Monsters In Fate?

So, I've built my own setting over the last 12+ years, slowly but surely developing it's elements, long before I discovered Fate Core. It's really the best system I've found since it's so simple at it's base, and so flexible. I have been able to adapt it very easily, even if that means adding several layers of complexity to make it FEEL right (or rather, to make it feel like I want to make the world feel). However, the Fate Core book seems to assume mostly human enemies, and I'm not really very sure how to make the more... monstrous things feel right. So, I'm here to ask for help from more experienced Fate Core users, with the caveat that I am intentionally making my version of the game a bit more complicated by adding Races, Magic rules, and a few other things that aren't quite traditional to Fate Core. Mainly, I need ideas on how to make monsters that are interesting challenges (examples are welcome too, since my setting is very ripe for original monsters). In addition to that though, I have a particular monster that I want to at least try to make more interesting. Sand Worms are a type of monster found almost exclusively on the so-called "Prison Continent" of Cathorius in my setting (about the size and general state of Australia actually, though I say this with only a vague understanding from brief google map exploration), which is covered in a massive desert. They are MEANT to be a very dangerous foe, such that a party of adventurers would worry about encountering one, but my one attempt to throw them at a party in one of my experimental one-shots ended with him getting 3 Boosts on him, each with 2 uses, and then one-shot from a 14 shift attack using all those advantages, and it only damaged one enemy slightly. I dunno if that was simply me running the scene poorly or what, but that didn't give it NEARLY the level of threat I meant for a Sand Worm. My system even has a system for Size advantages, such that the Sand Worm reduced damage he took by 2 for being one size larger than the opponent. I don't remember what the Sand Worm rolled against it, but I know it didn't really matter with that +6 bonus from the Boosts, all of which were caused to basically force the worm to keep it's mouth open for a direct attack down it's throat (which I hadn't expected, so I rolled with it since it worked, even if it made me feel like my poor worm wasn't living up to his threatening reputation). The major traits for the worm are it's Large in it's original design, though I think I may end up making multiple "levels" now, with an "adult" being at LEAST Huge (2 size categories larger than Normal, which is the average size for a character), and maybe also with a body that is based on the VLM concept shown in one of the supplement books, with either 2 or 3 zones making up the body's total size, though if I do this, I'm not sure WHAT I can do with it yet. It digs through sand like dolphins swim through water, can sense the movement of things on the sand within a moderate range, and is suppose to be fairly durable and strong (partly covered just by it's size). I'm VERY open to help on building this in Fate Core though, as I'm still really struggling to get how to build NPCs well in it, especially when they're not one of my races. So, can anyone help me either with my Sand Worm or ideas for original monsters?

There are a lot of creatures here that you can get ideas from :&nbsp; <a href="http://inkwellideas.com/fate_creatures/" rel="nofollow">http://inkwellideas.com/fate_creatures/</a> Some creatures might include a kind of "Armor" extra feature, or "Weapon"- I think it uses something like this optional rule here :&nbsp; <a href="https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/weapons-a" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/weapons-a</a>... You could also use some help from here:&nbsp; <a href="https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/monsters" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/monsters</a> If you tell me the things your Sand worm can do, I might be able to make a character sheet for it. Though you will figure out that when a party fights a single creature they can quite easily gather up boosts and free invokes. So if you wish to make encounters a bit more threatening it would be suggested that you add more creatures in an encounter, or have the creature take more actions within a turn~&nbsp; You could count one creature as two or more if you need to.&nbsp;

Sand Worms are able to basically "swim" through sand like water. They're very large and strong, with a maw of basically razors for a mouth, which makes being in front of them basically a death sentence for the average person. It's naturally camouflaged in the desert due to it's yellow coloring, so even when not in the sand it's not exactly easy to spot from any great distance. Inspirations for the creatures are Graboids, the sandworms from Beetlejuice or Dune, and similar things. This is why I'm thinking of using the VLM stuff, since that would fit pretty easily for the larger ones, if I can figure out what Aspects to define each Zone as, and work out how it would work. I'd need to work out at least two versions though. One for "babies" (which I'm using as a blanket term to include newborns, children, and young adults), and one for full grown Sand Worms. I'll definitely be going through those links to get inspiration for other creatures though, as that will help me a LOT. Thanks for that!

Whenever I make monsters for my game I tend to make it along the same lines as a character but with very strong stunts. In my experience it is better to kit towards defense so that the fight goes longer and the party doesn't get bodied by high numbers.&nbsp;For your sand worm it could have +4 defending with physique against smaller foes and a physique equal to the party's highest skills. Give it a fight score one to two higher than the party's strongest skill and you have an enemy parties would rather avoid. The alternative is to not make it a big stompy solo encounter and add some young sandworms to encounters to generate advantages. FATE is a system where having big numbers relative to the group is ok, people don't really get one shot and often have a better action economy than npcs.

