Posts

• Feb 27, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Gargoyles

  

  This post belongs to a series converting Dragon’s Dogma enemies to GURPS. All other entries, and all other posts adapting the setting can be found here.

  Gargoyles in Dragon’s Dogma are pretty much what you’d expect from hearing the word: humanoid flying monsters with rock-hard skin and a love of clawing out the eyes of unwary adventurers. The gargoyles of Gransys are living creatures, with flesh and blood beneath that rock skin, so they add “hunting for food” to their list of usual reasons for attacking PCs (territoriality, plain cruelty, etc.). They also have an additional surprise in store: their tails are tipped by a stinger capable of injecting a petrifying poison into a victim. They can’t eat the resulting statue, but it’s still a good tactic for finishing off foes who put up more of a fight than anticipated.

  Gargoyles dislike sunlight, and so make their homes in ruins and cave complexes, particularly those that feature one or more tall chambers full of good nesting spots. Someone suddenly attacked by a gargoyle in one of these dark places might confuse them with a harpy at first, only to be surprised at how little effect their blows have on the creature. Somehow bypassing a gargoyle’s DR is vital to effectively fighting it.

  ST 17; DX 13; IQ 6; HT 13;

  SM 0; Dodge 9; DR 9;

  HP 17; Will 10; Per 12; FP 13

  Basic Speed 6.50; Move 3 (Ground) / 13 (Air)

  • Talons (16): 2d+2 cut or imp. Reach C. May also grapple at skill 16.
  • Bite (16): 2d+1 cut. Reach C.
  • Petrifactor (14): 3d imp + Petrifying Venom follow up. Reach C.
  • Petrifying Venom (resisted with HT-5): Applied via a sting with the petrifactor, above. Targets who fail the resistance roll are turned to stone until cured with Stone to Flesh or similar magic.

  Traits: Claws (Talons); DR 9; Flight (Winged); Night Vision 5; Striker (Impaling; Clumsy, -2 to hit); Striking ST 4; Teeth (Sharp); Bestial; Bully (9); Gluttony (9); Social Stigma (Monster);

  Class: Mundane.

  Notes: Gargoyles only use the petrifactor as a last resort, as they prefer to be able to eat the victim after killing it.

• Feb 25, 2017

  GURPS X-COM: Operation BRUTAL ADVENT, Part 1

  

  Welcome to another post in my X-COM: Noises in the Dark actual play report! These are the PCs that participated in the mission:

  • Kendall Fairbarn: A paranoid Hacker from the UK. Was completely convinced human society had been heavily infiltrated by shape-changing aliens… and it turned out he wasn’t entirely wrong.
  • Minette Duvall: A bomb-disposal expert from Southern France, Minette is also quite handy with a rifle. She’s devoutly Catholic and swears a lot when faced with danger, which is all the time.
  • Niu Yulan (AKA Julia Yulan): A former hostage negotiatior from China, built without a template but approaching a shootier Face. Her innate kindness and empathy came in handy in several of the missions! Julia was ran by three different players during the lifetime of the campaign, which earns her a medal for Most Helpful Backup Character.
  • Jack Choi: A former police detective from Hong Kong, and a staunch adherent of the “kick down the door” school of policing despite his light frame. Also built without a template. His player dropped out of the planet near the end of the game, but not before making things interesting for the rest of the group.

  Also part of the team were two NPCs: Valenkov from Russia and Gutierrez from Argentina, both built using the Shooter archetype. They were originally PCs, but their players quit before making even a single post and after I had established they were members of the squad. I always found it funny that Strike One never had a single PC Shooter who stayed on for a full mission. I mean, the PCs can shoot, but none of them make it their primary focus.

  The Briefing

  As we saw in the previous post in this series, the newly formed X-COM spent its first month of existence futilely scanning the planet for alien activity before they found anything actionable. And it came not from their state of the art spy satellite network, but from a Youtube video recorded by a 12 year old.

  Her name was Gisela Vahlen, and she was Dr. Vahlen’s niece. The video was little more than a standard “family letter” message, recorded on a laptop camera in Gisela’s room, but anyone who watched could see that a lot was wrong with it. The girl had the look of someone who had been living in a war zone for months, and her room looked like part of said war zone. She struggled to maintain a cheery tone, despite the evident stress she had been under, and spoke in English instead of her native German.

