A staple of RPGs is the challenges that the player characters face as they adventure. Perhaps the most diverse and interesting challenges are the enemies against which a party stands in battle. These foes can be fully realized characters in their own right, but just as often are monsters. Animal Intelligence and Mindless monsters, in particular, serve a vital role in any campaign. They can allow characters to flex their more powerful abilities without having to worry about uncomfortable ethical implications. Even the most consistent group of redeemers and philanthropists can stretch their muscles against an ooze or a construct without concern for the enemy’s rights or feelings.
Realm of Runes includes a chapter dedicated to providing a framework with which any GM can quickly and reliably create new challenges, or convert them from other systems, to provide appropriate encounters for adventuring parties. As the system has been developed, these rules in particular have seen the most extensive playtesting to make sure that encounters are tuned just right. With practice, the rules for monster and NPC creation can be used to create a new monster from scratch in about 5 minutes, and take even less time to convert encounters from other similar systems, or adjust a challenge's level up or down to make use of an adventure earlier or later than it might have been originally planned for.
THE MONSTER TRIANGLE
One of the most important aspects of any monster is the role it is intended to fill in play. Diversity over the course of a campaign, or even within the same encounter, keeps things fresh and interesting. Realm of Runes uses a Role Triangle (as shown here) to sort encounters into different kinds of roles, providing a good set of guidelines for what a GM should expect when using each one. Each individual monster is categorized by its place in the diagram, as determined by its focus in these attributes: power, defense and durability. How much of a focus is put into each one of these areas impacts what an encounter with that creature is like.
POWER
Power represents how hard, and how accurately, a foe attacks. This can represent physical strength, but can also be potent offensive magical abilities. A creature that focuses on power hits characters where it hurts most directly: Hit Points. While not necessarily fatal, encounters with a creature that focuses on power should usually require players to spend resources on healing during or after the fight. Power-based encounters generally reward players that have more of a defensive focus, allowing themselves and their allies to withstand the barrage and come out victorious.
DEFENSE
Defense represents how hard a foe is to damage. While often and most obviously accomplished with a high Armor Class, this focus can also represent good saving throws or damage resistances. A creature that focuses on defense is a threat, not because it hits particularly hard or can survive a lot of hits, but because it makes hurting it hard to accomplish in the first place. Defense-based encounters generally reward clever play by discovering which types of attacks are most effective, and making each success count for as much as possible.
DURABILITY
Durability represents a foe’s staying power, and its ability to roll with the damage it takes. This can be accomplished by a large pool of Hit Points, but can also be achieved by abilities that allow continual or large amounts of Hit Point or condition recovery. Durable creatures are not necessarily threats to deal great damage, and are not usually difficult to deal damage to, but that damage has a nasty habit of being shrugged off one way or another. Durability-based encounters generally reward offensive play, as hitting them hard and frequently is necessary to overcome their staying power.
MONSTER ROLES
Assigning a monster a role from the Role Triangle gives a strong indication of how that challenge should likely play out when it makes contact with the players. The chosen role also has a lot of automatic mechanical implications during the actual steps of monster creation that make coming up with the statistics of your encounter quick and easy. When monster stat blocks appear in the Menageries, and when new monsters are included in adventures, the role that monster was built to serve is also included. This makes telling what sort of play style each encounter prefers easy to do at just a quick glance if you need to come up with a challenge on short notice.
BALANCED
A balanced encounter is one that has aspects of all three focuses, without focusing on any one of them in particular. A balanced encounter will have decent punch, decent defenses, and decent staying power, and there is not usually any one particular style of play that is rewarded over any other. Balanced encounters can be used as a comparison to all of the other types, making each one stand out more, or can be particularly potent when applied to a boss enemy of higher level than the party.
GLASS CANNON
The glass cannon is an encounter that focuses entirely on power. Glass cannons hit hard and hit often, but are fairly easily overcome when they are hit in return. Typically fast creatures, they generally avoid staying up close with enemies, preferring to strike powerfully and then make a quick getaway to avoid foes taking advantage of their relative fragility.
AEGIS
The aegis is an encounter that focuses entirely on defense. An aegis will typically stand toe-to-toe with the best the party has to offer, confident in its assumed invulnerability while it wears its enemies down. Often slow, they like their enemies to come to them so they can bring the hurt without having to go out of their way to do it. An aegis might even use Intimidation or other methods of inflicting debilitating de-buffs to a party to make its already good defenses even harder to overcome.
