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Hell's Rebels Bestiary: Dottari Guard
Part of the Bestiary for my solo Hell’s Rebels game.
The Lore
The book uses “dottari” both as a singular and a plural, but I kinda want to use “dottario” for the singular both because it fits the pseudo-Italian theming of Cheliax, and because it sounds like “otário” (fool/asshole) in Portuguese.
The dottari are Kintargo’s city guard, responsible for keeping the peace and enforcing the law. From what I see in the books Thrune barely had to do anything to get them to fall in line and begin collaborating on his fascist takeover. There were no big purges, he just replaced their commander with someone who didn’t keep their worst impulses in check.
This tells me your typical dottario has a personality very similar to that of your typical CCG Thug. The only difference between them is that the dottario made the cut to get into the guard and receive its training.
The Numbers
A dottari guard as seen on Scene 01, with equipment matching their role as riot cops. As this is quite heavy, we include some variants afterwards.
They will try to surround and outnumber their opponents, focusing on what they perceive to the the greatest threats and attempting to isolate them from any allies.
Dottari met on patrol will whistle for backup if outnumbered, unless they happen to be doing something even their bosses would not approve of. The higher the area’s general security level, the faster reinforcements will be to arrive.
Dottari Guard
ST 12; DX 11; IQ 10; HT 12;
Dodge 7 (9); Parry 9U (11U) (mace); Block 9 (11);
DR 3/1 in torso, 1 elsewhere.
HP 12; Will 10; Per 10; FP 12;
Speed 6.00; Move 3; SM 0;
- Mace (13): 1d+4 cr; Reach 1.
- Shield Bash (12): 1d-1 cr; Reach 1.
Class: Mundane.
Equipment: Light Mail shirt, mace, medium shield (DB 2), whistle, manacles. Medium Encumbrance.
Variants
Dottari Beat Cop: Remove the shield, leaving the dottario at Light Encumbrance with Move 4, Dodge 8, and no Defense Bonus to Dodge or Parry.
Dottari Archer: Add a short bow and a quiver with 12 arrows, and the following attack:
- Short Bow (13): 1d-1 imp; Acc 1; Range 150/225.
Impressions
ADAB.
Dottari have middling offense when compared to a typical starting delver, but their defense is high enough to be annoying. That shield makes them succeed fairly often at their active defenses unless the PCs spend some effort to bypass it, or to otherwise inflict penalties on them. Feints, Deceptive Attacks, flanking, surprise, anything but facing a solid formation of them head-on.
Other good alternatives against them are stealth and mind-affecting magic, as their Per and Will are only average.
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Hell's Rebels Bestiary: CCG Thug
Part of the Bestiary for my solo Hell’s Rebels game.
The Lore
CCG stands for “Chelish Citizen’s Group”. Basically, if we consider the government of Cheliax to be facist (and I do), these are your brownshirts. They were so happy with Barzilai’s ascension to power they formed an unofficial voluntary organization about it.
The CCG believes they have tacit permission from the big boss to hurt people just like they’ve always wanted to… and, in this, they’re right. Barzilai loves giving them privileged access to situations where they can help the dottari crush “seditious rebels”, or to hire them as contractors for tasks he can’t spare the manpower for. And when they spontaneously decide to do a cheeky bit of assault & battery or public torture, he turns a blind eye.
CCG thugs have the bare minimum of combat training and pretty much no tactical awareness unless directed by a more skilled leader. They’ll try to surround and repeatedly club the nearest victim until that victim stops moving. Their morale crumbles pretty fast once they see those victims are capable of fighting back.
The Numbers
CCG Thug
ST 10; DX 10; IQ 9; HT 10;
HP 10; Will 9; Per 9; FP 10;
SM 0; Speed 5.00; Move 4;
Dodge 8; Parry 9 (club); DR 1 (Torso);
- Club (10): 1d cr; Reach 1.
- Brawling Punch (10): 1d-3 cr; Reach C.
- Wrestling Grab (10): 1d-2 control (1d-4 one-handed); Reach C.