  Despite all the strangeness, a distressed Dr. Vahlen confirmed that it was indeed her niece, and that was indeed her room, battle damage notwithstanding. Pointing one of X-COM’s recon satellites at Cologne revealed an anomaly of some sort covering Gisela’s neighborhood. It looked as if someone had smudged the camera lens with a greasy finger. Infrared showed the same thing. And no one else in the world seemed to have noticed it. There were no news that anything was out of the ordinary in Cologne.

  All of this was relayed to Strike One, our PC team, as part of the first in-character post of the mission. Their goal was to fly to Cologne, ensure the safety of the civilians in the area, put a stop to the anomaly, and gather information on the aliens, in that order.

  There were some questions, but Mr. Fox was the first to admit their intel was crap on this op. The only things X-COM knew were the approximate area the anomaly covered, and that things seemed to be terrible inside it and functioning normally outside. At least it would be easy to evacuate from the zone. Dr. Sokolov had already ordered his team to load the Skyranger up with scientific gear, and all that was left before they were ready to leave was gearing up.

  Meet the Quartermaster

  At this point I introduced the party to another NPC: their quartermaster, Nobuo Ishikawa. This little troll of a man was known as Kappa-san back in the JSDF, but here everyone calls him Nobby. Because I firmly believe every military organization in fiction needs a Nobby.

  

  Our Nobby was more than happy to discuss gear selection with the PCs, and to laugh at Kendall’s ridiculously large wish list that turned the hacker into a one-man Ghost Hunters show crew. Most of this stuff was already in the Skyranger, actually, since Sokolov shared his enthusiasm for unveiling alien secrets.

  As for the rest of the gear, I provided the players with a basic list of weapons, armor and accessories to choose from. My goal with the weapon selection was to make it similar to the initial list on the computer games, particularly the 1994 original. The personal firearms were good for fighting people, but a little on the anemic side when it came to damaging aliens. Then you had things like grenade launchers and rockets, which were much more powerful but also heavier and harder to use. No one took those, though they did pick a mix of frag and smoke hand grenades. Julia also took a bunch of candy to win the kids over once they arrived.

  Insertion and Investigation

  Once everyone had finished gearing up, it was time to board the Skyranger! It looked and behaved pretty much like the one in the 2012 computer game, with a top speed of Mach 1 and enough fuel to cross the Atlantic. It sacrificed everything else you would expect from a military transport to achieve that, being relatively tiny and completely unarmed. It was one of those quirky Russian designs, and those adjectives also fit its pilot Yevgeny Korsakov quite well.

  Even at Mach 1, reaching Germany took a while. Once there, Julia asked Korsakov to do a flyby of the anomaly zone from a safe height. The passenger compartment didn’t have any windows, but it did have a monitor wired to an external camera, which showed the same “smudge” as the satellite image. Julia unbuckled and went to the cockpit to look through the windows, and found that whatever was messing with the sensors didn’t affect the Mk I Eyeball. The real landscape wasn’t any prettier, though.

  A region of three or so blocks around St. Marien Hospital in Cologne had been turned into a veritable war zone. The commercial and residendial buildings in that area had all been shot up and covered in weird graffiti, gutted car wrecks littered the cracked and cratered streets… the place must have taken months to reach such a state, and yet the city continued to function normally around it, as if no one knew what was going on. St. Marien was the same hospital where all those drugs had gone bad a while back, so whatever caused this must have happened around then as well.

  It was a good thing that the PCs asked Korsakov to be careful with the flyby, for soon he spotted someone at the roof of the hospital pointing what looked like an RPG at them! He manages to dodge the missile at the last minute, and flies out of there.

  The PCs discuss what do do next, and Minette came up with the following plan of attack:

  

  They’d have Korsakov land about 100 meters to the left of the red X in the picture above, on a wide avenue. Then they’d use the available cover to make it into Gisela’s home, the apartment building marked by the yellow dot. Choi was enthusiastic about kicking the door down, and Julia objected on the grouds that they were there to rescue civilians, not antagonize them. Minette reasoned that they might not have a choice, if the door wasn’t open.

