Creating A Monster

Generally when creating something your group to engage with, they will be fighting NPCs that follow similar rules to normal character creation. Many will be under geared or will have their stats & skills distributed in a more balanced way. Some may not have any combat skills whatsoever. Playable races & other intelligent races are the dangerous foes. Bullet pointing them can end with an unprepared party getting absolutely destroyed. Just be aware of the fact that people can be the most dangerous & unpredictable foes a party will likely encounter throughout their adventures as you toss your group into the fray.

Adjust The Dials

When engaging in combat with new parties or parties that have had new characters created to replace old ones — there is no straight forward formula. The way a party learned to engage combat with each other can be thrown out of tune when a new character is added. It’s not a power level thing. Not even a combat level thing. Players will expect others to play into their strengths & aid them by filling in any weaknesses they have in combat. The new character may not fit that role the same way, throwing off the dynamic of the party until they can establish their party’s new combat tactics.

Best practice is to slowly introduce a party into combat. Give them an easy challenge with more straightforward tactics initially. Allow the party to learn the dynamics of the system, habits of other players, & characteristics of the characters they are with. As they learn & grow; add enemies that use more tactics, more weapon switches, more stat variations that lean into their individual builds. Not quite a bullet point, but fairly close to it. Perhaps you can have an NPC with bullet pointed stats & skills as a boss fight for them, with fodder around the boss to keep the combat engaging. But try not to put anything in front of them that doesn’t give the party any chance at winning.

Find the sweet spot. Adjust it to a level that engages the players. Mix it up when needed. Turn it up & down so they have a mix of easy & challenging battles. If a character dies & gets replaced with another, turn the dial down a couple notches & find a new sweet spot for the group.

Monster Races

When creating a custom monster race, the normal stat limits sometimes won’t make sense. Almost all monster races have zero in their Mind stat. This means they cannot learn any skills. So for some of these monsters to be truly terrifying they either need raw numbers, special abilities, natural weapons or armor, or stats that go higher than what is normally allowed for character creation.

Each monster would still be built using the 4 main stats. However there is no rule for how many points they get distributed to them. The creature size modifiers can effect HP & damage bonuses. Pay close attention to their total “Hit Bonuses”, “Damage Bonuses”, Armor, & HP as you create them. Once the creature size & stats are spread, most of those details auto fill. Building this way allows you to grant combat levels to them to adjust the dial without recreating a new version of it each time. Simply padding HP with combat levels can make a moderate threat into something problematic very quickly.

Your monster’s “days of food” that it needs to survive can determine if they are in competition for hunting & trapping in the zones that they roam in. If resources are already tight, adding a monster into a area can force the players into “fight or flight”. Even if the monster is not directly attacking them.

If your group fights them, make sure there are rewards. Perhaps the hide might be exceptional. Perhaps parts might be traded for trophies. Perhaps some parts might be usable as replacements for armor, weapons, or cloth. Such as Land Drake scales that can replace a Tier 8 metal ingot for armor, giving it a distinct visual quality that says, “we kill the monsters that you have nightmares about”. Natural material replacements for ingots cannot be broken down into ingots. Make sure the player marks clearly when special materials are used in construction of items. And don’t forget that for risky battles they most definitely will earn experience.

Adding an Aggro mechanic is not necessary, but it can help the players learn to anticipate actions when they engage with that type of monster again in the future. This adds the feeling of knowledge & experience to the players themselves. It can make it so that, while first battle against it might had been clunky or chaotic, future battles against the same monster would feel coordinated & refined in comparison. Eventually the players will develop tactics that are especially effective against it, which is a good feeling. It should impress NPCs whom have knowledge of the dangers those monsters impose.

Example Aggro mechanics might be things like: “lowest total armor”, “lowest body stat”, “smallest creature size”, “least visible weapons”, “closest enemy”, “most visible weapons”, “whomever dealt the last blow”, “whomever dealt the most total damage”, etc. It only needs to be something that would be measurable by the monster itself — usually something visual. These mechanics aren’t usually applied to playable races. For playable races, each individual is individual.

Adding details like social behaviors, preferred terrains, or aggression can help story telling & immersion. Adding descriptions to appearance is a must. Adding a fleeing mechanic for many monsters will make sense. Such as, “it runs away after it loses half it’s HP”. But also, some monsters could be mindless enough to fight to their last … I guess zombies don’t breathe. But you get the point.