Traits: Your pick from Bully, Fanaticism (Thrune), Intolerance (Total) and other unpleasantness.
Class: Mundane.
Equipment: Padded vest, club, manacles, 2dx$5 in coins. Light Encumbrance.
Threat Level: Usually Fodder, but can go up to Worthy depending on the scenario.
Impressions and Design Notes.
A schlub with a club. They should pose very little threat to delvers, even as Worthies, unless they end up with a very long streak of good rolls. This happened a couple of times in my actual play, but that still led more to long fights than dangerous ones.
If you have a lot of CCG thugs in play and it feels like the fight is going to be a slog, feel free to have them break and run once a significant percentage of them (or one of their leaders) is taken down.
CCG thugs feature prominently in the first half of Adventure 01, but the PCs outgrow them after that and they get replaced by dottari guards as the rank-and-file human opposition.
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Hell's Rebels Bestiary: Introduction
If you’ve been reading my recent posts here you know I’ve been playing a solo game of Hell’s Rebels using GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. And a big part of my preparation for actually playing that game involves converting monsters when necessary. So I thought, why not post them here? After all, monster-posting has come to be a big part of my brand here at Octopus Carnival.
Here’s how we’ll do it: I’ll post the converted enemies and NPCs here in the blog as they appear in our published session logs. I’ll add a project page for them where they will be ordered both in order of appearance, and in alphabetical order. You’ll get a brief description, GURPS stats, and my impressions on the monster, both from looking at the stats and actually facing the thing in play.
I’ll convert, and therefore post, only the monsters I actually use in play. Hell’s Rebels books usually have enormous random encounter tables and new monsters at at the end, but I gather most people ignore the former and the later never appear on the adventure itself. I’ll leave those alone unless I actually have a use for them in my game. And of course, if I cook up a new monster for use in the game, it will also show up here.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels! Adventure 01, Scene 01
This is the first scene I did for my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign. Initially I wrote stuff into this file as it happened, alternating betweeen Player and GM roles as appropriate. Then I did several editing passes to properly format it for publication, add the correct links, and apply slight retcons resulting from the change to Arcturus’ background.
[GM] Introduction
The background for the adventure here is mostly the same, though I imagine mainland Cheliax is going to be worse than the writers envisioned at handling the Glorious Reclamation.
Barzilai arrived ten days ago, directed the Night of Ashes, instituted martial law, and made seven absurd proclamations so far. Several minor protests were dispersed by dottari or CCG thugs, and this is the largest one yet.
Anyway, our heroes are all at the protest for their varied motives:
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Now that she’s back in town Jade will never miss a protest against Thrune if she can help it. It’s also a good way to catch up on the news and figure out what to do from here.
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Arcturus is here for pretty much the same reason, though in this case he’s looking for news about Shensen, the missing diva.
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Rosalia is here due to rumors that her missing friend Shensen would be present, though they’d probably show up even if that wasn’t the case.
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Urist is here to find Rexus Victocora. He was tipped off by Laria Longroad that the man would be here. He is the last surviving family member of some of his former colleagues, and he will save the boy if he can.
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Jania is also interested on the news, though in her case she’s worried about how the current political climate might affect her school. Her disposition also makes her inclined to try some pickpocketing here.
[Player] The Aria Park Protest
We’re following the kind-of-skill-challenge laid out in the protest description, so there are these defined actions PCs can take during the initial part of the protest.
Everyone is going to spend their first couple of hours on Watch the Crowd and Listen for Rumors actions. Watching the crowd is a roll on the better of Perception and Observation. Listening for Rumors is either Current Affairs or again the best between Perception and Observation
Watching the Crowd:
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Jania lacks Observation, so she’s rolling Perception. Success by 3.
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Urist rolls Perception as well, since it’s better than his Observation. Success by 3.
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Arcturus fails his Perception roll by 2.
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Rosalia makes her Perception roll by 2.
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And Jade amazingly makes her Perception roll by 7! Not a critical success, but an excellent margin.
