Can monsters suffer fatigue or stress?

If they can, this makes bookkeeping for the monsters potentially very tiresome.

If they can't, several critical effects become very pointless against monsters and thus no worse than a standard wound.

I can see the argument for both sides to be valid but unsure what the intent is. I can't find anything that suggests they shouldn't suffer stress and fatigue as normal but I'm a bit scared of how much bookkeeping that entails

Destrin said:

Page 46, Tome of Adventure, Wound Thresholds

"Enemies do not suffer stress or fatigue the way player characters do. An effect that would force an enemy to suffer stress or fatigue inflicts an equal number of wounds instead."

Sure, I dont think criticals are *near* as debilitating to monsters as they are to PC's but that's how it works.

And against henchmen, criticals just deal additional wounds equal to the severity; then the Wound card is shuffled back into the deck. Also not as debilitating, but it kills them.

Mordenthral said:

Right, I am thinking of extending that out to more than just Henchmen - maybe any non-major-character npc.

Aha! Thanks for the page reference, I only managed to briefly skim read the ToA before running our test game last night and I couldn't find the stress/fatigue reference.

I found the critical reference for henchmen and I agree, it seems worthwhile extending this concept to any non-boss monster/npc just for ease of play

There's discussion in another thread where Jay Little chimed-in: Monsters can optionally use Aggression to take additional movements, as well as cunning to temporarily slide their stance 1 step.