  The craft landed, and they made a run for it, cover to cover. Once more it was a good thing that the PCs decided to be cautious about their advance, since a sniper began taking shots at them from the hospital! Kendall threw a smoke grenade to cover the advance, though it didn’t seem to do much. Choi emptied his PDW in the sniper’s general direction while running, which seemed to have a better effect. Fortunately, all the commotion seemed to have drawn the attention of the building’s inhabitants, as a man opened the door for the PCs when they got close enough, and they all scrambled in. Julia paused to take a last, long-distance shot at the sniper, and apparently hit! No more shots came from that direction after that.

  The building still housed seven civilians: Gisela, her parents, and another family with father, mother and two children. There was also a cop, Jan Wiest, who together with Gisela’s father was the informal leader of the bunch. Minette was proficient in German, and Gisela’s family was proficient in English, so they managed to communicate acceptably.

  Their situation was every bit as bleak and bizarre as it seemed in the briefing. A few months ago, shortly after news broke out about the hospital’s drugs all going bad, a large group of people in unmarked military uniforms and eyeless gas masks appeared in the hospital building and began killing everyone they came across. They haven’t really been trying to occupy the neighborhood - they just stage raids out of the hospital, and drag any bodies back with them when they return.

  Wiest’s unit has been fighting them since nearly the beginning, and the remaining civilians in the area have either been helping or hiding. A lot left the area as soon as they could - all those that remain (cops and civilians) stay out of a sense that they must contain the attackers. Wiest calls for backup every day, but no one ever answered, and no one ever came, until today.

  Assessment and Planning

  This story does nothing to answer the PC’s initial doubts: if this has been going on for so long, how come no one noticed? Kendall uses his skills and advanced gear to scan the airwaves, only to find them filled with something that sounds a lot like wailing and gnashing of teeth run through a “creepypasta” audio filter. It’s like an especially eerie form of jamming, as it prevents him from reaching HQ or anything outside the anomaly zone. His attempts to get through it end up revealing what seems to be alien radio chatter… which sounds exactly like the jamming except for the fact that it also has the cadence of someone with military training talking over radio. He also scans the laptop Gisela used to send her video message, but finds it to be a normal Macbook Air despite the occasional spooky image bleeding through its normal interface.

  The squad gets together to discuss what they learned here. The detailed workings of this anomaly are still a mystery, but it’s clear that it’s somehow preventing information about what’s going on here from getting out, and it’s likely affecting the minds of those within as well. The last bit would explain why any civilians still say in there rather than simply making a run for it. Assuming it’s being generated by some sort of transmission equipment, its shape indicates that this equipment is located in the hospital and likely guarded by these masked alien invaders. They’re going to have to get in there in order to stop it.

  End of Part 1

  To find out how the assault goes, stay tuned for part 2!

• Feb 20, 2017

  Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Seoni

  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I’ve already converted no less than eleven Pathfinder Iconic characters to Dungeon Fantasy, one for each of the templates from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers. You’ll also know that you can find a handy list of all of them in this page, which declares that the project as a whole is done. So why the heck are you seeing yet another of these articles here?

  Well, the simplest reason is because I wanted to do another one. Consider this a bonus track for the Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy album! As such, it doesn’t quite follow the rules I set for myself in the main set of eleven iconics.

  You see, our subject today is Seoni the Sorceress. Here she is:

  

  I have to say this isn’t one of Wayne Reynolds’ best efforts, since the proportions and the pose are a bit weird. That aside, Seoni stands out among the Iconics in that she shows quite a bit of skin, tough at least her bio gives us a reason for that. That bio is somewhat split between the page containing her d20 stats and this blog post.

  As the Iconic Sorcerer, Seoni represents a class that’s present in the Pathfinder and d20 core rules, but absent from DF 1, which had the Swashbuckler instead. It’s not hard to see why: any of the “traditional” spellcasters from DF 1 are already about as versatile as a d20 Sorcerer. It would be a while until GURPS had an officially published template that had the same relationship to the other spellcasters as their d20 counterparts. That template turned out to be the aptly-named Sorcerer from Pyramid #3/82, which in turn uses rules from GURPS Thaumathology: Sorcery.

  So now that I’ve explained my reasoning, let’s look at what we can learn from Seoni’s bio and stats.

  • She comes from the land of Varisia, and belongs to the nomadic culture of its original inhabitants. This culture is roughly analogous to the Romani of our world.