So everyone notices that the crowd is agitated and discontented, but not overly violent. Jade additionally notices a subtle undercurrent there as if there’s a group trying to rile up the crowd without being seen. There might be trouble brewing!
Those who succeeded by any margin also perceive the general layout of the protest, and which groups are part of it: Kintargo loyalists who demand local rule, democratic activists who demand an election for mayor, “economic conservatives” who are upset at the increased taxation, trolls who are in it for the lulz and perhaps a riot, and fascists who are trying to shout the others down in support of Barzilai.
Arcturus is too overwhelmed by the crowd to notice anything except that they’re noisy and kinda fun.
Listening for Rumors:
Everyone uses Perception except for Rosalia, who rolls Current Affairs.
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Jania uses Stealth as a complimentary skill and makes her roll by 3. She gets two rolls on the rumor table and hears that a) Shensen is missing, and might have been imprisoned and b) something is killing tieflings in the Devil’s Nursery. Could it be the Temple Hill Slasher returned from the dead?
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Urist succeeds by 1. He gets a roll on the rumor table and hears speculation about Mayor Bailinus’ fate. Some say she ran away when Thrune rolled into town, others say she died on an accident.
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Rosalia succeeds by 5. She gets three rolls! She hears the same rumor about Shensen, which is very fortuitous since that’s what she came here to learn. She also hears that the prisons are so full Thrune started keeping prisoners in warehouses, or putting them to work in commandeered buildings like the Salix Salt Works. Thrune also plans to bring public excruciations to Kintargo, a practice that’s common in the Chelish heartlands but used to be forbidden here.
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Arcturus succeeds by 2. He hears that Thrune’s bodyguard Nox might be a half-devil or something of the sort. Maybe he should wrestle her!
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Jade fails by 1. She learns the basic situation of the city, which is useful to her, but fails to turn up any juicy bits of gossip.
Three of the PCs will perform a third action, and after that I’m moving on to the riot.
Jania will pick some pockets! Let’s use the default rules from DF Exploits for it. She makes her Pickpocketing roll by 3 and thus earns 3 silvers… which is actually a mistake on my part (3 silvers is $60, she earned $15). But I’m letting that stand.
This is where it might get fun. Jade will attempt to Rabble-Rouse, and organize the crowd so that they can protest with one voice. Rosalia on the other hand will silence the lulzers and fascists.
The original book says rallying the crowd is a Diplomacy or Perform check, and silencing the assholes is a Bluff or Intimidate check. What about GURPS?
Both of these actions involve addressing large groups of people so Public Speaking should figure into it somehow, if only as a complementary skill to help grab the crowd’s attention. Jade is trying to organize a group of NPCs, which is definitely covered by Leadership. Rosalia is going to try to browbeat the fascists first, using Intimidation
Jade succeeds in her Leadership roll with a margin of 10, which I think it’s enough to get a nice unified chant going and for the crowd to recognize and part for her when shit goes down.
Rosalia makes her roll by 3, which is enough for a regular success too. The “Chelish loyalists” (fascist scum) are silenced.
Then what happens is that the two ladies notice each other’s efforts! The final action before the riot start will be each of them attempting to help the other. So how about we do one more rallying action with Rosalia helping Jade and one more suppression with Jade helping Rosalia?
So Rosalia rolls Singing to help a second Leadership roll from Jade, and Jade rolls Leadership to help a second Intimidation roll from Rosalia, directing the crowd to help shouting the trolls down. Regular successes all around, which are enough.
Each time the characters gain a quest XP reward in the original, I’m giving them 1 character point each. Here, they all gain the maximum of 4, for 4 successful actions.
[Player] The Riot
Things happen more or less as described in the book at this point. Barzilai appears, makes his eighth proclamation forbidding foreign ship captains from leaving their vessels on pain of torture, and gets pelted with horse manure.
I wanted Arcturus to be the one who throws it, since he’s pretty annoyed at Barzilai right now and is impulsive enough to want to start something. This was actually the first roll I made in Foundry, an attack using Throwing Art. I took into account the distance between Arcturus’ position in the map and the balcony (behind and above Nox), as well as its elevation. And he hit!
