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Old 03-22-2012, 06:07 PM   #31
Bruno
 
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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Next post: writeup!

Spike-Crowned Fiend
4'8"; 200 lbs. Squat, bizarre conglomeration of a dire rat, a two-legged dwarf elephant, and a porcupine.

ST 11*; DX 11; IQ 12; HT 13.
Damage 1d-1/1d+1; BL 24 lb; HP 14; Will 12; Per 14; FP 16.
Basic Speed 6.00; Move 6; Dodge 10†.

Parry: 10 (Arm); 8 (Tusks). Dodge: 10. DR: 3.

Burst of Barbs (17): 1d+1 imp. Acc 4. Range 275 yd / 320 yd. RoF 5. Rcl 1. Shots 15. The Spike-Crowned Fiend regrows one barb per second of Do Nothing. An aimed shot using Sonar to target has effective skill 24!
Fel Gnawing (12): 1d+1 cut. Reach C. Counts as a grab with an effective SM of +2, against full hit-location penalties. On successive turns the Spike-Crowned Fiend may worry at the bite if not shaken off, for automatic Fel Gnawing damage (re-roll each turn).
Elephantine Stomp (10): 1d-1 cr. Reach C. See Stilt Legs, below.
Tail flail (12): 1d-2 cut/imp. Reach C-2.
Short Tusks (12): 1d imp. Reach C.
Desperate Trunk Claw (12): 1d-2 cut/imp. Reach C.

Spiny Jabbing (7): 1d-2 imp. Reach C. The Spike-Crowned Fiend may roll vs Spiny Jabbing against every foe in close combat as a free action, once per foe per turn. This roll is +2 against opponents that attacked it from behind. Those who grapple the Spike-Crowned Fiend take damage automatically, and those who slam the Fiend automatically take maximum damage!

Sonar: The Spike-Crowned Fiend has substandard vision, but it's long-ranged sonar makes up for it! The Spike-Crowned Fiend has sonar at a range of 500 yards, with a +4 to Sonar sense rolls, but must roll to detect fine details. By taking an Aim maneuver, the Fiend can "lock on" to any target within range and acquire its precise range and speed - this gives it an additional +3 to hit that target with an aimed ranged attack!

Friend of the Dark: The Fiend blends in against nearly any background by complex colour changing, enjoying +8 to Stealth against visual creatures (whether moving or still).

Foe of the Sun: The Fiend is greatly weakened by the purifying touch of the sun (or the Sunlight spell); its quills and spines immediately soften and turn an ashy grey, and the Fiend looses Burst of Barbs, Spiny Jabbing, and Friend of the Dark. Most Fiends when exposed to sunlight will flee immediately if possible, or "surrender" and attempt to murder its captors that night.

Traits: Acute Hearing +4; Appearance (Monstrous); Bad Grip -2 (Tail Only); Bloodlust (12 or less); Born Biter +2; Bully (12 or less); Callous; Claws (Talons); Colorblindness; Combat Reflexes; Damage Resistance 3 (Flexible); Disturbing Voice; Extra-Flexible Arms (Two Arms); Fragile (Unnatural); Immunity (All Mind Control); Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Incompetence (Climbing); Long Arms 3 (1 Arm); No Depth Perception; Selfish (12 or less); Social Stigma (Monster); Sonar (Targeting); Stretching 1 (Legs Only); Ultrasonic Speech (switchable).

Skills: Acting-11; Brawling-12; Fast-Talk-9‡; Hidden Lore (Demon Lore)-12; Innate Attack (Projectile)-17; Intimidation-14; Stealth-14*, Wrestling-14.
* +8 against vision from 'Friend of the Dark'.
Features: Born Biter +2; Susceptible to demon-control magic; round enough to count as SM 0.
Skills: Acting-12; Brawling-12; Fast-Talk-12; Hidden-Lore (Demon Lore)-12; Innate Attack (Projectile)-14; Stealth-14*.
* +8 against vision from 'Friend of the Dark'.
Class: Demon.
Notes: Truly Evil, willing to negotiate but often lies.

