symbol marks the paragraphs describing intelligence for a category of monster.
| Rules | • | Spyragia Setting | • | Monsters | • | Stories |
Most fantasy adventure stories involve at least one monster. Yes, the butler is guilty—but why does he secretly keep a box with air holes in the attic?
The simple and intuitive rules for Nine Powers make inventing monsters easy!
Depending upon your setting a "monster" could be a dangerous animal, fantasy creature, alien, time traveller, person changed by a curse, or any other creature exempt from certain game rules. Monsters often move, attack, resist harm, and create problems in ways that PCs cannot. The rules section named issues and monster attacks has many examples.
Even if the specific example monsters described below are not useful in your stories, they are designed to provide a GM and Player with numerous ideas and details that can be used in other creative ways.
The monster descriptions below omit many skill ratings. This allows skimming for where each monster excels.
It is almost always true that when a monster effects something "nearby" that its range equals its movement rate.
Three color combinations are used with links to rules about special attacks that deal damage and also cause an issue, something avoidable, or something deadly.
A gray color combination is used with links about monster morale.
This font is used when describing how monsters exemplify a trope or combat strategy.
This font is used when describing how monsters have special movement or defensive abilities.
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All monsters might be intelligent. The symbol marks the paragraphs describing intelligence for a category of monster.
All monsters cannot have children like a normal animal, but have other ways to reproduce. The 
symbol marks the paragraphs describing reproduction for a category of monster.
All monsters except bigbeasts have special rules about how they get hurt. The 
symbol marks the paragraphs describing special defensive rules for a category of monster.
All monsters except bigbeasts have special rules about how magic affects them. The 
symbol marks the paragraphs describing special magic rules for a category of monster.
All monsters can see in the dark and have other flavorful exceptions to the core game rules. The 
symbol marks the paragraphs describing how that category of monster can "cheat" during combat. (Individual monster types have additional special abilities.)
All monsters have a weakness. The 
symbol marks the paragraphs describing the weakness for that category of monster. (Individual monster types may have additional weaknesses.)
Bigbeasts are monsters that combine the features of one or more animals (but never people) and exaggerate the innate abilities of those animals.
When a type of bigbeast is encountered more than once, that type is often given a name: a gryphon, hippogriff, pegasus, chimera, peryton, peluda, seps, simurgh, etc. The Sagacious look for patterns about when and where these bigbeasts appear, and compile records about successful hunting tactics for each type.
Some bigbeasts are unsociable and live alone. Others live in families or packs.
Bigbeasts are much bigger and tougher than a normal animal of their kind. As examples of size, a bigbeast rat is as large as a normal wolf, a bigbeast wolf is as large as a normal pony, and a bigbeast bear is as large as a normal elephant.
A bigbeast is slightly smarter than the normal animal(s) it resembles. As examples, bigbeast insects are as clever as normal rats, bigbeast squirrels plan tricks to deceive, and bigbeast boars can read road signs. A bigbeast's intelligence increases greatly after it establishes a lair, then continues to increase proportional to the size of its territory.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the Power named Laurel creates bigbeasts far from any settlements.
Laurel's followers will record which bigbeasts they have tracked and killed, and whether the deed was done alone or as a member of a hunting party. Some hunters will also mount the heads of slain bigbeasts on a prominent wall of their homes.
Spyragia contains many dangerous creatures that are not "monsters". Travelers who venture away from the main roads might encounter lions and tigers and bears and dinosaurs. Being a monster requires more than being a big thing that sometimes eats people.
Monsters must be interesting to fight! Consider hunting a tyrannosaurus. That might sound exciting, but usually that combat is actually too simplistic because dinosaurs lack intelligence and equipment, and they have no reason to be encountered in locations with strategic options. An ooze would have more interesting abilities. An visitor from another world would own interesting equipment. A dragon would have both, and a special location. A normal tyrannosaurus is simply outclassed!
Once per month a bigbeast lair magically creates a single egg that will hatch into the type of bigbeast that created that lair. Often this means that ridding a region of a troublesomely aggressive bigbeast is a two-step process: defeating the bigbeast and wrecking its lair. However, once a bigbeast has person-like intelligence its lair no longer has eggs.
Bigbeasts have no special defensive rules.
Bigbeasts have no special magical defensive rules.
Bigbeasts gain adrenaline during combat. After the first time a bigbeast causes damage each turn, it may attempt an extra melee attack at tough difficulty.
Bigbeasts have trouble removing issues. Their skill checks to do so suffer a big penalty.
Bigbeasts are sensitive and vulnerable to an enemy with potential. A person attacking it can display two or four unspent advancement tokens to gain a small or big bonus to their dice pool. This does not use up the advancement tokens.
Design Notes
The best monsters highlight the types of conflict understandable by and important to children. Fairy tales have demonstrated for centuries how children find comfort in stories where predatory or selfish deeds are punished, hurtful secrets are revealed, and wounded people recover and become strong.
Tangentially, most children find dealing with only a few types of crime and violence to be sensible, sufficient, and preferable to the wide array of grown-up evils. Therefore Nine Powers focuses on monsters that are warped creatures with unpredictably dangerous powers, with monsters that guard territory and attack intruders, and with monsters that enjoy capturing and enslaving people.
If the GM and Player are both adults then stories might additionally feature monsters that highlight prejudice, oppression, addiction, apathy, lust, entitlement, and other vices that require some maturity to deal with.
Bigbeasts have an innate desire to explore until they claim an isolated but distinctly describable location: a butte, signal tower, signpost at a crossroads, remote shrine, memorial, etc. When exploring and first claiming such a site and establishing a lair they do not disturb the local wildlife and are only dangerous if provoked.
However, bigbeasts who have finished their lair become aggressive and strive to expanad their territory. They roam farther and farther from their lair, ignoring small animals but hunting large predators and intelligent creatures and people.
Some evil people cause havoc by finding a way to lead a bigbeast from its lair to a village or town, where its instinct to attack intelligent creatures causes it to frenzy.
Bigbeasts gain exaggerations of their innate animal abilities. As examples, bigbeast snakes are peternaturally able to detect heat and hypnotize, bigbeast crows have a shriek that causes pain and panic, and bigbeast centipedes have nearly impervious chitin and can dig with incredible speed.
Design Notes
Fantasy literature is full of fights between heroes and dangerous animals.
Many times the favorite fantasy animal of a GM or Player can be included in the setting as either a non-monstrous animal or a bigbeast. Does the fantasy world contain rocs and unicorns as "normal" animals, or are these bigbeast eagles and horses?
Squirrels really are deceptive, using false caches of food to minimize thefts from rivals. Pigs really do have a talent for understanding print: they have been taught to differentiate known scribbles from new scribbles they have not seen before.
A razorbill is a kind of auk. Many fantasy settings have a creature named a razorbeak.
The bigbeast tyrannosaurus breathes fire and shoots its fist because I had a Shogun Warrior Godzilla toy during my childhood.
Similarly, bigbeasts have their personalities exaggerated from those of a normal animal of their kind. A bigbeast jay is an especially vicious bird. A bigbeast maltese is dangerous in its doggy desire for attention.
Bigbeasts that are a hybrid of several animals may have strange powers that extend beyond exaggerations of their innate animal abilities. These commonly include an incredibly tough rocky hide, additional horns, or bony protrusions.
Bigbeasts are usually at least as alert as a normal animal of their kind. Most have high Perception skill, although those at the top of their local food chain may have become fat, spoiled, and unperceptive.
If unopposed, a bigbeast will expand its territory so much that it becomes intelligent enough to participate in conversation. This grants it the very dangerous ability to change into a humanoid form. But these humanoid forms have a some feature that marks them as different from other people, such as scales or fur, a strangely shaped head or limbs, too many limbs, or fins and gills. Some bigbeasts use their humanoid form regularly, while others ignore this new ability and always remain in their normal form.
The hides or scales of bigbeasts are often prized by armorers.
The tongues of bigbeasts are useful for alchemy. An extract of bigbeast tongue will remove the need for a dice roll when improvising a particular type of alchemical crafting effect. (The enhanced improvisation does remain limited to effects that have impact of 1, 2, or 3.)
Nothing about a bigbeast hints at which alchemical effect the creature's tongue could help improvise. However, examining the tongue using the alchemy talent can reveal this.
A bigbeast centipede can be remarkably difficult to harm. One bigbeast centipede, alone, is not very dangerous if your damage can get past is thick chitin. But a group of bigbeast centipedes is formidable.
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Melee/Protect 1 (talent 1) ← Acid or Envenom
Movement Rate 4
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Bigbeast centipedes exemplify a grappling mob. Each is fragile, but they have the tools to work together to limit opponents' mobility and overwhelm. A group of them is difficult to fight alone, so in a story with a solo PC the GM should include advance warning when these monsters might be encountered.
Special Movement: Bigbeast centipedes move along walls and ceilings as easily as the ground, which can help them make sneak attacks using their Stealth talent.
Another traditional fantasy monster with the role of a grappling mob is what D&D calls a Stirge, or what Shadowdark calls a Stingbat.
To change the bigbeast centipede into that monster give it flight with movement rate 5, replace its damage mitigation with a second point of stamina, and give it a vampiric blood drain that heals the monster when it deals damage.
A chimera has trouble thinking straight, but can still be dangerous. As a monster it resembles a giant lion with a goat head growing oddly from its back and its tail replaced by a fanged serpent.
The snake mouth has a venom that dulls reactions. The goat mouth can breathe a cloud of stench that clings near the monster. Most dangerous is how the chimera can latch onto its target in a way that allows it to also scratch with both hind claws.
Chimeras prefer to live and hunt in pairs. They like to roam ruins or live in an abandoned building, often in a humanoid form that looks like a large lion-headed man or woman with goat horns and a snake's tongue, shrouded by a heavy leather cloak.
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Acrobatics/Climb 1 ← Grab
Movement Rate 5
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Chimeras exemplify a repulsive chaser. PCs want to keep their distance, but the monster has tools to close the distance.
Even a normal cobra is so large that is growls instead of hissing. A bigbeast cobra is truly terrifying! Their body is slightly furry, but no one is sure what other animal they are combined with.
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Melee/Protect 2 ← Weaken or Lethal Venom
Movement Rate 3
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Bigbeast cobras exemplify a doom combo. Any opponent envenomed might be instantly defeated.
Bigbeast crocodiles sometimes infiltrate a city's sewers. Lazy and hungry, they use their humanoid form to demand drink and food from people they meet: often sewer workers and thieves.
They usually appear in groups, and most will sleep while one remains in its humanoid form, awake and alert but nearly unmoving with reptilian patience. If they hear anyone approach without first calling out their password, they submerge in their monstrous form and wait in ambush.
Their death rolls are deadly. They can also flail about wildly to knock prone everyone nearby.
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Melee/Protect 2 (talent 1) ← Big Hit
Movement Rate 3
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Bigbeast crocodiles exemplify a skulking bruiser. They are tough when they can fight up close. But the real danger is not knowing if more of them are lurking out of sight.
A very different monster with similar abilities is a griffin. Griffins have the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, with the head and wings of an eagle. Some griffins have leonine forelegs and paws, whereas others have large eagle's legs as forelegs.
To change the bigbeast crocodile into a griffin give it flight, increase its movement rate to 7, reduce its damage mitigation to 1, and reduce its stamina to 4. Change its morale to Uncommitted Hunter Morale. Reframe its lethal melee as carrying prey high into the air (instead of a crocodile's death roll), and its knockdown spray as summoning a whirlwind (instead of a crocodile flailing about).
Griffins are strong enough to fly while carrying a horse. They will prey on livestock, but prefer the taste of horses and other mounts. They seldom fight adventurers, instead swooping down to grab and fly away with animals. They can attune with the air to summon whirlwinds, to force people and intelligent creatures out of their territories.
Many hunters try to bring home a griffin egg, for stories say that the monster will be tame if raised by a kind person, and can then be useful as both a mount and a squire. But only wild griffins learn to attune with the air.
Griffins exemplify a flying vexer that wants to grab prey and fly away instead of skirmishing.
A dire hamster acts like the worst-tempered among normal hamsters. It explores by charging objects and biting. It fights by trying to push over its opponents to more easily bite their throat or belly. With a flurry of furry blows, a dire hamster can knock down all nearby opponents.
Nevertheless, some people think they are cute. Other, more knowledgeable adventurers, have seen a dire hamster explode.
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Melee/Protect 1 ← Knockdown Spray
Movement Rate 4
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Dire hamsters exemplify a living bomb. Each is weak. PCs want to be distant when one is defeated.
A hydra is a strange bigbeast, some odd combination of dinosaur and snake. It knows that its heads multiply when a neck is severed, and so will try to weave its heads through the air to intercept incoming attacks with its necks.
At the start of each turn, roll a die to determine odd or even. The next time the hydra is harmed, if the amount of damage (after damage mitigation) matches (odd or even) then the hydra grows another head instead of suffering damage. An opponent who is causing the hydra to suffer any issue has observed the hydra carefully to learn whether the die rolled odd or even.
Most hydras are limited to having no more than six heads.
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Melee/Protect [skill equals # of heads] (talent 1) ← Acid Spray
Movement Rate [skill equals 6 − # of heads]
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Hydras exemplify a damage puzzle. Heroes need to study its behavior to learn how to efficiently attack it. If they are too inefficient the hydra will heal faster than they damage it.
