Request: Better Monster Signal:Noise or Information Design

[beaushinkle]

Confession: I find DFRPG monsters difficult to run, especially the more complicated ones.

I'll analyze some examples from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters, and also from Nordlond Bestiary and point out what would make this easier for me to run.

Draug (DFM23)

It starts with 164 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information

• they're angry (especially about their valuables) undead
• usually groups of 1 though they sometimes come in groups of up to 6, or more
• intelligent

Then, we get a compact stat block and list of attacks (this is great)

Then, we get the following trait list:

Bad Smell; Bad Temper (12); Bloodlust (12); Combat Reflexes; Dark Vision; Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Frightens Animals; Hidebound; High Pain Threshold; Immunity to Disease; Immunity to Poison; Indomitable; Intolerance (The living); No Blood; Single- Minded; Temperature Tolerance 5 (Cold); Temperature Tolerance 5 (Heat); Unhealing (Total); Vulnerability (Fire x2).

The following skill list:

Axe/Mace-16; Brawling-16; Broadsword-16; Shield-16; Wrestling-14.

and then unstructured notes:

Effective ST for grappling is 23 due to Wrestling skill. Carries a medium shield (DB 2), a broadsword, and an axe. Wears mail (DR 4/2, combined with innate DR 2 above) and a segmented plate helm (DR 4, giving the skull total DR 8). Some are buried with much better gear, enchanted or of superior quality. A buried-but-lively barbarian lord with a Sword of Wizard Whacking will be using it, of course! Unwilling to negotiate.

Analysis

The description is wordy. We get information about number appearing, but don't get information about what sort of treasure they might have.

The entries (and this feels like the general theme), feel like an odd midpoint between "the information useful for running the monster" and "build out the monster as though it was a PC".

DFRPG doesn't give us a full mechanical description of the Draug, but it also includes many traits that we don't need in order to actually run it.

• Bad Smell: Marginal value here; them smelling bad can be inferred from them being half-rotted corpses. Mechanically, this says the players get a +2 to detect or track the draug by scent, so if that wasn't something the GM could make a ruling on, now it's here (but buried in a trait description).
• Bad Temper: we already know from the flavor text that they're angry; is the expectation that we're going to actually be rolling Bad Temper checks for the draug (who does not negotiate, according to the notes)?
• Bloodlust: This one is useful; it informs how the draug actually behaves in combat.
• Combat Reflexes: necessary; large mechanical impact
• Dark Vision: necessary; large mechanical impact
• Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour): useful
• Doesn't Breathe: marginally useful; it can be inferred that a draug doesn't breathe if this comes up (or the GM can make a ruling on it).
• Doesn't eat or drink: unnecessary; if there is ever (for whatever reason) a question where knowing if draug have to eat is relevant, the GM can either infer it or make it up.
• Frightens Animals: unnecessary; animals don't need to be making reaction rolls against draugr, and the GM can decide the behavior of mounts/watchdogs without explicit mechanical guidance.
• Hidebound: mildly useful; I have a hard time imagining when I would need to make non-combat rolls for the draugr (rather than deciding what they do), but if you do roll skill checks for draugr out of combat (they have no non-combat skills), and you want to spend the mental effort deciding if the task was expected or unexpected, then knowing they get a -2 penalty is useful.
• High Pain Threshold: necessary
• Immunity (Disease, Poison): decently useful; a GM could rule that draugr are immune to disease and poison as a consequence of them being half-rotted undead, but I don't mind the explicit callout here since it's important in combat
• Indomitable: important; stuff like this gives Empathy value
• Intolerance (the living): unnecessary; we don't need to know how other NPCs react to the draugr, we can just choose. The PCs don't roll reaction rolls to see how they feel, they decide.
• No Blood: covered by immunity for most mechanics, gm rulings otherwise (in cases where you need to figure out if a vampire can drink the blood of a draugr)
• Single-Minded: fringe mechanical usefulness
• Temperature Tolerance: This one is confusing to me. Temperature tolerance reduces FP penalties for bad weather, but draugr don't have FP!
• Unhealing (total): important
• Vulnerability (Fire x2): important

Suggestion

Trim down the trait list to: Bloodlust (12); Combat Reflexes; Dark Vision; Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour); High Pain Threshold; Immunity (Disease, Poison); Indomitable; Unhealing (Total); Vulnerability (Fire x2).