I saw a kind of Monster Manual for Fate creatures, COLLECTANEA CREATURAE.&nbsp; It is from a 3rd-party company: <a href="http://drivethrurpg.com/product/130724/Collectanea" rel="nofollow">http://drivethrurpg.com/product/130724/Collectanea</a>... The Fate System Toolkit explains that, for really big monsters, you can design every limb and the head as a different character with separate attacks, and the puny PCs must each deal with only one at a time and would have to run a lot to get to another.&nbsp; In D&D-speak that would be claw/claw/claw/claw/bite. I had occasion to use a worm beastie, a giant slug, where I counted the front, middle and back as separate entities (and even separate tokens oriented differently to each other on Roll20).

Pierre S. said: I saw a kind of Monster Manual for Fate creatures, COLLECTANEA CREATURAE.&nbsp; It is from a 3rd-party company: <a href="http://drivethrurpg.com/product/130724/Collectanea" rel="nofollow">http://drivethrurpg.com/product/130724/Collectanea</a>... The Fate System Toolkit explains that, for really big monsters, you can design every limb and the head as a different character with separate attacks, and the puny PCs must each deal with only one at a time and would have to run a lot to get to another.&nbsp; In D&D-speak that would be claw/claw/claw/claw/bite. I couldn't get that since it costs money, unless I found a free version somewhere. Designing a worm as a multi-part creature is hard since, well.... it's a worm.

The front of the worm has the business end, but its tail swings free and attacks with its bulk.&nbsp; I gave the middle of my giant slug an attack as well, maybe chemical-based.

I suppose I could try to get creative. I've always been stumped on coming up with unique elements to give the Sand Worms, I just knew I wanted them to exist and be a "major threat" to people on the continent.

So, I have a bit of an idea for what I might do for the adult Sand Worms, I just need a bit of help. Split them up into 3 zones. One zone for the head, one zone for the rest of the body, and one zone for inside the body, which can be targeted through the mouth with a ranged attack, or you can try to suicidally jump into the mouth to try and get to it. The inside body zone would be more fragile than the other two, and would possess an attack of its own that can be fired out of the mouth. Might be zone-based, but it will almost certainly be acid-based. Might also only let it go off once per scene if it's a zone-wide attack.&nbsp; Any specific help beyond this is appreciated. EDIT: I would appreciate any ideas on how to handle ranged attacks trying to target the inner body through the mouth. I'm still not sure how to handle that.

For very large creatures the idea (from the Fate System Toolkit) is that characters don't have time to zip from one Zone of the creature to another.&nbsp; They have to split up to deal with the monster.&nbsp; Anything that comes out the mouth is a mouth attack, it doesn't count as an attack from the inside.&nbsp; A tail can lash out with momentum, a middle might at best only scrape people OR crush them OR constrict them.&nbsp; Give some hard dimensions of the length and width of the worm and create more than 3 Zones if it's big enough.&nbsp; A giant millipede has one kick-attack PER SECTION.&nbsp; Don't give it two or it may lose its balance!

Pierre S. said: For very large creatures the idea (from the Fate System Toolkit) is that characters don't have time to zip from one Zone of the creature to another.&nbsp; They have to split up to deal with the monster.&nbsp; Anything that comes out the mouth is a mouth attack, it doesn't count as an attack from the inside.&nbsp; A tail can lash out with momentum, a middle might at best only scrape people OR crush them OR constrict them.&nbsp; Give some hard dimensions of the length and width of the worm and create more than 3 Zones if it's big enough.&nbsp; A giant millipede has one kick-attack PER SECTION.&nbsp; Don't give it two or it may lose its balance! Having to split up the team seems a bit counter-intuitive. It also doesn't explain what to do if there are more party members than zones. I still like the idea of what I mentioned, even if I can't do the spitting attack.

Randy Oest has a bunch of Fate articles on his&nbsp; website (Compilation of Fate RPG posts) , including tiered opponents. Check them out. /Matt

In Fate the best structure for monsters is usually that they aren't dangerous because they have high stats but because what they can do. What are the 3 most important key features of this Sand Worm? Then think why those are such a big deal in the narrative. Fate definitely does not expect human opponents.

The big things about sand worms are their subterranean nature, their deadly mouth of razor-sharp teeth, and their massive size. Just not sure how to really work with all that.

