New(?) Monster

[DamonJynx]

I'm writing up a Dungeon Crawl and I created a new (to Legend anyway) monster. I'm just not so sure about how I've written it up. Some feedback would be nice.

• 
  Kruha
  
  Dice Average D20 Location AP/HP
  STR 3D6+6 17 CA 2 1-2 Right Hind Leg 2/7
  CON 4D6 14 DM +1D6 3-4 Left Hind Leg 2/7
  SIZ 4D6+6 20 MOV 12 5-7 Hindquarters 2/8
  INT 3D6-6 5 MP 11 8-10 Forequarters 2/8
  POW 3D6 11 SR 13 11 Right Tentacle 2/6
  DEX 4D6+6 20 12 Left Tentacle 2/6
  CHA 2D6 7 13-14 Right Front Leg 2/7
  15-16 Left Front Leg 2/7
  17-20 Head 2/9
  
  Skills;
  Athletics 67%, Evade 70%, Perception 46%, Typical Armour; Thick fur, no armour penalty.
  Persistence 52%, Resilience 58%, Stealth 125%
  
  Traits;
  Dark Sight.
  Displacement: Melee and ranged attacks are opposed by the Kruha’s Stealth skill until it is hit. Critical Hits ignore this and are unmodified by the creature’s Stealth skill; re-roll the creatures defence using its Evade Skill. This ability resets after the Kruha moves 4 or more metres.
  Bestial Fury: Against surprised foes, the Kruha can make a Tentacle and Bite attack on its first Combat Action.
  
  Combat Styles;
  Tentacles and Bite 67%
  
  
  Weapon Damage Size Reach Combat Manoeuvre AP/HP
  Tentacles 1D6+1D6 L M Bleed, Impale 2/6
  Bite 1D10+1D6 M S Bleed 2/11

Apologies for the formatting, but I don't know how to do tables in these posts!.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Apologies for the formatting, but I don't know how to do tables in these posts!.

What you need is

 tags, but you also have tabs in your text which you need to replace with the right number of spaces.

 

[RangerDan]

Interesting, a kind of DnD Displacer Beast I take?

Displacement: Melee and ranged attacks are opposed by the Kruha’s Stealth skill until it is hit. Critical Hits ignore this and are unmodified by the creature’s Stealth skill; re-roll the creatures defence using its Evade Skill. This ability resets after the Kruha moves 4 or more metres.

So if I understand correctly while the beastie is "displacing" every attack is an Opposed Check against a Stealth skill of 125%, at no CA cost. This means that in effect even very skilled opponents (100%+) will be missing half the time.

This gives the beastie a nice economy of CA - it can rely on its natural defenses and use all CAs on attacking, while the PCs need to balance attack and defense (as usual).

I like that once a warrior connects he can guess where the creature is and avoid the Displacement effect, whereas it resets once it moves. Of course I don't see this critter ever standing still on purpose, so it rewards players who are able to restrict its movement or immobilise it.

I would leave out the "Critical Hits ignore this" etc. part. The Opposed Check rules cover this already, a crit would hit unless the creature also crits its Stealth skill. The creature can always use a CA to attempt an Evade if the Stealth fails?

How do you feel about the following? It's slightly different mechanically to what you wrote but I hope it's in the same spirit:

Displacement: Any melee or ranged attack must first succeed in an Opposed Check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. If the Kruha wins the check the attack misses automatically, and no Combat Maneuvers are awarded to either combatant. This does not cost the Kruha a Combat Action. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally, and the attacker becomes immune to the Displacement effect until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters. The Kruha can use a Combat Action to attempt to defend itself from a succesful attack as normal.

Bestial Fury: Against surprised foes, the Kruha can make a Tentacle and Bite attack on its first Combat Action.

Surprise is pretty bad news already because of the inability to defend oneself. If the critter rolls well on its attack rolls and gets 2-3 CMs you could be looking at a PC out of action in the first CA :twisted:

 

[DamonJynx]

Interesting, a kind of DnD Displacer Beast I take?