Special Movement: On each of a hydra's turns, each head attacks separately.
An even more dangerous version of the hydra is the bigbeast giant squid called an ink-acles.
All around it is an abominable darkness that not only suppresses nearby light but also extinguishes any torches, lanterns, or other flames. This magical darkness is slightly tangible and sticky, and adheres to objects for a minute even after leaving the ink-acles' area.
Hopefully within the darkness there is only one of this monster!
Manticores are usually encountered as a mated pair or a pack. They consider themselves the aristocracy of their territory's sky. They will chase away all other large or carnivorous flying creatures. They love to toy with the creatures who live below them. In their monstrous form they look like shaggy lions whose fur has matted into spiky bits, with large bat-like wings and a long tail that is lined with bony spikes on both sides.
Manticores with humanoid forms will normally approach first in those forms: nobles with shaggy hair who are nicely dressed and elegant of speech, with their overly toothy mouths hidden behind masks, scarves, or gaiters. They might scold their prey for intruding on private property, discuss survival of the fittest in abstract ways, or explain that the concept of "hero" is a fiction created to give hope to the masses.
In both forms they have inner and outer jaws. The outer jaw has two rows of teeth like a shark. The inner jaw has more spiky teeth.
Manticores prefer to attack from safety by shooting a spike from their tails. This merely appears as a blur of speed if in its humanoid form. Each manticore starts combat with a six-sided die number of tail spikes that can be shot.
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Shoot/Throw 3 (talent 2) ← use teamwork to pin foes behind cover using the normal issue
Movement Rate 2 on ground, 5 when flying
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Manticores exemplify archers. They are most dangerous when they can keep distant.
Special Movement: Manticores may attack by shooting a tail spike while flying.
A nest of blue spiders the size of large dogs would be frightening enough, but mist spiders are especially deadly predators.
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Melee/Protect 2 ← Weaken
Movement Rate 3
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Mist Spiders exemplify damage puzzle, but of a very different sort from the Hydra. Hit all of them as consistently as you can, or the ones you miss become especially dangerous.
Special Movement: Some mist spiders have the ability to turn invisible when resting and waiting for prey. When these spiders first attack they will deal extra damage due to their Stealth talent, unless their prey can see invisible creatures. A mist spider that is waiting invisibly might try to attempt to sneak closer to prey it senses. On its turn, allow the mist spider to attempt a Stealth skill check. If successful, it remains invisible and creeps forward a distance of 1 (easy), 2 (medium), or 3 (tough) depending upon the degree of success. If the attempt fails, the mist spider stops being invisible and moves its normal movement rate.
Special Movement: Mist spiders are attuned to their own webs. Webbing does not hinder their movement. They automatically succeeds with Climb skill use to climb their webs. They automatically succeed with Perception skill use about happenings within their webs.
Special Movement: Each round a visible mist spider does not suffer damage it turns into blue mist. It becomes solid again as it makes its next attack: the mist streaming unnaturally through the air to manifest as a spider immediately behind its prey. This attack will deal extra damage due to their Stealth talent, unless the target can see invisible creatures.
Bigbeast shrews are the size of house cats. They are vicious and often carry disease. The unfortunate fact that are always encountered in groups suggests they actually combine a shrew with some second, more cooperative, type of rodent.
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Acrobatics/Climb 2
Movement Rate 4
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A bigbeast shrew exemplifies a scuttering hazard. The adventurers want to bypass or defeat this group of threats without getting injured at all.
Special Movement: The first time a bigbeast shrew causes damage it becomes enraged: it henceforth causes 1 extra damage and its movement rate increases to 5.
A similar monster with the role of a scuttering hazard is a pack of nimblegators: bigbeasts that combine the bipedal speed of a collared lizard with the long snout of an alligator. They are sometimes mistaken for velociraptors, but are monsters instead of dinosaurs.
To change the bigbeast centipede into a nimblegator increase its Melee/Protect skill rating to 2, replace the disease with knockdown, and give its Acrobatics/Climb skill the pack attack ability. Also give it 1 point of damage mitigation unless enraged.
The stenchbird is a bigbeast vulture. As it flies around it is surrounded by a cloud of noxious fumes that causes various penalties to all nearby opponents.
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Acrobatics/Climb 2 ← Terrify Spray
Movement Rate 6
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A stenchbird exemplifies a zone defense monster. It is weak when alone. But when with other adversaries, it restricts where the PCs can move, which makes those other adversaries more dangerous.
Special Movement: A stenchbird may use its spray attacks while flying.
A somewhat similar bird is the razorbeak. These odd creatures have an auk's webbed feet and flipper arms. Yet their two extra orange wings magically make them nimble fliers. They also have an extra orange beak on their chest, orange eyes on stalks, and two large orange spikes growing from their back.
Razorbeaks are protective of their nests and young, and will defend them fiercely against any perceived threat. They also see anyone's babies not in a nest as a victim of improper parenting, and will kidnap that babies to raise "correctly".
Razorbeaks lack the nauseating and weakening clouds produced by a stenchbird. Instead they have remarkably tough skin (increase damage mitigation to 2) and any damage they suffer is magically copied onto their nearby opponents. Keep your distance!
No bigbeast tyrannosaurus has ever been successfully hunted. Not only is it even larger than before, but it can breathe fire and the claw on its right forearm is replaced by a huge, glowing green ball of energy vaugely shaped like a fist.
Those bigbeast tyrannosauruses with a humanoid form only use it while eating in their den. This form is round-faced and bald, dressed in hides, and notable for its scaly green skin, spiky teeth, and glowing right hand.
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Shoot/Throw 3 ← Blast or Eldritch Spray
Movement Rate 4
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A bigbeast tyrannosaurus exemplifies an area of effect bruiser. Like the skulking bruiser it hits hard when up close. Unlike the skulking bruiser, it has a ranged attack, and both its melee and ranged attacks allow it to attack multiple targets on each of its turns. Unlike the skulking bruiser, the PCs know how many of these monsters they are fighting.
Special Movement: A bigbeast tyrannosaurus has such a large mouth that it can bite two adjacent opponents with each melee attack.
Special Movement: When a bigbeast tyrannosaurus shoots a blast from its glowing fist the range is twice its movement rate.
Special Movement: Its fiery breath (represented by eldritch spray) will ignite objects.
A worg is a bigbeast wolf that hunts in packs. Their humanoid forms resemble bipedal werewolves with greasy, matted fur, often wearing leather clothing and iron chains.
A worg pack is led by an alpha, who has 1 extra stamina and damage mitigation.
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Melee/Protect 2 ← Grapple or Knockdown
Movement Rate 6
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Worgs exemplify pack hunters. The danger increases when two or more worgs gang up on the same target.
Special Movement: Worgs always get a big bonus from flanking opponents.
Special Movement: The worg pack tries to cut off its prey's escape routes. While the alpha worg is leading the pack, any opponent suffering from an issue cannot use the Escape skill to flee combat.
A similar monster is an ankheg: a huge burrowing monster that mixes ant, trapdoor spider, and Devonian dinosaur worm. They are usually encountered as a nest of monsters burrowed in dirt, buried under soft sand, or perched above a passageway.
To change the bigbeast centipede into an ankheg, increase its damage mitigation to 2 and reduce its stamina to 3. Replace its reinforcements ability with a lethal melee that represents dragging a prone target underground. Also change its morale to no morale, since ankhegs retreat once they have acquired a meal.
An ankheg exemplifies a fleeing ambusher. Its only goal is to grab a meal and then flee to safety.
Bugaboos are monsters created when the scary things children imagine become real. Most bugaboos feed on fear, and attack using hallucination and grabbing.
Because children are so creative, bugaboos have tremendous variety in appearance and behavior.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, bugaboos are made by Little Humble. She loves children, and so she helps children who are afraid of imaginary monsters by removing nightmare monsters from children's minds and putting them in the real world.
Each bugaboos is made real in a place far away from the home of the child who dreamt of it. Thus most children freed of their nightmare fears never meet those bugaboos. Nothing special happens if they do meet, except that such an encounter is usually traumatic to the child.
The word bugaboo is a variant of bugbear, which is similar to bogeyman. Historically, the word bugbear emphasized being obsessed with the fear, whereas bogeyman emphasized that the childhood fear was purposefully implanted by the child's parents.
Yes, defeating a bugaboo is like smashing a piñata.
A category of monsters that is often invisible, with differing ways to see the different monsters, is a tribute to the Scandinavian vaesen as popularized by Johan Egerkrans.
The "garb-grabber" and "skin man" were inspired by illustrations in the Libris Mortis.
Most children's nightmare monsters are crafty and clever hunters. Few bugaboos grow in intelligence, but most are dangerous foes.
Many bugaboos know that creating more bugaboos is as easy as causing more children to have nightmares about monsters. Even better if more children have nightmares about a monster just like yourself!
Bugaboos do not have stamina or an armor rating. Their strange bodies, both physical and made of nightmares, make it unclear how sturdy they are. An adventurer fighting a bugaboo is often uncertain whether the damage he or she causes is about injuring, rebuking, or banishing the monster. A bugaboo is defeated when it has suffered an easy attack, a medium attack, and a tough attack. For more fragile bugaboos these three hits can happen in any order. For a durable bugaboo the attacker must find out (whether from research or by trial and error) which type of damage is counted first, second, and third. For the most sturdy bugaboos the three hits must also be consecutive attacks, and a missed attack or an attack of the wrong type will reset the required sequence to the beginning.
A bugaboo damaged by magic gains a small bonus to its attacks. The second consecutive time it is damaged by magic this increases to a big bonus. When the bugaboo is damaged by a physical attack the bonus "resets" and is removed.
Bugaboos are invigorated when people near them are frightened. To a bugabo, nearby fright counts as a beneficial circumstance that provides a small bonus during skill checks.
Bugaboos are invisible, but people can see an invisible bugaboo if they do a specific thing.
Bugaboos believe in imaginary friends. When a bugaboo is visible, the person hunting it can pretend to receive help from a vividly described imaginary friend. The bugaboo will believe the imaginary friend is real and act accordingly. (For example, a hero may gain a small bonus from flanking by describing the position of an imaginary friend.) The imaginary friend cannot touch the bugaboo.
Bugaboos are afraid of crafted magical weapons, which they mistakenly believe were all created specifically to hunt them. When an opponent wields a crafted magical weapon, adjacent bugaboos automatically suffer the issue caused by Wonder.
Although nearly every bugaboo is violent, not all children have nightmares about aggressive monsters. For example, one famous tale describes a bugaboo that strode brazenly into a tavern and for two days told amazingly creepy and frightening stories augmented with subtle, harmless hallucinations.
Many bugaboos want to manipulate people. They have an objective more interesting than merely harming people. They might want a criminal to be punished, an insult to be avenged, or a location to be cleansed.
Bugaboos have many varied abilities, because children have many varied nightmares.
When a bugaboo is defeated it explodes into a shower of treats: mostly candy and coins, but sometimes strange gadgets, magical tools, or an advancement token.
The bash-pull-pop looks like a horse-sized morel mushroom with six tentacles that it uses as arms and legs. It is hard to get past its regrowing tentacles to hurt it. Once it grabs you it bashes you against the ground or a wall, pulls you close to squeeze you, and then pops your head off. A happy bash-pull-pop protects a forest from intruders. But sometimes they grow in a damp cellar or attic and cause trouble!
You can only see a bash-pull-pop when you hold your breath.
A bash-pull-pop can whisper hungry thoughts into your mind. Then you have the urge to calmly approach and bite it.
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Melee/Protect 2 (talent 2) ← Grapple Spray or Grasp Spray
Movement Rate 0 (but its tentacles have a range of 7)
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A bash-pull-pop exemplify a doom combo. A grappled opponent might be instantly defeated.
Special Movement: A bash-pull-pop immediately gets a free attack when anyone who approaches it too closely.
A similar monster is the compost shambler that forms if too many bones are put in the compost. If you can see it, it looks like a compost pile. But then it swallows you whole. When it swallows someone it grows huge!
You can only see a compost shambler when you have leaves in your hair.
To change a bash-pull-pop into a compost shambler, give it a movement rate and remove its terrify ability. Perhaps require the three hits to be consecutive.
The coffee treant stands guard for other monsters. It is made of hard wood. Its beans give people energy because the tree drains energy so people fall down.
You can only see a coffee treant when you are barefoot.
As it attacks it also starts yelling, "Wake up, everybody! Time to get going!" Anything nearby hears this noise.
Its energy drain is represented by the Screech Spray ability. Opponents who have recently drunk coffee are immune.
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Melee/Protect 1 ← Screech Spray Movement Rate 0 (but its effective flanking has a range of 6)
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A coffee treant exemplifies a zone defense monster. It is weak when alone. But when with other adversaries, it restricts where the PCs can move, which makes those other adversaries more dangerous.
Special Movement: A coffee treant provides a small bonus to all nearby allies, as if it were helping them flank foes.
The dead kitten wants to get back in the house. It comes from its grave at night. Then it wants more food and petting. It does not realize it is dead. Do not touch it or your skin will rot.
In moonlight you can see it and it can see you. It can only be hurt in mid-leap.
A dead kitten cannot put its rotting curse on someone especially prepared with goggles and other protective clothing.
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Melee/Protect 1 ← Curse
Movement Rate 10
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A dead kitten exemplifies a repulsive chaser. PCs want to keep their distance, but the monster has tools to close the distance.
