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 big 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. A follower is a Minor of its title's Tier, or a Major of that Tier where the title says so (Part 2, Paths and Titles).

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 at 0 Vitality is simply dead; give escape-minded bosses a morale exit instead. A Major is a rival hero: it hits like a hero and carries a hero's pools, but it has no wounds to spend, so it falls the first time its pools run out. Four heroes drop a lone Major in about a round. Major count is the encounter lethality dial: one Major for every two heroes is a fight, one for every hero is a hard fight, more Majors than heroes 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.

Fought to the end, a Major with three Minors lasts four heroes about two rounds. Two Majors with four Minors last about three. A band of as many Majors as heroes lasts three or four, costs each hero about a wound from Tier 4, and there it can kill a hero the monsters single out.

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 + 18 x Tier: 28 / 46 / 64 / 82 / 100 for Tiers 1-5. This is the number that buys the 3-5 round climax. The pool is written for four heroes: take a quarter off for three and add a quarter for five.
• Vigor cap = Tier + Heart modifier (minimum 0), full at combat start. At the start of its turn it regains 1 Vigor if its Heart modifier is positive and loses 1 if it is negative, like any Major NPC.
• 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 Vitality it is simply dead. Like every NPC it never takes wounds, and it has no death timer.
• Give it two attacks in a normal turn, never a third. Its Sovereign Actions come on top of that, and together that is the whole boss action budget.

Sovereign Actions

A Sovereign has 2 Sovereign Actions each round from Tier 3, and 1 at Tier 1-2, refreshed to full at the start of every round. It enters round 1 with all of them.

• Spend one after another combatant's turn ends to take an extra attack or a maneuver, out of the initiative order. A Sovereign Action cannot repeat a maneuver: it cannot buy one the Sovereign has already named or used this round. A maneuver bought with a Sovereign Action resolves when the action is spent, in place of the extra attack.
• That is the whole boss action economy. Against four heroes a Sovereign acts three times a round, or twice at Tier 1-2, instead of once, so it trades blows with the party rather than drowning under them.
• Unspent Sovereign Actions do not bank. Two per round (one at Tier 1-2), 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 one more swing at the person in plate.

Sovereign Protection

An effect that would remove a Sovereign or take its turn costs it one Sovereign Action instead.

• Removal is anything that would kill or destroy it outright or take it out of the fight: banished, imprisoned, petrified, transformed, sealed in, turned, cast back, made to flee.
• A lost turn is anything that would take its turn or choose its action for it: Stunned, Unconscious, anything that commands or dominates it.
• The Sovereign loses the Sovereign Action and nothing else. Any Damage the effect deals still lands.
• If it has no Sovereign Action left this round, it starts the next round one short.
• Where an entry prints its own result against a Sovereign, the entry is right.

Sovereigns, Declarations, and Morale

• A Sovereign declares 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 + 18 x Tier), so most hits that land are Vitality hits. A Sovereign's declarations 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 declared ones.
• Sovereign Actions do not resolve a declaration early. A declaration still fires at the start of the Sovereign's own turn, and on that turn it replaces one of the Sovereign's attacks.
• 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.
• Its own saves: a Minor has no stat dice and rolls d20 + its Tier. A Major or Sovereign rolls d20 + the save stat's die + its Fate die and adds no Tier.
• 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. At the start of its turn it regains 1 Vigor if its Heart modifier is positive and loses 1 if it is negative. A Minor's Vigor is its whole pool and never regenerates.
• Multiattack is the threat scaler, and it is tier-gated. A Major makes one attack at Tier 1-3 and two at Tier 4+. A Sovereign makes two attacks at every Tier, its Sovereign Actions on top, never a third. A Minor makes one attack at Tier 1-3 and may take a second from Tier 4.
• Maneuvers: monsters name their maneuvers in the Enemy Tactical Phase. A harmful maneuver, one that damages an enemy, forces an enemy to save or puts any effect on an enemy, does not resolve there: it resolves on the monster's own turn, in place of one of its attacks. A maneuver that touches no enemy (a stance, a move, a ward, an order to its allies) still takes effect at once.
• Both in one round: a monster may use a harmful maneuver and resolve its declaration in the same round, each in place of one of its attacks. With one attack it does one of them. With two (a Major from Tier 4, a Sovereign at any Tier) it may do both.

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.

Declarations

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. On the turn it resolves, the declaration replaces one of the creature's attacks. The creature makes its other attacks as usual.
3. Disruption: each hit that costs a Major or Sovereign Vitality while the declaration is pending forces one roll of its disruption die (usually a d6, listed per ability): on a 1, the declaration 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 declaration.
4. Declared nukes hit hard, on a ladder picked by what the ability is. Everyone it catches takes the step's Damage on a failed save and 1 Vigor damage on a save, on every step.
   • Light: flat Damage equal to the creature's Tier. For anything with a strong rider (stun, restrain, frighten).
   • Heavy: one Tier die. For a wide area, a line or a small burst, or one target with a light rider (prone, pushed).
   • Crushing: two Tier dice. For one target with no rider.

A declaration can also be a battlefield-changing effect with no Damage. A declaration 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 many times the size, so its declarations are exposed far more often.

Boss phases: script them at Vitality thresholds (two-thirds and one-third remaining): new declaration 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. For Majors and Sovereigns they are declarations, and the Damage on a failed save comes from the declaration ladder above: Light, Heavy or Crushing.
• "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. One limit: an effect that takes a player character's or a Major's turn ends at the end of the target's next turn, and a creature that saves is immune to it for the fight (Part 6, Conditions).

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.