[DF] Homebrew Monsters

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

That Frost Giant major boss (Gerhaard) above, for instance, looks like he'd take out any high-power DF group.

Low-powered monsters are also easily created with this thread; I did the high-end stuff for fun. I did call Gerhaard a Greater Boss and, oh yeah, a weapon of mass destruction... Use with caution... ;]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

(Keeping in mind, I'm a collector, not a role-player, so I don't know the rules...) His Power Blow with the Broadsword would wipe out (I think...) pretty much any fighter (average of 34.5 damage; even a DR as high as 10 would still leave almost 25 points getting through--and with a thrust, isn't there a bonus on damage that gets through DR?).

It's easy to fall into the trap of picturing a straight contest of one guy's damage against the other's DR and vice-versa in a toe-to-toe slugfest of dumb brutes when you don't actually play very often, and certain fights may play out that way if both sides are mildly retarded, but most intelligent adventurers are going to take one look at this guy and know better than to fight him at all (if they even get that close - his reputation and army generally preceed him) and even if they have no choice they can try to avoid just sucking up his massive damage with good positioning, superior speed, movement magic, etc. I made him a non-shield-user specifically to leave him vulnerable to ranged attacks of the classic DF arrow-in-the-eye variety, and his IQ is decent but not fantastic against illusions, mundane trickery, etc. His SoD to the Winter Court means that ruthless adventurers can hold its innocents hostage to keep him at bay. Be creative. ;]

[Pragmatic]

So it's more a matter of creating a "use your brains or your feet" sort of monster, rather than a "convert a monster over from D&D"?

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So it's more a matter of creating a "use your brains or your feet" sort of monster, rather than a "convert a monster over from D&D"?

Yeah mostly; I haven't played actual D&D since I was like 15 so I'm just going for the general feel out of nostalgia here. On the sense of scale of my own GURPS DF party Gerhaard would be a complete roadblock to be very nervously negotiated with or avoided (unless we could set up our Ogre Barbarian with a total sucker shot with his axe to the back of the head somehow, like with an invisibility potion and a good distraction or something...), but I'm not going to rule out some sort of 500-point DF / Supers game where all the PCs are Norse Demigods and frost giants are cannon fodder, either. A moderate straightforward challenge for my DF group that probably wouldn't settle any PC's hash would be something like one lesser frost giant leading 6-12 pixies, or just the pixies if they have paralytic venom and a good ambush.

[Pragmatic]

So are there any "stat normalized" monster write-ups out there? From what I've seen, from what I understand, there's a lot of power in DF, but nowhere near the exponential growth as seen in D&D. The higher-level monsters in D&D are stronger, because the characters in D&D have become stronger, as well.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So are there any "stat normalized" monster write-ups out there? From what I've seen, from what I understand, there's a lot of power in DF, but nowhere near the exponential growth as seen in D&D. The higher-level monsters in D&D are stronger, because the characters in D&D have become stronger, as well.

Everything in this thread is modular. The basic skeletons, goblins, etc from the beginning can be kept as humble or made as epic as you want just by adding or not adding the additional lenses.

[Taliesin]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Has anyone actually playtested these monsters against DF characters, fully maxed out?

That Frost Giant major boss (Gerhaard) above, for instance, looks like he'd take out any high-power DF group. (Keeping in mind, I'm a collector, not a role-player, so I don't know the rules...) His Power Blow with the Broadsword would wipe out (I think...) pretty much any fighter (average of 34.5 damage; even a DR as high as 10 would still leave almost 25 points getting through--and with a thrust, isn't there a bonus on damage that gets through DR?).

Defenses are way more important than DR. The Paladin im my group has a block of 18 and everyone but the thief has a parry in the 16-18 range as well. That plus strategic play makes a party of pc's pretty resilient. Right now, I'm giving "mook" monsters ST in the 22-32 range and DX in the 16-18 range plus lots of special abilities to make them interesting.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Has anyone actually playtested these monsters against DF characters, fully maxed out?

These are the result of the DF game we played in, and they worked pretty well. We didn't play it extensively, we didn't poke it for holes and look to see where it'd all go wrong (Though I will say I was constantly pleasantly surprised by how players got around what I figured was unbeatable monsters) and if this were going to be an official SJGames product, it would need to be playtested much more thoroughly.

But it DOES work.

That Frost Giant major boss (Gerhaard) above, for instance, looks like he'd take out any high-power DF group. (Keeping in mind, I'm a collector, not a role-player, so I don't know the rules...) His Power Blow with the Broadsword would wipe out (I think...) pretty much any fighter (average of 34.5 damage; even a DR as high as 10 would still leave almost 25 points getting through--and with a thrust, isn't there a bonus on damage that gets through DR?).

He's a boss. He's supposed to be scary and require some thought to beat. But frankly, that's no worse than several of the Dragons, Elder Things, or heck, even an Ogre. I remember in one game, a player played particularly stupidly and let an Ogre hit him full-on (he was a martial artist, so had no armor, and he'd made an all-out attack for some reason) and that was that. But the rest of us had no problem taking the ogre out.