Special Movement: Some dead kittens can move through walls or peek down through a ceiling.
The garb-grabber rises from a pile of clothes. Maybe more than one if the pile has more sets of clothes that go together. It looks like someone invisible is wearing the clothes. But no one is, the clothes are the monster that tries to knock you down you. Run away, but do not fall as it causes you to see things that are not there.
You can only see a garb-grabber while waving a piece of clothing.
Garb-grabber do not make normal melee attacks. Instead, they automatically cause 2 damage that bypasses armor to prey they leap over.
Garb-grabbers make two types of disorienting hallucinations. The first makes it difficult for nearby prey to walk without falling down (represented by Knockdown Cloud). The second makes it difficult to move steadily (represented by Nausea Spray).
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Acrobatics/Climb 2
Movement Rate 10
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A garb-grabber exemplifies an area of effect bruiser. It hits hard when up close and its melee attacks effect multiple targets.
Special Movement: A garb-grabber cannot be knocked prone.
The "Look at me!" Lady is at least twice as tall as you, and screams, "Look at me while I am talking to you!" This can be hard to do when she is invisible. Then she thinks you are ignoring her and gets even more angry. You do not want to look at her: if you do you turn to stone. If she wants she can be visible; then she seems to be a normal lady until she wants something and does not get it.
You can only see her if you are reciting a poem that rhymes
She does not attack normally. Instead, she first makes prey look at her (represented by the Terrify ability). Then she moves closer, turns them to stone, and vanishes (represented by the Living Bomb ability). When she vanishes, she is not defeated, but will reappear in the future at an inconvenient moment.
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Perception/Escape 2 ← Living Bomb
Movement Rate 5
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She exemplifies a living bomb. Do not let her use her worst ability!
Special Movement: A creature she has turned to stone will be cured of the condition if she can be tricked into touching it.
The bad Mister Broccoli is tall and green. He hunts people who eat his vegetable cousins. He does not make you healthy, but makes you sick. He reaches out his long arms. When he hugs you the leaves on his sides go down your throat, choke you, and plant seeds of more Mister Broccolis in your belly. If you run away, run very far, so he won't throw sharp leaves at you.
You can only see him if you are chewing on a vegetable. You can only hurt him while singing.
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Acrobatics/Climb 1 ← Disease Cloud
Movement Rate 4
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Mister Broccoli exemplifies a scuttering hazard, but unlike most scuttering hazards is a single large monster instead of a pack of monsters. The adventurers want to bypass or defeat this monster without getting injured at all.
Special Movement: The curse of Mister Broccoli is stronger than other versions of that ability. It lasts until the opponent either has a restful night's sleep or eats a bite of a defeated Mister Broccoli. But Mister Broccoli knows this, and thus might flee before failing a morale check.
A surprisingly similar classic monster is the werewolf. If we ignore the narrative differences between a giant vegetable and a beast-man, we can note the similarities in game mechanics. Both are tough, hard-hitting melee combatants that can spread a curse and turn their victims into their same kind of monster.
Do not get surprised by the riding hood. Outside it looks like any normal cloak, cape, or hood. But if you put it on it whispers ideas into your mind and tries to control you. It can fly, and likes to pounce from the shadows and wrap around you. Once it is wrapped around your friend, your blows will hurt that friend too.
Riding hoods are invisible indoors. Maybe lots of people are wearing them?
A riding hood tries to use mind control, not harm its prey. If its prey is alone, it squeezes them until it takes over their mind (represented by Grasp and Lethal Melee). If its prey is not alone, it implants an urge to have its prey run away from its allies (represented by Terrify).
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Wrestle/Disarm 2 ← Grasp or Lethal Melee
Movement Rate 2
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A riding hood exemplifies a fleeing ambusher. Its only goal is to grab a host and then flee to safety.
Special Movement: When the riding hood is riding on a creature, half the damage to the riding hood is instead applied to the ridden creature.
A skin man is empty and only made of skin. He has no teeth. His tongue is icky. He drags himself across the floor with a noise like the wind rustling leaves.
You can only see him if you are in the rain. He can only be hurt when tied up with rope.
A skin man is seldom a lone monster. They normally appear in a group. But they are not pack predators. Each skin man prefers to hide until prey moves near, and then pounce.
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Melee/Protect 1 ← Unsteady or Confuse
Movement Rate 4 (increase to 8 in the rain)
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A skin man exemplifies a repulsive chaser. PCs want to keep their distance, but the monster has tools to close the distance.
Special Movement: A skin man's movement rate is doubled in the rain. Some rumors claim that a skin man can magically start rain locally, even indoors!
Special Movement: Note that a skin man can do damage using its Eldritch Cloud ability while pouncing or chasing. A skin man only needs to use Melee to make its prey unsteady.
The yellow candy are candies that eat people! They fly around while wiggling like seven-legged spiders. They have a single eye. People near them feel very hungry. They are small and sneaky. They live in groups. They like to make people feel hungry but not know why.
You can see them when you grip your tongue with your teeth.
They create invisible areas of magical hunger (represented by Weaken Cloud) that do not impair creatures who are eating.
Their small size makes it difficult for only one to grab a person and slowly fly away (represented by Grapple and Lethal Melee). But a group of them are very dangerous kidnappers!
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Wrestle/Disarm 1 ← Grapple or Lethal Melee
Movement Rate 2
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Yellow candies exemplify a flying vexer that wants to grab prey and fly away instead of skirmishing.
Special Movement: Yellow candies fly slowly. If they defeat a person, that person's allies probably have opportunities to interrupt the kidnapping before the yellow candies have fled the scene.
The undead are corpses of animals, people, or monsters animated by the curse of necromobility as resilient predators that drain energy from the living.
An undead is a vivified dead body, not a revived living individual. It retains no memories, skills, habits, or spiritual connection from before its prior life.
Newly created undead are mindless zombies. Undead gain intelligence as they evolve along one of two possible paths: zombie → ghoul → wight → vampire to merge with a land, or zombie → skeleton → wrath → lich to merge with a bane. This progression begins when a zombie eats a brain. The stages continue as the undead eats enough different people to continue evolving.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the circumstances that cause the curse of necromobility are widely varied but all lead back to Gnash. Established causes of a creature or person becoming an undead include being killed with a necrotic weapon, being killed by an undead, dying near a famous meteor said to be from Gnash's star, or dying while praying to Gnash with an especially intense desire for vengeance or destruction. Perhaps being sacrificed on one of Gnash's altars also turns the corpse into an undead.
The word bane is purposefully vague when describing liches. Is a bane a tragic situation? a spoken curse? a prophesied destiny? Any of those? Use what works for your stories!
A lindworm, wyvern, and basilisk are not traditionally undead creatures. That change adds an ironic twist to the King of Serpents, and is no odder than imagining a cockrel hatching a snake's egg. (Note that the choice of "adder" is arbitrary: no snakes actually hynotize their prey.) Lindworms have such varied descriptions that the change is comparatively minor!
The body of any person or animal killed by an undead will rise as a zombie. Many stories describe other ways that the curse of necromobility supposedly spreads, with the most common claims about being killed with a necrotic weapon, dying near a certain famous meteor or on a certain altar, or dying while praying for vengeance.
Only magical weapons and injuries hurt undead, because they are animated and held together by a resilient curse. Their curse heals them rapidly: it is not noticeable during combat, but after being defeated they must be beheaded or they will rise again in a few moments.
Undead are healed by harming-magic and harmed by healing-magic.
Undead can sense nearby living creatures and feel an estimate of each creature's intelligence. This ability even works through walls. The Sagacious debate whether undead can sense plants: do undead truly have "life sense" or are they actually sensing brains? An undead with healthy sensory organs might have exceptionally keen senses, especially smell.
Most undead are vulnerable to something related to the source of their necromobility. For example, an ambitious noble who prayed to Gnash to become an undead as he was killed by a rival might be vulnerable to the dagger the killer used, or while seeing the coat of arms of the rival noble family, or while hearing the voices of his children whose safety was foremost in his mind as he died.
Undead are also limited by an inability to cooperate. Zombies are mindless. Liches can control monsters, including other undead, so all undead will shun liches to avoid becoming subservient thralls. Vampires are regional: their unity with their land means cooperating with beings from another territory bothers and hinders them. Vampires can also control animals, including undead animals, which therefore try to avoid them.
The curse of necromobility grants irresitable cravings at each stage of undeath. For example, zombies want to eat a brain, allowing them to change into a ghoul or skeleton. More advanced undead have their own cravings, as described below.
Undead do not age or breathe. The curse that animates them mimics metabolism by preventing natural decay and healing wounds.
Undead that happened to grow extra wings or limbs when first becoming zombies might have quite different skill ratings.
Undead that wear armor might add that armor's rating to their inherent armor rating.
Perhaps the most powerful weapons are the intelligent necrotic weapons created when an undead carries a weapon for a long time.
Newly created undead are mindless zombies. While becoming a zombie the creature (especially an animal or monster) might grow extra wings or limbs.
Zombies usually move slowly, but sometimes can lurch with startling speed.
If a zombie eats a brain it begins changing, evolving along one of two paths. The creature begins merging with either the land or a bane.
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Acrobatics/Climb 1 ← Terrify
Movement Rate 2 ← see below
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Zombies exemplify a fleeing ambusher. Its only goal is to grab a meal and then flee to safety.
Special Movement: Zombies, at the start of each of their turns, make an Acrobatics avoidance check. If successful, its movement rate increases to 3 during that turn, and its Terrify ability affects any foe adjacent to its movement path.
Special Movement: Zombies, at the end of each of their turns, have a 50% chance to become stiff and sturdy until their next turn begins. If this happens, exchange their movement rate and damage mitigation.
When a zombie is defeated, all nearby zombies gain 1 point of stamina. A zombie whose stamina reaches 6 becomes a zombie hulk for which all other skill ratings are increased by 1 and melee attacks gain the Big Hit ability.
Example Zombies
Some undead creatures that are not humanoid are called by other names.
A lindworm is a large zombie constrictor snakes that grew one pair of legs when becoming undead. These legs look absurd and are nearly useless because of the beast's long, heavy body. However, large constrictor snakes are normally very dangerous, and an undead version can be nearly unstoppable.
People terrified by a lindworm will to try to hide behind their nearest ally. Lindworms have the big hit ability and an enormous amount of stamina.
A wyvern is a lindworm that also grew wings when becoming undead. A few unreliable stories claim wyverns who live near pools or lakes will so favor eating hairy animals (goats and sheep, not cows or fish) that a person who removes his or her clothing is no longer appetizing to the wyvern.
The first stage of merging with the land turns the zombie into a ghoul. Its body begins healing but it still looks like a rotting corpse. Ghouls behave like clever, feral animals and often gather in packs.
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Shoot/Throw 1
Movement Rate 3
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Ghouls exemplify a scuttering hazard. The adventurers want to bypass or defeat this threat without getting injured at all.
Special Movement: Ghouls, at the start of each of their turns, make an Acrobatics avoidance check. If successful, its movement rate increases to 5 during that turn, and its Terrify ability affects any foe adjacent to its movement path. (Note that wights and vampires do not have this special movement.)
Special Movement: Ghouls, wights, and vampires may clear an issue by forfeiting their movement for that turn.
When a ghoul is defeated, all nearby ghouls gain 1 point of composure. A ghoul whose composure reaches 6 becomes a ghoul elite for which all other skill ratings are increased by 1 and melee attacks ignore mundane armor.
Example Ghoul
Some undead creatures that are not humanoid are called by other names.
The tiny but dangerous banshquirrel is a squirrel ghoul. Besides the normal abilities of a ghoul, any person who hears its shrill screech is unable to heal until the next sunrise.
After eating a sufficient number of people's corpses, a ghoul advances to the second stage of merging with the land. Now it is called a wight because it is fiercely intelligent, and if humanoid can look like a person except for its teeth. It always moves quickly, having outgrown the occasional bursts of speed that characterized the creature when it was a zombie or ghoul. Many wights begin to shun melee combat and instead use ranged weapons. They lick their weapons to spread disease.
To change a ghoul into a wight, increase both the skill and talent ratings for both Shoot/Throw and Perception/Escape to 2. Give its Shoot/Throw skill the Disease avoidable ability. Increase its Movement Rate and Stamina to 5. Switch its morale type to Pack Morale.
Wights exemplify archers. They are most dangerous when they can keep distant.
Example Wight
A basilisk was a bigbeast adder before it become a wight. As a bigbeast its hypnotizing gaze was enhanced to become deadly and its venom became so prolific that it drooled from its mouth. As a zombie it grew several sets of legs. As a wight it learned to spit its venom.
The most famous basilisk was given the nickname "Little King" because of a crown-shaped white spot on the top of its head. For a dozen years adventurers tried to kill it but failed. Then a roaming bigbeast weasel killed the Little King in the darkness of its underground burrow.
The final stage of merging with the land is becoming a vampire.
The slow process of becoming one with the land makes vampires feel less like a person, and they drink people's blood to regain some of their personhood.
Truly one with their lands, vampires gain the ability to control and empower the lands' animals, and see through the animals' eyes. They learn to manipulate its weather. They eventually can transform themselves into animals, or clouds of mist.
Perhaps most dangerous is how vampires can charm people in their land by looking at them to implant suggestions—including forgetting about meeting the vampire or being charmed.