Here is the OSE Mummy, as a sort of parallel reference. Note how little information needs to conveyed in order to actually run it, and how the description is in bullet points and terse sentences, making it easy to reference at the table. The rest of the information about the mummy is implied or left to GM fiat.

Shark (NB161)

It starts with 163 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information:

• they live in the ocean/near shore
• capable of leaping out of the water
• they have a great sense of smell and also blindsight (pressure waves / electromagnetic sensors)
• hit and run and stealth tactics
• won't fight to the death unless it has slipped into a blood frenzy

Then, we get a compact (ish; the control thresholds section is huge) section for stats, a list of attacks, and special abilities. Good!

Then we get this list of traits: Acute Taste and Smell 3; Berserk (Feeding Frenzy) (6); Dependency (Water, 1d FP per minute out of water); Discriminatory Smell; Enhanced Move; Gills; No Legs (Aquatic); No Manipulators; Pressure Support; Slippery 3; Temperature Tolerance 5 (Cold); Vibration Sense (Water)

And the following skills: Brawling-13; Stealth-12; Swimming-14; Tracking-14

Analysis

The description is great info, but wordy. Missing: how many sharks are often together? What sort of treasures might a shark contain (no treasure)?

Then traits:

• Acute Taste and Smell 3: At first I thought this was reasonable, and then I realized that there next to no mechanical support for smelling things. DFE9 includes rules for making smell checks but includes no information about range (that's only for vision checks). It does say "The GM may assess bonuses or penalties for strong or weak tastes or odors". So if the GM wants to use the shark's 13 smell (vs it's normal 10), the GM also needs to invent some sort of range penalty system. Far easier to just say that the shark smells you when it's fictionally exciting.
• Berserk (Feeding Frenzy) (6): The rules text for berserk doesn't take a type, but I think the intention here is to say "the Shark goes into berserk not when it takes injury over HP/4 in one second, but instead when it has a feeding frenzy". Feeding Frenzy is defined above, and says "After tasting or smelling blood, if a white shark fails its self-control roll for Berserk by 3 or more, it attacks anything it can see or sense, including other sharks". The mechanical result is unclear: does it berserk when it smells blood but only fails by 1 (as berserk would imply), or is this actually just a special ability? IE: "The shark has a 8-in-3d chance upon tasting or smelling blood to enter a Feeding Frenzy, and attacks anything it can see or sense, including other sharks."
• Dependency (Water, 1d FP per minute out of water): mildly useful; this gives us a mechanic for dealing with sharks suffocating out of water, but I don't know that we needed one. In lieu, we can use the holding your breath and suffocation rules.
• Discriminatory Smell: This jacks our smell up to 17, and has mechanics about memorizing scents based on IQ rolls. Unfortunately, the shark can't succeed at memorizing smells given it has an IQ of 2. Thus, the smell bump could have been Acute Smell 7, which is already of dubious value.
• Enhanced Move: I'm torn about enhanced move. It's extremely important information, but it's already well-encoded in the stat block, since "Move" is written as "5/10".
• Gills: unnecessary
• No Legs (aquatic): unnecessary
• No Manipulators: unnecessary
• Pressure Support: unnecessary
• Slippery 3: necessary (it informs grappling and squeezing through things), but weird. Shark skin is the opposite of slippery; it feels like sandpaper.
• Temperature Tolerance (Cold) 5: I'm still unclear what to do with these. Are we supposed to make temperature checks for all enemies as combat starts to see how much fatigue they're missing? Do sharks have actual ways to spend fatigue in combat? DFRPG does not have any extra-effort-in-combat rules to speak of, and sharks don't cast magic.
• Vibration Sense (Water): important

Suggestion

Trim down the trait list to: Enhanced Move [maybe]; Vibration Sense (Water). Include temperature tolerance if you really expect sharks to be making temperature checks for fatigue loss. Infer or making rulings about everything else. Make the feeding frenzy special ability self-contained.

For comparison, here's the OSE Shark!