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Making Monsters; Making Systems
Topic Started: Jun 30 2015, 08:07 AM (1,894 Views)
stellatedHexahedron
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Apr 2 2016, 12:05 PM
That is actually a really great idea stellatedHexahedron.
Thanks!

Username
Apr 2 2016, 12:05 PM
Weak Minded (Tier -1)
This monster rolls twice against Mind Affecting abilities and keeps the lower result.

Boring (Tier -1)
This monster's dice do not explode.

Unresponsive (Tier -1)
This Monster can not take Reaction Actions.

Fragile (Tier -2)
This monster halves its resilience to all sources of damage.
Hmm. I don't know about Weak Minded and Fragile, since fragility and weak-mindedness can be achieved just through stats, and Boring is just, well, boring.
Unresponsive is nice, though. It could arguably be tier -2, since reactions are such a big part of combat, but I'm not at all sure about that.

Another trait that could also help simulate a swarm creature but also be applicable to a lot of other things:

Many-Eyed (Tier 1)
This creature has many eyes, many heads, or some other way to sense things in all directions at once, and is hard to catch unawares unless it is very distracted. None of it's actions except for Focus Power and Run provoke opportunity attacks.

Alternative, weaker, more complicated version Many-Eyed:
This creature has many eyes, many heads, or some other way to sense things in all directions at once, and is hard to catch unawares unless it is very distracted. Someone must spend a reaction in order to make opportunity attack against it, unless the triggering action is Focus Power or Run.
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stellatedHexahedron
Apr 2 2016, 05:34 PM
Hmm. I don't know about Weak Minded and Fragile, since fragility and weak-mindedness can be achieved just through stats, and Boring is just, well, boring.
Unresponsive is nice, though. It could arguably be tier -2, since reactions are such a big part of combat, but I'm not at all sure about that.
Well, the thing with Weak Minded and Fragility is that they impose a weakness regardless of stats. Some stats that are used for toughness such as Willpower and Constitution also have other uses such as casting and saving throws. You could have a Weak Minded enemy that is good at summoning in other enemies or teleporting with Conjuration. Their High Willpower needed for this is countered by a disadvantage on saving throws. The issue there though is that you'd want to make sure you use a dice generator, as rolling and counting a bunch of dice can become time consuming.

Fragile is similar. Can make an enemy that has very good saving throws for Constitution and Willpower, or is good at dispelling offensive magic with high willpower but if actually hit takes a lot of damage. Handy for Glass Cannons too. I considered making fragile half hitpoints instead of halving resilience though, and I might do that. That would have the side effect of leaving the critical points unaffected so they could still be difficult to actually finish off if they had True Grit or armor and the like.

Boring is boring, but it has some fitting brevity to it. I kind of like it. I could see it used on some robotic enemies that have good stats but will never go especially above the norm on their rolls. Has the fun side effect of making a Boring wizard unable to cause Psychic Phenomena while unfettered casting too.

Unresponsive would be Tier -2 on an enemy with Resource points I would say, but since without feats or resource points most things get only 1 reaction action per turn it isn't quite as large a setback.

Easily Hurt (Tier -2)
This monster's hitpoints are halved.

Sap X (Tier -VARIABLE)
This monster automatically loses X HP every turn, X being a maximum of 5.

Exploitable (Tier -2)
This Monster takes -2k1 on rolls to resist effects (Stun, Snare, Toxic, etc)

The names are terrible, but I'm just trying to throw out some potential modifiers.
Edited by Username, Apr 2 2016, 10:00 PM.
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Divergent Reality
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Tremorsense (Tier 1)

This creature is able to sense the footfalls of creatures out to a ten meter radius around itself.

Heightened Tremorsense (Tier 2)

This creature's finely tuned senses allow it to detect creatures movement and footfalls up to 50 meters away.
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stellatedHexahedron
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Apr 2 2016, 06:00 PM
Well, the thing with Weak Minded and Fragility is that they impose a weakness regardless of stats. Some stats that are used for toughness such as Willpower and Constitution also have other uses such as casting and saving throws. You could have a Weak Minded enemy that is good at summoning in other enemies or teleporting with Conjuration. Their High Willpower needed for this is countered by a disadvantage on saving throws. The issue there though is that you'd want to make sure you use a dice generator, as rolling and counting a bunch of dice can become time consuming.

Fragile is similar. Can make an enemy that has very good saving throws for Constitution and Willpower, or is good at dispelling offensive magic with high willpower but if actually hit takes a lot of damage. Handy for Glass Cannons too. I considered making fragile half hitpoints instead of halving resilience though, and I might do that. That would have the side effect of leaving the critical points unaffected so they could still be difficult to actually finish off if they had True Grit or armor and the like.
Those are very niche situations, and you know it. The point of traits is to cover things that can't easily or shouldn't be covered by stats and feats, and fragility and weak-mindedness definitely don't qualify. Essentially duplicate, if not identical, pairs of traits like Fragile/Soft muck up the conceptual space and also should not exist; pick one or the other.

I think I've come around on Boring. I think it needs a better name, though, like...Rigid? Programmed? Automatic? I can't find the exact word I'm thinking of. I'm not sure it exists : \

Negative variable traits are probably a bad idea, since GMs can give them Sap (413) and make a guy that only lasts one round, but that's all they need take out the party. (not that they WOULD, but.) Sap itself also is kind of a niche case; it's probably better for the GM to just have whatever is damaging them be a separate effect than a trait. Or list it in their monster entries, like Frightful Presence.

