Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Bestiary

• Armour: The type of armour the beast is considered to have for the purposes of injury checks.
• Shooting: bonuses or penalties when attempting to shoot at the beast.
• Melee: the dice the beast rolls in melee, as well as what weapon to treat it as for length and injury checks.
• Harm: the dice the beast rolls when doing an injury check. If no specific table is given, assume it is the standard injury check (1-6 flesh wound; 7-12 injury; 13+ down).

Below I have created a handful of template monsters. In the style of “Just Use Bears”, I figure that at least for now this is good enough. Some monsters might have specific injuries they always cause, or specific types of weapons they are resistant to. (e.g. a skeleton has a +4 on injury checks against pierce and +2 against slash.) I trust myself to wing those things at the table, at least for now.

Templates

“Bears”

Actual bears, but also other big beefy creatures like…owlbears?

Armour as: leather

Shooting: +2 (because of its size)

Melee: 2d8; Weapon as Sword

Harm: d12

“Wimps”

1/2 HD creatures. Stirges, Kobolds, etc.

Armour as: varies

Shooting: -2 (because of size, speed, etc.)

Melee: d10; Weapon as dagger (usually)

Harm: highest of 2d20

“Soldiers”

Human-like creatures that have some combat training.

Armour as: varies

Shooting: +0

Melee: 1d12+1; weapon varies

Harm: d20

More trained units roll 1d12+2. Leaders get a +1 on melee rolls and have one Resolve Die.

“Hounds”

Pack hunters. Vicious up close.

Armour as: leather

Shooting: -2 (speed)

Melee: d6+1 per additional beast; as short sword (teeth, claws, etc.)

Harm: d20

Note: Per Violence, you are still rolling a d6 for each hound & taking the best. It is just that the highest result then gets a +x, where x is the number of hounds - 1. Don’t let them gang up on you.

Casters

Magicians, Witches, etc.

Armour as: none

Melee: d12; weapon as dagger or shortsword

Harm: d20

Spells: A general “mook” caster has a 50/50 chance of having one or two spells prepared.

• Easy spell: Players get a save vs the effect, 10% chance roll on misfire table
• Hard spell: Players get a save, 75% chance roll on misfire table

“Higher level” casters may have better combat training, more spells memorized (though probably not more than 3 easy spells or 1 easy and 1 hard), and lesser chances of misfires. This is a little asymmetric from how players cast magic, but the idea is to factor in the chance of them mispreparing the spell.

Upcoming…

Next up I will be completing the very last thing I think I truly need before playtesting: some guidelines for injuries (as well as a few more combat rules). If I can’t get a playtest set up soon, I might take the extra time to add the Cleric backgrounds, skills, or similar. I’m pretty sure Dolmenwood has a table for character’s previous professions, otherwise I’ll use the DCC one.

I have some IRL friends I was kind of planning on doing the playtest with, but if other people are interested feel free to reach out to me. (No promises though). I’m super excited to test these rules out, so expect a play report and my thoughts on what worked and what didn’t in the somewhat near future.