The horse apple veers off-course at the last minute because Barzilai has a Missile Shield on himself, but he still flinches and spills his wine, ordering Nox and the dottari to move against the crowd. The fight is on!
Now, the original book recommends dealing with the crowd abstractly. It makes most of the map difficult terrain for everyone except those PCs who managed to make a good impression. Most people will do this because it’s faster and more convenient.
I’m not most people.
A map of the Aria Park riot filled with protesters represented by individual tokens. We’re using the variant of Popcorn Initiative used in Lancer. The first character to act is a PC, chosen by the group. Then the GM and the players alternate, with each one choosing a character on their side to activate that turn. When one side runs out, the other activates their remaining characters. At the end of the round everyone refreshes their activation and we keep the same alternating sequence. If an enemy was the last to act before, a PC acts first in round 2, and vice-versa.
We also have a “neutral” side here: the bystanders. I rule they move 4 hexes on their turn, and they all activate together at the end of each round. Bystanders have a Move of 5 and a Dodge score of 8, and they go down (disabled or dead) upon taking any hits.
The bystanders, obviously, will attempt to run away by moving towards the left or right edges of the map. If they get there, they manage to escape and I remove them from the board.
The CCG thugs start out in the middle of the crowd, and they’ll use Move or Move and Attack maneuvers to close in on bystanders and club them. If a PC is in range they’ll prioritize attacking the PCs instead. These are mooks, and though they can make defense rolls they also go down in one hit.
The dottari will slowly march down the map, moving 1 hex at a time except if they need to turn their formation. If they move into reach of a bystander, they will attack, but they will prioritize keeping their formation over that. Nox and her hellhound pet will keep formation with them. Or at least, that’s the plan. Dottari are regulars, going down automatically at 0 HP. Nox and her hellhound are elites, and use the same rules as PCs.
The PCs can do whatever they want, of course, and with my player hat on I decide that they will try to protect as many bystanders as they can and give them time to run away, and then will attempt to escape themselves. Even Jania finds herself compelled to do that - she’s far from selfless but she’s also no friend of the dottari.
I started writing up detailed actions here, but I found that took too long. This was the exact type of busywork I’m trying to eliminate by using Foundry. So here’s a summary.
Jade starts the proceedings by moving directly northwards to challenge the dottari. If they’re focusing on the tall elf with the sword they will pay less attention to the unarmed civilians. The illustration above is after I had moved her.
The dottari advance according to their plan, and the CCG Thugs manage to club a couple of civilians who were too close when the chaos started. Arcturus charges into them and begins grappling. Rosalia, Urist and Jania move to assist, trying to keep the un-grappled thugs away from both the civilians and Art himself.
Arcturus remains unarmed throughout the fight. Any thug he grabs is more or less defenseless since they have such low stats. In the turn after he grabs them, he can punch them and spend the boatload of Control Points the grab generated to deal a monstrous amount of damage. He gets to do that twice. Jania defeats another grappled thug with a whack of her cane, and Urist knocks one out with a shield bash - he hasn’t drawn his axe yet.
I forgot to move the bystanders at the end of the first round, so in the second one the dottari began reaching them and taking down the upper row of the crowd. I let that stand when I realize my mistake - we can say the crowd was collectively stunned for a round.
Seeing this, Jade decides to up the ante and attack the dottari that’s closing in on her, nearly beheading the guard with a well-aimed horizontal slash to the neck!
This causes Nox to start moving towards her and ordering the other dottari to do the same. They pick up their pace, ignoring the fleeing bystanders to focus on those armed individuals who are actively resisting them.
Fortunately the rest of the PCs manage to defeat the thugs by the time the guards arrive. Jania, who is a bit further away, forms an Ice Dagger and begins to aim it at Nox’s general direction.
Jade stabs a second dottari in the face and begins fencing with two others plus Nox and her dog. She slowly retreats towards the rest of the group, now focused on protecting them.