Appearance: A nearly spherical body with two thick elephantine legs, forward-thrust ratlike head with 4 huge humanoid ears, two to each side, and a long, prehensile ratty tail. The fiend has a crown of long spikes on its brow, and a carpet of shorter quills running all the way down to the tail tip, which is graced with a tuft of four foot long quills. It has two tiny little glassy white eyes that squint constantly. Its snout ends in a flexible trunk with a three lobed "hand" structure at the end, each lobe equiped with a retractable, "spike" claw. The mouth extends back to under the rear pair of ears, from where where two pairs of two-foot tusks protrude; its incisors are four inch long chisels with wicked edges. ts body is draped with sagging wrinkled layers of extremely loose hide; the folds and sags of extra flesh become extreme on the legs until it extends them, wherupon the skin is pulled taut over the stout muscles.

The Fiend is able to speak, and usually knows one or two mortal languages, but its voice is an irritating and incongruent high pitched squeek.

Behaviour: This fiend likes to use its stealth to Aim a burst on a target for maximum bonuses from Sonar, then scoot away to a new hidy hole to regrow a new volley of spines. Beware cornering it in its hide - its bite is ferocious, and it is able to co-ordinate a grapple between its trunk and Fel Gnaw, fill the target full of body spikes and rake at it with its tail spines!
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Last edited by Bruno; 03-22-2012 at 06:17 PM.
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Old 03-22-2012, 06:44 PM   #32
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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I'm treating (10+ST adjust.) from the Size table as %age of Potency ST, and also added in a SM -1 and SM +1 row :)
An early draft of mine had two size tables: one for humanoids and one for everything else. Simply going with a totally new table might work even better.
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This evening I might make a customized-for-DF class table as a drop in replacement too.
Take the extra percentage needed out of Insect. Unless you really want 10% of all monsters being Insects. (Pigeon likes everything to be the same chance for everything.) I think splitting Mundane into Mundane (Humanoid) and Mundane (Supernatural Beast) would solve most of my issues with that, the more I think about it. Peter's logic has something to it.
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I will attempt to draw this later - there is not much in the way of CG that will help me here I think, so it's going to look very cheap 70s D&D art (how appropriate!)
It couldn't look dumber than the Agitar on page 27. For those without the book: think a cross between a Grell and Peter Gabriel's Slipperman costume.
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I'm rolling separately for ST, DX, IQ, Move adjustment, DR on Rasputin's tables. I'm using a baseline HT of 12 and HP, Will, Per, and FP = to their base attributes and use the Move column to adjust it, rather than treating them as core attributes. HT is going on the list because I don't like extreme HT values on monsters.
I was actually doing something like this for Will and Per for non-animals, though I wasn't explicit; I always left HP and FP alone unless I had a reason, not a roll. Note that almost no monster in any GURPS product has extra FP without an ability that uses FP.

High HT monsters is a pet peeve of mine too. I wonder if going straight 10-14 for HT would be better.
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Next post: stat block!
Looks totally cool! And I wish I still had my MM2 now -- I only have my Fiend Folio left from 1e. (I am so Marcie from Dork Dungeons, except I'm a guy and I never could get a prom date.)
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Old 03-22-2012, 07:05 PM   #33
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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Take the extra percentage needed out of Insect. Unless you really want 10% of all monsters being Insects. (Pigeon likes everything to be the same chance for everything.)
twitch Why make me roll two dice if they don't USE the extra precision! twitch

I stole from Alien as well as Insect and (to a lesser extent) Amorphous. I like Elder Things but I don't think they should be every-day.

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I think splitting Mundane into Mundane (Humanoid) and Mundane (Supernatural Beast) would solve most of my issues with that, the more I think about it. Peter's logic has something to it.
I actually like that they've gone into more detail in the "mundane" category, because a little concrete detail goes a looong way for me when trying to figure out what something is. That's why I love the hordelings :)

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It couldn't look dumber than the Agitar on page 27. For those without the book: think a cross between a Grell and Peter Gabriel's Slipperman costume.
It's scribbled in blue pen. So...

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I was actually doing something like this for Will and Per for non-animals, though I wasn't explicit; I always left HP and FP alone unless I had a reason, not a roll. Note that almost no monster in any GURPS product has extra FP without an ability that uses FP.
Good point about FP, but adding a little more HP to monsters can be a really useful idea. And, I really felt like tables today. In retrospect I might treat it as +-10% simply because that's how the basic set lists suggested attribute limits - that and huge monsters should get more than +3 HPs if they're supposed to have lots of HP.

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High HT monsters is a pet peeve of mine too. I wonder if going straight 10-14 for HT would be better.
Not sure. It's a thought, for sure.