  • Due to her mystical bloodline, Seoni has experienced mysterious visions since a very young age, and her quest to understand those has led to the awakening of her powers. The tatoos covering most of her body are both a status symbol in her culture and a focus for her magic.

  • Seoni’s obsession with being in control of her own fate combines with her penchant for detailed plans to make her look like a “control freak” to her companions.

  • She is extremely blasty. The vast majority of her abilities deal direct damage, usually with fire or lightning. The rest are either straightforward combat debuffs (glitterdust, dispel magic) or energy barriers (mage armor, shield, wall of force).

  Our version of Seoni certainly manages to uphold the “less known spells cast more frequently” motto of the d20 Sorcerer. She knows all of four spells, but she can cast all of them all day long without even spending FP as long as she can both move and speak when she does so. She can only use one of them at a time, but Accelerated Casting allows her to switch effects without pausing. She can do passably well at social endeavors with her training in Diplomacy and her Charisma, and can improvise any minor spell with a full cost of 7 points or less, but what she’s really good at is spamming lightning bolts all day, every day.

  As for power-ups, she can always use more Sorcery spells! Her mundane skills are lacking a bit, so any spare points there also help. Those players willing to save points for a while can fully master Dispel Magic for an additional 48 points, which would enable Seoni to cast and maintain 2 effects at once.

  Seoni, 250-point Human Sorceress

  Attributes

  ST 10 {0}; DX 12 {40}; IQ 12 {40}; HT 12 {20}

  Secondary Characteristics

  Damage 1d-2/1d; Basic Lift 10kg; HP 10; Will 12; Per 12; FP 12; Basic Speed 6.00; Basic Move 6.

  Advantages

  • Accelerated Casting {10}
  • Charisma 3 {15}
  • Magical Lineage (Fate-Touched) {1}
  • Sorcerous Empowerment 6 {70}
  • Sorcery Talent 3 {30}

  Sorcery Spells

  • Dispel Magic {12}

    Attempts to negate every instance of magic within the area. See Sorcery, p. 21.

    • Keywords: Area (Leveled), Resisted (Will or spell).
    • Full Cost: 60 points.
    • Casting Roll: Will.
    • Range: Unlimited.
    • Duration: Instantaneous.

  • Fly {10}

    Allows the target to fly with a Move equal to their Basic Speed x2 for three minutes.

    • Keywords: Obvious.
    • Full Cost: 48 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Three Minutes.
    • Statistics: Affliction 1 (Flight with Magical, +360%; Increased 1/2D x10, +15%; No Signature, +20%; Fixed Duration +0%; Sorcery, -15%).

  • Lightning 3 {7}

    An Innate Attack doing 3d burning surge damage. Metal armor counts as DR 1. Targets struck by it must make a HT roll at -1 per 2 injury suffered or be physically stunned (HT to recover in subsequent turns). Behaves unpredictably around conductors.

    • Keywords: Missile, Obvious.
    • Full Cost: 35 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Beam) to hit.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Instantaneous.
    • Statistics: Per Pyramid #3/82, p. 13.

  • Mage Armor {8}

    Gives the subject an extra DR 5 for the duration.

    • Keywords: Buff.
    • Full Cost: 40 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Three minutes.
    • Statistics: Affliction 1 (DR 5 with Magical and Force Field, +280%; Increased 1/2D x10, +15%; No Signature, +20%; Fixed Duration, +0%; Sorcery, -15%)

  Disadvantages

  • Bad Temper {-10}
  • Curious (12) {-5}
  • Disciplines of Faith (Ritualism) {-5}
  • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
  • Stubborness {-5}
  • Unnatural Features 5 (glowing tatoos, otherwordly air) {-5}
  • Weirdness Magnet {-15}

  Skills

  • Climbing (A) DX-1 {1} - 11
  • Diplomacy (H) IQ-1 {2} - 11
  • Fast-Talk (A) IQ-1 {1} - 12
  • First Aid (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Hiking (A) HT {2} - 12
  • Innate Attack (Beam) (E) DX+4 {12} - 16
  • Scrounging (E) Per {1} - 12
  • Staff (A) DX+3 {12} - 15
  • Thaumathology (VH) IQ-2 {2} - 10