Vampires are so tied to their land that they have trouble crossing borders into places owned by other people. They cannot cross running water, and may not enter a home uninvited.
A combat with a vampire should be the climax of a long story that involved much research about that particular vampire and its unique abilities and weaknesses. No two vampires are alike!
A vampire exemplifies a Big Bad Evil Guy. It should be a unique villain that uses minions against the PCs until a final confrontation.
In contrast with zombies, the first stage of merging with a bane causes the zombie's body to rapidly decompose until it turns into a skeleton, alert but still barely intelligent.
A few skeletons are able to use ranged weapons. These will prioritize shooting prey that other skeletons have pulled to the ground.
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Shoot/Throw 1
Movement Rate 3
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Skeletons exemplify pack hunters. The danger increases when they gang up on the same target.
Special Movement: Living creatures touched by skeletons are temporarily drained by the curse of necromobility, and for the rest of the combat can no longer forfeit their skill check to move twice their movement rate.
Example Skeleton
The moss skeleton was once a deer but not creeps through the forest as a mass of bones, antlers, and plant material. When high in a tree it might look like a large bird nest or parasitic plant. It has no ranged attack, but uses its Shoot/Throw skill to aim as it drops from a tree onto prey it senses below.
The second stage of merging with a bane is called a wraith because its skeletal form is almost insubstantial.
Instead of using damage mitigation, non-magical damage has only a 25% chance to harm the wraith's stamina.
Wraiths are so insubstantial that they can only make easy attacks. However, these attacks ignore the target's armor. When a wraith wields a weapon, the weapon (and its projectiles if a ranged weapon), like the wraith itself, is strangely insubstantial yet able to cause damage.
A creature touched by a wraith is not only drained (as by a skeleton) but a wraith's touch can Curse the target.
Wraiths exemplify a foe with a prerequisite. Adventurers with crafted magic weapons can fight them much more easily.
Example Wraith
The orange blob is a wraith ooze that looks like a quivering mass of orange flesh. Acid squirts form its dangerous yellow eye. Attacking it with melee weapons is difficult because it is spongy and full of an acid that dissolves wood and metal.
The final stage of merging with a bane is becoming a lich. Truly one with that curse or cause of distress, a lich works to make dangerous and unpleasant whichever item, creature, or location is most intrinsic to its bane.
A lich gains the ability to control and empower nearby monsters, and see through those monsters' eyes. Liches learn to animate and manipulate some objects. They eventually can transform themselves into clouds of poison.
Perhaps most dangerous is how liches can stupefy people or implant a curse of attunement—anytime the lich would suffer harm its attuned people protect it by instead suffering half the harm, shared among them.
A lich might eventually learn how to create a phylactery. Unless that item is destroyed the lich and its curse will always reform.
A creature touched by a lich is contaminated with a rotting disease that will require a rare herbal cure.
Liches are so tied to their bane that they have trouble approaching other curses. They cannot entered a cursed building. Nor can they physically touch a cursed person.
A lich exemplifies a Big Bad Evil Guy. It should be a unique villain that uses minions against the PCs until a final confrontation.
Oozes are rubbery and nearly transparent creatures (slimes, puddings, jellies, molds, cubes, and lurkers) that gain shapes and intelligence as they consume animals and people.
Oozes can slowly undulate across the ground or creep along a wall or roof.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, oozes are made by Futhorc.
Futhorc is the patron of puzzles, and fighting an ooze can be like solving a puzzle.
The Sagacious debate what sources of nutrition cause them to grow fastest, and whether Futhorc creates some oozes with more initial intelligence.
The first published version of Dungeons and Dragons had several creatures on the "clean up crew": black pudding, gray ooze, green slime, ochre jelly, and yellow mold. That is 5 out of 51 monsters—about ten percent of that old game's opponents were ooze creatures!
Sean K. Reynolds has written a great rant about D&D infravision.
The smallest oozes are useful and easily capturable. Full-size oozes are very dangerous monsters.
Compost size oozes are the smallest (1 stamina). They can only dissolve cellulose (plant material) and are not dangerous to people. These are often purposefully put in compost piles.
Outhouse size oozes are medium-sized (4 stamina). They can also dissolve proteins, which means they can harm people. But they can be safely kept in a smooth-walled metal container.
Dangerous size oozes are the largest (6 stamina). These can also dissolve fats, making them a threat to animals. They can also move along any wall or ceiling, and are large enough to attack multiple creatures simultaneously.
Rumors say the biggest oozes can even dissolve rock or metal.
An ooze is as intelligent as the most intelligent creature it has consumed. A newly created compost ooze is not intelligent.
Certain types of physical trauma will cause an ooze to divide into two halves. This hurts! But some intelligent oozes accept the pain and intentionally divide themselves. With a steady supply of food and an appropriate environment for growth, a single ooze can become a multitude.
The rubbery bodies of oozes do not negate damage like armor, but their texture and lack of internal organs can protect them. Instead of armor's normal damage mitigation there is a chance (out of 6) that any successful attack against the ooze does no damage.
The heroes who attack oozes should have many types of damage available, for the reasons described below.
Oozes never make melee attacks. They instead deal 2 special damage on each of their turns to opponents they have grabbed with Wrestle. This corrosive damage first removes the prey's armor's damage mitigation points, then harms the prey's stamina.
The five traditional ways to attack oozes are by cutting, bludgeoning, burning, electrifying, or splashing with salt water. Depending upon the type of ooze, a different arrangement of these will: cause damage, cause +1 damage, disrupt the ooze's damage negation for 1 to 6 rounds, do nothing, or cause the creature to split into two smaller oozes.
Oozes perceive the world around them using the five normal senses and two special senses: they can sense heat and detect magical energy. They can sense trails of heat and magic, to follow where a warm creature or a magic item has recently gone. (In a setting without magic, oozes can instead detect electricity, force fields, Bluetooth receivers, etc.)
The least intelligent oozes act like slow-moving hamsters: curiously exploring, tentatively probing their environment, searching for food, movement, and magic.
Oozes feel pleasure when they surround magic things. Unintelligent oozes usually move towards magical items. Intelligent oozes might attack anyone carrying a magical item. Oozes keep their magical items in a special vesicle, safe from digestion.
Oozes attack by stretching a pseudopod or their entire body around prey. Once they succeed with a Wrestle attack they begin constricting.
Many oozes die in a dramatic and dangerous fashion: splattering, exploding, or expeling spores. Adventurers who attack a ooze should try to kill it from a distance.
Small oozes are useful for sanitation, and some people collect them as a profession. Big oozes usually carry multiple magical items inside them.
Amber slimes are the most acidic oozes. Despite being slimy, amber slimes cannot be smelled. Several stories tell of a hunting party that used hounds meeting disaster when the hounds ran ahead of the hunters and encountered a group of amber slimes hidden in the forest's underbrush.
Amber slimes spit large, sticky blobs of moist goo at torches or other fires they sense. This attack can extinguish the fire with an easy (torch), medium (lantern) or tough (campfire) success.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← (spits sticky goo, treat as Envenom Spray)
Movement Rate 3
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normal damage: bludgeoning +1 damage: electricity disrupt damage negation: salinity cause splitting: cutting do nothing: fire |
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Amber slimes exemplify archers. They are most dangerous when they can keep distant.
Special Movement: Amber slimes can defend themselves by using their interior acid to dissolve weapons. An amber slime that remains around a weapon that has penetrated it has a 1 in 4 chance of dissolving that weapon on each of the slime's turns.
A pool of invisible mold is a difficult challenge for an unprepared adventurer. They are naturally nearly transparent and very difficult to see if not moving.
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Wrestle/Disarm 3 ← Entangle or Envenom (remember oozes' special damage)
Movement Rate 3
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normal damage: electricity +1 damage: salinity disrupt damage negation: bludgeoning cause splitting: fire do nothing: cutting |
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Invisible molds exemplify a skulking bruiser. They are tough when they can fight up close. But the real danger is not knowing if more of them are lurking out of sight.
Special Movement: When stationary, seeing an invisible mold requires actively looking and succeeding with a tough Perception skill check.
Special Movement: When an invisible mold divides, the shock to its system stuns it. Both halves lose their next turn.
Special Movement: An injured invisible mold has a big bonus to its Escape skill checks if there are any holes or cracks nearby.
An invisible mold that has grown large enough to completely fill a corridor is called a gelatinous cube.
Phosphorescent jellies are oozes that move silently and radiate heat. They explode when killed.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← (sprays fiery goo, treat as Envenom Spray)
Movement Rate 2
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normal damage: cutting +1 damage: bludgeoning disrupt damage negation: electricity cause splitting: salinity do nothing: fire |
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Phosphorescent jellies exemplify a living bomb. Each is weak. PCs want to be distant when one is defeated.
Special Movement: The radiant heat around phosphorescent jellies causes adjacent opponents to automatically suffer 1 extra damage (not mitigated by armor) at the end of a phosphorescent jelly's turn.
Special Movement: When an phosphorescent jelly divides, the shock to its system prevents it from moving or making a ranged attack during its next turn.
Smoke sludges are unusual oozes that feed on emotions by causing people to remember their most guilty secrets.
Smoke sludges always appear in groups; perhaps they are especially adept at causing their own splitting?
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Smoke sludges cause damage to composure instead of stamina! Bargain/Wonder 2 ← Nausea
Movement Rate 5
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normal damage: bludgeoning +1 damage: salinity disrupt damage negation: electricity cause splitting: cutting do nothing: fire |
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Smoke sludges exemplify a skulking bruiser. They are tough when they can fight up close. But the real danger is not knowing if more of them are lurking out of sight.
Special Movement: Each smoke sludge can, once per encounter, turn into smoke to disengage from combat and flee twice its movement rate.
Squelchy puddings are truly bizarre. These annoying oozes can make an obnoxious sucking noise that causes erratic nerve impulses in the brain. Oddly, a dead squelchy pudding is safe to eat and quite nutritious, but does not taste like anything. Who first tried that?
A squelchy pudding can change shape and coloration to mimic any creature it has digested. It remains rubbery. Assume it has practiced moving as that creature normally does, including melee attacks. Some stories claim an intelligent squelchy pudding can mimic objects.
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Wrestle/Disarm 2 ← Entangle or Grapple (remember oozes' special damage)
(Note that other skills might be used when this monster mimics creatures.) Movement Rate 4
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normal damage: fire +1 damage: bludgeoning disrupt damage negation: cutting cause splitting: salinity do nothing: electricity |
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Squelchy puddings exemplify a grappling mob. Each is fragile, but they have the tools to work together to limit opponents' mobility and overwhelm. A group of them is difficult to fight alone, so in a story with a solo PC the GM should include advance warning when these monsters might be encountered.
Special Movement: A squelchy pudding can move along walls as easily as along the ground, both in pudding form and while it mimics creatures.
Sucking lurkers drift slowly through the air. When resting they become nearly intangible. They prefer to surprise prey.
When moving, sucking lurkers radiate magical darkness to a radius twice their movement rate. They can see through this magical darkness.
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Wrestle/Disarm 2 ← Entangle or Grapple (remember oozes' special damage)
Movement Rate 2
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normal damage: salinity +1 damage: fire disrupt damage negation: electricity cause splitting: cutting do nothing: bludgeoning |
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Squelchy puddings exemplify a flying vexer that wants to grab prey and fly away instead of skirmishing.
Special Movement: As their first action, a sucking lurker usually sucks in a tremendous amount of air. This extinguish nearby fires and Weakens all nearby creatures.
Special Movement: Sucking lurkers can fly.
Special Movement: When an sucking lurker divides, both halves become intangible until their next turns.
Dragons are monsters that become smarter, stronger, quicker, and more dangerous as their hoard increases.
There are many types of dragons. Some resemble reptiles. Some look like piles of swamp plants. A few can shift between multiple appearances.
Most dragons have enough of a hoard to be intelligent and able to speak and sing. Many dragons are accomplished musicians using large instruments of their own invention.
A dragon that owns at least one book is intelligent and can talk. Additional books in a dragon's hoard might increase its intelligence.
A dragon that owns at least one musical instrument can sing. Additional musical intruments in a dragon's hoard can increase its musical ability, and perhaps even allow its music to be especially charming or enchanting. Whenever a song composed by a dragon becomes sufficiently popular for the first time, an egg will appear in that dragon's lair. Clever dragons try to publicize many catchy compositions without revealing these songs' origin.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, dragons are made by Maw Lute.
Most of Maw Lute's dragons look like her: enormous, winged, warm-blooded reptiles with bushy eyebrows, bristly tufts hair beside the sharp plates that jut up in a row along their back, and a perhaps a long, wispy beard under the tip of the snout.
Nearly all of Maw Lute's dragons have enough of a hoard to be intelligent and able to speak and sing. This is because older dragons who learn of a newly created dragon try to visit and gift it a starter hoard.
Unsurprisingly, as Maw Lute's monsters, dragons try to be accomplished musicians (using large instruments of their own invention) and collectors.
Dragons work hard to make their homes flamboyant and eccentric, hoping Maw Lute will notice and upgrade their home into one of her lair dungeons.
The name Kostiiormrthrax is a combination of the Slavic word kost (meaning "bone"), the Old Norse word ormr (meaning "dragon"), and the dragon from the 1981 film Dragonslayer named Vermithrax Pejorative
Storehouses look like huts with chicken legs because of Baba Yaga and the Sami storehouse.