VOID
The void is an encounter that focuses entirely on durability. A void will take everything that a party can dish out, and shrug it off. Often just fast enough to ensure no easy escape, the void is comfortable at range or up close. It simply does not care what the party does, and will follow its own game plan with the assumption that it will be victorious through sheer attrition. Voids with regeneration cannot even die from Hit Point damage unless that ability is suppressed, and such creatures will use that impunity to their advantage at every opportunity.
TANK
The tank is an encounter that has a split focus between power and defense. A tank lacks the total impenetrability of the aegis and the wallop of the glass cannon, but has enough of each to still be dangerous. Tank encounters make use of their defensive ability to buy themselves time to use their good power to dish out enough damage to win.
BRUISER
The bruiser is an encounter that has a split focus between power and durability. Bruisers sacrifice some of the overwhelming power of the glass cannon in order to gain some of the staying power of the void. A bruiser likes to stay in the thick of things, dishing out as much damage as it takes, and making sure it remains the last one standing.
JUGGERNAUT
The juggernaut is an encounter that splits its focus between defense and durability. Juggernauts are both hard to hit and hard to overcome when those hits land. Often slow and implacable, and lacking the ability to end fights quickly, a juggernaut can slowly drain a party’s resources as they struggle to hurt it at all, let alone make that damage stick.
NPC CREATION
Non-Player Characters are an important part of making the game world feel alive. Unlike true monsters, NPCs often seem similar enough to the players, and their abilities, that it feels like they should follow the same rules as they do, and they can. Following the rules of character creation and advancement will yield a character that works well as an NPC, and this can be an especially good idea if the purpose of the NPC is to spend time traveling with and acting in tandem with the party, or to serve as a recurring antagonist that the party will encounter numerous times. These sorts of NPCs feel more grounded when their abilities make sense and are consistent, both across encounters and with the rules as the players understand them.
Making an NPC from scratch using the character creation rules can be time-consuming, though, and since an NPC is unlikely to have enough time in the spotlight to use all of the abilities that a fully-fledged character gets, a lot of that effort can feel wasted. To make this aspect of running a game easier, Realm of Runes offers two other ways of creating NPCs that make GM preparation less intensive, and can even be done on the fly with enough practice. These rules are catered to making NPCs that require statistics, either because they are expected to enter combat with the party or because they are going to aid the party in a way that has mechanical interactions with rules elements, such as Assisting with skill checks or providing healing. If an NPC is only expected to interact with the players in a minor or non-mechanical way, simply having a name and personality in mind can be sufficient and even this amount of preparation may not be necessary.
NPC AS MONSTER
The simplest way to make an NPC functional from a mechanical perspective is to build it as a monster. All of the rules of Monster Creation work just as well when applied to an NPC. Its stats will feel right as a challenge, and as long as it has some abilities that appear to be like player rules, the difference is not important. If an NPC built this way becomes a recurring ally or enemy, it might be a good idea to rebuild the NPC, either using the full character creation rules of the flexible solution below. When going through the steps of monster creation with an NPC, it is especially useful to use its focuses to select appropriate class feats or features. A Vanguard NPC might have some limited Stamina abilities, while a Sorcerer NPC likely has a few spells or Bloodline Powers. Picking just enough to make the NPC feel recognizable, without loading it up with abilities that will not see use, gives the NPC a sprinkling of class flavoring without requiring you to cook the full meal to get it.
FLEXIBLE NPC
This method can be helpful if you think your players might end up having longer-term interactions with an NPC, but are not sure. The Flexible NPC method is essentially an abridged version of the character creation process that leaves a lot of blanks that can be filled in later and on the fly, as necessary. Start with ancestry, class, and level, keeping track of mandatory class features over that range. Choose ancestry, class, general and skill feats important for the NPC, then leave everything else unfinished. As the NPC gets more time to develop, you can “fill in” these unfinished areas with options that are helpful and make sense. This method lets an NPC grow into itself over time, and also does not waste effort if the NPC is killed or makes no further appearances in an adventure for whatever reason.
Monster and NPC creation rules in Realm of Runes are primarily there to help a GM quickly create appropriate challenges by providing an easy and repeatable step-by-step process. This process is the same one used throughout Realm of Runes wherever pregenerated monsters or NPCs show up, and that consistency is important to ensure a nice continuous feeling of character progression. As with most other rules elements in the game, these rules are opt-in. If you have your own preferences and style for more (or less) difficult monsters, these rules are not so rigid as to handcuff you into a certain style. Having transparent mechanics of how the pregenerated monsters are built makes them easier to convert away from to suit your personal touch, just as well as those mechanics make it easy to convert from other systems into Realm of Runes. Next time we'll take a more detailed look at traps and hazards in Realm of Runes, and how they work both in combat and out to make encountering them a seamless experience.
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