  Loadout

  • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
  • Quarterstaff [Torso]: Damage thr+2 cr or sw+2 cr. Parry +2. $10, 2kg.
  • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
  • Paut x2 [Backpack]: Restores 4 FP of energy lost to magic. $270, 0.5kg.
  • Glow Vial x2 [Backpack]: Sheds light in a 1m radius for 12 hours. $60, 0.5kg.
  • Blanket [Backpack]: $20, 2kg.
  • Rations x4 [Backpack]: $8, 2kg.
  • $572 remaining.
• Feb 18, 2017

  GURPS X-COM: Campaign Setup

  

  The big post-mortem on the Noises in the Dark campaign setting seems to have been relatively well-received, and I’ve been in search of subjects to talk about, so I’m going to make that campaign A Thing here in Octopus Carnival. I’ll post a few more specific descriptions of my setup and play reports for the actual field missions!

  This will break up the blog’s so far relentless stream of fantasy posts with some modern articles, and give me something to write about that’s easier to do than coming up with stats for Dragon’s Dogma Bestiary monsters. After all, everything that’s here already happened. I’m not sure I can post the GURPS stats I made up for the Dreams of Ruin monsters or their environmental effects, but pretty much everything else should be fair game. If you really want to see those stats then throw some money in Mr. Grabowski’s direction so the material can be freed earlier!

  In this post I’ll try to expand a bit on the basic setup for the X-COM side of the campaign, since that part is all me.

  Step One: Recruitment

  This was a forum-based game on RPG.net, so the first thing I did was to put up a recruitment thread. I laid out the basic premise of the game: it’s GURPS X-COM, with soldier PCs and occasional “strategic” interludes where the players themselves made decisions for the organization. Prospective players should post character concepts, and I would choose which ones would fill the group.

  Recruitment was not on a first-come, first-served basis, as I had been burned in the past by doing that and ending up with one or more severely disrupting players. The lot I got from this round of recruitment was pretty nice, though!

  Two of them would end up bailing out from the game before their first in-character post, but I wasn’t too upset with that - it’s pretty much the cost of doing business in forum games. I always recruit a number of players slightly higher than what I think I can easily handle for this reason.

  Obviously if you’re planning on replicating this campaign in a face to face game, you wouldn’t have this issue.

  Step Two: Choose Your Destiny

  Once the initial group of players had been locked down, I presented them with a series of decisions that would shape the campaign to come.

  Choose Your Enemy

  As stated in the post-mortem, this was a choice between the original alien enemies of the X-COM games, and the Dreams of Ruin. There isn’t much to say about the former, as they weren’t chosen and I never developed them beyond this initial concept.

  Choosing the Dreams meant that the initial incidents X-COM was created to investigate had more to do with traditional horror stories about fairies and witches than they did with classic UFO mythology. Strange things silhouetted against the moon, people vanishing into the woods, and a particularly notable incident where all the medical drugs stored in a hospital in Cologne went bad at once for no readily apparent reason.

  Choose your Leaders

  In response to this, a group of 36 nations founded the Council and pooled their resources to form X-COM. The idea behind the Council is nice: the nations of Earth gather together to repel a global threat! The reality is a little darker, as despite all delegates theoretically having the same amount of decision power, the richer members contribute with more money and see themselves as entitled to more influence. The ruling elites of each country also simply cannot resist using this clandestine military and intelligence organization to handle private issues that have little to do with aliens.

  These negative tendencies are greatly amplified by having the Dreams of Ruin as the Enemy, since one of their main effects is to amplify negative emotions in their affected area. From the start I planned to have the corruption in the Council nations to play an important role in the story.

  There were fierce debates among the Council members over who would be its commanding officer. Sure, they all wanted someone who could get the job done, but they were also looking out for the interests of their specific nations. Finally it came down to two choices:

  The first was “Mr. Fox”, an American with a long list of shady black ops in his curriculum, in places like the Middle East and the Balkans. He actually went missing for years to get away from all that stuff, and they only managed to bring him back because the fate of the world literally depended on it. He’s pretty much a Big Boss expy. He has a reputation of taking good care of his men, recruiting the best and giving them top of the line training. The downside is that a lot of Council members don’t like him very much, and he has no time to spare sucking up to them.

  The second was “Mr. Smiley”, a well-connected member of the British intelligence community. He brings from that line of business the idea that human assets are expendable if it means the success of the mission. As such, his agents are individually less well-trained than Fox’s would be, but there are more of them. And his connections mean the Council loves him, in no small part because he promises to look out for several of its member nations’ private interests. He is, of course, a George Smiley expy.

