Making a Beast - Making Large Monsters More Effective

MAKING A BEAST

One of the things I’ve noticed in running and playing classic tabletop games for some time is how ineffective large dangerous ‘monsters’ are.  Fantastical beasts such as Owlbears and even Dragons are often less dangerous to adventurers under the older dungeons and Dragons rules then a pack of humanoids or bandits. 

HMS Apollyon Diabolic Abomination - A "Starfish" - Beast Candidate

I remember worrying one time about a ‘brown bear’ encounter being the first encounter by a new party in ASE.  There were four adventurers against a bear with 4 HD or so and a couple of dangerous attacks.  I figured it’d be a fairly tough fight.  It took two rounds before 20 odd HP of bear was being skinned and the choice cuts buried to take back to town. The party was smart, they peppered the innocent beast with arrows and bolts while it was standing near its lair and growling – displaying deadly claws (just as the ‘mildly hostile’ roll on the reaction die suggested it might), and then the adventurers charged in to surround the poor injured thing and cut it down before it could attack.  This sort of tactics and results might make sense for big mundane animals like a bear, it’s pretty much how are ancestors hunted the things after all (also with dogs, but that’s a murder hobo staple as well), but it seems awfully anti-climactic for mythical beasts of legend to go down in a couple of rounds, mobbed under by a pack of bec de corbin wielding hoodlums.

HOW SHOULD FIGHTING A BEAST FEEL?

The ravening power of an enraged mythological beast should be a near unstoppable torrent of violence and ferocity, and even with group tactics the creature should be dangerous, faster, stronger and more tenacious then any normal creature and especially the sentients that have invaded its territory.  It don’t want the giant dangerous creatures my players face to feel like stacks of HP to be whittled down, I want them to be frightening and worthy of respect, requiring cunning to overcome commensurate with the wealth in magical hides, teeth bones and meat that they provide.

Since a beast is something that is not especially intelligent, I would like to make out thinking these monsters the real trick.  Luring them into enclosed spaces and traps for example rather than simply slugging it out with them.  Slugging it out should be very dangerous.

PROBLEMS

Solitary mythical beasts don’t feel especially dangerous, at best they represent a danger to one or two characters, but even then they aren’t likely to last more than a couple of rounds. I believe the following factors are the major reasons for this weakness.

      1) Monsters that are a single large target can be easily surrounded and hacked to pieces in melee.  With a shield and plate armored front line of fighters in direct melee and several other characters with spears or polearms behind it rarely takes long to bring down even dangerous lone monsters.

2) Beast type monsters generally have no way of defending themselves at range. This means that a party of 4-10 members will likely get at least one round of missile attacks, and likely remove a fair chunk of the creature’s HP before it can even attack.  This doesn’t even account for spells – though since spell resources are limited I am less concerned if the party wants to burn their scrolls and memorize attack spells when faced with such a creature.

3) Large Monsters frequently lack a significant number of attacks, and while there attacks are more likely to hit, even a creature like the B/X Saber Toothed Tiger, which has a decent chance of killing a white dragon in combat, has only three attacks per round and only one attack that is significantly damaging for an eight hit dice monster (1-8/1-8/2-16).

4) Beast type monsters (bears, big cats, giant animals and the beloved owlbear) are rarely heavily armored.  In a game where a well-equipped first level fighter has an Armor class as low/high as 2/18 the mighty owlbear has armor equivalent to chain mail (AC 5/15).  Only giant lizards (lets admit these are basically smaller dinosaurs) have Armor only a little better, except for the chameleon.  Clearly bestial monsters are meant to soak up injury rather than avoid it.

All this leads to scenarios like the one above where a lone monster can be surrounded and dispatched by cautious or well-equipped adventurers with relative ease, and again I think this is a bit of a shame. I is perhaps sensible for mundane creatures (which people have hunted forever), but for mythical and magical beasts, several hunters with spears and crossbows just shouldn’t have an easy time.