Precisely.

So if I understand correctly while the beastie is "displacing" every attack is an Opposed Check against a Stealth skill of 125%, at no CA cost. This means that in effect even very skilled opponents (100%+) will be missing half the time.

This gives the beastie a nice economy of CA - it can rely on its natural defenses and use all CAs on attacking, while the PCs need to balance attack and defense (as usual).

I like that once a warrior connects he can guess where the creature is and avoid the Displacement effect, whereas it resets once it moves. Of course I don't see this critter ever standing still on purpose, so it rewards players who are able to restrict its movement or immobilise it.

That is exactly correct. I thought that would keep 'the flavour' of the critter and make it a real challenge even though it only has 2 CA.

I would leave out the "Critical Hits ignore this" etc. part. The Opposed Check rules cover this already, a crit would hit unless the creature also crits its Stealth skill. The creature can always use a CA to attempt an Evade if the Stealth fails?

Consider it done, after all the opponents Critical number is only going to go down by 3 points max.

How do you feel about the following? It's slightly different mechanically to what you wrote but I hope it's in the same spirit:

Displacement: Any melee or ranged attack must first succeed in an Opposed Check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. If the Kruha wins the check the attack misses automatically, and no Combat Maneuvers are awarded to either combatant. This does not cost the Kruha a Combat Action. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally, and the attacker becomes immune to the Displacement effect until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters. The Kruha can use a Combat Action to attempt to defend itself from a succesful attack as normal.

I like it a lot and am going to pinch it if you don't mind. I may just change it to read:

...the attack is worked out normally, and the Displacement effect ends until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters.

Re Bestial Fury: Surprise is pretty bad news already because of the inability to defend oneself. If the critter rolls well on its attack rolls and gets 2-3 CMs you could be looking at a PC out of action in the first CA :twisted:

Well, it is supposed to be nasty and an exceptional hunter! You think this is too much?

 

[RangerDan]

I like it a lot and am going to pinch it if you don't mind. I may just change it to read:

...the attack is worked out normally, and the Displacement effect ends until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters.

Yeah this is more in line with your original concept. Makes the Displacement effect more manageable, especially for a larger group.

Well, it is supposed to be nasty and an exceptional hunter! You think this is too much?

Hard to say without knowing the party. A Kruha will obviously destroy a starting-level party, but I guess a more skilled group should be able to handle one or two depending on circumstance.

As an aside, how do you plan to handle targeted spells against the Kruha (ie. Disruption)? As written they would work normally so a powerful magic user will quickly disable a Kruha. Do you have any in your party?

 

[DamonJynx]

I actually GM Elric so magic is quite different. One of the other guys has just started up a home-brew campaign; we're discovering that the core magic is quite powerful.

With this Dungeon Crawl I'm actually writing it up as a generic scenario for novice-seasoned parties and the intention is to post it here for free. If it receives favourable feedback I may create more and try to get them published.

It began life as a one-off for my D&D groups Christmas Party when we moved from 3.5 to 4E. It was written up for 3.5 as some of the guys didn't want to play 4E and eventually split.

The intention is to provide a number of challenging encounters where if the players use their brains they can make the encounters much easier for themselves.

I've been thinking, in the D&D version the attackers have a 50% chance to hit, it may be easier to have the displacement ability just impose a 50% penalty on melee and ranged attacks and re-calculate the creatures stealth to a more realistic figure (normally I just add 30 points to a monsters/npc's base score, depending on the situation). I would argue that spells are also attacks and suffer the same penalties as the Displacement ability affects the attackers perception of where the creature actually is, thus making targeting more difficult.

 

[DamonJynx]

Would this be better for its Traits:

• Dark Sight
  Displacement: All attacks against the Kruha have a 50% miss chance unless the attacker first succeeds on an opposed Peristence vs. the Kruha's Stealth skill test. Weapon skills are reduced by 50% and magical attacks sepcifically targetting the Kruha must also roll equal to or under 50% to affect the creature. This effect ends with a succesful attack and resets once the Kruha has moved 4 or more metres.
  Bestial Fury: Against surprised foes the Kruha can make a tentacle and bite attack on its first Combat Action.