The "-wei" suffix in Gladfangwei's name is a tribute to many fantasy dragons named Longwei.
A dragon's stamina cannot be damaged until other parts of the dragon have been damaged, as described below.
A dragon harmed by a type of magic damage (acid, fire, frost, lightning, poison, etc.) temporarily adds that type of damage to its bite or breath weapon attacks.
Dragons have a breath weapon.
All dragons can fly, whether with wings or magical hovering. A dragon on the ground feels irrationally flustered, which is represented by the Wonder issue "I am intimidated. I cannot use the four-sided die."
Different dragons prioritize hoarding different types of items.
Contrary to many children's stories, dragons do not simply push their treasure into a pile to sleep upon. Instead, they are careful to hide their treasure effectively in several locations, while keeping useful items accessible.
Esteem and respect in dragon society is based upon how many villages, towns, and cities a dragon controls. Dragons do not actually care about ruling or governing the settlements they dominate. Instead they demand a tribute that proclaims the settlement's subservient attitude. Tribute varies with the dragon's creativity: plump livestock, baked good, poems or ballads extolling the dragon, required questing for obscure relics, etc.
The characters attacking a dragon must choose what part of the dragon to attack:
Only after enough of these have been reduced to zero can the attackers attempt to damage the dragon's stamina. This represents resisting the dragon, learning to maneuver close to it, and finding a weak spot in its scaly hide.
For a young dragon, reducing two of those to zero is sufficient. For an old dragon, reducing three is required.
Often some parts of a dragon are easier to attack than others. For example, when a winged drake is flying close to the ground an attacker might get a bonus to hit its large, outspread wings, but a penalty to hit any other part due to the drake's speed and how it twists its body as it swoops.
Dragons prioritize collecting panoply items. Most large hoards contain both incomplete and completed panoplies, as well as more mundane treasure.
Young reptilian dragons with small hoards are called drakes. They slowly expand their territory, acquiring more treasure.
Drakes are traditional European dragons. They are seldom as intelligent as people. They mainly attack by using their breath weapon while flying, but sometimes grasp a specific target and rip it apart. They radiate an aura of terror, and can increase its intensity to make foes scatter.
Drakes normally breathe fire or lightning.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← Blast Spray (fire) or Eldritch Spray (lightning)
Flying Movement Rate 7 (wing damage) (no damage mitigation)
Stamina 10
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Drakes exemplify a doom combo. A grappled opponent might be instantly defeated.
Special Movement: A drake that owns jewels can change its vision to see from one of those jewels. This can help monitor its hoard locations.
Old reptilian dragons with large hoards are called wyrms. Increase any of the drake's numbers to show how the wyrm's large hoard has made it more powerful.
Many wyrms have well-developed breath weapons whose effects linger. Treat these as a cloud instead of a spray, as described in the rules for monster attacks.
Many wyrms that have become as intelligent as people can magically assume a person's form. Usually they have a single "aspect" they adopt, and cannot copy the forms of specific peoples.
Example Wyrms
The bards sing stories of especially eccentric wyrms. A few examples are shared below.
Magnosurge the Rotund is a huge wyrm with gray scales, thick legs, and broad bat-like wings. He has a booming, raspy voice and an acidic temper and breath. He hosts annual an pie baking contest. All the wealthy people living in the settlements he controls must attend. Magnosurge eats all the pies, and then eats those he judges baked the worst pies. His hoard includes many jeweled rolling pins, silverware and silver flatware, and a large collection of recipe books. He also has many hidden rooms full of pies. He gains different magical benefits from eating pies of different types (meat pies, fruit pies, custard pies, etc.) even if they are old and stale, including extra damage.
Grandslitherblaze the Congested is a wyrm with green scales, thin legs, insect-like wings, and a barbed tail like a scorpion. She has graceful movements, a nasal voice, and a fiery temper. From the people of her settlements she demands a constant supply of spicy meals. On her bad days, even live sheep and pigs covered with paprika are sufficient. Her hoard includes extensive collections of hot sauces, spices, puffy duvets, and mechanical music boxes. Grandslitherblaze is an introvert who spends most of her time in her lair eating spicy snacks, listening to music while dancing alone, and fuming about how "no one respects the finer things in life" such as which other peppers blend well with habaneros or the proper way to position wings and a tail during a pirouette.
Gladfang the Generous is an enormous yet elegant wyrm with yellow scales, feathered legs, and colorful bird-like wings. His voice is melodious. His temper is dulcet. Gladfang demands that each village, town, and city in his territory send him one damsel to live as a captive in his lair. Unfortunately, the truth has spread that these damsels live in luxury in his resplendent lair, feasting and studying music. Now people travel great distances to establish new villages in Gladfang's territory, hoping their daughter might be chosen as a new prisoner. When a damsel gets old, Gladfang sends her away with one of his songs. If she successfully popularizes the song then she may return to be rewarded with a purse full of gold and one of Gladfang's eggs to raise. Usually she retires somewhere to raise the dragon hatchling so it may to contribute to Gladfang's legacy of musical greatness.
Hoard guardians do not travel as much as other dragons. They are often created with a hoard of significant size and are mostly content to guard it. A few are created as a gift for someone who needs a guardian for his or her treasure chambers.
Hoard guardians normally breathe acid or poison. They are immune to the clouds they create.
A classic hoard guardian looks like a cross between a burrick and a genie. These have no wings, but attacks aimed at their smoke-like tails count as "wing damage" that reduces their flying movement rate.
Unlike most dragons, hoard guardians are often encountered in packs. When this happens, the number of dragon parts that must be reduced to zero before reducing stamina is based not on the age of the hoard guardian but the size of the pack. Once half the pack is defeated, the number of dragon parts that must be reduced to zero drops from three to two.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← Acid Cloud or Nausea Cloud
Flying Movement Rate 8 (wing damage) (no damage mitigation)
Stamina 6
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Hoard guardians exemplify a zone defense monster. It is weaker when alone. When with other adversaries, it restricts where the PCs can move, which makes those other adversaries more dangerous.
Special Movement: When awake, hoard guardians are intuitively aware of their hoards' contents and the location of each item. If an item is stolen the dragon no longer is considered its owner, and loses the knowledge of that item. An alert hoard guardian can therefore gain clues about what looters at its hoard locations are doing. A sleeping hoard guardian will only realize upon waking that items are missing.
A storehouse is a sentient hut built on tree trunks that look like chicken legs. They are much bigger inside than outside, and can turn their interiors into labyrinths. They enjoy roaming and normally keep their wings folded against their walls, but will fly when in danger.
Storehouses collect gallinaceous birds, which they polymorph into imps. During combat they release their imp swarm while trying to turn foes into more imps. (Treat the imps as bigbeast centipedes.)
Storehouses normally breathe a cursed, putrid stench.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← Curse Spray
Flying Movement Rate 2 (wing damage) (no damage mitigation)
Stamina 8
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Storehouses exemplify a doom combo. A cursed or diseased opponent might be instantly defeated.
Special Movement: A storehouse that owns painted ceramic plates can perform an hour-long ritual to teleport to any real location pictured on one of these plates.
Example Storehouse
An unreliable tale describes a storehouse that only attempted to subjugate villages with male mayors. It then required the mayor of each village to marry a witch! The mayors and their wives had to take turns living inside the storehouse for one season of the year, and had to give the storehouse regular "pedicures" to keep the tree trunk roots from growing too tangled.
A wampus is a forest dragon who pounce on people who travel outside after sunset. Most look like a huge, mangy, antlered version of a forest mammal. A few are bipedal. They sometimes travel in groups.
Wampus dragons use their slow flight to quietly sneak up on prey. They lack wings. Damaging their antlers hinders their magical flight.
Wampus dragons normally breathe an eerie cloud steam or frost that terrifies creatures.
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Shoot/Throw 1 ← Terrify Cloud
Flying Movement Rate 3 (wing damage) (no damage mitigation)
Stamina 10
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Wampus dragons exemplify a fleeing ambusher. Their only goal is to grab a meal and then flee to safety.
Special Movement: A wampus dragon that owns macabre taxidermy can animate these objects to serve as spies.
Special Movement: When a wampus dragon flees, it turns invisible while emitting a bright pulse of blinding light.
Example Wampus
Kostiiormrthrax the Creepy is a swamp creature who collects bones, antlers, fungi, and necrotic weapons. Her body is a tangle of tough, dense, sinewy, regrowing plant material. She likes eating undead each new moon night at midnight. When no undead are available, she requires the villages near her swamp to provide her on those nights with the corpses of people who died during the past month. Besides numerous errie creatures made of wood, bones, and antlers, she is aided by a swarm of mind-controlled swamp rodents.
Picaroons are primitive animal-folk with magical mutations. They are bipedal and can become magically stealthy. They travel in mixed warbands and use banditry, piracy, and raids to claim valuable items and people which they take back to their cave homes.
Most monsters appear only alone or in groups of the same type of monster. Picaroons are an exception. A picaroon warband almost always contains all three types of picaroons.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the Power named Speleoth creates picaroons.
Speleoth is the patron of travel and caves. Speleoth is upset by villages and towns in which few people enjoy travel, and sends his picaroons to those locations. Then people are forced to travel to caves to recover what was stolen from them by the monsters.
Speleoth also magically sustains the ecosystems in his cave-complexes. Similarly, Speleoth's monsters are almost unique with how adventurers normally encounter a group in which many different types of picaroons work together so their strengths and weaknesses harmonize.
The word picaroon is not only an old word for pirate, but related to the picaresque genre of fantasy adventure stories. A delightful modern version is Fools Errant by Matthew Hughes.
The word "argle" is old British for argue or dispute. It also sounds like a blend of Runequest's "Slarge" and Elder Scroll's "Argonian".
Rat-people are common as a fantasy trope. In Warhammer and Dungeons of Drakkenheim they are called Ratlings. In Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder they are called Ratfolk.
The word "flittermouse" is an old-fashioned term for a bat.
Within a warband, picaroons have three roles. Most of the warbrand are wimpy mooks or sturdy bruisers. The warband also has one commander that is larger than the other picaroons and is as intelligent as a normal adult person. This commander makes plans for it warband and can sometimes be reasoned with.
Adventurers trying to save people from picaroons should learn about that warband. Which type of mutation will the adventurers face? Can the adventurers use clever strategy to isolate the commander, minimize the danger from the warband's mutation, or take advantage of the warband's weakness?
Except for the commander, picaroons have only primal intelligence, brutish cunning, and instinctive savagery. Their language is vicious hisses, bickering grunts, or maddening babbling. Their tool use is primitive. They are aggressive, not interested in discussion, and only perceive the present moment.
After a picaroon dies a valiant and violent death, if its calcaneus bones (heels of the feet) are buried far from where people live then the bones will become two new picaroons of the same type and pack. Picaroons are aware of this. After a combat, they try to give their dead what they consider a proper burial.
Mook picaroons are
numerous but weak, and are defeated after suffering 2 points of damage.
Bruiser and commander picaroons regenerate. Their wounds heal almost instantly at the start of each combat round. This means that defeating a bruiser requires causing 3 points of damage in a single combat round.
Defeating a commander requires causing 3 or more points of damage in a single combat round, depending upon the individual commander.
Picaroons are only slowly harmed by magic. Each damaging magical attack is converted into damage over time. The picaroon suffers 1 point of that damage on each of its turns until it has suffered the attack's total damage. Subsequent damaging magical attacks "stack" with each attack causing 1 point of its damage on each turn.
The most interesting ability that picaroons have is the mutation specific to their warband. Below is an example table of random mutations. The GM and Player can also invent their own!
All picaroons are invisible in proportion to how quiet they are. A lone picaroon that is frightened and trying to hide silently in the shadows is incredibly difficult to see (a big bonus to Stealth). A pack of picaroons trying to move stealthily as they sneak up on prey is usually too excited to actually keep very quiet, and only becomes semi-opaque (a small bonus to Stealth). Picaroons shouting and howling in battle are fully visible.
All the bruisers in the warband will share a weakness to a certain type of damage. When they suffer of damage of this type, they no longer heal at the start of each combat round. (Fire and acid are the most common examples.)
Picaroons are not only crepuscular by habit, but they are weak near noon and midnight. The members of a warband suffer a specific issue between 11pm and 1am, and two between 11am and 1pm.