SOLUTIONS

One common solution to this feeling, and one that is neither novel nor interesting, is to add increased HP or special abilities to monsters.  Generally in early D&D special abilities were almost synonymous with special attacks, though some creatures like the displacer beast had primarily defensive abilities.   Offensive abilities don’t help much when the creature will be dead in one or two rounds, and while defensive abilities may prolong the creature’s survival or eliminate a particular tactic, the existing ones I can find aren’t especially good at doing much more than prolonging the combat.

The other classic solution is to simply increase the number of creatures encountered, but this feels somewhat lame, I want there to be huge hulking monsters in my game that individually provide a serious threat to the party, not because they might use one devastating attack, but because they are hard to kill, persistent and when engaged in melee can more than hold their own.

SIMPLE SPECIAL ABILITES

1) Damage Reduction – It’s not possible to kill several tons of magically enhanced muscle, feather, fur and teeth with dagger cuts and the odd arrow.  A giant beast should not only have a fair number of HP (Though with damage reduction fewer are needed), but also the ability to shrug off minor would in the form of a flat reduction to damage it receives.  In an OD&D game with flat 1D6 damage this is an incredibly powerful ability, and three points of damage reduction will render the majority of attacks harmless.  In B/X or other systems (as with everything related to damage) it becomes harder to determine what damage reduction is reasonable – but most earlier iterations of the game use a D8 as a HD, making damage both higher and ‘swingier’.  For B/X I would give the same creature with its -3 a -5 damage reduction.

Rule Purpose: The purpose of this damage reduction is to make using standard attacks against the creature, especially missile attacks (and on some creatures perhaps simple missile immunity or missile only damage reduction might be more appropriate), less effective.  While this is somewhat akin to increasing a creature’s hit point totals it has the slight advantage of making ‘bigger’ attacks more effective.  In a variable damage system where there are plenty of damage bonuses and such it is really a way of degrading the effectiveness of ‘non-heroic’ attacks – that is henchmen without damage bonuses and missile weapons.  Spells, two-handed weapons, and attacks by those with damage bonuses will do more damage to the creature while it shrugs off the poking spears of a hundred churls.  In flatter damage systems, like the modified OD&D I prefer flat damage reduction is very powerful as few attacks do more than 1D6 damage.  In this case I would be more likely to use the Staged Damage Reduction described below.

2) Flurry Attacks – Rather than a specific number of attacks allow the creature an attack at each enemy that comes into melee with it, the terrifying ferocity of the beast making it capable at lashing out at anyone nearby.  This can work in two ways, first simply give the creature an attack for each attacker it faces in melee.  This is simple but might get in the way of special attacks such as the Owlbear’s deadly hug, but this isn’t so much of an issue, in that we simply give the owl bear a base of claw/claw/bite with the hug attack remaining.  Any additional attackers beyond a certain number – let’s say two for the owlbear receive flurry attacks – that is the owlbear gets to make an additional attack against them representing it’s sweeping claw slashes and dangerous shifting of muscled bulk.

The damage for a flurry attack need not be as dangerous as the creatures main attacks, they exist to make it less safe for low HP characters and henchmen to surround and prick the creature to death.  I think for the Owlbear in B/X we would note Flurry as follows:

Attacks: 3+Flurry(2) Claw*/Claw*/Bite + Flurry(2) Damage: 1D8/1D8/1D8 Flurry 1D6
*If both claw attacks hit the same human-sized target in one round the owlbear will hug for and additional 2D4 damage that round.  Flurry cannot be used on the same round as a successful hug attack.

Here we’ve made tactics of surrounding an owlbear and attacking from multiple angles far more dangerous without removing the iconic attacks of the creature.  Another way of dealing with flurry attacks would be to make them less damaging, but include other effects, most typically this would be a “buffet” attack that causes low damage (say 1D6/3 in ODD&D and 1D4 in B/X), but requires a Save vs. Paralysis or Dex check to avoid being knocked down and unable to attack the next round. This sort of attack mimics the ability of huge creatures to overbear and knock about smaller foes.

