Monsters & Encounters

Part 7B as written. What a Minor, a Major, and a Sovereign are made of, what their numbers should be at each Tier, and how a telegraphed move is declared, disrupted, and paid for.

MinorMajorSovereign

Monster Roles: Minors, Majors, and Sovereigns

A monster is defined by two things: its Tier (1-5) and its role, Minor, Major, or Sovereign. NPCs have no level; Tier governs everything about them. NPCs NEVER take wounds. No injury rolls, no death timers, no refills. Only player characters take wounds.

Minors have no Vitality. Their whole track is a single Vigor pool of twice their Tier, and half of it is the fight in them:

• At Tier remaining or less, a Minor BREAKS: it routs, surrenders, or runs. Out of the fight but alive. Creatures marked Fanatic are the exception: they fight all the way down.
• At 0 it is dead, which is twice its Tier in total damage. A single blow of 2x its Tier or more kills it on the spot.
• Minors never regenerate Vigor.
• Vigor damage against a Minor is simply damage (its pool IS Vigor). Mystic attacks and Vigor-damage AoEs are the mook-clearers.
• Retainers are Minors in the party's colors: pool = 2 x Tier, same break point at Tier remaining and the same death at 0.

The old role names survive as texture, not as rules: what used to be a mook or a soldier is a Minor at Tier 1-2, an elite or a lieutenant is a Major, and a boss is a Major when it fights with its guards around it or a Sovereign when it faces the party alone.

Majors and Sovereigns keep the two-layer model: a regenerating Vigor shield over a real Vitality pool. Either one out of Vigor and Vitality is dead; give escape-minded bosses a morale exit instead. Major count is the encounter lethality dial: one Major is a fight, two is a hard fight, three is a raid. A Sovereign is its own dial: field exactly one, and treat every Minor you set beside it as a step up in difficulty, because the Sovereign already acts more than once per round.

Sovereigns

A Sovereign is a solo boss: one creature built to carry a whole encounter against a whole party. The dragon in the last chamber, the lich on its throne, the demon lord, the kraken, the named villain a campaign has been pointing at from session one.

A Sovereign runs on the Major attribute path (stat dice and modifiers, Cunning crit range, Sense-based AC, a regenerating Vigor shield, rolled Tier-die damage) with two things changed: a boss-scaled Vitality pool and a boss action economy.

When a Creature Is a Sovereign

The test is how many of it you would ever field at once. If two of them could show up in the same fight, it is not a Sovereign. A Sovereign is the one and only centerpiece.

• Sovereign: adult and ancient dragons of every color and metal, gem dragons, dracoliches and wyrms; archfiends fought alone (balors, pit fiends, demon princes, archdevils); great undead (liches, demiliches, vampire lords, mummy lords, a death knight standing as the last foe); titanic singular monsters (krakens, leviathans, phoenixes, colossi, elder aberrations, elemental princes); named unique villains and god-avatars fought alone.
• Not a Sovereign: wyrmlings and young dragons, hags (they come in covens), ogres, giants in a war band, rank-and-file devils and demons, common elementals, most golems. Those are Majors. Anything fought in numbers is a Minor.

Tier sets a Sovereign's weight class: a lesser boss around Tier 3, an adult dragon or lich or vampire lord around Tier 4, an ancient dragon or demon lord or kraken at Tier 5. Low-Tier Sovereigns are legitimate and useful. A goblin king at Tier 1 or a spider queen at Tier 2 is the climax a starting party can actually lose to.

Sovereign Statline

• Vitality = 10 + 4 x Tier: 14 / 18 / 22 / 26 / 30 for Tiers 1-5. This is the number that buys the 3-5 round climax.
• Vigor cap = Tier + Heart modifier (minimum 0), full at combat start, regenerating at the start of its turn like any Major: roll Tier exploding d4s, each 4 restores 1.
• Damage, crits, ATK, AC, and Save DC are the Major numbers. It rolls its Tier die on a hit and two Tier dice on a crit, crits on its Cunning-based crit range, and takes ATK and Save DC from its Tier.
• At 0 Vigor and 0 Vitality it is dead. Like every NPC it never takes wounds, and it has no death timer.
• Give it two or three attacks in a normal turn, same as a Major. The Sovereign Actions come on top of that.

Sovereign Actions

A Sovereign has 2 Sovereign Actions each round, refreshed to full at the start of every round. It enters round 1 with both.

• Spend one after another combatant's turn ends to take an extra attack or a maneuver, out of the initiative order.
• That is the whole boss action economy. Against four heroes a Sovereign acts three times a round instead of once, so it trades blows with the party rather than drowning under them.
• Unspent Sovereign Actions do not bank. Two per round, every round, until the fight ends.
• Hold one back on purpose. Answering the caster who just stepped into the open is usually worth more than a fourth swing at the person in plate.