To be clear, a warband has three different types of picaroons, most of which will be mooks and bruisers, as well as one commander. But all the picaroons in each warband share three traits:
Picaroons organize themselves as bands of bandits, pirates, or raiders. They attack travelers and small settlements. They prize the items and people they capture, and do their best to take care of them and get use from them.
| Appearance | Drawback | Benefit | How to Counteract | |
| 1 | Yellow tongue | Speak in a gurgle | An uninterrupted roar heals the character | Interrupt the roar |
| 2 | Lemon spikes | Difficulties with clothing and armor | Successful wrestle always causes at least 1 damage | Attack ranged |
| 3 | Lime teeth/claws | Teeth and nails falling out | Causing a wound also causes an explosion | Stay apart |
| 4 | Chartreuse mouth | Lips, nose, ears wither | Spit arcane globs pull hit characters together | Stay apart |
| 5 | Pea green eyes | Hair falling out | Gaze causes disadvantage on Brawn skills | Avoid the gaze |
| 6 | Green skin | Skin blisters and molts | Your aura weakens foes, a stacking −1 to mental skill use | Attack ranged |
| 7 | Emerald arms | Knobs grow on arms | Causing damage also grants temporary armor | Timing—don't waste attacks |
| 8 | Cyan chest | Chest glows | Can explode chest energy, then reabsorb it | Stay apart, attack ranged |
| 9 | Turquoise aura | Unwanted teleportation | Get stronger when ally with this mutation defeated | Timing—be simultaneous |
| 10 | Blue neck | Breathing clean air is painful | Defeat causes curse that is worse with more distance | Stay close |
| 11 | Ultramarine pool | Aquatic features | Heal when cause damage within pool around feet | Dodge, attack ranged |
| 12 | Violet eye | Eyes merge like cyclops | Gaze causes paralysis | Avoid the gaze |
| 13 | Purple tentacles | Have tentacles | Can reposition foes | Positioning |
| 14 | Magenta tendrils | Move slow, but can climb walls/ceilings | Magic cast on ally with this mutation affects me too | Runeblock choice |
| 15 | Red motes | Eerie noises around you | Ignore the first point of ranged damage suffered each round | Stay close |
| 16 | Maroon abdomen | Mouth on abdomen | Explode when defeated, creating small enemies | Stay apart, attack ranged |
| 17 | Orange hands | Extremely farsighted | Tossed arcane balls wound characters if distant | Stay close |
| 18 | Ochre eyes | Vision limited to 10 meters | Lifesense 10 meters | Attack ranged |
| 19 | Tangerine hands | No opposable grip | Throwable arcane blades appear in hands | Use cover |
| 20 | roll twice more, using both results, ignoring this result on subsequent rolls | |||
Picaroons usually various equipment and treasure, appropriate for their past success in raiding.
An argle is a giant, mutant, stone-age lizard-person. Most are about two meters tall. Argles may have adaptations to fit their biome: long fingers and a prehensile tail for forests, gills for lakes or rivers, immunity to cold for tundra, etc.
Argles are slavers. They will not only help their warband's claim its specific objective, but will also take slaves when they can. Slaves are kept shackled until the warband commander finds someone willing to purchase them in exchange for food or useful items.
Argles believe themselves to be superior to people and to other bipedal monsters. The only exception is their warband commander, if it is a non-argle picaroon.
Argle mooks can spit globs of mucus that cover the target's eyes. This is represented below by the confusion ability.
Argles make up most but not all of a picaroon warband's bruisers.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← Confusion (mooks only)
Movement Rate 5
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Argles exemplify a skulking bruiser. They are tough when they can fight up close. But the real danger is not knowing if more of them are lurking out of sight.
Special Movement: When an argle bruiser defeats an enemy, all the argles near that defeated opponent absorb energy from it and are fully healed.
Special Movement: Remember that all picaroons are invisible in proportion to how quiet they are. This can grant them a small or big bonus to Stealth.
An ettercap is a spider-person with tusks and filthy hide armor. Most are about one meter tall.
Ettercaps can spin webs, which they use to set traps or reinforce tunnels. (They do not get stuck on their own webs.)
Ettercaps make up about half a picaroon warband's mooks, and a few of its bruisers.
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Melee/Protect 1 (talent 1) ← Acid (mook only) or Envenom (bruiser only)
Movement Rate 4
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Ettercaps exemplify a grappling mob. Each is fragile, but they have the tools to work together to limit opponents' mobility and overwhelm. A group of them is difficult to fight alone, so in a story with a solo PC the GM should include advance warning when these monsters might be encountered.
Special Movement: The acid of an ettercap mook can cause metal items to immediately rust. Use a destiny check to determine if an item rusts.
Special Movement: Ettercap bruisers can move along walls and ceilings as easily as walking or running. The GM should also remember to have ettercap webs be part of the encounter. Together these mean positioning will be much easier for the ettercaps than their foes!
Special Movement: If the warband's commander is an ettercap, when the commander causes two or more damage with one hit then all nearby ettercaps rampage and may immediately attempt an extra melee attack.
Special Movement: Remember that all picaroons are invisible in proportion to how quiet they are. This can grant them a small or big bonus to Stealth.
Flittermice are bat picaroons who seek to dominate the night sky. They try to avoid big fights, preferring to act stealthily and use fear to rule the darkness.
In combat, flittermice use extra-loud echolocation chirps and erratic flight patterns to disorient and distract their prey. They have sharp claws, but prefer to more safely attack from above with archery and by dropping primitive alchemical bombs.
An intelligent flittermouse can use alchemy to make primitive bombs and healing potions for its warband. If the warband's commander is a flittermouse, each flittermouse in the warband will have a healing potion (that only works on picaroons) and each flittermouse will have a primitive bomb (only 50% chance of detonating when thrown).
Flittermice are after material wealth, and will be distracted bya chance to steal food and valuables. Flittermice do not care about prisoners: when the people they attack flee, the flittermice snicker but do not pursue.
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Shoot/Throw 1 ← Big Hit Spray (a bomb, only if commander is flittermouse)
Movement Rate 4 on ground, 8 when flying
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Special Movement: Flittermice can fly.
Special Movement: Remember that all picaroons are invisible in proportion to how quiet they are. This can grant them a small or big bonus to Stealth.
Witches look like maidens, matrons, or crones. They are ephemeral creatures able to create magical effects to help them fulfill a mission.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the Power named Yarnspinner creates witches whose missions are always to create specific events that will develop into interesting stories.
During the Age of Adventure most witches were created to create stories that encouraged people to stay safely near home unless they were an exceptional adventurer. After the Era of Exploration began, witches were given a much wider variety of story themes.
Most witches in Spyragia look like a woman from one of the kin. But now and then Yarnspinner creates a different kind of witch that is tiny and winged, called a fairy or pixie.
Prehensile hair is a trope linked to RPG witches by Pathfinder and the film The Forbidden Kingdom.
The crescent moon visible in a dryad's eyes is a reference to the song Witchy Woman by the Eagles.
The Seelie Court is a traditional Scottish classification of fairies.
Green pearls are a tribute to Jack Vance's novel The Green Pearl, the second part of the Lyonesse Trilogy.
Most types of witches live or travel alone. But some witches live together in groups.
Witches are as intelligent and clever as people. But most are recently created and lack life experience. They try to hide their ignorance, especially if their mission involves blending into society or infiltrating a party of adventurers. Many witches are easy to distract, befuddle, or dupe.
There are no reliable accounts of witches being able to make more witches. Some rumors claim this is possible, but involves the witch first questing for specific eldritch implements (such as a wand, ring, cauldron, hat, or box).
Witches use their flexible and potent magic to defend themselves. They create environmental hazards, items, and opportunities. How this works depends upon the type of witch and her mission.
Witches are immune to magic.
Witches can elongate and shrink their hair, and also use it as a dextrous, prehensile limb to reach up to four meters away. Even physically weak witches can do feats of immense strength with their hair. At the end of each round, each witch may take an extra turn in which she uses her hair.
Witches cannot voluntarily move close to rowan trees. A person holding a branch of freshly cut rowan wood in one or both hands cannot be touched by a witch.
Everyone has heard of famous examples: a witch who kidnapped an oppressed princess to introduce her to valiant suitors, a witch disguised as a traveling apothecary charlatan whose lotions and balms had amazing effects, a witch who drew magical hopscotch courts that changed the children who played there, etc.
Many of these legends tie the witch to a magical building, such as a house made of candy, a wooden hut with legs, or a pet store that only appears at midnight and sells impossible monsters.
Witches know they have a temporary existence. Some lack a sense of self-preservation. All prefer a dramatic death to abandoning their purpose.
Some witches infiltrate a social club or adventuring party. The witch will appear to be in need of help or useful as a potential ally. She will initially be genuinely helpful to whomever she meets. However, as time goes on she will become more and more demanding. As soon as any demand is not met, the witch becomes hostile. She tries to take back any sources of aid that she has lent to her former companions, fairly offering trades if appropriate but willing to fight if resisted. Then the witch flees and disappears forever.
Witches can do fearsome magic. Many tales tell of witches turning a person into a frog, turning vegetables into vehicles, or instantly creating a house made out of cupcakes.
Most people believe a witch can do anything with her magic. Yet a witch can only use magic to advance her assigned mission, and cannot use magic on herself or other witches.
When a witch fulfills her mission she turns into a puff of scintillating smoke. After several seconds, the smoke coalesces into a green pearl. Touching one of these pearls to a treasure map adds a new location to the map and causes the pearl to vanish.
A set of coven witches always appear as a maiden, matron, and crone.
The young-looking maidens are enchantresses whose magic must affect the mind. Examples include granting boldness and luck, forcing people to speak the truth, granting intelligence to animals, or helping couples fall in love.
The middle-aged-looking matrons are conjurers whose magic must create items or terrain effects. Examples include summoning a flying carpet, creating fog banks, aiding heroes by creating disguises or armor, blocking passages with walls of fire, or trapping foes in suddenly appearing pits.
Elderly-looking crones are transmogrifiers whose magic alters objects or bodies. Examples include turning people in animals, making animals intelligent and talkative, granting objects flight, making people huge, shrinking objects to toy-sized, or cursing foes with muteness or blindness.
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Acrobatics/Climb 4
Movement Rate 8
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Coven witches exemplify a foe with a prerequisite. They appear frail, but their intense connection to their mission makes them surprisingly difficult to harm. Adventurers should find a source of bargaining leverage or other weakness by researching the witches' history and learning about their purpose. It seldom works to fight them as if they were a more typical monster.
Special Movement: Coven witches can use their magic in almost any way that helps advance their assigned story. Their ability to use magic while staying distant with magic and their high movement rate usually deters even the foolish from attacking them. When attacked, the witches begin with magic that forces the opponents to move (the maiden creates hallucinations, the matron summons poisonous clouds, the matron makes furniture chase people, etc.). If stronger dissuasion is need, the trio does something to limit their opponents (the maiden clouds minds, the matron summons grasping vines, the crone shrinks people, etc.). As a last resort the witches do something that forces their opponents to stiffen (the maiden stuns minds, the matron creates glue in armor joints, the matron turns people or clothing to stone, etc.). Use a variety of appropriate monster actions.
Some forests are protected by dryads who use illusionary terrain to prevent people from finding and entering the deeper parts of their forest. Dryads look like people, but can be identified because the reflection of the sun in their eyes will be shaped like a crescent moon instead of a circle. Their skin is tough and bark-like.
When forced into combat dryads will cause plants to grow and move, entangling intruders and blocking paths. They can also charm people, which might cause those charmed to attack themselves or their allies. If forced to fight, dryads use bows and knives.
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Shoot/Throw 2 (talent 2)
Movement Rate 6
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Dryads exemplify archers. They are most dangerous when they can keep distant.
Special Movement: Dryads can move into trees. This can provide a big bonus to Escape attempts.
A different forest witch is the seelie fairy. These small witches are as cowardly as dryads are brave.
Seelie fairies are not to be trusted, even if they are not as unthinkingly malevolent as their unseelie relatives. The seelies act according to their own code of honor, and claim they act justly and return favors. However, their understanding of honor is enigmatic, and they often seem to act mischievously and avenge actions that only they understand as offensive.
Seelies are fond of music and dancing. They enjoy watching people's festivities, but do not appreciate when their own music or dancing is watched.
Seelies somehow live without physical affection or childbearing. They cannot understand these, but are fascinated by what seems to them pleasant absurdities. They like to spy on people hugging or kissing even though they understand this is impolite, and nothing pleases them more than being able to make a baby smile.
To change a dryad to a seelie fairy, give its arrows Curse and Lethal Melee. (Enemies hit twice by their magic arrows fall asleep or are turned into small woodland animals.) Change their morale to Cowardly Morale
Special Movement: Many seelie have wings and can fly.
Special Movement: When a seelie dances, all foes who can see it are fascinated and cannot attack it until they spend fortune or that particular seelie resumes violence.
The witches called hags are hideously ugly but usually are only seen disguised as mice. They draw nourishment by sitting on the chest of a sleeping person and "drinking" in the sleeper's exhalations. They avoid combat, but if forced to fight will extend their hair to great length in either mouse or humanoid form.
During combat they recover as much stamina each turn as the number of people they touch.
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Melee/Protect 2 (talent 2) ← Grapple or Grasp
Movement Rate 6
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Hags exemplify a grappling mob. Each is fragile, but they have the tools to work together to limit opponents' mobility and overwhelm. A group of them is difficult to fight alone, so in a story with a solo PC the GM should include advance warning when these monsters might be encountered.
Special Movement: Their long, prehensile hair allows them to melee and grapple opponents from a distance.
Special Movement: A hag can become insubstantial. This allows it to float in the air. While insubstantial it flees if retreat is possible, and only takes damage from heat, cold, poison gas, etc.
A similar witch that embodies the perils of questing for sunken treasure is a sea hag. Their true forms are unnerving and slightly aquatic. They appear in groups of three or more, wearing illusionary disguises that make them appear fair of face (and sometimes male). When they decide to attack, they shed their illusionary disguises and try to gang up on one target at a time.
To change the hag into a sea hag replace its ability to become insubstantial with the finishing move Lethal Melee. People grabbed or grappled by sea hag's kelp-like hair feel a deep chill, and are about to suffocate.
