Latest / Sessions Canceled / Draw Steel, Monsters! | Tabletop Shout Out-Part. 5: Ep. 171

Transcript

Draw Steel, Monsters! | Tabletop Shout Out-Part. 5: Ep. 171 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Welcome back, Internet. The GM keeps talking about how
• 0:18
  cool Draw Steel is and how much he likes it, but he hasn't
• 0:23
  actually read the book yet and has no intention of running it
• 0:27
  anytime soon. But he really likes it and we're
• 0:31
  all just kind of confused because we thought we were going
• 0:33
  to play, but he hasn't read the book.
• 0:37
  So Sessions cancelled. Hopefully he'll read it soon.
• 0:43
  We'll see though. We'll see.
• 0:46
  You know, I I'm gonna test. I'm gonna test it because if we
• 0:49
  do run it soon, I'm just gonna start making rules up and I'm
• 0:51
  gonna see if he just starts nodding.
• 0:53
  He. Notices he's like, yeah, yeah,
• 0:56
  that's how that works. And you're like, this rule says
• 0:59
  that I just do 100 damage every turn.
• 1:01
  Yeah, it's it's like, so if I roll above, if I roll at least
• 1:04
  an echelon, if I roll Echelon 3, that means I can roll another
• 1:07
  attack and it just kind of is like exploding dice where I'll
• 1:08
  just get to keep rolling attacks.
• 1:11
  Just have infinite attacks. Have I showed you the that that
• 1:18
  bit from the TT the Emperor TTS episode where they play
• 1:21
  Warhammer RPG and they have to fight an actual custodies and
• 1:25
  they're like, their only way we're going to win is if we can
• 1:28
  keep popping exploding dice and the dude keeps rolling Ulrich's
• 1:31
  Fury, which is the mechanic for that game.
• 1:34
  So he's just like roll 10 roll. Eventually he rolls enough
• 1:41
  exploding dice to actually beat a custody's armor value.
• 1:46
  He says a lot of damage and the character's like, that's
• 1:49
  bullshit. What the?
• 1:55
  Fuck, just keep rolling. Yeah.
• 2:01
  Exploding dice, one of those concepts that's always like,
• 2:04
  it's fun, but man is it just like impossible to really design
• 2:09
  around, you know what I mean? Like the possibility for the
• 2:15
  math to just get out of control. Lancer did a pretty good job of
• 2:19
  this because there's A tag and its weapons called overkill,
• 2:22
  which is exploding dice. So if you roll, I think every
• 2:27
  time you roll Max damage on an overkill weapon, you roll again,
• 2:32
  but you take, I think you take one heat.
• 2:35
  So you can roll potentially pretty high if you get lucky
• 2:39
  enough, but you're just going to overheat the shit out of your
• 2:41
  mech, so you might go to nuclear while you beat the bad guy.
• 2:45
  I mean, that's a that's a decent trade off.
• 2:47
  I, I just more, I more meant like when you're trying to math
• 2:53
  out like average damage in a round, like how many rounds can
• 2:57
  an enemy take, how many rounds should combat usually go for?
• 3:01
  Like what kind of output do the enemies or the players that like
• 3:05
  that kind of stuff is always kind of hard to figure out as
• 3:08
  soon as you start bringing it exploding dice 'cause you're
• 3:10
  like, well, normally they do 10 damage around, but they could
• 3:13
  potentially do 40 in a round if they roll right.
• 3:16
  And that's going to really make this fight a joke.
• 3:18
  But I don't know how we would. If we make the HP too high, then
• 3:23
  the fight's going to be awful. Like you know what I mean?
• 3:27
  I think you it really requires Adm willing to throw the the OR
• 3:32
  the plan out the window. Like if you just get crazy
• 3:34
  exploding dice, they're just like fuck it, let's run it.
• 3:37
  Well, I mean for the designers, I'm not even talking about for
• 3:39
  the GM, I'm talking about the action.
• 3:41
  I mean making the game like how they have to playing around
• 3:45
  that. Same concept, methinks.
• 3:47
  I think that like you as a designer have to just be like,
• 3:50
  this is dumb and it's going to be overpowered and it's probably
• 3:52
  going to cause some problems, but I think it's going to be
• 3:54
  funny, so fuck it. I guess I don't know.
• 3:59
  It's definitely not something I would want to have to contend
• 4:01
  with. I think Fabulous did this pretty
• 4:06
  well. Make it an optional rule.
• 4:07
  It's like 0 powers tell the the the you know 0 powers tells the
• 4:11
  GM. This is going to be a fuck
• 4:13
  busted, but it could get really funny if you let it, so up to
• 4:17
  you. Fabulous.
• 4:18
  Doesn't have exploding dice. No, but it has the 0 powers
• 4:20
  which do like ridiculous damage and like make every fight kind
• 4:24
  of trivial. I mean, sure, if you're throwing
• 4:28
  it in there as an optional rule, that's fine, but like Shadowrun
• 4:31
  has exploding dice by default for example.
• 4:35
  I like any and all, any and all damage I'm pretty sure can
• 4:40
  explode and Shadowrun if I remember correctly.