I can't figure out what Exploitable is meant to represent. I'm also not liking the insistence on using the "rolls twice" thing which is generally only used for tables. Is it an effort to make it more "traitlike" since -2k1 or whatever is too "exaltationlike"?

Divergent Reality
Apr 2 2016, 07:54 PM
Tremorsense (Tier 1)
This creature is able to sense the footfalls of creatures out to a ten meter radius around itself.

Heightened Tremorsense (Tier 2)
This creature's finely tuned senses allow it to detect creatures movement and footfalls up to 50 meters away.
How about

Tremorsense (X) (Tier V)
This creature's finely tuned senses allow it to detect creatures movement and footfalls up to 10X meters away.
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stellatedHexahedron
Apr 2 2016, 09:10 PM
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Apr 2 2016, 06:00 PM
Well, the thing with Weak Minded and Fragility is that they impose a weakness regardless of stats. Some stats that are used for toughness such as Willpower and Constitution also have other uses such as casting and saving throws. You could have a Weak Minded enemy that is good at summoning in other enemies or teleporting with Conjuration. Their High Willpower needed for this is countered by a disadvantage on saving throws. The issue there though is that you'd want to make sure you use a dice generator, as rolling and counting a bunch of dice can become time consuming.

Fragile is similar. Can make an enemy that has very good saving throws for Constitution and Willpower, or is good at dispelling offensive magic with high willpower but if actually hit takes a lot of damage. Handy for Glass Cannons too. I considered making fragile half hitpoints instead of halving resilience though, and I might do that. That would have the side effect of leaving the critical points unaffected so they could still be difficult to actually finish off if they had True Grit or armor and the like.
Those are very niche situations, and you know it. The point of traits is to cover things that can't easily or shouldn't be covered by stats and feats, and fragility and weak-mindedness definitely don't qualify. Essentially duplicate, if not identical, pairs of traits like Fragile/Soft muck up the conceptual space and also should not exist; pick one or the other.

I think I've come around on Boring. I think it needs a better name, though, like...Rigid? Programmed? Automatic? I can't find the exact word I'm thinking of. I'm not sure it exists : \

Negative variable traits are probably a bad idea, since GMs can give them Sap (413) and make a guy that only lasts one round, but that's all they need take out the party. (not that they WOULD, but.) Sap itself also is kind of a niche case; it's probably better for the GM to just have whatever is damaging them be a separate effect than a trait. Or list it in their monster entries, like Frightful Presence.

I can't figure out what Exploitable is meant to represent. I'm also not liking the insistence on using the "rolls twice" thing which is generally only used for tables. Is it an effort to make it more "traitlike" since -2k1 or whatever is too "exaltationlike"?
Traits such as this are more for mechanical effect than specific representation, being able to give an exploitable weakness to an otherwise Powerful enemy. This encourages a party to invest in Lore Skills, helps give character to an enemy type and rewards more flexible play. All my suggestions are for Crunch first here, although they have their fluff uses as are pointed out.

I absolutely do not think that the descriptions I mentioned in Weak Minded or Fragility are all that Niche. Weak Minded is basically just the Strong Minded feat in reverse. Perhaps you have a powerful mage, tempted by the talk of Daemons that led him astray. He could be very good at summoning or Dispelling, but actually not very good at resisting the call of those beasts, or other mind controlling mages.

As for Soft/Fragile, there is already a similar mix in the game with Amorphous and Unnatural Toughness, with Unnatural Toughness being a rarer, more powerful version of Amorphous with no downsides. In this comparison, Soft is a less crummy version of Fragile while accomplishing something similar. Since it doesn't affect how you take Critical Damage, it is somewhat less of a negative compared to Fragile. I mentioned Fragile perhaps working as I mentioned for Soft, but rather than remove one option I just wrote down the second as a separate option.

Variable negative traits are necessarily bad, but I do think they need caps in some cases. With Sap I intended it to just be a reverse Regenerate, with a general Cap of 5 as with Fear. I'll edit that in. It might be a good idea to make a variable trait that works as Negative-Armor or Aura, so that if hit by physical or magical attacks they automatically take extra damage. Soft would probably be a good name for the negative Armor one.

Exploitable is best used with enemies that are powerful and difficult to damage directly, but can be indirectly taken down. Imagine the Walkers from Star Wars. Tough, killer vehicles that can be taken down relatively easily by snaring their legs. The reason I didn't do one as a -2k1 isn't because it seemed exalt-like, but rather because that did feel like something better represented by stat changes. Just a -2k1 negative to saving throws might well be a more elegant solution to what I intended for Exploitable though.

Traits like these and Sap might not be so useful for the Monster Creation rules presented here though, but I do think they could be interesting.

Soft (X)
This monster is easily harmed physically: Act as negative armor, increasing the damage of all physical attacks by an amount equal to X.

Sensitive (X)
This monster is sensitive to the effects of Warp Energy: Act as negative Aura, increasing the damage of all Magic attacks by an amount equal to X.
Edited by Username, Apr 2 2016, 11:13 PM.
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