Author: David Thiel

I’ve been noodling with the monster creation rules, and decided to stat up some Lovecraftian beasties for fun.

I’ve been noodling with the monster creation rules, and decided to stat up some Lovecraftian beasties for fun.

I’ve been noodling with the monster creation rules, and decided to stat up some Lovecraftian beasties for fun. How do these look to y’all?

Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath

Solitary, Huge, Terrifying

Ropy tentacles (d10+3 damage) Close, Reach

20 HP, 1 Armor

Special Qualities: Exquisite loathsomeness

Instinct: To serve its mother

 Bite with its many puckered maws

 Trample a victim beneath its hooves

 Resemble a tree

Deep One

Group, Stealthy, Intelligent, Organized

Claw (d8 damage) Close

10 HP, 1 Armor

Special Qualities: Amphibious, Immortal

Instinct: To breed

 Call others of their kind from the sea

 Execute a prodigious leap

 Conspire and infiltrate

Gug

Solitary, Large, Intelligent

Double claws (b[d10+1] damage) Close, Reach, Messy

16 HP, 1 Armor

Instinct: To make a blasphemous sacrifice

 Deliver a savage bite

 Drag a victim back to its underworld city

Hound of Tindalos

Solitary, Planar

Proboscis (d10 damage) Close

12 HP, 0 Armor

Special Qualities: Teleportation, Time travel

Instinct: To hunt

 Track its intended prey through time and space

 Emerge from a fixed angle

 Excrete blue ichor

Mi-Go

Group, Stealthy, Intelligent, Organized

Nippers (d8 damage) Close

6 HP, 3 Armor

Special Qualities: Wings, Interplanetary travel

Instinct: To experiment

 Swarm

 Wield an electric gun

 Adopt a disquieting humanoid disguise

 Extract and encase a living brain

Shoggoth

Solitary, Huge, Construct, Ancient, Amorphous, Terrifying

Constrict (d12+4 damage) Reach

27 HP, 1 Armor

Special Qualities: Maddening ululation

Instinct: To rebel against natural life

 Gibber a madness-inducing cacophony 

 Engulf and consume

A question about the monster listings: how do you adjudicate a situation in which a monster is not using its default…

A question about the monster listings: how do you adjudicate a situation in which a monster is not using its default…

A question about the monster listings: how do you adjudicate a situation in which a monster is not using its default form of attack? The obvious example is the dragon, which is listed as having a bite. Presumably it also has some form of breath weapon, but the only suggestion of one is the move “bend an element to its will.”

How do you decide how much damage it does, or whom it targets? Unless I’ve missed something, there’s nothing about area effects in the rules. 

Yeah, I know, “whatever the fiction dictates.” I get that the game is meant to be much more improvisational than 4E (the system with which I’m most familiar), but I do wish that there was an example of this sort of situation in the book.

Side note: I noticed that in the Slave-Pit adventure, the author gives a couple of monsters multiple forms of attack, with different damage values. Is that kosher? The official monster listings don’t do this, even in cases in which multiple weapons are implied. And, if you’re using the monster creation rules, how would you ever come up with different damage values for the same critter?

(I suspect that I’m probably being too literal in my approach, but I’m very much a traditional RPGer with little experience in storytelling games. I’m going to be GMing a dry run of DW next week in preparation for a convention game at the end of the month, and am concerned about getting myself in the right mindset.)