Bunch of ideas:&nbsp; Give the sandworms the aspect Too Big to be Harmed by Anything but Artillery or Demon-level Magicks.&nbsp;If it's an aspect, it's true. The players won't do any damage to the sandworm with regular firearms and hand-to-hand weapons, only with heavy stuff. If you go this route, it should be common knowledge among your PCs that you can't easily kill a sandworm. Don't spring this on them as a surprise. Give the sandworms a lot of stress boxes and consequences. I don't necessarily recommend this, as the objective is not to turn the fight into a grindfest, but if your players are regularly doing 14 points of damage, it's an option. Don't forget to let the sandworm defend itself against created advantages.&nbsp; Give the sandworms a lot of armor. Armor subtracts from damage, but it doesn't reduce a boost to a miss, or turn a miss into a spectacular miss. Armor: 5 would reduce any damage the sandworm takes by 5 points. Give the sandworms a weapon rating. Weapon: 5 would increase any damage they cause by 5 points. Weapon ratings don't turn a miss into a boost or a hit. See Extras in Fate Core. Check out the scale rules from the Fate System Toolkit. Give the players a scale of 1 and the sandworm a scale of 4. That will give the sandworm +/-3 on every roll. <a href="https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/scale" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/scale</a> Give the sandworms a weight of 20 (PCs have a weight of 1 each). See the weight rules in the War of Ashes SRD. If the sandworm outweighs the PCs 2 to 1, it can replace any Fate die with a +. If it outweighs them 4 to 1, it can replace any two Fate dice with a +.&nbsp; <a href="https://fate-srd.com/war-ashes/advanced-conflict" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/war-ashes/advanced-conflict</a> Let the sandworms attack everyone in a single zone with one attack, without splitting their attack. They're that big. You could even give them two attacks per turn (one for the head, one for the tail) and allow them to attack two different zones or the same zone. And lastly: Your players got creative with creating advantages, so maybe it's okay that they were able to take down a sandworm.

Ron S. said: Bunch of ideas: Give the sandworms the aspect Too Big to be Harmed by Anything but Artillery or Demon-level Magicks. If it's an aspect, it's true. The players won't do any damage to the sandworm with regular firearms and hand-to-hand weapons, only with heavy stuff. If you go this route, it should be common knowledge among your PCs that you can't easily kill a sandworm. Don't spring this on them as a surprise. Give the sandworms a lot of stress boxes and consequences. I don't necessarily recommend this, as the objective is not to turn the fight into a grindfest, but if your players are regularly doing 14 points of damage, it's an option. Don't forget to let the sandworm defend itself against created advantages. Give the sandworms a lot of armor. Armor subtracts from damage, but it doesn't reduce a boost to a miss, or turn a miss into a spectacular miss. Armor: 5 would reduce any damage the sandworm takes by 5 points. Give the sandworms a weapon rating. Weapon: 5 would increase any damage they cause by 5 points. Weapon ratings don't turn a miss into a boost or a hit. See Extras in Fate Core. Check out the scale rules from the Fate System Toolkit. Give the players a scale of 1 and the sandworm a scale of 4. That will give the sandworm +/-3 on every roll. <a href="https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/scale" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/scale</a> Give the sandworms a weight of 20 (PCs have a weight of 1 each). See the weight rules in the War of Ashes SRD. If the sandworm outweighs the PCs 2 to 1, it can replace any Fate die with a +. If it outweighs them 4 to 1, it can replace any two Fate dice with a +. <a href="https://fate-srd.com/war-ashes/advanced-conflict" rel="nofollow">https://fate-srd.com/war-ashes/advanced-conflict</a> Let the sandworms attack everyone in a single zone with one attack, without splitting their attack. They're that big. You could even give them two attacks per turn (one for the head, one for the tail) and allow them to attack two different zones or the same zone. And lastly: Your players got creative with creating advantages, so maybe it's okay that they were able to take down a sandworm. My game already has a scale system in place. It wouldn't work the way your suggestion said though. The scale ranges from Tiny to (Whatever is needed for the largest things ever, so far Huge for the Sand Worm). Difference in Scale determines the effect, with smaller creatures getting bonuses to hit and evade larger creatures, but larger creatures getting bonuses to resist damage and inflict damage. In this way, if the larger creature manages to hit (which isn't easy), they'll do massive damage, but they're easy to hit, if not very hard to hurt. This would effectively be the same as having Armor and a Weapon that is size-based, rather than outright armor and a weapon. I'm not sure how well that would work if they ALSO had Armor though. The Aspect ideas are interesting, and something I'll need to consider more. That weight system could work, but I'm not sure at the moment how it would work out. I'll need to think on that one carefully if I do use it, especially how it would work with the Size system I'm using. Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Okay, so I've got a design for the Sand Worm now, I just want some feedback on if you think it will accomplish the feeling I want, or if it will just frustrate players. Adult Sand Worm Blind as a Bat Size: Huge (approximately 60-80 feet in length, with a mouth about 8-9 feet across) As a Huge Creature, you gain a +2 Shift to damage opponents for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is, and reduce damage you take to them by 2 for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is, and they gain +1 to Attack and Defend for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is. You also become a VLM with 2 normal zones, and a special third zone inside your body. (note that I am taking some liberties with the VLM stuff) (Size Scale: Tiny &lt; Small &lt; Normal &lt; Large &lt; Huge) Zone 1 - Head/Mouth: If an enemy is damaged by the Mouth and it succeeds with style, they are "eaten", becoming Grappled inside the mouth. The mouth can only eat one enemy at a time, though others can be slammed by the mouth (it can't damage people in it's mouth on the same turn it tries to slam into someone). If someone who is being Eaten fails by 3 or more again, they are swallowed and move to Zone 3 (Inner Body). 4 Physical Stress boxes + additional mild and moderate physical consequences, 2 mental stress boxes. Lesser Weakness: If the mouth is damaged, it cannot attempt to eat someone that turn, and must pay Fate to try in the future. Zone 2 - Body/Tail: A tough hide prevents most damage to this part of the body by non-magical attacks. It is also very rough, so anyone touching it must make Athletics checks to avoid taking damage if it is moving.&nbsp;4 Physical Stress boxes + additional mild and moderate physical consequences, 2 mental stress boxes. Zone 3 - Inner Body: Cannot be targeted except from the Mouth with a Ranged Attack, or from someone in the same zone. Damages everything in the zone. 2 physical stress boxes, 2 mental stress boxes Other Aspects: The Subterranean Terror of the Sand, Big Enough To Swallow a Ty'goth Whole (for the record, these are one of the larger playable Races), Hidden Beneath the Sand Extras: Tremorsense Senses via earth tremors; does not need to see opponents as long as it is in contact with the earth. Ambush Predator &nbsp; When the Sand Worm attacks, it can make an Athletics check with an opposition of 2 (or by the Physique of players that may not wish to let it go underground) to begin moving underground. If it succeeds, the head is underground at the end of the attack. If it succeeds with style, the body is also underground at the end of the attack. If it ties or succeeds, the Sand Worm will move entirely underground at the end of the round. Sand Stealth When the Sand Worm is in sand, it gets +2 to Stealth checks. Skills: Epic (+7): Physique Fantastic (+6): Fight Superb (+5): Tremorsense Great (+4): Athletics Fair (+2): Stealth The benefits on Zone 1 are technically also an Extra, but listed there because that's where it matters. The intention is taking out the mouth won't defeat it, just remove it's best weapon, but taking out either Zones 2 or 3 will (with zone 2 being really hard, and zone 3 being really easy if you can get to it).