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Looks totally cool! And I wish I still had my MM2 now -- I only have my Fiend Folio left from 1e. (I am so Marcie from Dork Dungeons, except I'm a guy and I never could get a prom date.)
Well, I just found this, if it helps you any :) It's not identical to the MMII tables, and seems to be 3eD&D or some other D20 fantasy, but I think it's quite good-enough :D
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Last edited by Bruno; 03-22-2012 at 07:17 PM. Reason: got distracted and hit send before I was done.
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Old 03-22-2012, 08:24 PM   #34
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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twitch Why make me roll two dice if they don't USE the extra precision! [I]twitch[/]
You're gonna have to post it, y'know. I might make this into a web site in the end. You seem to have even more patience for rote work than I, and that's saying something, though fully GURPSifying the Special Abilities table would be pure masochism. There would have to be about 30 variants of the Potency Table to be complete.

Oh, thanks for the link.
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Old 03-22-2012, 08:37 PM   #35
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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This evening I might make a customized-for-DF class table as a drop in replacement too.
There's a table of DF monster classes in DF 8 (p. 59).
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Old 03-23-2012, 06:04 AM   #36
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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There's a table of DF monster classes in DF 8 (p. 59).
Indeed, and will be a useful start - but I want at least potency modifiers to go with the rest of this little system, and I will be subdividing Mundane, Animal (or breaking out into subtables) to put a little more concrete suggestions on where to start. The book does separate humanoids from the rest of what GURPS would call "Mundane", and that's actually a pretty good idea based on the way the system in it works. I might put another line on it for "draconic" too, but I'm not sure. I need to really sit down with it.

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You're gonna have to post it, y'know. I might make this into a web site in the end.
It's one of those little projects that's probably going to be a constant work in progress because, hey, I like to tweak, but once I have something "reasonable" I'll put it up :)

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You seem to have even more patience for rote work than I, and that's saying something,
My quirk-level obsessive-compulsive tendencies get provoked by a few situations and trigger temporary Single-Minded behavior.

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though fully GURPSifying the Special Abilities table would be pure masochism. There would have to be about 30 variants of the Potency Table to be complete.
Yeahno, it's too abstract. Overall, I think the book is a nice balancing point between concrete and abstract (I'd tweak a few places, big surprise) - at least for me it provides just enough structure to give me ideas, rather than so much freedom that it leaves me sitting going "Now what?"

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Oh, thanks for the link.
No problem. :D
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Old 03-23-2012, 08:15 AM   #37
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

If the problem with "Mundane" is its vagueness and thus a problem with evoking an image of the creature, there are several possible solutions:

Treat the Animal, Humanoid, and Insect classifications as body plans instead of "types." Animals are quadriped, humanoids are humanoid, and insect means other body plans--maybe with hexapod as a baseline assumption.

Repurpose the body plan generation tables from Space, though I think those are a little "in-depth" for generation on the fly.

Combine the Animal and Insect classification into one category and have a subtable for generating a body plan, maybe based on the meta-traits in Basic.
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Old 03-23-2012, 10:01 AM   #38
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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As a side note, I think I should go through the existing DF monsters and see what traits are universal to each class. This isn't specific to this little project; it's obviously useful for anyone making monsters with any method. Though I suppose you've already done that.
No, I haven't. You don't actually need to, although you could do a "these sorts of traits are worth looking at when you make a critter" entry for each type. But even within types, they vary a lot both by accident and design.
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Old 03-23-2012, 10:18 AM   #39
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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No, I haven't. You don't actually need to, although you could do a "these sorts of traits are worth looking at when you make a critter" entry for each type. But even within types, they vary a lot both by accident and design.
I found this out the hard way with Demons last night. Constructs have a core of about six traits that they always have and about four that are quite common, but Demons are all over the place. The only commonality I think I found was Immune to Metabolic Hazards, which is pretty common for anything that isn't Plant, Animal or Mundane. So don't go into the dungeon looking to fight with metabolic hazards.
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Old 03-23-2012, 11:07 AM   #40
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Default Re: Crafting fantastic dungeon creatures in GURPS

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So don't go into the dungeon looking to fight with metabolic hazards.
Oh I don't know, an assassin worth their salt comes equipped with more than just mundane poisons, so they can still coat their blades with death regardless of the foe (although constructs are generally still a pain). And priests of disease and decay have more than a few tricks up their vermin fur sleeves to blight those that think they're beyond such mortal concerns.

In the same way as many things overcome Indomitable and Fearlessness, there are many ways to afflict those immune to metabolic hazards if that is your shtick. Well, at least in my world...
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