I’ve got an example monster to post for this week’s Campaign Column. I decided to start off with something pretty simple and straight forward.
Here is the “Armored Skaab” (If you believe the internet, I did some searching and found a WOTC forum post that said its pronounced SKAHB — I will probably forget time to time and say SCAB). While the Armored Skaab doesn’t have many interesting things going for it mechanically, thinking about its statistics being derived from the simple ‘power/toughness’ MTG format starts a fun train of thought.
Average Humans in this block (like most others) hover around that base 1/1 power and toughness. Most wizards and common soldiers/townsfolk fall in to this category. Easy enough! I imagine it represents a rudimentary ability to defend yourself and a basic knowledge of which end to point the spear at people. Things appear to jump a bit in ‘implied’ skill by adding that next +1/+1 step.
With just a little nudge, that 1/1 soldier becomes a trained warrior…a knight or expert fighter. Interestingly, 2/2 seems to be the threshold of normal human ability. There exists a few 2/3 creatures with ‘human’ in their type…most of those are either shaman or werewolves in human form. Of the remaining 2/3 humans, the +0/+1 is usually represented by some sort of ‘environmental’ bonus…ex Woodland Sleuth (and the forest) or Midnight Guard (and the city walls).
Once you reach the 3/3 threshold, almost universally you enter the realm of the supernatural — Devils and geists fall into this slot. So what can that tell us about something simple like the Armored Skaab?
First thing I want to pay attention to is the creature type…”Zombie Warrior” Like other RPG games, being a “Zombie” will probably carry along with it some extra benefits/penalties (Slower speed perhaps? Maybe a higher natural armor rating to represent a zombie toughness? An immunity to Morale tests?) I think I will roll some of these in to an “undead” keyword in the players packet!
Next the 1/4 power toughness…so the Armored Skaab has an average human fighting ability and is tough as NAILS. I built that in to the creature having an innate bonus to the creatures defense AND armor rating when compared to a base human. As i write this, I think there be some things I already think I might want to tweak lol (Quote on the creature is from the Walking Corpse card, but I think it still fits just fine…haha, I used it because it took up the extra spaced I wanted in this particular layout).
So what should be next? I don’t want to give too much away as to take away from the surprise once I start things up. Maybe a little of the NPCs and locations I’ve started to jot down for Selhoff?
This fan work is in no way intended to claim ownership on any of WOTC, Green Ronin or Bioware’s intellectual property. It is for personal use and I have no intention of creating an ‘illusion of sponsorship’ or E-commerce for this particular creation.
ok… so how do you explain village bell ringer?
It doesn’t look like there is a universal translation from power/toughness to atk roll, atk damage, AC, and damage reduction. I agree that humans generally don’t have high power, and that a card’s surrounds may impact its toughness.
You mentioned woodland sleuth, it’s a 2/3 because it takes advantage of the forest to hide and defend itself. Similarly, there may be more defensive creatures like village bell ringer that are experts at defense and gain advantage of walls.
There aren’t many humans with large p/t, and almost all that do are groups of humans (thraben militia, riders of Gavony). I’m not sure how you are suppose to assign a CR to these groups, maybe they are just normal humans who receive a bonus when in certain numbers?
Lets assume that power represents atk rolls and/or attack damage, and that toughness is evasion and/or AC and/or damage reduction and/or health. If 2 creatures both are 3/3′s, they don’t have to have the same stats, since (for example);
Creature A
atk roll:high
atk dmg:low
AC:High
Damage reduction:low
Creature B
atk roll:low
atk dmg:high
AC:low
Damage reduction:high
Both these creatures can be considered 3/3, but are not the same. I guess translating p/t to stats can have a wide range of stats.
I foresee that you’ll need to fudge some numbers and be liberal with the p/t translation. Like, it doesn’t make sense why a doomed traveler would have the same offensive capabilities than a fortress crab (something at least 2 sizes categories larger than it).
I find it hard to evaluate your armored skaab stats without comparing it to other things. +5 atk and 2d6+3 might be too high for something with 1 power, or maybe not depending on the average creature’s damage reduction. When i look at its picture, it looks easy to hit, moderate to high damage reduction, and high health. Maybe post the stats of an average 2/2 human soldier, then that can be used as a bench mark to compare to other creatures.
I always pronounce it skaab or scab, since cobbled together undead aren’t respecting the strike mandate and stealing the jobs of normal zombies, making it impossible to put brains on plates for the normal zombies family lol.
I agree that a fair amount of creative license is going to have to go into these… which is fine since that seems to be the main goal anyway.
In addition to actual physical prowess and the “environment” issues already discussed, temperament also seems wrapped into P/T stats. This explains creatures like the fortress crab: large and durable, but simply unlikely to respond to threats/prodding with its full potential force. Taken another way: if you accost a fortress crab or doomed traveler you are likely to take approximately the same (small) amount of damage.
In 3.5e, if you were to upgrade a creature from medium(1/1 humans) to huge(fortress crab), it would get the following:
+16 str, -4 dex, +8 con, +5 natural armor, -2 atk roll
A fortress crab may not be an agressive creature, but there is no way it would have the same offensive abilities as a normal human.
Ah, but how likely is that crab to actually go on the offensive?