 

[RangerDan]

Would this be better for its Traits:

• Dark Sight
  Displacement: All attacks against the Kruha have a 50% miss chance unless the attacker first succeeds on an opposed Peristence vs. the Kruha's Stealth skill test. Weapon skills are reduced by 50% and magical attacks sepcifically targetting the Kruha must also roll equal to or under 50% to affect the creature. This effect ends with a succesful attack and resets once the Kruha has moved 4 or more metres.
  Bestial Fury: Against surprised foes the Kruha can make a tentacle and bite attack on its first Combat Action.

Hmm I actually think that in terms of economy of rolls your original concept (Opposed check vs. Stealth) works better. Having said that, I do see the sense in involving the Perception skill (I guess you mean Perception not Persistence) in trying to attack the Kruha.

I would probably not choose for a flat miss chance (one more roll to make every attack) but rather a penalty to the attacking skill check of say -50%. This actually gives you some scaling options you don't have with a flat miss chance. Maybe adolescent Kruha have a Displacement effect of only -20%, but the dread Elder Kruha has a Displacement effect of -100%.

Displacement: Any attacker using a melee, ranged or direct magic attack against the Kruha must first roll an Opposed Perception check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally. If the Kruha wins the check the attacker suffers a -50% penalty to the attacking skill for that attack. On a succesful attack against the Kruha the Displacement effect is disabled until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters.

With this version of Displacement I would not reduce the Stealth skill of 125%. You need for the Kruha to consistently win the opposed checks in order for the Displacement effect to be felt. The Displacement effect is weaker than the previous version (penalty rather than automatic miss) but it will still be a near-crippling penalty to beginning characters who fail the opposed check.

 

[DamonJynx]

Having said that, I do see the sense in involving the Perception skill (I guess you mean Perception not Persistence) in trying to attack the Kruha.

I actually did mean Persistence. The displacement effect is an illusion and as such I thought Persistence would make a better opposed roll. Back in the day, Illusions were countered by a successful Will save hence my thought process - the Illusion is playing with your mind more so than your actual senses, but it is more in keeping with MRQ2/Legend to oppose Stealth with Perception. I'll probably change that.

I would probably not choose for a flat miss chance (one more roll to make every attack) but rather a penalty to the attacking skill check of say -50%. This actually gives you some scaling options you don't have with a flat miss chance. Maybe adolescent Kruha have a Displacement effect of only -20%, but the dread Elder Kruha has a Displacement effect of -100%.

This was what I was aiming for. The exception is spell casters, they don't have to roll to hit per se, just successfully cast their spell via the appropriate skill, so if they failed their Persistence/Perception check it wouldn't decrease their spell casting necessarily, but would affect their targeting hence the miss chance.

Displacement: Any attacker using a melee, ranged or direct magic attack against the Kruha must first roll an Opposed Perception check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally. If the Kruha wins the check the attacker suffers a -50% penalty to the attacking skill for that attack. On a succesful attack against the Kruha the Displacement effect is disabled until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters.

Very neat. I'll have to give you, at a minimum, play testing credit!

With this version of Displacement I would not reduce the Stealth skill of 125%. You need for the Kruha to consistently win the opposed checks in order for the Displacement effect to be felt. The Displacement effect is weaker than the previous version (penalty rather than automatic miss) but it will still be a near-crippling penalty to beginning characters who fail the opposed check.

You're probably right. I'm beginning to think the original version was a bit simpler and just as effective. The only thing is trying to cover magic users...

• Displacement: Any melee or ranged attack against the Kruha must first succeed in an Opposed Check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. In the case of magical attacks the caster rolls their magical skill as appropriate but must also succeed in an opposed Perception vs. Stealth check. If the Kruha wins the attack misses automatically, and no Combat Manoeuvres are awarded to either combatant, however magic users pay the cost as normal for a successful casting. The Stealth check does not cost the Kruha a Combat Action. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally and the Displacement effect ends until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters, which resets the Displacement ability.
  

