A bestiary and enemies book for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (Powered by GURPS).
I'm collecting all the Monster of the Day examples (which are still WIP, but they've got all the stuff they need to show off what I'm trying to accomplish here) in a Reddit thread. It is a great place to direct those who want to see what the project is without clicking individually through updates.
Todays' monster of the day is the óséðmorðingr, the unseen murderer, which is totally not an Invisible Stalker.
Really.
This air elemental is sent, always, to kill. Not for recon, polite conversation, or to deliver an invitation to tea. Unless you're serving tea in Hell(heim).
In the groups I've played in, Concussion has always been a favorite spell, so it just stands to reason that it should be used effectively against the PCs, right?
Tactics favor a grapple-then-slice, ideally to the neck or limbs. It is a death of many cuts
Parties without a solid plan for dealing with a very fast diffuse foe are going to have a hard time countering it. It can step 2 yards, and moves at a speed roughly equaling the speed of the fastest quarter-horse on a racetrack (about 44mph), if not the fastest unofficial horse speed (over 50mph, reputedly). So it's quick. And of course, diffuse, which can cause no end of trouble to the unprepared.
How do you summon one? Oooo. A neat trick, indeed. Apparently only known to NPC wizards, demons, evil cult bosses...
The low damage is an intended design feature, relying on an armor piercing attack to get through a tough outer layer to the creamy center inside. It might not be enough, though, so a power-up for the creature may well be a (3), (5), or even (10) armor divisor, so that enchanted epic plate is a hindrance.
Altering either the armor divisor or the ST of the creature is the way to balance it against more-epic foes, and something that can grapple for more than 1d control at a time (and impose a higher tally than 15 Control Points) might be more worrisome.
If it hasn't been obvious already, many of these creatures are inspired and converted from That Other Game, and the óséðmorðingr is no exception. There are plenty like this, though each get a thorough going over during the conversion to make sure that abilities make sense and are translated well enough - but perhaps not exactly, just to keep folks on their toes - to convey a proper threat.
Today's example is big. It's armored. And it's usually pretty irked.
While still not armored enough to shrug off an optimized 250-point Weapon Master knight or a barbarian sporting some of the heavier polearms, its DR 10 laughs at up to 1d+4 unless it's armor-piercing, and provides excellent protection even from a 2d+7 cutting attack (say, ST 14, Weapon Master, and a long axe in two hands). So it's tough. It's strong, and can legit one-shot incapacitate some foes.
I'm not sure the silhouette is the right size. It's big, but should be about 3.6× larger than our model human, and I may need to play with the scale a bit. It's got a few new things going for it, too.
It's not listed (yet), but this is definitely a creature that can threaten to swallow whole something that's SM -1 or lower. A favored tactic will be to bite a creature to hold it in place, then worry (free attack!) and rend with its claws. That's a lot of damage concentrated in one turn.
Like all the monsters, first I'll get them down as an initial pass, then I'll have my Patreon Subscribers try and take them on against parties of various point levels, from 1-1 encounters to parties of 62, 125, and 250 pointers. So some of these folks will get tweaked before you see them again.
So, we are exactly halfway in the campaign right now, and frankly, I'm in the "I have no idea where this is going to end up" camp right now. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though as a creator, it's unnerving as heck.
These updates help.
Yesterday I was in Galveston, TX for most of the day. We frolicked on the "beach" for a while, which the kids loved, and my youngest collected shells which of course she's now bringing home on the airplane. We also took a tour of the Elissa, a three-masted barque active in the very late 1800s. That was a lot of fun, but it also meant that we didn't get a lot of time near my computer or a WiFi connection, which may have been part of the point.
In any case, I knew I was going to have to reserve some of the monsters that backers have already seen for the Turkey Day holiday, and so without further ado I recycle the Fjallatroll with only a little remorse.
So I've shown this guy, but haven't talked too much about him.
The thing about the fjallatroll is that - especially relative to other trolls - they're smart. Very smart. Well, for a troll. They are not especially fast, at only DX 10, but they are twice as tall as our shadow-warrior Ylva, and that has its own benefit.
They're spellcasters, and trap-layers. They are hard(er) to outwit than their brutish cousins, and given the opportunity to prepare a trap, they will, taking extra time to do so. Lots of extra time, if they can. Against lower power delvers, they're going to be a threat, simply because in the relatively unlikely event they land a blow, it's going to hurt. A lot. Their icy weapon has a very long reach (1-5) and will deliver 4d through DR 7 armor, which is enough injury, on the average, to be a one-shot kill. They're not sporting a (2) armor divisor, but with ST 24 they don't need to. A grapple attack with an average of 11 control isn't so bad either. The higher end wrestlers will fight clear of that, as might barbarians. A knight with a large shield and some defense-maximizing choices might be able to take one as long as their shield is 13 lbs or more. Note this makes the Nordlond Battle Shield, at only 8 lbs, a poor choice for troll-fighting, even though its light weight is handy otherwise. The troll's DR 4 makes it annoying to pepper one from a distance with regular arrows at the usual 1d+ something that a scout brings, but bodkin arrows help there. Thrown axes with their swing damage will fare better.
