I added a bunch more creatures, including a section of basic undead, and some tactically-renamed D&D favourites. This is the last time I'm going to update the original post, because it's getting too big! I will put the Bestiary in an open Google Drive folder and post the link up top, and I will keep updating the Bestiary for the foreseeable future. Probably won't have dragons til after Christmas, but y'all aren't ready to fight dragons yet, right?

8 hours ago, Direach said:

Probably won't have dragons til after Christmas, but y'all aren't ready to fight dragons yet, right?

You've clearly never had me as a GM before then! I love throwing a dragon at players on their third or fourth adventure, usually a young one that they might be able to beat if they are clever enough. If not, it's a great lesson in "you know you can run away...it doesn't change much."

This is pretty awesome! Thank you

It's probably worth noting, GMs, that there is absolutely no reason that a creature with two claws, or claws and a bite, can't employ the two-weapon fighting rules. While some creatures listed here have Multiattack, meaning they get a full attack with two (or more) weapons, most creatures can (and should) employ two-weapon fighting with their natural armament. Likewise, a humanoid or wight armed with a sword and shield can slash with its sword and follow up with the shield, or vice versa. Put your players to the test!

I edited the document version for clarity, so that the abilities were easier to read.

Just dropping a line to thank you for this marvellous bestiary!

Do you mind if I use some of these profiles for my own work? With appropriate credit. Seems pointless to reinvent the wheel when coming up with generic creature profiles when you've got everything done so nicely.

12 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

Do you mind if I use some of these profiles for my own work? With appropriate credit. Seems pointless to reinvent the wheel when coming up with generic creature profiles when you've got everything done so nicely.

Go right ahead! I'm doing this mainly as a community resource, and as a jumping-off point for those who want to develop or convert their own creatures.

On 12/18/2017 at 6:28 PM, Direach said:

Eventually I'll put everything related to this campaign setting in a Google Drive folder that people can access. Right now it's all work in progress, and I definitely need the feedback!

By the way, if anyone has a request for a monster, send me a message or reply here. Right now I'm just adding stuff that occurs to me, and tweaking the existing creatures as I notice stuff. Dragons are on the list of things to do, but they are quite complex, so I'm taking my time with those. The behold- I mean, dreadgazer was pretty time-consuming, dragons are taking longer.

I've been giving dragons some thought, and had some rough ideas:

Claws get Linked 1, probably high damage and pierce--being engaged with a dragon is very dangerous

Bite does a little less damage than claws, but Range is Short, rather than engaged, probably some pierce

Tail does a little less damage than the bite, but has Sweep (from rancor), Range is Short, and has Knockdown

Can use two-weapon fighting rules to combine these, I suppose. I think the individual attacks don't need to hit as hard as other big monsters, like the rancor, but should be threatening because the dragon has a lot of options to hurt up close or at some distance, and can chain together a bunch of attacks.

Breath Weapon has Range Medium (not sure what skill it should use, though), and we can look to spells for how they work. I would say it could have Blast and Burn for a dragon that spits flames or acid, Cold (from Attack spell) with Ensnare, and Lightning (from Attack spell) as appropriate. Maybe the Poisonous effect for some dragons that breath a noxious gas instead. And I would probably give each dragon at least one spell they can cast, since they are often inherently magical. They would probably have something like Brawn 5, Agility 1 or 2, Intellect, Cunning, Willpower, Presence 3-4 depending on the type of dragon. Maybe go up to 5 on one of the mental stats for more of a Mastermind-type dragon.

Maybe give it the Swoop attack ability that allows a flying creature to move from engaged to short range as an incidental after making an attack?

I would also give it one of either the Star Wars Inquisitor Frightful Presence ability (beginning of encounter, everyone makes a Hard fear check), the Fearsome talent with 2-4 ranks (when an enemy becomes engaged, they must make a fear check of difficulty equal to ranks), or the ability from the Mislead Force Power that just gives enemies within a certain range 2 threat on all their checks.

And probably Dark Vision.

Less soak than a rancor, since the dragon can be mobile, and is more likely to have some minions.

Seems like a lot, but dragons are typically pretty complex monsters and encounters in whichever system you find them.

@Direach

Some of the animals should probably be minions. Particularly the pack animals. They may be a little larger than what we think of as minions, but I would imagine they would most often be encountered in a group.

For stuff like the Basilisk, I wonder if it should have a more active ability. I don't know that this system wants players rolling an additional pool of dice against an effect every turn. Maybe make it an active attack from the basilisk, or an activated quality on its standard attack? After all, it's not turning you to stone if you're looking at its tail, you have to meet its gaze. Maybe it can spend a maneuver each round to look at a particular target?

Ditto for troglodytes and ghouls...these could mimic the Fearsome talent, but instead of characters making a fear check when they become engaged, instead they make a Resilience check. I also think Staggered may be too strong a result on a failed check for something that you may have to roll against every round.

Oh, and thank you for this! I may be nitpicking a little, but I really appreciate this resource!

Most of the animals are derived from creatures in the various Star Wars books. For the most part, I just used the same classification as the source creature in Star Wars. Even a pack animal can be a significant threat if you make it angry or scared. It's easy enough to downgrade something to a minion if needed.

Anything with a gaze attack is tough because there is no facing in this game. For the basilisk, I tried to replicate the mechanics of the 5E basilisk, which are more forgiving than previous editions. Unlike the beholder, the basilisk doesn't shoot a petrifying beam, you have to meet its gaze (which it can compel if you're caught unawares). I'm not a big fan of insta-kill abilities, which getting turned to stone usually is, hence the multiple chances to avoid that fate. If you want a deadlier basilisk, just make the first Hard Resilence check the turn-to-stone roll.

