Monster Blocks (Expedition B2)

This is what a monster looked like in Expedition B1.

Dragon [100] {Leader}
A legendary creature of incredible power.
[E] 100 / [Stg] 30 (1) / [Ev] 12 / [Ar] 10 (Heavy) / [Cnd] 15 / [Cnv] 15
[Att] 4d10+2 Drop 2 (Melee) / [Dmg] 4d10 Drop 1 / [AP] 10
[Att] 3d10+2 Drop 1 (Ranged) / [Dmg] 3d10 Drop 1 (Heat)
Ancient Lore: Grants a bonus to all tests relating to knowledge and wisdom.
Majesty: Grants a bonus to all social or interaction tests.
Monstrous Power: Grants a bonus to all physical tests.
Flight: See above in the Roc description.
Monster of Legend: A Dragon is unparalleled in its might.
•Passive: Whenever the Dragon uses “Ready” it regains 2 AP instead of 1.
•2 AP: The Dragon uses any one combat maneuver of its choice as a Support Action (except for Ready, which it must always use as a Significant Action).
Magic Breath: A Dragon can launch a stream of flames from its mouth.
•Passive: The Dragon has a passive magic attack it can make in addition to its normal attack. It has its own ranged attack listing above and deals Heat damage.
•2 AP: The Dragon can target an additional character with its breath, and rolls 4d10 drop 2 for its attack and damage instead of 3d10 drop 1.
•5 AP: Can launch a stream of flames that rolls 5d10 drop 3 to attack and deals 5d10 drop 3 damage and targets all characters in a particular area.

Part of the project of Expedition is to remove limits on certain common character choices. In Expedition everyone can switch between classic roles, such as support characters who give bonuses to their allies, or characters who forge ahead and advance the story, or characters who engage harmful elements and shut them down for a time to allow their allies safe passage. Notice that these are pretty abstract – I see these as roles that exist both inside and outside of combat in different ways. Every character should get a shot at playing those roles if he or she wants to play them.

This freedom is not something only players get, however. Non-Player characters are also afforded this kind of freedom, but you have to think about how you represent it. In the stat block above, the Dragon has Potentials listed so it can participate in non-combat tasks. But does it really need them? If a Dragon is leaping over a cliff to get the PCs, do we really roll to see if it makes it? This is an important element of what goes into an enemy’s sheet. I think that the Dragon does need those elements, or at least, it can’t hurt to include them, but it doesn’t need them in quite that format.

These are questions you can ask yourself about every single element in that character sheet. Can we render this information in a better way? What I tried to do in Beta 2 is centralize a lot of that information in the core rules. The ways those Perks function, the way its attacks are rendered, are all areas where you can put more work into the core rules so there’s less to write in the creature sheet. This is where things like keywords, and the maneuver system, come into play. The Dragon doesn’t need to spell out how it hits multiple targets as a special ability, because in Beta 2 I’ve centralized “hits multiple targets” into the Blitz maneuver, something that people just need to read once and they’ll understand from then on what it means.

In retrospect, asking people to look at the Roc or the Imp to see how Flight works was pretty monumentally stupid and I’m very happy that people called me out on it! So we’re not doing that anymore.

Here’s what a Dragon looks like in Expedition Beta 2.

Dragon [Behemoth]
A legendary creature of incredible power.
[E] 75 / [STG] 35 / [F] 120 / [Off] 5d10 / [Def] 4d10
Potentials: Majesty (Interaction: Civil), Ancient Lore (Mental: Lore, Culture, Nature), Keen Senses (Perception: Audiovisual), Ferocity (Physical: Strength).
Combat: Claws (slicing, melee); Tail (impact, melee); Breath (heat, ranged).
Traits: Flight, Leader, Hardened [Bravery], Heavy Armor.
Staggered: When Staggered the Dragon loses an Offense Die and a Defense Die, but the GM gains +2 Feat Die to the Dragon’s faction pool.
Monster of Legend: The Dragon can spend a Feat Die to roll a Break test against all characters with Bravery as a Major Action. If successful it Breaks Bravery and deals 15 Stress instead of 1d10 Stress.
Magic Breath: Whenever the Dragon rolls a Blitz that includes its Breath die, it can spend a Feat Die to choose two targets per Blitz total formed out of its pool, rather than one.

You could compress that a bit if, for example, you don’t particularly care about the Dragon’s ability to Break Bravery or if you want its Magic Breath to be weaker. If you don’t want a special Stagger effect you can also tweak that out. Or if you don’t care about its Potentials beyond that it has +1d10 to finding PCs who use the Sneak maneuver. None of those are strictly necessary. Here’s a Dragon down to the very basics: test dice pools, “equipment” and its traits.

Dragon [Behemoth]
A legendary creature of incredible power.
[E] 75 / [STG] 35 / [F] 120 / [Off] 5d10 / [Def] 4d10 / [Test] 3d10
Combat: Claws (slicing, melee); Tail (impact, melee); Breath (heat, ranged).
Traits: Flight, Leader, Hardened [Bravery], Heavy Armor.

This block can be useful if you want to make an “easier” Dragon fight or if I am, say, ever writing an Expedition adventure and really quickly want to give you a quick Dragon fight without a) telling you to go look at dragon stats in another book, or b) giving you a huge dragon block that’s not appropriate.

The rest of it is looking at the book and reading the maneuvers, core rules and creature traits once or twice. They’re not terribly hard to remember. Here’s one that’s important to our buddy there: Hardened.

Hardened [Debuff or Buff]: A Hardened character cannot be dealt damage except when it suffers the particular debuff noted in the trait (Hardened [Imperil] characters can only be dealt Damage while they are Imperiled) or by characters who have the buff noted in the trait while attacking the Hardened character (Hardened [Bravery] characters can only be dealt damage by enemies who have Bravery).

Flight, Leader and Heavy Armor are also monster traits in a monster trait section. Read them once or twice and you’ll know pretty intuitively what they mean on a sheet from then on. This keeps a lot of repetitive verbiage out.