I think this covers all the bases. I don't think it's fair to allow the Kruha to also use a CA to defend itself while it's Displacement ability is in effect. How would it know that it's Displacement ability failed to protect it, unless it felt the pain of the sword slicing through its flesh or the barb of an arrow piercing its furry hide?

Bloody hard to get the balance right, isn't it?

I suppose that's why play-testing is done - to iron out the finer details.

 

[RangerDan]

I actually did mean Persistence. The displacement effect is an illusion and as such I thought Persistence would make a better opposed roll.

Ah ok! Cool idea, I think I like it more than plain 'ol boring Perception, which savvy players will tend to boost anyways.

• Displacement: Any melee or ranged attack against the Kruha must first succeed in an Opposed Check against the Kruha's Stealth skill. In the case of magical attacks the caster rolls their magical skill as appropriate but must also succeed in an opposed Perception vs. Stealth check. If the Kruha wins the attack misses automatically, and no Combat Manoeuvres are awarded to either combatant, however magic users pay the cost as normal for a successful casting. The Stealth check does not cost the Kruha a Combat Action. If the attacker wins the check the attack is worked out normally and the Displacement effect ends until the Kruha moves at least 4 meters, which resets the Displacement ability.
  

Nice. This version makes the Displacement effect more mechanically powerful than the previous one, but that is in line with a beastie meant to terrorise the players.

I don't think it's fair to allow the Kruha to also use a CA to defend itself while it's Displacement ability is in effect.

A fair point. I don't think it's that bad though, considering that to defend itself the Kruha will use one of its two CAs, and have to rely on its not-unbeatable Evade score of 70%. Also, as per Evade rules, if it attempts to defend itself, the next CA it uses cannot be an attack. Maybe it only tries to Evade if it feels outmatched.

As a last thought, don't let your players talk you into allowing a Kruha-hide cloak!

 

[DamonJynx]

As a last thought, don't let your players talk you into allowing a Kruha-hide cloak!

Not on your life! Once the creature dies, so too does the magic!

 

[PhilHibbs]

As a last thought, don't let your players talk you into allowing a Kruha-hide cloak!

Not on your life! Once the creature dies, so too does the magic!

Nonetheless, if such a magical ability is possible, then it is implausible that this creature is the only thing that can do it. Does the creature have some kind of unique connection to the otherworld source of this magic? Is it an avatar of some kind of deity or great spirit, and if so, can said being be contacted and worshipped? Can the creature's magical ability be re-activated somehow, or used in similar magic, perhaps only for a limited amount of time or number of uses?

Having an absolute "Not on your life!" kind of answer to that question just reinforces the impression that this is really just some kind of game entity that is there to annoy players, and has no plausable place or role in the world.

What does this creature eat? Is that where it gets its ability? Are there Kruhares or Kruhalibut that it hunts? Can their blood be used in Kruhalchemy? :wink:

 

[DamonJynx]

Stuff

Thanks Phil. I must admit I haven't given a lot of thought to the ecology and origins and so on of the unique creatures in the adventure. I do agree, some background on those creatures would be useful to GM's wishing to include them in their regular campaigns. So I will work on this.

However, all I've posted is a statistic block for a creature. So I feel your comments about it being a creature to just annoy the players unwarranted. It presents a different sort of creature for the PC's to fight. One which they will have to adjust their tactics to defeat, otherwise they will have a hard time of it. I think that's a good thing.

And don't forget, it's a Dungeon Crawl, it's supposed to be a challenge and a bit of fun. It doesn't have to be overly deep and meaningful!

 

[Redcrow]

So I feel your comments about it being a creature to just annoy the players unwarranted.

I'm the type of GM that takes it as point of pride whenever I come up with a new creature to annoy my players with. :twisted: YMMV.