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So it's more a matter of creating a "use your brains or your feet" sort of monster, rather than a "convert a monster over from D&D"?

This was never about converting monsters from D&D. I frankly feel that's a waste of time and a violation of the spirit of GURPS. If you wanted to play D&D, you would play D&D. Instead, people want to play GURPS in a dungeon fantasy setting, and my monsters uses GURPS monsters to do that. It uses the Lich and the Wraith from the Magic book, the Dragons from the core book, the Dark Ones and the Goblins from the Dungeon Fantasy books, and so on. Let GURPS be GURPS, I say.

And an important part of letting GURPS be GURPS, you have to understand, is letting GURPS work the way GURPS does. A monster that could one-shot a high level hero in D&D is unheard of... but it's fairly common in GURPS. Just look how bad gun damage is! But Gerhaard, glancing over his stats, doesn't look all that bad to me. He's not terribly accurate by DF-Boss standards, with only a skill of 14, which means he won't be making deceptive attacks. His Power Blows eat up fatigue, so he can't do that forever. Thus, as an attacker, what you get is this large slow guy who hits REALLY hard and digs massive, icy furrows into the earth, but not someone who really scares a swashbuckler or martial artist. He also has a relatively mundane perception (12), making him rather easy to evade as a thief.

The greatest dangers he present, actually, isn't his damage, but his toughness. He has a DR of 15, a Magic Resistance of +5 and a HT of 14 and a Will of 18. This means he's basically untouchable by both Mind and Body magic, and his resistance to ice means my own Wizard's Ice magic would have been a waste of time. Fortunately, lightning and fire both work pretty well against him, the former because it can zip past his armor, the latter because he's vulnerable to fire. However, the guy has 48 HP on top of all that DR and +3 HtK, which means fighting him is going to take a long, long time.

Finally, he's noted as a Greater Boss, which is Golden Apple's way of suggesting that you don't throw him at a starting party

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But Gerhaard, glancing over his stats, doesn't look all that bad to me. He's not terribly accurate by DF-Boss standards, with only a skill of 14, which means he won't be making deceptive attacks. His Power Blows eat up fatigue, so he can't do that forever. Thus, as an attacker, what you get is this large slow guy who hits REALLY hard and digs massive, icy furrows into the earth, but not someone who really scares a swashbuckler or martial artist.

I don't have the DF books, so I don't know the rules for scaling weapons up to SM +2, but I'm picturing him using those first couple of Power Blows to smash parrying weapons (or even blocking shields) and then just jabbing and slashing for the torso at his leisure when things go ideally for him (ha!). Definitely no fancy hit locations or deceptive attacks for this guy - He does more commanding than actual fighting, and more sitting around looking scary than either.

ETA For The Noobs: If you can be reasonably confident about breaking whatever your target will parry or block with, you might as well open up with Telegraphic Attacks and see what they've got. If they have some kind of indestructible magic shield or a really high Dodge, switch to non-Telegraphic attacks. This is a signature strategy for pretty much any huge, low-skill combatant.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

He also has a relatively mundane perception (12), making him rather easy to evade as a thief.

Probably the smartest thing to do, if possible.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The greatest dangers he present, actually, isn't his damage, but his toughness. He has a DR of 15, a Magic Resistance of +5 and a HT of 14 and a Will of 18. This means he's basically untouchable by both Mind and Body magic, and his resistance to ice means my own Wizard's Ice magic would have been a waste of time. Fortunately, lightning and fire both work pretty well against him, the former because it can zip past his armor, the latter because he's vulnerable to fire. However, the guy has 48 HP on top of all that DR and +3 HtK, which means fighting him is going to take a long, long time.

Yeah, I wasn't joking about the sucker shot to the back of the head earlier. Anything over 6 penetrating skull damage (after DR 17 total, so we're talking 4 dice and up here) will cause a 28+ injury major wound for a stun+knockdown check at HT -10 that will fail by more than 5 for a clean knockout 2/3 of the time, but short of that they'd have to pound on him in eight-hour shifts to put him down. I picture him as sort of a walking C&C armored vehicle, barely smart enough to lead and tough enough to send close to the front lines. His offensive capability is almost incidental to his combat role unless there's a fortress that needs rocks thrown at it.

[Johnny Angel]

I'm still working my way through the pages of the thread, but this is a superb resource.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Thread necromancy!

I wanted to announce that after getting the permissions of the various authors, I have put up all the monster entries from this thread on the new GURPS Repository - it's 69 monsters so far! If you have any other monsters in the "Dungeon Fantasy" format somewhere on these forums (or elsewhere on the Web) and want me to put them up there as well, please point me to them... (or put them up yourself - I think the instructions are easy enough to follow.)


Oh, and does anyone here still take any requests? ;)