This whole encounter feels like an even match. It’s likely our heroes could win this and kill all enemies if they stayed to the bitter end like the Dungeon Fantastic party often does. They’d suffer casualties, but I think they might win in the end as long as either Art or Jade stayed up for long enough.
I don’t intend for them to stay that long, however. If Nox gets a single hit in, it’s game over for that PC. And if the dottari from the left flank get close enough to surround them, it might be game over for the whole group. They’re not strong individually, but they can prevent the party from moving and make them easy targets for Nox.
Once Nox is close enough Rosalia hits her with a Song of Humiliation and manages to stun her. Jania takes this opportunity to throw the Ice Dagger she had been holding.
My rule here is that melee attacks with no declared target land on the enemy’s torso, but ranged attacks end up in a random location. Nox fails do dodge this one, so the dagger hits her right leg. Jade follows up with a sword strike to the same leg, crippling it. They all see Nox immediately begins regenerating the damage, though.
Arcturus, Urist, and Jania book it towards “map east” as soon as there are no dottari in the way. Rosalia and Jade end up staying for a bit longer, but the bard quickly finds an alternate escape route and Jade follows soon after now that she doesn’t need to cover anyone’s escape. During this altercation, which took around 8 rounds, the bulk of the bystanders managed to escape unharmed. So were the PCs, for the most part. Urist got bonked by a dottari for 4 HP, but managed to heal himself back to full in short order.
The original Pathfinder encounter had the CCG Thugs appearing first, then a pair of dottari, and then the rest as a “you should run now” message. Putting everyone on the map from Round 1 and increasing the total number of dottari seems to be the right way to make this challenging and exciting for starting DF delvers.
While they technically ran from this fight, that was the goal, so I can consider this a victory. I give them 1 point for it.
This scene was definitely chaotic and though the characters acquitted themselves well, the Chaos Factor rises to 6.
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Urist Stortebeker, the Last Archivist
One of the player characters for my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign.
Urist Stortebeker is a somewhat unorthodox dwarven priest because he honors gods of freedom and knowledge such as Caiden Caylean, Avandra, and Ioun. This naturally drew him to the Honored Society of Archivists in Kintargo a few years ago. This was a secret organization dedicated to preserving the true history of the Ravounel region and of wider Cheliax from the revisionist depredations of its fascist government.
He was just walking the first steps to mastering their deep scholarship, but his previous adventuring career made him very good at retrieving lost documents of historical and cultural value, so that’s what he mostly focused on.
He had been out on a mission to retrieve one of those documents when the Night of Ashes happened. The agents of Barzilai Thrune, the newly appointed Lord Mayor of Kintargo, swept through the city killing anyone who they thought might be able to oppose his plans, and burning down their homes. This included the members of the Society, most of whose identities Barzilai had figured out.
This makes Urist the last surviving Archivist, and you can be he’s extremely angry and sad about that. However, just before he left on that last mission, some of his Archivist friends asked him to look after their son if anything happened to them. They weren’t sure anything was going to happen, but things weren’t looking good in general.
So now Urist’s top priority is finding this son, Rexus Victocora, and making sure that he’s safe. And then he’s going to make those damned nazis pay. His demeanor might be jolly but he’s still a dwarf. He knows how to hold a grudge.
Description
Urist has a very typical appearance to go with his very typical name. Stocky, bald, pale skin, white beard, brown eyes. He always carries his clan dagger in his belt, and his axe too. In combat he likes heavy armor and a shield to go with the weapons. Unlike the typical dwarf character, he tends to act jolly a lot of the time, even in the face of adversity and grief.
“Stortebeker” is an epithet that was applied to a historical Dutch pirate. It means roughly “upturner of cups”, which in turn means someone who drinks a lot. Appropriate for a priest who honors the drunk god.
Build Notes
Urist is a pretty typical Dungeon Fantasy Cleric, though he’s more on the fighty side of that archetype than on the “staff and robe” one. So in addition to more spells, his progression plan is going to include better combat skills and possibly some Holy Warrior abilities to make him better at directly fighting demons.
