splinter-keep/rules/deck/creatures.yaml

# Creatures of the Chaos — Monster Creation Cards
# Roll 2d6 on each table to build a creature from scratch.

type:
  description: "It's kind of a..."
  table:
    2: "Construct or golem"
    3: "Demon or devil"
    4: "Elemental"
    5: "Fiend or beast"
    6: "Flyer or serpent"
    7: "Humanoid"
    8: "Insect"
    9: "Monstrosity"
    10: "Ooze"
    11: "Plant"
    12: "Spirit or undead"

appearance:
  description: "It looks like it's..."
  table:
    2: "A ragbag of body or item parts"
    3: "About to pop or burst or dissolve"
    4: "Been dragged through a meatgrinder"
    5: "Glowing in white light, sickly or divine"
    6: "Got red eyes, grey/sickly skin or scaly"
    7: "Had too many dinners, but still hungry"
    8: "Inside out or created by a distracted kid"
    9: "Not been fed for a long, long time"
    10: "Smeared in — what IS that?"
    11: "The result of an experiment gone wrong"
    12: "Wounded, scarred, protruding weapon"

size:
  description: "How big is it?"
  table:
    2: "Hand or kitten sized"
    3: "Hand or kitten sized"
    4: "Seven large bananas, tip to tip"
    5: "Seven large bananas, tip to tip"
    6: "Seven large bananas, tip to tip"
    7: "A Christmas tree"
    8: "A Christmas tree"
    9: "A Christmas tree"
    10: "Basketball hoop height, filled out"
    11: "Basketball hoop height, filled out"
    12: "Largest thing you've ever seen — and then some"

difficulty:
  description: "How dangerous is it?"
  options:
    easy: { health_formula: "1 + party_total_max_health", to_hit: 0, damage: "1d6-1 (or 3)", grit: "2d6 (or 7)" }
    hard: { health_formula: "6 + party_total_max_health", to_hit: 1, damage: "1d6+1 (or 5)", grit: "2d6+2 (or 9)" }
    oh_boy: { health_formula: "12 + party_total_max_health", to_hit: 2, damage: "1d6+6 (or 10)", grit: "2d6+3 (or 10)" }

numbers:
  description: "How many are there?"
  table:
    easy: "3d6"
    hard: "2d6"
    oh_boy: "1d6"

attack:
  description: "How does it attack?"
  table:
    2: "Animates the inanimate — by mind or magnetism"
    3: "Bludgeoning, head-butting, or barrelling"
    4: "Consuming, sucking, scraping, or deafening"
    5: "Drills into the mind — strangles or influences"
    6: "Freezes, burns, or radiates inside or out"
    7: "Fuses with elements and bends them"
    8: "Natural spikes, darts, spores, splashes, or spills"
    9: "Pierces or possesses the soul"
    10: "Poisons, infects, or corrodes inside or out"
    11: "Teeth, claws, or natural weapons"
    12: "Wields or projects a weapon of choice"

defence:
  description: "How does it protect itself?"
  table:
    2: { name: "Nothing", reduction: 0 }
    3: { name: "Armour scraps", reduction: -1 }
    4: { name: "Armour scraps", reduction: -1 }
    5: { name: "Another's flesh or bone", reduction: -2 }
    6: { name: "Another's flesh or bone", reduction: -2 }
    7: { name: "Natural organics", reduction: -3 }
    8: { name: "Natural organics", reduction: -3 }
    9: { name: "Natural organics", reduction: -3 }
    10: { name: "Arcane magicks", reduction: -4 }
    11: { name: "Arcane magicks", reduction: -4 }
    12: { name: "Incorporeal shifts", reduction: -5 }

feature:
  description: "Aside from attack or defend, it can also..."
  table:
    2: "Be real tricky to catch, find, hear, or see"
    3: "Cast arcane magicks it's marked or infused with"
    4: "Give the strange feeling you're actually elsewhere"
    5: "Glue together with others and harvest their energy"
    6: "Grab you in its thrall if you're not careful"
    7: "Grapple, restrain, suffocate, engulf, or turn you mad"
    8: "Look entirely like something else — until..."
    9: "Nullify, minimise, deflect, or mimic arcane effects"
    10: "Regenerate its health — even if it's fallen"
    11: "Seem to know in advance what you'll do or say"
    12: "Spread fear, stress, blindness, paralysis, or exhaustion"

need:
  description: "Right now, it needs to..."
  table:
    2: "Complete its unfinished business"
    3: "Defend its territory, kin, or something unknown"
    4: "Destroy or control all in its path"
    5: "Escape imprisonment, shackles, tethers, or commands"
    6: "Escape or distract a threat yet to present itself"
    7: "Find a new purpose, victim, master, friend, soul, or host"
    8: "Find what it's looking to hoard, eat, or drink"
    9: "Follow the command of its master (who may be en route)"
    10: "Learn, adapt, or survive this new environment"
    11: "Mate, assimilate, or implant"
    12: "Trade or swap something the party has or can find"

# Pre-baked creatures
ready_to_bake:
  boneplasm_totem:
    description: "One of many in the realm. Harvested from bones of the fallen. May sense movement, cracking open, letting veins, viscera, and eyeballs sluice out."
    number: 1
    max_health: 9
    armour: -3
    to_hit: 2
    damage: "1d6+1 (acidic)"
    grit: null
    feature: "Spray boiling blood, reform and suck contents back in"
    need: "Guard something of import nearby"

  frother:
    description: "Disfigured monstrosity, human-sized, mouth of yellowed froth, putrid grey flesh, patches of blood-darkened fur, twisted limbs."
    number: "2d6"
    max_health: 6
    armour: -2
    to_hit: 1
    damage: "1d6+2 (teeth & claws)"
    grit: 9
    feature: "Grapple & teleport nearby, infect victims with mutation"
    need: "Spread its plague, divide and weaken its prey"

  karrion_drone:
    description: "Hideous, partially inside-out, child-sized insect, undead, feasting on fresh corpses, leaving behind healing nectar."
    number: "1d6"
    max_health: 3
    armour: -1
    to_hit: 0
    damage: "1d6 (sting, poison)"
    grit: 5
    feature: "Pollinate healing nectar, phase into ethereal plane"
    need: "Carry rotten nectar to the hive, its gyne & brood"

  screebies:
    description: "Tiny mechanical construct hive mind insectoids. Seek to burrow under skin to lay eggs."
    number: "3d6"
    max_health: 2
    armour: -1
    to_hit: -1
    damage: "1d6-2 (bite)"
    grit: 7
    feature: "Connect host to hive for symbiotic control"
    need: "Find a host before internal circuitry fails"

  shift_mimic:
    description: "Takes any form. Glare at it and you might trade places, trapped, watching it walk off in your body."
    number: 1
    max_health: "per host"
    armour: "per host"
    to_hit: "per host"
    damage: "per host"
    grit: 10
    feature: "Automate host to protect itself"
    need: "Survive, persuade others it is the host"

  volcartek:
    description: "Large earthen elemental, volcanic ash coating, molten lava spilling from cracked black rock. Guardian of subterranean tunnels."
    number: 1
    max_health: 15
    armour: -4
    to_hit: 2
    damage: "1d6+4 (slam or burn)"
    grit: 11
    feature: "Expand, glide over lava, sense & generate tremors"
    need: "Guard against passage through tunnels"