Staggered is a very bad condition, so adventurers should think tactically when confronting such creatures. I've seen D&D groups get demolished by ghouls when they thought they would be easy prey. My thinking is that not all minions should be chumps, ghouls and trogs are examples of deadlier minions.

I think having the repeated saves for the basilisk was a good call--not arguing with that, just that everyone is rolling a "save" every round, automatically. I think forcing the basilisk to spend a maneuver to lock gazes with someone would be reasonable. Maybe threat could be used to entrance the target, making it unable to look away, so you can't have one person take his attention then close their eyes.

22 minutes ago, yeti1069 said:

I think having the repeated saves for the basilisk was a good call--not arguing with that, just that everyone is rolling a "save" every round, automatically. I think forcing the basilisk to spend a maneuver to lock gazes with someone would be reasonable. Maybe threat could be used to entrance the target, making it unable to look away, so you can't have one person take his attention then close their eyes.

Perhaps you missed it, because the abilities are a little cluttered, but the basilisk does have to use a maneuver to enable its gaze effect. " Petrifying Gaze (as a maneuver, a basilisk can force a target within Short range to meet its deadly gaze. "

Already used this bestiary on the first adventure since we switched to Genesys. I am using these to create monster cards (in powerpoint because I suck at photoshop)

I hope it helped! I'd be interested to hear how any creatures you used performed in play, I haven't had a chance to torment my players with all of them yet.

By setting the base damage done and other offensive and defensive factors and special abilities there is no limit. The dice serve primarily as the chance to hit and trigger. Therefore, it seems to me, the dice pool size is designed to limit and/or balance the SPECIAL results(crits etc..).

On 12/17/2017 at 8:26 PM, widomknight said:

so should an ant have a Brawn of 5 or 6 too?

Pound for pound one of the strongest living things on earth

Perhaps if you were shrunk down in size and face to face with it!

But if you're human size and said ant is ant sized then ant ain't gonna have much to offer in a conflict (although it may make your skin sting or overrun you with many many many ants which might not be fun )

A lot of these things come down to narrative factors- the dice just set the odds at sensible levels, with the many scales of possibilities in different situations otherwise there could be situations where you'd need to or could suggest you'd need to roll hundreds of them! It's also about balancing out what is/isn't possible- elephants may be super strong but humans have still tamed and trained them, for better or for worse, notwithstanding the morality issues of so doing, even of course sadly ruling them with cruelty. So I think such dice caps reflect the fact limits aren't always limits and powers etc are usually not totally insurmountable. A dragon might be lethal but if you've made it your 'pet' may love you to bits and want/offer only tlc!

Perhaps my ant example is a case for some sort of 'relative' stats, regardless, my tip: always always think about the specifics of the situation, how a relates to b, and so on. Thus how to best balance the dice odds.

The Bestiary has been updated! A little bit. I tweaked a few rules for a few creatures based on creature profiles from Realms of Terrinoth, and added a couple new creatures (skeletons and skeleton warriors, and the viscid cube). I'll be adding more creatures to this soon, just been working on other stuff.

20 hours ago, Direach said:

The Bestiary has been updated! A little bit. I tweaked a few rules for a few creatures based on creature profiles from Realms of Terrinoth, and added a couple new creatures (skeletons and skeleton warriors, and the viscid cube). I'll be adding more creatures to this soon, just been working on other stuff.

Excellent, I love "incorporating" other people's ideas

This is great, nice work! My only suggestion would be that you check out the Massive X trait, for especially large creatures (Sil 5+, let's say) or fantastically powerful creatures like dragons. When I used exceptional creatures in Star Wars, I would typically give them Massive 1, if they didn't already have it. Massive increases the Crit Rating of all attacks against the creature by it's rating. Very useful for preventing crit-farming PCs from demolishing a big scary dragon in one round ?

1 hour ago, MordSith said:

This is great, nice work! My only suggestion would be that you check out the Massive X trait, for especially large creatures (Sil 5+, let's say) or fantastically powerful creatures like dragons. When I used exceptional creatures in Star Wars, I would typically give them Massive 1, if they didn't already have it. Massive increases the Crit Rating of all attacks against the creature by it's rating. Very useful for preventing crit-farming PCs from demolishing a big scary dragon in one round ?

I am fine with the Massive trait, and may end up using it occasionally, but since it's not currently part of the Genesys system (though it does appear in the Star Wars line), I don't plan to integrate it into the bestiary. That said, I certainly encourage anyone using these creatures to modify them however they see fit to best serve their game.

Bestiary is updated! Added a whole section of giants, and a number of new creatures, including winter wolves, hellhounds, stirges (both minions and swarm), scarabs, skeletons, will o' wisps, and some giant beetles! I plan to continue updating the bestiary over the next few weeks, including sections for golems, demons, and (finally) dragons!

12 hours ago, Direach said:

Bestiary is updated! Added a whole section of giants, and a number of new creatures, including winter wolves, hellhounds, stirges (both minions and swarm), scarabs, skeletons, will o' wisps, and some giant beetles! I plan to continue updating the bestiary over the next few weeks, including sections for golems, demons, and (finally) dragons!

awesome! Just in time for my game tomorrow

I have PDF skills, if you need attractive layout and formatting.

6 hours ago, lecudas said:

I have PDF skills, if you need attractive layout and formatting.

It's still a continuing work in progress, and I'm in a mood to do a bunch of work on it, so a PDF would have to be updated constantly. Me personally, I don't really care much about the formatting as long as it's legible, but if you want to spruce it up, I'd be glad to put a PDF of it in the folder as well!

Bestiary/Creature Catalogue is updated with golems, chimera, gargoyles, vampires, a reanimated hand, the dreaded hullathoin, and some minor tweaks to formatting and a few existing entries. Plus a note at the top about Apex Nemeses, the worst of the worst. More to come soon!