Sovereigns, Telegraphs, and Morale

• A Sovereign telegraphs exactly like a Major (below) and is disrupted the same way: only Vitality loss forces the disruption die.
• Its shield is small next to its pool (Tier + Heart mod against 10 + 4 x Tier), so most hits that land are Vitality hits. A Sovereign's telegraphs live out in the open, and a party that keeps hitting will strip a good number of them. Build its threat on the moves that resolve immediately as well as on the telegraphed ones.
• Sovereign Actions do not resolve a telegraph early. A telegraph still fires at the start of the Sovereign's own turn.
• A Sovereign does not check morale. It is the encounter. It fights to 0 Vitality or to whatever exit you wrote for it (a plane shift, a collapse, a bargain offered from a losing position). Phase thresholds do the work morale does for lesser creatures.

Monster Statline

Tier, Role, Pool, AC, ATK, Save DC, abilities

• ATK by Tier: +2 / +3 / +5 / +6 / +8 for Tiers 1-5, with a +/-2 ferocity swing for brutes and cowards.
• AC sits in a flat 10-16 band set by concept (hide, armor, scales), not Tier.
• Save DC = tier DC: 11 / 13 / 15 / 17 / 19 for Tier 1-5.
• Damage: a Minor's hit deals flat points equal to its Tier, no roll. A Major's or Sovereign's hit rolls its Tier die (d4 at Tier 1 up to d12 at Tier 5) like a player character.
• Crits: Minors crit on a natural 20 only: roll the Tier die, floored at the flat value (a crit is never worse than a hit). Majors and Sovereigns crit on their Cunning-based crit range like a character and roll two Tier dice.
• Vigor: a Major or Sovereign has a full shield: cap = Tier + Heart modifier (minimum 0), full at combat start, regenerating at the start of its turn exactly like a PC. A Minor's Vigor is its whole pool and never regenerates.
• Multiattack is the threat scaler. A big monster that swings once per round is a mook with extra steps: give a Tier 3+ Minor a second attack, and Majors and Sovereigns two or three attacks always. A Sovereign's 2 Sovereign Actions sit on top of that.

Monster Tier Scaling

The Tier die is what a Major or Sovereign rolls on a hit (two of them on a crit); a Minor deals the flat Minor Hit instead. ATK carries a +/-2 ferocity swing for brutes and cowards. Major and Sovereign Vigor is not on the table: their cap is Tier + Heart modifier.

Telegraphs

A Major's or Sovereign's big move is a Declared Maneuver, announced to the table.

1. Declare in the enemy tactical window, loudly: name the move, show the dread.
2. It resolves at the start of that creature's next turn unless disrupted.
3. Disruption: each hit that costs a Major or Sovereign Vitality while the telegraph is pending forces one roll of its disruption die (usually a d6, listed per ability): on a 1, the telegraph is lost. One hit, one roll, however many points it took. A hit the creature's Vigor absorbs entirely does nothing. A Minor has no Vitality, so any damage at all disrupts a Minor's telegraph.
4. Telegraphed nukes hit hard: flat Damage equal to the creature's Tier to everyone in the area on a failed save (1 Vigor damage on a save), or a battlefield-changing effect. A telegraph should cost at least as much as an average basic hit.

Chewing through a Major's Vigor is part of the game: disruption needs real Vitality loss, so the shield protects the spell. A Sovereign carries the same small shield over a pool four times the size, so its telegraphs are exposed far more often.

Boss phases: script them at Vitality thresholds (two-thirds and one-third remaining): new telegraph set, arena change, summon wave. A Sovereign's pool is deep enough to carry three distinct phases, which is the main thing its Vitality buys you. A Major or Sovereign at 0 Vitality is simply dead; give escape-minded bosses a morale exit instead.

Converting Creature Abilities

For material written with damage dice:

• Dice at or below the creature's old band = its normal attack: flat Damage equal to its Tier (a Major or Sovereign rolls its Tier die instead).
• Breath weapons, AoE riders, and big single hits = save-based effects: flat Damage equal to the creature's Tier on a failed save, 1 Vigor damage on a save (telegraphed declarations for Majors and Sovereigns).
• "Standard attack dealing XdY" = "a normal hit" (flat Tier for Minors, Tier die for Majors and Sovereigns).
• Flat DCs = the tier DC above.
• Leech healing = steal 1 Vigor. Summon/wall pools = Minor pools by Tier.
• Conditions, movement, auras, and control effects carry over unchanged; they are the interesting part.

Morale

Creatures fight to live. A Minor at Tier remaining flees on its own; morale is the group-level version. When a group loses half its number (fled or dead), or a Major hits one-third Vitality, check morale (Heart save vs the party leader's presence, or GM judgment): failures flee, surrender, or bargain. Morale is how fights end early; use it.

Sovereigns are exempt. A solo boss never rolls morale: it is the whole encounter, and a Sovereign that routs on a bad Heart save takes the climax with it. If you want a Sovereign to survive its defeat, write the exit into its lowest phase and take it deliberately.