Encounters
Reference for weighing and building adversaries. The reasoning behind these numbers is the Bestiary’s Running Adversaries and Building Your Own; this page is the arithmetic on its own.
Soak
Soak is a per-die threshold, not a subtraction - see rules.md. 10 − Soak is the share of damage dice that connect, out of ten.
| Soak | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dice that connect | 100% | 90% | 80% | 70% | 60% | 50% | 40% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 0% |
Threat and Budget
Creature Threat = damage dice × Health Levels ÷ (10 − Soak)
n of them = n² × Threat
Party Budget = 0.7 × party damage dice × party Health Levels ÷ min(10, 10 + Ferocity − average party Soak)
Threat ÷ Budget gives the band. The n² is not a fudge: more creatures deal more damage and survive longer to keep dealing it, so both terms scale with the count.
0.7 is the party’s average chance to connect, the one term not read off a sheet. 10 + Ferocity is there because a creature’s natural weapons are boosted: each die adds the creature’s Ferocity against Soak (see Attack by Role). Most creatures have Ferocity 2.
| Threat ÷ Budget | Band | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| under 0.35 | Trivial | nobody goes down |
| 0.35 - 0.75 | Standard | about one character drops |
| 0.75 - 1.4 | Hard | two or three drop |
| 1.4 - 3.0 | Deadly | most of the party is on the floor |
| over 3.0 | Overwhelming | all of them |
Bands count characters reduced to 0 Health Levels, not deaths. Death requires deliberate further attacks on a downed character, down to −(Health Levels) - see Going Down.
A creature with Soak 10 has no finite Threat against ordinary weapons: no damage die can connect. It is not a band, it is a wall.
Building a Creature
Bounds and meanings, in the order that avoids trouble.
| Stat | Range | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Soak | 0-2 flesh, 3-6 armor or hide, 7+ most weapons fail | whether the fight is possible at all |
| Damage dice | compare to the lowest party Health Levels | whether it drops a character in one turn |
| Health Levels | 5 short, 10 a few rounds, 15 a set piece | how long the fight runs |
| Defense | 0 nearly impossible to reach, 10 trivial |
reach only - follows size and speed, never toughness |
| Attack | set by role - see Attack by Role | how reliably it connects |
| Ferocity | set by role - see Attack by Role | what each natural-weapon die adds against Soak |
| Potence | √(body mass in kg ÷ 10), so it can drag about its own weight | grabs, shoves, breaking things |
| Initiative | (Movement Rate − 5) × 0.7, +3 for an ambush hunter | when it acts: 1d10 + Initiative |
| Psyche | Apex 4, Predator and Fighter 3, Cornered 2, Nuisance 1; +2 supernatural | its Mental wall, and its Social Defense (10 − Psyche) |
| Presence | only if it has a Social or Mental attack, or a mind to read; as Psyche, but Fighter 2 | its Social wall. None means immune to Social attacks |
| Mental Defense | 10 − Presence; with no Presence, by temperament: 8 a feral dog, 5 a wolf, 2 a wolverine |
how hard its mind is to reach |
| Stamina | burst hunter 2, generalist 4, endurance runner 6, never tires 10 | free Rounds in a chase |
| Athletics TN | 10 a cat, 8 a dog, 5 a snake |
climbing, jumping, swimming, the Chase roll |
Caps. Attack, Soak and natural weapon Damage never exceed 10; Defense never exceeds 10. Health Levels have no cap.
Attack by Role
A creature’s Attack comes from what it does when it fights, not from its size or how dangerous it looks. Pick the role, then use its number; a Dire, Giant or Mutated version adds +1 as usual.
| Role | What it means | Attack | Ferocity | Hits a Defense-7 character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apex | Built to kill large prey, including people | 8 | 3 | 85% |
| Predator | Hunts by attacking: dogs, cats, raptors, striking snakes | 7 | 2 | 79% |
| Fighter | Doesn’t hunt you, but commits hard once it fights | 6 | 2 | 72% |
| Cornered | Fights back when trapped, grabbed or stepped on | 5 | 2 | 64% |
| Nuisance | More noise and trouble than danger, or doesn’t really fight | 3 | 1 | 45% |
Natural weapons are boosted. A creature’s bite, claws, gore, sting and the like add its Ferocity to each die against Soak, the way a character’s Ki Infusion does, so even Soak 10 is not a wall against an animal. Social lines are not boosted, and neither are weapons a creature or person carries.
Traits are written in terms of existing rules - Advantage, Disadvantage, Ki, Range Bands, conditions - never a new subsystem.
Check any new creature by computing its Threat and comparing it against a creature already in the index.
Variant Templates
Applied to a creature’s own printed base stats, never to another variant. Full rules and the pre-built examples are in adversary-index.md.
| Soak | Attack | Defense | Health Levels | Movement | Damage | Ferocity | Potence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dire | +1 | +1 | +1 | +3 | +2m | +2 | +1 | ×1.7 |
| Giant | +2 | +1 | +2 | +6 | +3m | +5 | +1 | ×3 |
| Mutated | +1 | +1 | +0 | +2 | +0 | unchanged, plus one Mutation Trait | +1 | unchanged |
Movement floor. A creature whose printed Movement Rate is 5m or less does not get faster under any template.
Round Potence to the nearest whole number, to a maximum of 10. Initiative, Psyche, Presence, Mental Defense, Stamina and Athletics TN don’t change.