Dungeons & Delvers: Bare-Bones Monsters

I know I've posted about monsters before, but that was over half a year ago and some things have changed. Let's start with a run-of-the-mill skeleton:

Attack 5
Defense 7; 5 versus Religion
Wounds 1
Speed 2/6
XP 1

Undead: Skeletons are immune to poisons, disease, and don't need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep. They cannot be charmed or reasoned with.

They aren't armed or armored, and are pretty easy even for a starting wizard to smash. They're intended to be used in large groups (say, two per adventurer), or to supplement other monsters such as...

Skeleton warriors are a better armed and slightly more durable:

Attack 7
Defense 7; 5 versus Religion
Wounds 2
Speed 2/6
XP 2

Undead: Skeleton warriors are immune to poisons, disease, and don't need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep. They cannot be charmed or reasoned with.

They can take a few whacks, but are easy fare for your typical fighter, who is rolling around 9 on his Defense rolls, and 8 or so on Attack rolls (and that's before you factor in defense and offense talents).

Unlike skeletons they work pretty well, even in small numbers, especially if they can gang up on someone due to mob attacks.

Mob attacks are where the GM takes the number of enemies and has them make a single, concerted attack against an adventurer. Instead of rolling multiple attacks, you make just one, but you increase the Attack value as follows: start with the highest Attack value of all the monsters attacking, and then add +1 for each additional monster.

For example, if you have 3 skeleton warriors attacking an adventurer, the target makes a Defense roll against an Attack of 9 (base of 7, +1 for each additional attacker). If you instead were using a skeleton warrior and four skeletons, the Attack would be 10 (base of 7, since it's the highest, +1 for each of the skeletons).

Normally, a hit is still just 1 Wound, though some monsters have the ability to deal more than 1 Wound if the Defense roll fails to meet the Attack value by a certain amount (usually 3 or more points).

Mob attacks are basically there to help overcome characters with a high Defense Pool, like a defender-tree fighter being supplemented by an abjurer wizard (though, after our Heart of Hemskil campaign, I've since reduced the efficacy of some of those talents). The GM can risk rolling individually to potentially get more Wounds, but if you want a sure thing there ya go.

Of course, some monsters get a bit more out of being assisted, like the death knight:

Attack 9; Charge; Multiattack 2; Onslaught 3; Weaponmaster +1d6
Defense 11; 9 versus Religion
Wounds 4
Speed 2/5
XP 8

Charge: The death knight can move its full Speed and still attack.
Devour Soul: When the death knight reduces an adventurer to 0 Wounds, they are dead, and the death knight either regains 1 Wound or animates the corpse as a skeleton warrior.
Multiattack 2: The death knight attacks twice on its turn.
Onslaught 3: If the death knight is assisted, it makes three attacks instead of two.
Undead: Death knights are immune to poisons, disease, and don't need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep.
Weaponmaster +1d6: When the death knight attacks, its Attack is increased by 1d6.

Pretty badass, and definitely not something for a starting party to tackle: he's very likely to hew through a 1st-level fighter in only three rounds, even if you have a cleric with the Healing Domain talent, and even sooner if he's got someone helping out thanks to his Onslaught trait.

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