The strange rat king sometimes looks like a huge, bipedal rat and sometimes looks like a tangle of normal rats. Then it shifts form even more and looks like a vile woman made of colorful centipedes, called a ribbon queen.
As a rat king it can mentally control all rats in a large area (for example, several city blocks). As a ribbon queen it can attach one of its centipedes to a sleeping person to control their minds.
A combat with a rat king should be the climax of a long story that involved much research about that particular vampire and its unique abilities and weaknesses. No two rat king are alike!
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Acrobatics/Climb 4 (talent 3)
Movement Rate 4
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A rat king exemplifies a Big Bad Evil Guy. It should be a unique villain that uses minions against the PCs until a final confrontation.
Special Movement: A rat king chooses how gravity works nearby.
Visitors have traveled to the "normal" world from alternate planets, planes, or dimensions.
Visitors provide an excuse for the GM and Player to have any type of opponents. It can be fun to borrow ideas from other settings. The example visitors described below pay tribute to people and creatures that have become tropes.
Note that this page of monsters does not include giants. Visitors can be repurposed when giants are needed. Increase the monster's numeric abilities appropriately, and perhaps change their ranged attack to more thematically represent thrown boulders, hurled lightning, etc.
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the Power named Soot Erica creates visitors.
Soot Erica is the patron of secrets. Adventurers who need to fight visitors should first find these monsters' secret abilities and weaknesses.
Soot Erica also uses visitors to highlight her five vices. Visitors are entitled (they are parasites that do not work), gluttonous (they claim more and more), envious (they want to take what others have), irate (they are angry at people and cannot handle their own plans failing), and suffer from luxury (they are stuck in an attitude of security through physical dominance).
Some of Soot Erica's visitors come from a place where magic works so differently that they suppress the effects of Spyragia's magic around them. Crafted magic items stop functioning, runeblocks do not work, etc.
Flame cultists are a tribute to the Cult of Ragnaros.
Skekkers are a tribute to skeksis, but their home world is taken from the novel The Great Divorce.
Scrappers are a tribute to jawas.
I imagine that handzards could have been a part of the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Garhwals are a tribute to kzinti, and named after the garhwal division of tigers.
The word orkor is from Tolkien's elven language Quenya, the plural word for orcs that roughly translates as "monsters to fear". Cheese dip is a reference to Groo the Wanderer.
Visitors are most often intelligent like people, and chose to travel to the story's normal world. But they could also be only as intelligent as animals, released into the normal world by accident or on purpose.
With Visitors the issue is not how they reproduce, but how many more of them will be arriving from wherever they came from!
Visitors do not have stamina points. Instead usage dice are used to track the effects of damage.
Visitors can reflect a specific type of magic or elemental damage.
Combat can be boring for human-like visitors. To keep combats interesting at the very end of the round, after all characters have taken their turns each visitor may attempt to cause an issue.
Visitors use fake names when in the "normal" world. They know that anyone who learns their true name can use it to banish them back to the world from which they came.
For the sake of game balance, it can be useful to consider four goals for visitors:
Visitors that are looters can take items back to wherever they came from. They can be fought, and when defeated are killed.
Visitors that are explorers or conquerors cannot take items back to wherever they came from. Instead they are in the normal world to gather information, or as a vanguard group of immigrants or invaders. They can be fought, but when defeated return to their own world instead of being killed.
Visitors can make a fun rival adventuring party that tries to do what the PCs do but faster, more dramatically, or with better publicity.
Some visitors need rescuing because they cannot return to wherever they came from.
Perhaps the PCs need to prevent more visitors from arriving. Do these visitors get to the normal world through a portal, with a ritual, or by using a special vehicle?
The visitor's usage die starts at a certain polyhedral die size (for example, an eight-sided die).
This die might be reduced to the next smaller size die when a successful attack causes damage:
Design Notes
Useage dice were popularized by The Black Hack RPG.
Their expected overall value is listed here.
The visitor is defeated when it is using a four-sided usage die and that four-sided usage die is "reduced".
As an example, to defeat a visitor that starts with an eight-sided usage die requires at least three successful attacks: a first that reduces its usage die to a six-sided die, a second that reduces its usage die to a four-sided die, and a third that finally defeats the visitor. But if those usage die rolled high then it might take many more successful attacks than three!
Within a group of visitors, individuals will have one of three possible combat roles.
PCs who are fighting a group of visitors should do their best to focus damage on one visitor at a time. Wounding many of the monsters will make the combat much more difficult!
Visitors may have interesting other-worldly equipment as well as innate abilities. This equipment is flavorful treasure for the people of the "normal" world.
Visitors who are cultists have a sinister project involving long-term crafting or summoning. Usually they are working from a hidden base of operations. As a short-term goal they might travel from that lair to act as looters or conquerors, but that activity is merely the first step towards their overall goal.
Cultists are resistant to divination and mind-control magic, and reflect that type back magic back at its caster.
Cultists are especially annoying in how they can run away from adventurers. Their Perception/Escape skill rating starts at a measly 1, but it increases each time their usage die is reduced.
A classic trope requires the PCs to prevent cultists from acquiring certain McGuffin items.
As an example, imagine that a sect of flame cultists has claimed the abandoned lair of a dragon and are trying to summon their unearthly Lord of Fire. Can they be prevented from gathering samples of magma from four different volcanoes?
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Shoot/Throw 1 ← Blast Spray or Eldritch Spray
Movement Rate 4
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Cultists exemplify archers. They are most dangerous when they can keep distant.
Special Movement: A cultist bruiser that does not move can instead ignore the first magical damage it would suffer before its next turn.
Special Movement: A cultist healer that does not move can instead heal itself or an ally, initially by 1 stamina.
Special Movement: A cultist killer that does not move can instead create around itself a cloud of magical darkness with radius equal to its movement rate. Only cultists can see through this magical darkness.
Example Cultists
Why do only female harpies travel through portals to our world to steal gems, magic items, and shiny trinkets? What makes them so malevolent and cruel, delighting in destroying anything artistic or beautiful? Are stories true that they worship a being that embodies disease and decay and are trying to summon its influence (or its bodily form) in our world?
The orkor are aggressive invaders with pig-like faces whose military squads use shamanic enchantments. They charge into action without fearing any consequences. They want violence, but can be distracted by cheese dip. Their long-term projects usually involve siege machines and conquering farmland.
The creepy visitors who call themselves esoterics travel through linked portals. They appear at unexpected times to smile at heroic adventurers in mocking praise. Are they rivals? What is their agenda? Are the books they write in diaries or spellbooks?
Visitors from a dimension or plane themed by a classical element or a school of magic are called elementals. An elemental could be made of that element or merely skilled at manipulating it.
Most are explorers or conquerors. This includes those that are unintelligent and simply lost after being transferred to the normal world.
Elementals can reflect attacks of their theme back at their foes.
Elementals are especially dangerous in how their aim improves during combat. Their Shoot/Throw skill rating starts at a measly 1, but it increases each time their usage die is reduced.
As an example, rambunctious fire dogs are not larger than normal dogs, but spew cones of fire from both ends. Are they aggressive or merely dangerous while playful?
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Shoot/Throw 1 ← Eldritch (increases as usage die is reduced)
Movement Rate 3
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Elementals exemplify pack hunters. The danger increases when two or more worgs gang up on the same target.
Special Movement: Once a target has recently suffered damage from an elemental, all elemental bruisers and killers of its type ignore that target's damage mitigation when making melee attacks. This allows elementals to be especially effective when working together while surrounding a target.
Special Movement: An elemental healer may use the Protect skill to heal itself or an ally, initially by 1 stamina.
Example Elementals
The ritual that skekkers use to travel to our world gives them only a few hours to do their plundering before they automatically return. After escaping from their undending town of infinite pettiness and bickering, in a world without needs or cooperation, they rush to rampage wildly, seeking excitement—or any feeling. Their element is despair, and those they grab or bite might lose the will to resist.
Hinkypunks are quick-flying sparks from a dimension of flashy lights. They want to guard a grave but have not found one in this world. So they wander, looking for a person to lure into a lonely place. When prey is found they gather in number, and when enough have arrived they lure the hypnotized person next to a ditch and slay them.
Did people once summon shadow squids from the plane of shadow? Some dark ruins seem permanently infested by them. Breathing their air brings bad luck. Reliably seeing them requires bright light. Their touch prevents people from healing stamina or composure until the person touched rests in a warm place. Rumors claim that the only way to really kill a shadow squid is to pour enough poison into the pond or puddle or bucket whose water it calls home.
The soot thrower looks like a bone covered with soot that throws soot. But the material is not actually soot, for it leaves behind a trail of the stuff that does strange things if you touch or breathe it. They appear to be the advance scouts sent from their world, for if they are not defeated quickly more monsters of grime and trash appear.
The most distinctive feature of gadgeteers is that their strange devices work for everyone.
In most stories, the PCs cannot use a cultists' rituals or an elemental's magic. But the PCs can pick up the strange ray gun dropped by a gadgeteer and pull the trigger, or wear the humming belt that they looted from a gadgeteer and press the large button on its buckle.
Another distinctive feature is that the devices used by gadgeteers are unreliable. Sometimes they do not work at all. Sometimes they cause a different effect in the normal world than the device caused in the gadgeteer's home world. These issues might surprise the gadgeteers!
Scrapper items, like magical crafted items, should have a limited effective duration and a limited number of uses.
A classic trope requires the PCs to prevent gadgeteers from repairing their strange vehicle.
Gadgeteers are especially able to make mechanical repairs when the pressure is high. Their Machinery skill rating starts at a measly 1, but it increases each time their usage die is reduced.
Gadgeteers can reflect luck-based abilities back at their foes.
An opponent who is causing a gadgeteer to suffer any issue is observing the gadgeteer carefully and learns that gadgeteer's current damage mitigation.
As an example, diminutive scrappers travel in huge, dimension-hopping vehicles that look like giant irregular polyhedrons on treads. Sometimes scrappers are peaceful, but at other times they ruthlessly steal anything metal or mechanical. They have sturdy swords, but prefer to fight using enigmatic projectile launchers, despite the fact their single eye means a lack of depth perception impairs their aim. If their raiding party is sufficiently rebuffed they will flee towards their vehicle, and vanish along with it in a flash of light and thunderclap.
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Shoot/Throw 1 ← Knockdown
Movement Rate 3
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Gadgeteers exemplify a damage puzzle. PCs need to study its to learn its damage mitigation and more efficiently attack it.
Special Movement: A gadgeteer bruiser who suffers only 1 damage (after damage mitigation) gets its protective belt working, and henceforth is immune to ranged attacks. If in melee combat, it will changed to ranged combat if possible.
Special Movement: A gadgeteer killer who suffers only 1 damage (after damage mitigation) gets its sun blaster working, and henceforth adds the Stun ability to its ranged attacks. The gadgeteers will try to bring stunned foes back to their vehicle, portal, or ritual site.
Special Movement: A gadgeteer healer who suffers only 1 damage (after damage mitigation) gets its metal control device working, and animates something metallic to join the combat, rolling or skittering across the ground. If the scrapper could instead take control of a useful mechanical device, that happens instead.
Example Gadgeteers
A squad of gharwals is three to six tall tiger-people who wear spacesuits. They follow strict codes of honor and feuding that only make sense to other gharwals. Rumors claim their swords can be activated and for a time will cut through any material.
A handzard is an orange metallic humanoid from another world, who can replace its hands with a big hand, hook, drill, pair of spikes, lightning rod, grapnel launcher, or other options. Their two great joys are racing fast vehicles and trying to understand mechanical devices by disassembling and reassembling them. They are overly eager to use or take apart carts, wagons, chariots, boats, ships, and other vehicles.
Animated objects are indistinguishable from normal objects until they move. Yet animated objects can move—some can even fly!
Some animated objects are also magically flexible compared to normal objects of their type. For example, a stone gargoyle can move like a living creature.
Animated objects can be striking, but are they art?
Design Notes
In the setting of Spyragia, the Power named Snowidget creates animated objects. The Sagacious debate whether animated objects are magical or constructed of mundane components too small to see that form a technology so advanced it appears to be magical.
Many animated objects are statues of an animal. These act like the animal they represent. Those that are like a predatory animal are hunters. Those that look like a pack animal can cooperate as a pack. Those that look like a grazing animal behave like one.
Some animated objects are statues of fictitious creatures. As a category, these are called gargoyles because many resemble the statues used as drainspouts on stone buildings.
Untrustworthy legends describe how the Snowidget will (rarely) make animated statue-people. One tale describes an entire village of statue folk.
It is impossible to predict how much intelligence Snowidget has given a newly encountered animated object. Usually a gargoyle is more intelligent than an animated household item.
Note that in a science fiction setting the same game mechanics useful for animated objects can work for robots and for alien races with a mineral-based biology. Those futuristic foes could use nanites or alien biology to "pull themselves together" after being missed by an attack.
Most animated objects have a specialized intelligence appropriate to their purpose. An animated rope is expert with knots. An animated abacus performs flawless computations. An animated chain knows where to wrap around a prisoner and how to squeeze to best prevent escape. But animated objects are oblivious or clueless about issues distinct from their specialty.
In most fantasy settings the animated objects are crafted by someone and do not reproduce. In the sample setting of Spyragia, animated objects are "supposed to be made" by the Power named Snowidget, but when instead crafted by a mad scientist can feature in a story about why they were crafted and if there will be more of them.