  In game terms, the players were given the chance to vote for one of the two candidates. Choosing Fox meant the PCs would be built on 250 points, and would get extensive drone and robot support once that became available in the tech tree. It also meant that X-COM would eventually have a nasty falling out with the Council, due to his inability to stay on good terms with them by playing along with the corruption present there. As they would still be the only ones with any real chance against the threat, they would be forced to go rogue.

  Choosing Smiley meant that the PCs would be built on 150 points, and would be part of a larger unit with several other NPCs. The opposition wouldn’t get any weaker, which meant that unit would almost certainly face significant casualties when it fought the aliens. Some of their missions wouldn’t involve aliens at all, but would instead be about doing dirty jobs for one member nation or another. This X-COM would be very well-funded, but less effective at combating the Dreams. The “big falling out” here would ideally be between the PCs and the organization.

  Whatever commander they chose would lead X-COM, and the other would vanish from the game… or so the players thought. The commander they didn’t choose would go on to form a rogue organization that would make an appearance later. Yes, this would be a version of EXALT from the 2012 computer game. Or rather, X-ALT. The hyphens are important!

  They chose Mr. Fox, which meant Mr. Smiley went into the cold to form his black ops squad in the service of those corrupt special interests in the Council nations. This makes X-ALT a “bad guy” faction.

  Choose Your Science

  The players were similarly given three choices of Lead Scientist for X-COM: Dr. Moira Vahlen, Dr. Raymond Shen, and Dr. Yuri Sokolov.

  The first two were taken straight from the 2012 computer game. Here, Vahlen is a German doctor and particularly skilled in the biological sciences. Shen is a Chinese engineer and skilled in robotics. Sokolov, the original character, is a Russian and also a doctor, but his main area of interest is paranormal research - no one alive knows more about all those weird Soviet psychic research programs than him.

  Any of the three would be equally adept at leading X-COM’s research efforts, and their different areas of expertise translated into different “free” starting technologies as the new lead scientist used the organization’s resources to turn their previous research into something useful in fighting aliens. Vahlen would give them advanced medkits; Shen would give them flying scout drones.

  They chose Sokolov, who was a bit of a special case. He spends that time convincing his colleagues that he’s not a useless crackpot, so there’s no bonus tech… but he turns out to be just perfect for leading research into Alien Crazy, which in this case means magic.

  Unlike the choice of commander, all three scientists are part of the team regardless, along with a number of other nameless NPCs - this is just to decide who calls the shots.

  Step Three: Hurry Up and Wait

  With all the choices made, X-COM installed itself in its brand new underground base in the remodeled Cheyenne Mountain complex, and began scanning the skies for the alien menace… only to find nothing for a whole month. At the end of that month something remarkable happened, but I’ll leave that for the next post on this subject. Stay tuned!

• Feb 14, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Eyes

  

  Today is Valentine’s Day in the US, so this is me making eyes at you. Not that kind of eyes, though.

  In Dragon’s Dogma, the creatures known as Eyes are pure monsters: they have no natural habitat or ecological niche. They are an expression of corruption from beyond the Rift, appearing only in places where the world’s veil is thin and supernatural evil is abundant. While they are living creatures, their forms and anatomy don’t even pay lip service to normal phisiological principles. Tough highly intelligent, they never communicate or negotiate, and always try to kill non-Eyes that run into them.

  They come in several varieties, all of which share some of the characteristics of the Eye of Death found in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, p. 14. In fact, the Eye of Death could easily be another member of the this monster family.

  Update (2017-02-21): The Gazer has its own stat block now, and is even nastier with the addition of a couple more gaze attacks.

  Vile Eyes

  The smallest of the bunch, Vile Eyes look like fleshy spheres with a single lidless eye always staring ahead. While they are not as agile or perceptive as an Eye of Death, they share the same death gaze ability and can protect themselves with a nigh-impenetrable energy barrier. Fortunately for their victims, they can’t do both of those things at the same time. Switching from the barrier to one of the other powers and back requires a Concentrate maneuver, giving the PCs a window in which to hit them.

  Unlike their larger cousins described in this article, Vile Eyes are usually found in small groups. Despite their small amount of HP, they are usually worthies.

