Tales of EvenFall

Introduction 

Game Rules

Evenfall Campaign 

Forgotten Realms 3E Campaign

Bestiary

I am working on developing a bestiary for Tales of Evenfall. For the campaign I am running now I have been using monster manuals from various editions of D&D. To make my game a completely playable work of its own it should have its own bestiary. I recently purchased a book of animals to help with my research for the bestiary. From the book I intend to pick out some interesting creepy crawlers and animals to stat for my game. Some of these animals will be used to create humanoid hybrids. Of course, my game could have some of the more popular monsters found in fantasy literature like: orcs, goblins, dragons, unicorns and undead. Maybe people would miss them if they were not present in there traditional form in my game.

One thing that is important to me is monster stat block size. I want the GM (Game Master) to be able to read and reference the stats easily during a game session. I am still experimenting with some different formats to present monsters. The template above is the format I am presently working with. At this point the numbers are just a baseline to begin to give the creatures stats based on size. Stats of individual creatures based on size will still vary. During development the name of the monster will replace the size information in this table for the purpose of statting the monster. The size of the monster will appear in a text description of the monster in the bestiary section of the rules. I am not sure the present format will be the most helpful in play. There are two entries for attack (attack and damage) two for defense (defense and damage reduction) and two for resistance checks (magic resistance and poison resistance). This may be a lot for the GM to manage.

My thoughts on the monster sizes were that bigger equals more powerful. This might not be the best approach. I will use the table to create a miniature version of a large creature or a large version of miniature creature. That is, I could create a giant-sized tic by using the row for Giant in the table. Or I could have a dragon statted at various sizes based on various life stages.

I am still at the brain storming stage in the development of this bestiary. I am wondering if I can just make up all of the monsters for my game based on real world creatures or hybrids thereof instead of mythological ones. Did you know there is a flying salamander? The flying salamander could be a 'dragon' in my game. This dragon would be much larger than the type found in the real world. Some of these giant salamanders could be given special abilities besides their natural ones like spells for instance. All of the unusual creatures, including the hybrids, could be given a fantasy twist. I am concerned that people would miss the mythical creatures if I didn’t include.

 Beast Template