#and things are adjusted

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

Tales from the Aether: Monster Design

Part 1 - pre play testing

So I've got a bit of energy and inspiration from a previous post so I'll give a quick run down of how monsters work in this system.

Monsters in this system have a total of 10 Levels and are broken into 5 Ranks within each Level: Minion, Grunt, Boss, Spawn, and Swarm. Level 1 creatures are balanced around a party of level 1-3 adventurers. Level 2 creatures are balanced around level 3-6 adventurers, so on and so forth. However, I will go in depth on different kinds of encounter design based on the party's composition and give GM's the tools to tweak a monster's Level or Rank as needed.

All Monsters of each Rank, regardless of Level, share similar surface level characteristics, allowing them to be scaled to player levels easily. A Level 10 Minion servers the same purpose in an encounter as a Level 1 Minion. How to create your own monsters is clearly laid out with templates and damage ranges, stat ranges, and health ranges compared to various party levels.

Additionally, a significant focus is put on every monster's gimmick and motivations. Every monster has a unique ability or special circumstances where they thrive such as favoring dark environments to gain additional Defense and Ambush capabilities. Every creature also has a number of points distributed between the following motivations: protection, hunger, greed, survival, and blood lust. This will help guide the GM in determining how the monsters act in and out of combat and is easily adjustable for every monster.

Lastly, every monster has damage vulnerabilities and weak spots the players can exploit during combat. This encourages the players to seek out information about their potential enemies as well as giving monsters more diversity in how they are defeated.

Below the cut I'll go into a bit more detail on what all this means ;P

This is a peak at some design elements of my TTRGP Tales from the Aether. This is not dnd. If you think some of these ideas are interesting, check out my Masterpost linked here and follow for more updates :D

Creature Ranks

Minions are death fodder and go down in one hit. Their purpose is to distract the players, chip their health down, and waste their resources. Minions are incredibly simple with one attack a turn and have two actions at most. In small numbers Minions are a nuance but they can become a problem in groups or when paired with a Grunt or Boss.

Grunts can go toe to toe with individual party members and have a healthy choice of actions and abilities but aren’t too complicated. They have a max of 5 abilities and can occasionally use magic. They often come in equal numbers to the party and are often minor antagonists, potential allies, or mini bosses in fights leading up to the main Boss.

Bosses can tank whole parties by themselves as solo encounters or work with lower Ranked monsters in a Commander capacity. Alternatively, a Boss itself might not be very strong but plays a support roll that increases the difficulty of every Grunt or Minion they command. In some cases, defeating the Boss may cause all other enemies to scatter, potentially ending the encounter. Bosses have a plethora of abilities to choose from with significant health and occasionally magic. These are usually the final confrontation in dungeon crawls, the main antagonists for story arcs, or particularly rare and deadly random encounters.

Spawns are nests, portals, or other things that bring new waves of enemies into the battlefield. They must be destroyed to stop the onslaught of enemies but will often be highly protected and can even be alive to defend itself. Any encounter with a Spawn usually has the main objective of the encounter being to destroy it. Like Bosses, destroying a Spawn may cause all other enemies to abandon the fight - or fight even harder if the Spawn was a type of nest.

Swarms are a collection of tiny or smaller creatures that are essentially harmless on their own, but can be deadly in groups. A Swarm acts as a single creature and disperses if enough of the swarm is killed. Because it is a mass of small creatures working together, striking the swarm with weapons or targeted abilities can be incredibly difficult. Fighting multiple swarms may lead to defeated swarms joining together instead of dispersing to create new swarms or even combining to create Mega Swarms aka Boss level swarms. Regular swarms are generally on par with Grunts or Minions.

Motivations:

Protection: The creature is holding its ground and trying to scare you off. It makes a big display of aggression to try and convince you to leave. It will die to protect whatever it is defending but will let you leave if you don’t get too close or are not a threat. 