That is what I mean by “Power” in the P/T in the WOTC sense incorporating a sense of aggressiveness. Remember, the model is that a (1/6) fortress crab could swat and kill a “normal” (1/1) human when confronted, but a hero level human (2/2 or more) would only be badly “wounded”. That doesn’t seem ridiculous, since the crab is really just going to be concerned about deterring an annoyance rather.
This is kind of my inclination too…when the Crab is all alone without the PCs around it doesn’t really matter if hes doing 2d6 damage or 5d6 for the story. He has no issue eating “1/1 or 0/1″ regular humans no problem.
Narrative-wise, the drunkards that wander too close to the shoreline make an easy meal.
If the party represents a group of 2/2′s (in the weird cross-over world) then it makes sense to me that it would take about the normal group of 3 to take a crab down. They’d get a little beat up…some bruises perhaps, but sounds reasonable to me.
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I rolled a mock battle between the cathar and skaab, the skaab obviously won. What the free guide didn’t talk about was armor. does armor increase your AC or your damage reduction? or both? How is health determined?
Given that i don’t know those answers, I’m merely guessing at what should be changed. It feels that the cathar’s life total is too close to the skaab’s, maybe increase the skaab’s health and/or lower the cathar’s health.
The skaab hit the cathar frequently usually dealing a good chunk of damage. Part of me thinks that it maybe shouldn’t have the weapons focus axes. The flavor text on cards mentions how sometimes zombies retain their skills in death (abattoir goul, diregraf captain), but if skaabs are cobbled together, would/should they retain skills from before?
Awesome idea about taking away the focus! Makes sense…Good catch about the armor/defense
Defense = Number needed ‘to-hit’
Armor = Damage reduced before its taken from the Health. Soak damage.
Traditionally games with damage soak like Warhammer can kind of spiral out of control (They called it Naked Dwarf Syndrome…their toughness could get so high, which affected their damage soak…and they were in fact better with no armor on than in full plate)
I think they’ve tried to reign that in with this game, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it!
Don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but its about zombies.
I drafted today and came across an interesting flavor text,
Ghoulflesh;
Enchanted creature gets -1/-1 and is a black Zombie in addition to its other colors and type
“The body dies in stages. First the skin, then the muscle. The brain is last, much to the victim’s dismay.”
This card brings up an interesting question, what happens to living things when they are bitten? Does this card imply that you can turn if you don’t seek a healer, or is this just a specific curse? The guide only says that zombies are animated by ghoulcallers, but not the consequences of being bitten or scratched. Since zombies in mtg are from magic, I don’t think they’d pass a virus, other than the one you’d get from wild rabies-animals. My guess is that the card just refers to a spell or curse.
Furthermore, the guide talks about how a skaab is created;
1 Corpus Creare, also known as “corpse cobbling,” is the collecting of various anatomical parts from corpses from which the skaab will be constructed. This is usually performed by paid grave robbers or homunculi under the skaberen’s charge. In some cases, even the limbs of beasts are used for the construct; if a human arm is not available, a horse’s leg can suffice.
2 Patin Ligitus, or rune-bonds, are the “binding plates” used to join various anatomical features together. These are plates of copper and/or brass, with silver-inlaid runes scribed on them. They provide an arcane bridge of sorts between disparate parts gathered by corpse-cobbling.
3 Viscus Vitae, or vital fluid, is the key to the skaberen’s art. Viscus vitae is created by mixing a large quantity of lamp oil with the slightest pinch of the dried blood of an angel. Once a perfect mixture of viscus vitae is created, any blood remaining in the corpse is replaced with vital oil, via transfusion. As a result, skaab are often highly flammable.
4 Vox Quietus, translated as “the silent word,” is the final step in creating a skaab. The skaberen whispers a fairly lengthy incantation over the corpse which awakens the creature, but in a much calmer manner that that which is used by ghoulcallers. Once awakened, the skaab is in a calm, “tabula rasa” state, which allows the alchemist to begin the long task of re-educating the creature. In the eyes of a skaberen, the technique used by ghoulcallers is crude, heretical, and provides unacceptable results.
What I found interesting was that dried blood of angels are needed to make these superior zombies, with most of the angels trapped in the hellvault, that material must be rare. This implies that skaabs are suppose to be special and rare, so it’s okay to give them high stats. It also states that skaabs can be taught, so you can give them whatever focuses that seem appropriate to that skaabs purpose. Lastly, it says that skaabs are flammable because of their fluids. Maybe this should be built in as a weakness in skaabs, like after they have taken a certain percentage of there health in damage, they take bonus fire damage (because they’d start leaking?).
The guide also mentions how zombies remember physical skills from their lives. This makes sense because if you do something enough, you gain muscle memory and it becomes a reflex.
Damn! There’s SO much great stuff in there! I’m sure terrible things happen down in the erdwal for even an ounce of the precious blood…seems like the perfect place to even attempt illicit trade of that nature.
I’m inclined to think of ‘Ghoulflesh’ the same way as you (for the same reasons) that the spell represents a curse. Its like the colloquial name for the enchantment or something. Its just easier to explain whats happening to the poor guy when he starts looking like the mysterious man from your local abattoir.