rather than fighting them, or using clever elements of the environment to take them down.
• I had given the NPCs a lower number of points and skills than the players.

The first two are fair enough and exactly what I would have hoped from the game. The last one troubles me, because it's the bit that is down to my judgement. My own experience of dramatic encounters - as a player - is that it's more exciting to escape or win a battle by the skin of your teeth than it is to walk all over an incompetent enemy. Based on my experiences last night, it can actually be quite hard to hit a player character with a monster and do them real harm.

A surprisingly easy situation for a player to get out of.

Of course it's easy to tip the balance in the wrong direction. Despite the iconic nature of Daleks as a Doctor Who enemy (for what incarnation of The Doctor feels truly complete without a dust-up against the xenophobic tin-cans?) the source book gives each Dalek 10 points of armour and a weapon with does insta-death damage on a good or better hit. How many would I pit them against? One? One each? A battalion? I don't want to end up wiping out the player party, just to test the theory!

But, I think the last adventure shows that there is plenty of scope for putting the players in enough peril that they are forced to rely on story points to survive. After all, if they don't have to use them then there is no impetus to earn them. As the overall GM and narrator, I can of course intervene to avoid a total party kill; but it would be nice to put them in some real danger. Game A is a very big group. With 5 players they have a combined Story Point total of 56. Plenty of scope for a sound thrashing!

Total destruction of the Tardis and occupants. Nowhere near as hard to survive as it looks.