As mentioned above, he’s a dwarf, and his species traits have been included in his character sheet below.
Character Sheet
ST 12 {20}; DX 12 {40}; IQ 14 {80}; HT 12 {20};
Damage 1d-1/1d+2; Basic Lift 14.4kg; HP 12; Will 14; Per 14; FP 14 {6}; Basic Speed 6; Basic Move 5 {-5};
Advantages
- Clerical Investment {5}
- Detect Evil {18}
- Night Vision 5 {5}
- Power Investiture 3 {30}
- Resistant to Poison 6 {6}
- Unfazeable {15}
Features
- Armor not interchangeable with that of humans
Disadvantages
- Charitable (12) {-15}
- Compulsive Carousing (12) {-5}
- Compulsive Generosity (12) {-5}
- Intolerance (Evil Religions) {-5}
- Overconfidence (12) {-5}
- Sense of Duty (Good Entities) {-10}
Quirks
- Define your own! {-5}
Skills
- Axe/Mace (A) DX+2 {8} - 14
- Diagnosis (H) IQ-2 {1} - 12
- Esoteric Medicine (Holy) (H) Per {4} - 14
- Exorcism (H) Will {4} - 14
- First Aid (E) IQ+1 {1}1 - 15
- Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 14
- Hidden Lore (Demons) (A) IQ-1 {1} - 13
- Hiking (A) HT-1 {1} - 11
- Innate Attack (Projectile) (E) DX+2 {4} - 14
- Meditation (H) Will-2 {1} - 12
- Observation (A) Per-1 {1} - 13
- Occultism (A) IQ-1 {1} - 13
- Public Speaking (A) IQ-1 {1} - 13
- Religious Ritual (H) IQ-2 {1} - 12
- Research (A) IQ-1 {1} - 13
- Savoir-Faire (E) IQ {1} - 14
- Shield (E) DX+2 {4} - 14
- Surgery (H) IQ-2 {2} - 12
- Teaching (A) IQ-1 {1} - 13
- Theology (H) IQ-2 {1} - 12
Spells
All get +3 from Power Investiture
- Affect Spirits (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Armor (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Breathe Water (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Cleansing (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Continual Light (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Cure Disease (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Glow (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Lend Energy (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Light (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Major Healing (VH) IQ {1} - 14
- Minor Healing (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Recover Energy (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Recover Energy (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Resist Disease (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Resist Fire (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Resist Lightning (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Resist Poison (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- See Secrets (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Shield (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Sunbolt (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
- Sunlight (H) IQ+1 {1} - 15
Loadout
$1000, 22.18kg, Light Encumbrance.
- Clothing: $0, 1kg.
- Silver-Coated Axe: Reach 1, sw+2 cut; $150, 2kg.
- Small Shield: DB 1; $40, 4kg.
- Small Knife: Clan dagger; $30, 0.25kg.
- Light Cloth Armor: All locations, includes face protection; DR 1; $155, 9.4kg.
- Small Backback: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
- First Aid kit: +1 to First Aid. $50, 1kg.
- Holy Symbol: $50, 0.5kg.
- Holy Water: “Grenade” bottle; $15, 0.5kg.
- Pouch: Holds 1.5kg; $10, 0.1kg.
- Minor Healing Potion: heals 1d HP; $120, 0.25kg.
- 13 x Silver Coin: $260, 0.13kg.
- 15 x Copper Coin: $15, 0.15kg.
Combat
Assumes Light Encumbrance and a DB 1 shield.
- Defenses
- Dodge: 9
- Parry: 11U
- DR: 3 on skull, 0 on eyes, 1 everywhere else.
- Attacks
- Axe (14): 1d+4 cut, Reach 1.
- Shield Bash (14): 1d-1 cr, Reach 1.
- Sunbolt (14): 1d-9d burn, Acc 2, Range 75/150, costs 0-8 FP.
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Defaults from Esoteric Medicine (Holy) ↩
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