While the fjallatroll is probably something you have to think about but even a party of 62-point delvers will deal with handily if fought with a tiny bit of though, the real fun comes when the GM declares that this is the basic model. An upgrade makes them more interesting.
Higher DX, Combat Focus. A lot of the "ease" of dealing with the troll comes from frankly mediocre combat skills. Glaive (14) brings Parry-10 to the table, +1 for a retreat. The polearms don't benefit from a parry bonus (which actually goes against how I was trained to use such mostly-balanced weapons as the glaive or some spears tipped with more than a foot of steel, but I digress), so really, these guys have a decent attack and a decent parry, but nothing special, and certainly not up to the challenge of fighting several delvers at once. An experienced fighting troll with DX 12, Combat Reflexes, and Glaive (18) starts to look a lot scarier. Enough skill to confidently attack limbs and necks, or deceptive attack a delver, or even throw two blows with Rapid Strike. Parry-13 is going to mean five blows in six are turned away in single combat, nine in ten with a retreat, unless the delvers bring it with Deceptive Attack. Or, as they should, press in close to swamp them. But they'll have to contend with Reach 5.
Arcane Expertise. The troll is not a great caster. Darkness and Invisibility are nice but not special at 15, but the rest are lackluster. Boosting the variety and potency of the spell list would help, and since Monsters Cheat, letting the PCs experience how a Grease spell feels on the other end is nigh-on high-larious fun.
The bænadýrið is mostly feared because of the number of ALT-keys required to type its name.
Otherwise, one on one, they're nothing special. One of my Patreon members took this sucker for a test drive against even a 62-point defense-optimized knight. The knight was able to wipe the floor with one, defeated two handily (it took eight or so turns due to some dice oddness), and even was a threat 3-1.
The thing is, these things are going to likely appear in groups of 3d or so. They're exactly the sort of thing a cultist leader would summon to cover an escape, or a more powerful demon call up a plague of them to waylay a party. Their armor-piercing slashing attack means that you need a lot of armor to simply ignore them, and the cutting grapple - especially by several - is going to be really irksome. Those with no ability to avoid a grapple, limited armor, or not optimized for defense have to worry. And that ties up a party's resources, giving the real threat time to prepare, warm up a giant bolt of something, or escape.
They're the demon equivalent of kobolds. Scary, maybe, to a commoner with limited combat ability caught alone, or a group of villagers who won't know how to organize against this type of foe. The corrosive spit will put armor and weaponry at risk, which is annoying and makes one think about how much you want to bring out your Grade-A equipment.
I was pleased that the low-level threat did what I wanted: nothing really horrid in small numbers, but you don't face small numbers of these guys.
The campaign will be half over tomorrow, when there are nine days and nine hours remaining.
The first-day response was good, and we've ticked up well. We already are solidly thumping Delvers to Grow (which didn't pass 400 backers until the last two days of the campaign, much to my dismay) and are in roughly the same spot for backers as the best-ever DFRPG campaign, the Citadel at Nordvorn. Of course, this is a larger book, a hardcover, and I have 13 books on offer for folks looking to jump into a well-supported setting in one click.
There are also a record-for-me 662 folks following the campaign, and 370 of those have yet to back the campaign. And usually about 1/6 of the follow total come from nowhere, don't follow, and pledge anywhere. That puts the maximum projected backers somewhere between where we are now at about 410 and 890. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I will admit in my heart of hearts I was hoping I'd pull in the same total as (say) Monsters 2 with over 1,000 backers. Looks like - unless we start reaching audiences that I have not yet reached - we'll fall short of that. Funding will help - the "hey, we're funded! No risk! Get stretch goals!" note that goes out for some reason motivates folks, even though it's no risk ahead of time.
In any case, we're far from done. In fact, we're half-done, and there's still time to get the word out and rock it. I know hitting that 240-page book is on folks' minds (including mine!) for a lot of reasons, and the lore of these creatures is sufficiently different from the usual SRD stuff (while still being recognizably the source of some monsters) that they'll make a good change-up for the usual game suspects.
In any case: We'll hit the halfway point tomorrow, and with some help, some mass mailings, and maybe a few calls from backers and patreons to their favorite local game stores (retail pledges go a long way), and the other stuff that social networking does, it's not too late to hit big.
Hope we see some acceleration over the last half of the campaign! I really want that 240-page book.