Rule Purpose: This rule is designed to emphasize the danger of melee combat with a giant beast, and to do so in a way that makes swarm tactics less effective. 

COMPLEX SOLUTIONS

1) Staged Damage Reduction – Rather than a simple damage reduction against every attack which generally discourages combat with normal attacks that don’t have additional damage components, staging damage reduction based on the number of attackers encourages a different set of tactics. The idea is that the beast can shrug off one or two attacks per round far easier than a whole bunch, and for each attacker distracting it other attackers will be able to hit the beast somewhere vital. 

Like standard damage reduction pooled damage reduction is a means of encouraging certain tactics and discouraging others, Staged damage reduction encourages multiple melee attackers, and allows damage in flat damage systems. It would be my preferred way of dealing with beast in an OD&D system, but it also would work well in a game (like AD&D) where fighters rapidly develop near impossible to hit armor classes, and limits these type from “tanking” monsters while the rest of the party attacks from afar. 

2) Damage Pool – Similar to damage reduction, perhaps a slightly simpler mechanic then staged damage reduction with a similar intent.  Each round an amount of damage (10 HP perhaps) is simply absorbed without effect on the creature.  This mechanic protects the creature from some damage, but in general doesn’t have a great mechanical effect, and doesn’t discourage mob tactics or solve any of the problems that face individual monstrous opponents.

3) Damage Cap – A mechanic with the opposite intent of damage reduction, the idea is to limit the damage taken by the creature from each attack to some number (10 HP for example) that prevents large attacks from killing the creature quickly meaning that it must be whittled down by numerous injuries as opposed to catastrophic damage.  This mechanic doesn’t seem like it would be appropriate for many creatures, perhaps only the truly enormous or some kind of swarm like entity like a rat king made of endless swarming vermin.

4) Damage Threshold – Much like a damage pool, and a common mechanic in games with multiple combat scales, such as ones involving giant robots.  The idea is that damage is granular and comes in two or more scales.  Any attack doing less than ten points of damage is harmless to creatures that operate on the larger scale, and whose attacks are generally in this same greater scale (called ‘mega damage’ or ‘structural damage’ games like Palladium’s RIFTS or the anime robot brawler Mekton).  The problem with this system for beasts is that it mechanically complex, and tends to be somewhat silly unless regular attacks only rarely reach the damage threshold (for example in B/X an 18 STR fighter with a two-handed sword can easily do over ten points of damage, especially with a magic weapon, making a 10 point threshold somewhat ridiculous).   Mechanically the damage threshold system is complex, and seems excessive (as well as somewhat unsuited) for mere monstrous creatures.  

5) Attack Pool – instead of simply giving a creature more attacks the more enemies it faces one could model a truly devastating monster by giving it an attack pool.  That is the mighty kraken would attack with 12D6 per round.  This could be concentrated into a single attack against one foe or split as the GM sees fit amongst multiple attacks.  Likely the Kraken, being a dumb beast, would divide its attacks equally among enemies in range until it was making up to 12 1D6 attacks.  This has a couple advantages over simply giving the Kraken twelve attacks, but is similar.  It certainly can save time though, and it provides a greater risk and reward for a heroic individual engaging the Kraken alone – in that if the monster misses it completely fails to harm the hero and if it hits the damage is catastrophic.

6) Berserking – Creatures that simply refuse to die.  Also a good aspect of any berserker subclass or NPC, something that allows several rounds of action after the creature reaches zero HP (likely 1D6 rounds) where additional damage does nothing to stop the bloody ravening and technically dead creature from continuing to attack.  This is more of a standard trick monster ability and not something that should be limited to large “beasts”.  The dangerous nature of this ability (especially on a large creature with multiple high damage attacks) is lessened by the fact that it’s a clear intuitive mechanic and easy to counter simply by running away until the creature finally collapses.