Hunger: The creature needs to kill you to eat and depending on how desperate it is, it may be willing to die in the attempt. The creature will try to remain hidden to ambush its prey in hopes of ending the fight as quickly as possible. No show or warning here, this creature means business and isn’t about to let a meal escape.

Greed: The creature wants something from you be it wealth, magic items, or your life to satisfy a contract. This creature could potentially be bought off but if you aren’t willing to give them what they want or are incapable, they have no problem with killing you. If it becomes more trouble than it is worth, the creature will try to escape the moment they realize they are going to lose.

Survival: The creature is driven by pure desperation to survive. If you are able to convince it you are no threat to its survival, it may stop attacking and it will try to escape if it thinks it will die. 

Blood Lust: The creature wants to kill you and there is nothing you can do about it. This could be out of enjoyment of the hunt or a mindless need to destroy. There is no parlaying with these creatures. They may flee if they realize they can’t win but they will return and finish what they started, perhaps with friends.

Weak Spots

All creatures have Weak Points, areas of their body that could cripple the creature or fatally wound it. These spots are usually very well protected and may not be obvious to the naked eye. All Weak Points are unique and require a specific damage type to exploit. Let's explore the three Weak Points all Humanoids share.

Throat. Slashing damage. The Strike’s damage is doubled. The target takes 4d4 points of Bleed damage (1 heart) for 5 rounds and cannot speak.

Head. Bludgeoning damage. The Strike’s damage is doubled. The target is Stunned for 1 Minute. At the start of its turn, the creature can attempt a Willpower Reflex check against the DC 15 to remove the Stunned Condition. On a success, it remains Disoriented for the rest of the minute.

Chest. Piercing damage. The Strike’s damage is doubled. The target takes 2d4 points of Bleed damage (0.5 heart) for 1 minute.

In order to successfully attack a creature’s Weak Spots, you must make a Called Shot. A Called Shot is when you declare a specific part of the target you want to hit before you roll to Strike. All Called Shots take a -5 Penalty to the Attack Roll but certain creature’s Weak Spots may be protected and can increase this Penalty, as seen in the Weak Spot’s description.

You may take a Called Shot to target a specific part of a creature that is not a Weak Spot in an attempt to disable it in some way. This could mean attempting to damage a creature’s wings to reduce its fly speed or chop a creature’s arm off so it can’t wield a weapon, etc. Declare your intention before making your roll and the GM will determine the Damage Threshold you must reach in order for the effect to take place. 

The Damage Threshold is how much punishment a creature must take to a specific part of its body in order for that part of its body to become disabled. Only half of the damage dealt during a Called Shot in this manner counts towards the Target’s total Health. 

Monster Health

Monsters count health differently than Player Characters. Instead of a number, monsters have Hearts. One heart equals 10 points of damage. All damage a monster takes is rounded to multiples of 5 and when a creature takes damage, there is no math that needs to be done. The GM simply fills in a heart on the monster's character sheet. I explain explicitly how to round damage when I talk about this in the monster section.

During the first play test we did, this was such an incredible weight off my shoulders it was incredible lololol No maths required i just fill in bubble XD (ok minor maths to round the number but rounding to multiples of 5 is way easier than subtraction in my opinion)

If you read this far thank you <3 I'm always open to feedback and things will definitely be tweaked as we continue play testing. If you are interested in exploring the system then stick around, send me a message or comment as I'm probably gonna start asking for volunteers to help beta test the Character Creator and Combat soon ;)

[zipsunz]

never to meet, forever apart

[silosbears]

i think alphonse would still experience depersonalization and dysmorphia even after getting his body back

[adobe-outdesign]

Entire Pokemon fanbase upon watching the Z-A trailer: wow I can't believe they added anti-homeless bars to the benches in Pokemon

GameFreak dev who thought those were arm rests:

[marciaillust]

your design of me

[l-747]

Quick mob on the kri and tah

[insulindiancorvid]

off day

[plagueislost]

i love being late to trends. my new years resolution is to be late to every trend ever. and you know im serious because im even late to new years.