 

[PhilHibbs]

And don't forget, it's a Dungeon Crawl, it's supposed to be a challenge and a bit of fun. It doesn't have to be overly deep and meaningful!

Of course. I'm not here to spoil anyone's fun. But there is a long tradition of using the parts of magical creatures as the ingredients in magical processes, I'm sure the skin of this creature would be of great value to a magician or an alchemist even if it can't be just cut into a cloak to give instant powers.

 

[DamonJynx]

OK, I get where you're coming from now. Yes, that would be reasonable. What Dan and I were obviously concerned about was a PC skinning the animal and getting the Displacement ability in full, which would be way too powerful. As it is, its a powerful ability for a rare creature and having PC's who are already well above the norm having that kind of power is just too much.

I don't see why the 'parts' of the animal couldn't be used to make potions or items that give short term or minor benefits. The most obvious being a cloak of the creatures skin which could provide a bonus to stealth checks equal to the creatures Critical score for its Stealth skill in this case 13%? Or a potion of Kruha's Grace that doubles the imbibers DEX for a short period of time; 2-4 CA for example. Obviously these things would and should have a limited availability and be very expensive if not impossible to purchase.

 

[PhilHibbs]

...The most obvious being a cloak of the creatures skin which could provide a bonus to stealth checks equal to the creatures Critical score for its Stealth skill in this case 13%? Or a potion of Kruha's Grace that doubles the imbibers DEX for a short period of time; 2-4 CA for example. Obviously these things would and should have a limited availability and be very expensive if not impossible to purchase.

2-4 CA seems quite mean. If you make magical items so limited, they become so expensive relative to their benefit that people will simply not use them, but will just sell them instead. If it takes longer to find the potion and drink it than it does to make use of its benefit, then when you come to really need it, you're probably dead before you've taken it. I'd make it double the drinker's natural CAs for 1d6 combat rounds.

 

[DamonJynx]

So is the double the drinkers CA's instead of doubling the drinkers DEX or on top of it? I'm assuming instead of. That would be quite reasonable. It's up to individual GM's to do what they will and best suits their players and campaigns.

 

[Dan True]

Hi Damon.

I've had a look now and I think the monster i interesting, you have some good ideas. I do however have a few ideas:

- I would properly give it 3 CA at least, (call it a +1 CA for having the tentacle-thingies). Even with that sort of defense, this creature will not fare well if having only 2 CA against 4x3 CAs as many parties have. I know it doesn't have to spend many CAs on defense, but I still feel it'll be turnd to powder the minute anybode gets through its displacement.

- I'm thinking if one could make the displacement more interesting than simply ruining one's blows? I mean if the party is fighting one of these, and it simply means its much the same as other fights except you miss 2/3 of the time.. it's not really that great.
How about perhaps calling the displacement a -20% to attack rolls, and then make a table of stuff happening if you hit the creature. This table could include "illusionary overspill" or some such, for instance:

1d20
1: The character fumbles his attack
2: A flash of light blinds the character the instance his weapon connect with what he thought was the creature - treat this as being the subject of a blind CM. The attack misses.
3: The weapon turns into some similar useless object - a trout, a teapot or a snake (depending on style). Treat this as if a phantom(sight) was cast on the attacker, with a duration of 1 minute and magnitude 2.
4: The illusions pops when you hit the creature, and reveals that the creature was not there at all! - move the creature up to 1d3 meters to any location that makes sense.
...
15+: you hit the monster! The monsters displacement is temporarily ended, either for the whole next round or until the monster has moved 4 meters or more.

You can of course still have the 4meter reset etc incorporated in this, and some way for it to shut down outside of the table.
This IS a lot of work though, but it could make for a pretty different and interesting (if the table is done correctly) fight... however, stick with the current rule if this would be too much work.

Otherwise the monsters seems fair enough. Good work. Looking forward to seeing the finished result.

- Dan

 

[DamonJynx]

Your thoughts are intriguing Dan, but I don't think I have the design skill to come up with something like the table you suggest!

It was my intention to have the party face at least 2 of these creatures possibly more.