Just because I need to work them out too, since they might matter.... Juvenile Sand Worm Blind as a Bat Size: Normal to Large (approximately 8-15 feet in length, with a mouth about 5-6 feet across) As a Large Creature, you gain a +2 Shift to damage opponents for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is, and reduce damage you take to them by 2 for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is, and they gain +1 to Attack and Defend for each Scale Stage smaller your opponent is. As Normal, the benefits still apply to smaller creatures.) (Size Scale: Tiny &lt; Small &lt; Normal &lt; Large &lt; Huge) Other Aspects: The Subterranean Terror of the Sand, Physically Resistant (halve physical damage or advantages based on physical damage), Hidden Beneath the Sand Extras: Tremorsense Senses via earth tremors; does not need to see opponents as long as it is in contact with the earth. Ambush Predator&nbsp; When the Sand Worm attacks, it can make an Athletics check with an opposition of 2 (or by the Physique of players that may not wish to let it go underground) to begin moving underground. If it succeeds with style, it moves underground at the end of the attack. If it ties or succeeds, the Sand Worm will move underground at the end of the round. Sand Stealth When the Sand Worm is in sand, it gets +2 to Stealth checks. Swallow An Enemy &nbsp;If an enemy at least 1 size smaller than the Sand Worm is damaged by the Mouth and it succeeds with style, they are "eaten", becoming Grappled inside the mouth. The mouth can only eat one enemy at a time, though others can be slammed by the mouth (it can't damage people in it's mouth on the same turn it tries to slam into someone). Enemies can only be swallowed if killed. Lesser Weakness: If the mouth is damaged, it cannot attempt to eat someone that turn, and must pay Fate to try in the future. 4 Physical Stress boxes + additional mild physical consequence if Large, 2 mental stress boxes. Skills: Superb (+5): Physique (if Large) Great (+4): Fight, Physique (if Normal) Good (+3): Athletics,&nbsp;Tremorsense Average (+1): Stealth