Attacking an animated object with a weapon this feels like hitting a thing instead of a creature. Damaging an animated object is an attempt to crack or break it rather than the way attacks normally accumulate damage. Instead of an armor rating, an animated object has a threshold for how much consecutive damage must happen before subsequent damage is applied to the monster's stamina. Any attack that misses will reset this "how much damage in a row?" counter because the monster has a moment to pull itself together and reform. (This does not heal stamina damage the monster has already suffered.)
Most animated objects behave like cowards. Each time it loses stamina it tries to flee so time may mend it completely. But it will return soon!
The magic that animates the object might simply absorb incoming spells. The creature's stamina also measures the chance out of 8 that each harmful magical attack does nothing.
Animated objects have special abilities according to their purpose.
Silk disrupts the magic that animates objects. An opponent attempting to ensnare an animated object in a silk net or cloth receives a small bonus to do so. After being ensnared, the animated object has a 50% chance to lose its turn each round.
All animated objects have a helpful purpose. Their goal might be to guard something, assist a crafter at work, or simply be helpful around the home.
However, the stories that focus on animated objects are interesting when something goes wrong with that purpose. As examples, a broom will not stop working, a statue decides the location it keeps people away from includes an entire village, or a factory will not stop making robots!
In fun stories an animated object is much more than a monster than needs smashing. The example monsters below are examples for archetypes whose abilities generalize to an entire subcategory of similar monsters.
Most animated objects have no treasure. But some guard treasure. A few are themselves treasure, such as a flying sword that will serve whomever defeats it.
Animated armor prioritizes preventing trespassing. Clever adventurers can prevent it from bludgeoning by provoking it to halt quick-moving opponents (with Wrestle/Disarm), but this tactic has its own risk.
Animated armor is the most durable type of animated object. The first nine consecutive points of damage it suffers merely stresses its magic.
The first time its stamina is damaged, a whip extends from one of the arms of the animated armor. Henceforth it can attempt a second melee attack each turn.
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Melee/Protect 3
Movement Rate 4
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Animated armor exemplifies an animated durable object. These unintelligent guards are animated to block movement or prevent access. The animated armor blurs and reforms after taking damage. Heroes must wear it down for a long time before it finally begins falling apart!
Special Movement: The animated armor gains a big bonus to using Wrestle when it did not move on its previous turn.
Special Movement: A cloud of poison billows from the animated armor each time it tries to use Wrestle to stop an opponent's movement.
The numerous clamps, grips, pincers, and stands of an animated chemistry set are hinged and flexible, allowing the monster to throw all manner of esoteric alchemical supplies at targets. The chemistry set has no tactics, and always attacks the closest foe using a Throw skill check with medium difficulty.
An animated chemistry set is the least durable type of animated object. The first one points of damage it suffers merely smashes through racks and glassware, not penetrating to the sturdy workbench beneath. When an attack misses, the monster has time to reform its layer of protective outer apparatus.
Each attack causes two random issues. (Players should describe what happens as their PCs are briefly nauseated by gas, slimed with goo, knocked back by an explosion, frozen in a block of instant ice, etc.)
Adventurers who defeat this monster can loot alchemical ingredients as treasure.
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Shoot/Throw 2 ← two random monster issues/abilities Movement Rate 8
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An animated chemistry set exemplifies an animated container. These objects have unpleasant or dangerous contents! Imagine an animated jar, barrel, crate, trunk, or mailbox that contained rotten eggs, sticky tar, boiling oil, poisonous gas or bugs, exploding parcels, etc.
Special Movement: The animated chemistry set can throw objects at every opponent when it did not move on its previous turn.
Special Movement: Prompting the animated chemistry set to gallop after its opponents might leave behind a trail of clouds of various chemicals.
Some flying swords are guardian monsters. Others are assassins with the ability to magically track the first living creature they see.
A flying sword is simple and sturdy. The first four consecutive points of damage it suffers merely stresses its metal. Only the fifth and subsequent points of consecutive damage cause lasting cracks and breaks.
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Melee/Protect 3
Movement Rate 7
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A flying sword exemplifies an animated tool or terrain feature. These objects are dangerous primarily because of a surprising ambush and surprising agility. An animated portcullis, stalagmite, or hat rack is a similar monster whose attacks normally deal damage. An animated rope, rug, chain, cloak, chandelier, or dresser would often wrestling and cause issues in addition to dealing normal damage.
Special Movement: The flying sword will focus on one target, and follow it until that target is defeated or manages to flee. It prefers to stay so close to its target that any of that target's allies who attack the flying sword and miss will instead accidentally hurt their ally.
Gargoyles are winged and bipedal. Some are big, and others are small. Some look wicked and others look angelic. Do not let them grab you!
A gargoyle looks very sturdy, but the magic that allows it to move means its stone is not actually stone hard. The first two consecutive points of damage it suffers merely make tiny chips of rock fall off.
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1. left wing
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When a gargoyle loses stamina, only one point of stamina is lost. Roll a six-sided die to determine which location is broken.
Each of these six locations represents one of the gargoyle's six points of stamina. When a previously broken location would be hit, shift to the next location in the list.
Gargoyles can fly or glide until one of its wings is broken.
A gargoyle can make two attacks each round until one of its arms is broken.
A gargoyle does one extra point of damage until one of its legs is broken.
A PC that is attacking a gargoyle can aim carefully in exchange for a penalty. A small penalty on the attack allows adjusting the die roll for the hit location by ±1. A big penalty allows allows adjusting the die roll for the hit location by ±2.
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Shoot/Throw ← Knockdown Spray (see below)
Movement Rate 4
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A gargoyle exemplifies a living statue. Similar monsters include animals made from a child's building blocks or slightly sentient robots.
Special Movement: A gargoyle can only use its breath weapon (spewing forth rock shards or a force blast to knock opponents prone) when it did not move on its previous turn.
Be very careful what you say near a self-constructing toolbox! It yearns to be helpful.
When it hears muttering such as "It would be nice to have better tools!" it starts building those. When it hears complaints about "If only my workshop was bigger!" it crafts machines to knock down and rebuild walls.
The bards sing several stories about a town or city thought to be suffering from a maniacal mad scientist, but in truth the source of the lightning turrets, darkness bombs, and giant war robots was a self-constructing toolbox doing what it thought was making people happier.
A self-constructing toolbox keeps itself in great shape. The first five consecutive points of damage it suffers are merely dents that it immediately repairs.
A self-constructing toolbox does not attack. It only uses Machinery, eagerly anticipating how successful its next skill check might be.
With a Machinery skill check that has easy or medium success the toolbox produces yet another small, autonomous danger. (Perhaps it behaves like a Flying Sword?)
With its first Machinery skill check of tough success the toolbox merges some of its creations. They are repaired of any damage, and more dangerous after being combined! (Perhaps it behaves like a Gargoyle?)
With its second Machinery skill check of tough success the toolbox merges releases fireworks and plays music as it reveals its master plan!
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Perception/Escape 3
Movement Rate 1
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A self-constructing toolbox exemplifies a spawner. The creature itself is not threatening, but what it makes is dangerous! Similar monsters include an animated crossbow or living ordnance that shoots and then has more ammunition appear from nowhere, or a magical candelabra that spawns living flames that swarm at its foes.
Special Movement: A self-constructing toolbox can reform itself after being destroyed, unless some preventive condition happens. It might need to be burned to ash, submerged in water, etc.
The following tables summarize some of the distinctiveness among monsters in the sample setting of Spyragia:
| Monster Type | Intelligence | Reproduce |
|---|---|---|
| Bigbeasts | with lair and territory | lair's monthly egg |
| Bugaboos | crafty and clever | cause nightmares |
| Undead | as evolve into types | by spreading curse |
| Oozes | what it has eaten | can split |
| Dragons | own more books | popular songs earn eggs |
| Picaroons | only the commander | bury heel bones |
| Witches | yes, but naive and distractible | using eldritch implements |
| Visitors | usually people-like | more of them travel here |
| Animated Objects | only for purpose | mad science |
| Monster Type | Special Defense | Magic Defense | Special Rules | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bigbeasts | no special rules | no special rules | adrenaline | advantage tokens |
| Bugaboos | three special hits | buffs by absorbing | invisible, frightening | imaginary friends |
| Undead | only hurt by magic | heal/harm swap | senses and more | cannot cooperate |
| Oozes | percent chance to be hurt | types do things | damages with grappling | one type of damage |
| Dragons | locations before stamina | absorb types | breath weapon | fighting on the ground |
| Picaroons | regeneration | happens over time | mutation, stealth | near noon/midnight |
| Witches | potent magic | immune to magic | dangerous hair | rowan wood |
| Visitors | usage dice replace stamina | reflect/echo/store | causes more issues | true name |
| Animated Objects | consecutive damage | chance to reflect | varies by purpose | silk |
This concluding section of the monster page offers additional help for a GM who borrows from his or her favorite published adventures from other game systems to use in Nine Powers stories.
Rangers of Shadowdeep is a solo miniatures skirmish game. It presents a series of well-designed combat encounters that have a lot of variety. PCs do advance in between these combats, but the story that connects them is skipped instead of role-played.
The Nine Powers rules can be used to play the missions from Rangers of Shadowdeep, even with a solo PC who is adventuring without companions.
The Nine Powers versions of monsters tend to be both stronger and more flavorful. However, the combat reactions in Nine Powers have much less randomness, and Nine Powers provides ways for PCs to do magical crafting in between encounters.
Thus changing to the Nine Powers rules adjusts the flavor of the game. Stronger foes are balanced out by how a more-skilled PC (with medium or heavy armor) can much more reliably deal with a pack of less-skilled melee opponents, especially if that PC can gain bonuses from higher ground, a magically crafted item or weapon, etc.
| zombie → undead zombie
giant rat → bigbeast shrew giant spider → bigbeast mist spider gnoll archer → picaroon argle mook gnoll fighter → picaroon argle bruiser gnoll sergeant → picaroon argle commander gnoll shaman → picaroon ettercap commander vulture → bigbeast stenchbird |
flesh golem → bugaboo skin man
shadow knight → undead wraith giant fly → bigbeast stingbat swamp zombie → undead zombie troll → picaroon flittermouse commander burrow worm → bigbeast ankheg |
In Rangers of Shadowdeep die roll difficulties are named target numbers, abbreviated TN. These roughly correspond to the Nine Powers difficulties of easy (TN ≤10), normal (TN 11 to 15), and hard (TN ≥16).
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to convert Rangers of Shadowdeep XP into Nine Powers advancement tokens. As a rough estimate this ratio is 12 to 1. But it changes based on how many PCs are in the party.
Shadowdark resembles a modernized and more readable version of the AD&D that I grew up with.
The Nine Powers rules can be used to play Shadowdark adventures, even with a solo PC who is adventuring without companions.
Gold coins from Shadowdark adventures can be used as listed in the Nine Powers economy.
Each Shadowdark XP is worth one Nine Powers advancement token.
The Nine Powers dice roll difficulties of easy, medium, and tough are in Shadowdark named easy (DC 9), normal (DC 12), and hard (DC 15). A Shadowdark difficulty of extreme (DC 18) requires a tough success and spending one fortune.
Many of the monsters from Shadowdark are similar to the Nine Powers monsters. However, most Nine Powers monsters are more flavorful. A monster similar in theme might present different challenges.
Here are equivalents of the people from Appendix B of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.
For the sake of efficient notation skill ratings of 1 are omitted, and talent ratings written as superscripts above the corresponding skill ratings.
A few of these NPCs have special abilities that resemble the wondrous feats of Spyragia, with links provided.
| Shoot/Throw | Gamble/Provoke | Acrobatics/Climb | Melee/Press | Wrestle/Disarm | Perception/Escape | Stealth/Track | Identify/Lore | Bargain/Wonder | Disguise/Etiquette | Animals/Wilderness | Intuition/Hearthwork | Alchemy | Machinery | ||
| Acolyte | 33 | 2 | 2 | 2 | runeblocks include Candle, Silence, Misfortune |
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| Apothecary | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 44 | carries healing herbs and potions | |||||||||
| Assassin | 2 | 2 | 2 | 21 | 2 | 43 | 3 | 21 | an elite killer who uses poisons | ||||||
| Bandit/Cultist/Guard | 2 | 2 | 2 | might know Raging | |||||||||||
| Cavalier | 2 | 32 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | uses good armor, rides griffon or warhorse |
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| Cult Fanatic | 22 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | runeblocks include Feral, Tether | |||||||||
| Gladiator/Veteran | 32 | 21 | 22 | 33 | 32 | 2 | runeblocks include Antimagic | ||||||||
| Knight/Noble/Thug | 2 | 42 | 31 | 2 | 2 | knows Touristry (Dauntlessness) | |||||||||
| Mage | 22 | 44 | 2 | 4 | 2 | runeblocks include Hand, Fire | |||||||||
| Priest/Chaplain | 44 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | runeblocks include Immobilize, Languages, Doom |
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| Scout | 32 | 31 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | might know Touristry | |||||||
| Spy | 21 | 32 | 2 | 22 | 3 | 42 | 2 | 2 | 42 | 32 | might know Rewinding | ||||
| Scoundrel | 2 | 2 | 21 | 2 | 2 | 2 | maybe Emptiness (Empty Palm) | ||||||||
| Urban Ranger | 2 | 42 | 3 | 3 | 32 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | might know Touristry and/or Forensics |