(theres an inverse version of this by @chamiryokuroi , you should go check it out! i started making this before i saw theirs, but i think its cool that now theres both versions)

[live-laugh-luigi]

edit: join the subreddit for updates, i think thats where most of the planning is happening. it seems that the date may be changed to allow more time to organize and plan

second edit: you can also follow on bluesky

another edit: i reblogged this with a link to more info but i think most ppl haven't seen it so im gonna leave it here

[mohntilyet]

caterina's datamined character description calling her korean-italian and early lucanis designs having him look east asian . i'll just do everything myself i guess

assorted thoughts: caterina is fully 'korean' or whatever the thedas equivalent would be in this design, and clawed her way to the top of the crow food chain after years of work. their armor is something caterina forcibly incorporated to distinguish house dellamorte from the other crows, and a symbol of their status because they get it custom made or imported. of course race-equivalents do not really exist in thedas or this world but i also will never forget how gaider just implied (east) asian people don't exist in thedas because it just so happens that there are no asians on the continent of thedas (guy who forgot about boats) . explode and die. there's not the same kind of discrimination as exists irl ofc (and the dellamortes are actually treated fine, much better than a mage or elf) but a level of xenophobia against foreigners from a different continent. illario looks the least like her, and passes for being fully antivan, which changes how he is recieved by the other crows.

and sorry if the korean is bad please actually let me know if it's horribly translated i relied on google translate . if you are one of ten asian dragon age fans feel free to talk to me at any given moment.

[dailyteamrancher]

[day 86] some say they’re still being put into situations to this day…

[with-both-my-hearts]

Whoever was in charge of changing cameras live during the stream, I love you. (Aka: Ren stalks his prey (False) through multiple camera angles and then gets run over with a chair)

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

FEED, MY CHILDREN! FOR I HAVE BLESSED UPON THEE COLOURED DISKS OF MUCH SUSTENANCE. LEAFFALL SHALL ALSO BE PROVIDED FOR THINE LARDERS, TO SHORE UP FOR THE COMING MONTHS

(it's leaf litter refresh day and I've provided a few slices of carrot for the isopods)

[stealingyourbones]

Danny gets experimented on by either his parents or the GIW and dies over and over and over again but because of his unusual ghostly creation he keeps coming back and with each return he changes. Originally the changes with each death were subtle. His skin would be a shade greyer, his flesh would be tougher, his powers a bit stronger.

Then the changes became far more apparent, the deaths reaching past the multiple thousands. He’s grown and he’s grown a lot. His skin is grey and spikes protrude over his being. His face no longer resembles what he once was, now a terrifying being with razor sharp teeth and spines imitating a beard jutting out of his jaw (wait how long has he been doing this? Has it been THAT long? Surely not.) Danny just wishes he could be free, not to be put under simulated trials over and over and dying again and again.

The Justice League heard word of unusual power disruption and reports of unethical experimentation at an absolutely massive underground research facility. Superman chose to lead the charge, rounding up scientists and directing other league members to find the server room and to find, collect, and then destroy all research this group might have found.

Going deeper and deeper into the research facility, there are dozens upon dozens of inhuman entities in massive glowing green vats, all of which seemingly in a comatose state.

At the farthest and most secure part of the facility, having broken through dozens of secure locks, doors, and security drones, Superman comes across the largest containment of all; one holding a being hooked up to dozens of monitors and in a similar comatose state as the others, the beast within is someone Superman knows very very well. Doomsday.

[journey-to-the-attic]

ik gets trapped and beel is too in the zone to help free her

levi and ik have like four hours to burn because he insisted on showing up to a pop-up event way too early

ik loses interest in the middle of bothering satan and just sorta flops there

mammon has big ideas (they are probably not good)

[defleptic]

"Are you sure you don't wanna dance with anyone else..?"

Mike asks Will to dance. Will is confused why he wouldn't just dance with a girl, and everyone is staring.

Manifesting a prom scene in s5 🙏