Guidelines for PCs fighting mooks

Just a recap Basic Combat rules states that a character's combat pool is his or her Dexterity + Melee/Archery/Brawl + an applicable specialization.   If you want to compare where your character stands against most NPCs you are likely to fight alongside or against, look below.  

Combat Dice Pools

  1 The weak and infirm   2 Most civilians   3 Ragtag militias and civilians in rough areas   4 Typical Militia   5 Typical professional soldiers, seasoned militia   6 Seasoned professional soldiers   7-11 Heroes and villains     PCs have twice as many character health levels as most NPCs, which is a large advantage, but as you can see above, the gap in fighting ability between player character and most mooks is not very large and it's not even guaranteed that a player character will be a better fighter than the mook he faces.   All things equal, a player character will defeat an NPC with the same base stats because the player character makes more dynamic choices, spends Willpower more judiciously, and splits their dice pool more often and strategically.   The dice pools of heroes and the faceless mooks they fight are relatively similar means that even if the player character has an edge, it is not an overwhelming edge.   Even brave soldiers don't want to die and most warriors fight defensively. Since most of the time, enemies are going to be rolling a parry or dodge and most of the time, they are wearing at least light armor, it is unlikely any one swing of a sword or an axe is going to kill someone. It usually takes a couple attacks.   Even mindless mooks like golems and undead that lack self preservation will defend themselves if only because their masters don't want them to die in droves. Golems are expensive to create, if they folded immediately in combat, no one would bother with them. Most people who use undead minions become social pariahs, if the undead soldiers fell too easily in combat, no one would bother creating them.   Given that the use of "A" actions and "B" actions D&D10 is not a game system that lets the player routinely one-shot kill or incapacitate enemies with each swing of an axe or loosing of an arrow while counting like Legolas and Gimli though it happens sometimes.   Magic weapons and active buff spells act as a force multiplier letting heroic or villainous character cut through mooks and redshirts much faster.