  ST 5; DX 10; IQ 10; HT 11

  SM -1; Dodge 8; DR 0;

  HP 10; Will 10; Per 10; FP 10

  Basic Speed 5.5; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Vile Eye DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Death Gaze (Resisted by HT-5): 1d toxic damage. Range 20. Cosmic, ignores DR.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals);

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Evil Eyes

  Not to be confused with Vile Eyes, these things are leathery spheres over three meters in diameter whose body is dominated by a huge fanged maw that opens to reveal the central eye. A large number of tentacles protrude from the central body, each one thick as a human leg and tipped by yet another maw. They are invariably highly proficient spellcasters in addition to possessing debilitating gaze attacks and a barrier similar to that of the Vile Eyes. The monster’s tentacles reach beyond the barrier and thus are always vulnerable, but that also means it doesn’t need to lower the barrier to attack with them!

  Evil Eyes are solitary, and they like to clear out a large, spacious portion of whatever dungeon or region they emerge in for use as a lair. For all anyone knows, they just sit there waiting for intruders to kill - stories about Evil Eye lairs tend to be about mysterious places no one returns from. Very few people know of the creature’s existence. They are obviously boss monsters.

  ST 35; DX 12; IQ 16; HT 12

  SM +3; Dodge 9; DR 5 (body), 0 (eye, tentacles);

  HP 35; Will 16; Per 16; FP 30

  Basic Speed 6; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Evil Eye DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Debilitating Gaze (-): Works as Dispel Magic cast at skill 20. The target must also resist with HT-5 or be Stunned for seconds equal to the margin of failure. Range 30.
  • Bite (14): Damage 4d-2 imp. Reach C.
  • Tentacle Bite x8 (16): 1d imp, plus the target is automatically grappled at ST 15. Reach 3.
  • Spells (-): Any the GM deems appropriate, at skill 20 for Hard spells and 19 for Very Hard ones.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Indomitable; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals); Magery 5; See Invisible; Unfazeable; Vibration Sense (Air).

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Tentacles!

  The Evil Eye’s eight tentacles act as indepentent characters. They have ST and HP 15, Dodge 10, and attack using the statistics shown on the main Evil Eye stat block. Once they grapple a target, they’ll attempt to drag them to the Eye’s maw. Multiple tentacles can cooperate in this!

  Damaging a tentacle doesn’t damage the Eye itself. Bringing a tentacle to 0 HP severs it and takes it out of the fight… but the Eye can spend 5 Concentrate maneuvers with its barrier down to instantly regenerate all of its tentacles!

  The Gazer

  Is this particularly ancient Evil Eye? The progenitor of the whole species? Something else? No one knows. Its true form cannot exist all at once in our dimension, but the visible bits are an even larger Evil Eye with an even more terrible bite. It can use both the Evil Eye’s debilitating gaze and the Vile Eye’s lethal one at will, as well as cast spells or simply slam victims with its incredible bulk.

  ST 55; DX 12; IQ 16; HT 12

  SM +5; Dodge 9; DR 5 (body), 0 (eye, tentacles);

  HP 55; Will 16; Per 16; FP 50

  Basic Speed 6; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Gazer DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Death Gaze (Resisted by HT-5): 1d toxic damage. Range 20. Cosmic, ignores DR.
  • Debilitating Gaze (-): Works as Dispel Magic cast at skill 20. The target must also resist with HT-5 or be Stunned for seconds equal to the margin of failure. Range 30.
  • Petryfing Gaze (20 vs. HT): As Flesh to Stone (Magic, p.51). Range 20.
  • Blinding Gaze (20 vs. HT): As Strike Blind (Magic, p. 38). Range 20.
  • Bite (16): Damage 6d imp. Reach C.
  • Tentacle Bite x16 (16): 2d imp, plus the target is automatically grappled at ST 20. Reach 3.
  • Spells (-): Any the GM deems appropriate, at skill 20 for Hard spells and 19 for Very Hard ones.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Indomitable; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals); Magery 5; See Invisible; Unfazeable; Vibration Sense (Air).

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Even More Tentacles!

  The main spherical body has no tentacles, but the creature can summon up to 16 of them from rifts that open in the walls or floor and move around at Move 4. Severing a tentacle only means it will be automatically replaced by another in 2 turns.

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