• 4:42
  I mean, don't quote me on that, I might be misremembering, but.
• 4:44
  Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it, but that's what I'm kind of what I'm
• 4:46
  saying is like if you as a designer wanted to put it in,
• 4:49
  just make it an optional rule. Sure, you could do that.
• 4:53
  Shadowrun does not. No Shadowrun.
• 4:56
  Requires 4 dice to confirm an attack.
• 4:58
  Shadowrun doesn't give a shit about you or your time. 4 roles.
• 5:01
  4 roles to confirm attack. Shadowrun also likes to tout
• 5:07
  itself as like, pretty mathematically balanced.
• 5:14
  Is it though? I I've not played the game
• 5:16
  enough, but I've heard the wacky Boo Boo.
• 5:18
  It doesn't seem like it. I'm going to say like not
• 5:21
  really, but I think the designers like to say it is.
• 5:25
  I don't know, it's a thing, I don't know, whatever.
• 5:28
  I'm also talking with out of date information, so like it
• 5:31
  might be better now or something.
• 5:33
  And I also could be misremembering too, because, you
• 5:35
  know, I, I played, I don't know, fucking over six years ago or
• 5:42
  something like that. Maybe five years ago I played
• 5:45
  Shadowrun. So like or no more than that.
• 5:47
  More than that. No, I played it when in my like
• 5:49
  first or second year of college. So like, math, math is hard like
• 5:56
  9 years ago, baby. So I could be misremembering
• 6:01
  things too, you know, like don't take my, my, don't take my word
• 6:04
  for it 100%. But yeah, I don't know.
• 6:10
  Shadowrun's a weird game. It's a weird game.
• 6:13
  It's a weird setting. It's a, it's weird.
• 6:18
  It's got weird books, you know. And by books I mean novels in
• 6:22
  this case. Goblinification or whatever.
• 6:25
  Goblinization. That's yes.
• 6:28
  That is when a human, when they hit puberty, turns into an orc
• 6:32
  or a troll. Yes, because you're not born
• 6:36
  that way. Yeah.
• 6:38
  Listen, I like, I look, I like a lot of the lore and Shadowrun,
• 6:42
  but it does get fucking wacky. So you know, Yeah.
• 6:49
  You know. It'd be that way sometimes.
• 6:55
  Like, shrug. Like anyway, though we're not
• 7:01
  here to talk about Shadowrun, We're hearing about about we're
• 7:06
  we're here to talk about draw steel again, more, more steel
• 7:14
  has been. On.
• 7:16
  Thrusted and drawn, Yeah. Anyway, yeah.
• 7:27
  Draw steel. Look, we're going to, we're
• 7:29
  taking a look at the monster book because I wanted to take a
• 7:33
  look at the monster book because we didn't last time and I wanted
• 7:41
  to. I don't know why I'm justifying
• 7:42
  this. I felt like it.
• 7:44
  OK, here we are. This is going to be a little
• 7:50
  chaotic because there's not really, I feel, in my opinion at
• 7:56
  least, I don't feel like there's any good easy way to cover a
• 8:01
  monster book or an RPG because you're not going to go through
• 8:06
  and just like read every monster stat block because holy fuck,
• 8:10
  that would be boring. So we're just going to like
• 8:13
  talk, jump around and talk about it in general is kind of the
• 8:17
  best. I got point out some things I
• 8:21
  think are cool and whatnot. And yeah, yeah, and, you know,
• 8:30
  we'll cover the like, basic rules at the beginning of the
• 8:32
  book, obviously. So sorry.
• 8:39
  Sorry. I almost for gore.
• 8:43
  Follow us, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice.
• 8:45
  And if you're feeling especially generous, we have a donation
• 8:48
  link in the description if you would be so kind.
• 8:53
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• 8:57
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• 9:00
  daddies that are offering Saudi oil barons.
• 9:04
  Knock yourself out. Speak for yourself, but on that
• 9:10
  last one, but OK, OK. I, you know, listen, if Bill
• 9:14
  Burr can take the money, why can't we?
• 9:16
  I Because we have principles. I couldn't.
• 9:22
  I couldn't resist. I look, I I understand brother,
• 9:26
  I understand anyway also, I know we absolutely just sub tweeted
• 9:32
  Matt, but I'm now I'm just openly tweeting Matt Matt, stop
• 9:35
  blowing up my fucking discord. You're not in the.
• 9:37
  Podcast, what is the point of you saying that this is going to
• 9:42
  be over a week later that he would even remotely have a
• 9:45
  chance of hearing you stake that statement?
• 9:47
  It's fine. It's the thought that counts.
• 9:51
  I get Isaiah from the past or from the future or no.
• 9:55
  Yeah, from the past is telling Matt to fuck off.
• 9:59
  Stop blowing up my fucking discos.
• 10:02
  Fix you and and raise audio problems over DMS Stop doing it
• 10:07
  in my. I did have that thought.
• 10:10
  I did have that thought. I ought to kill you.
• 10:15
  Oh my God, Anyway, it's still happening.
• 10:22
  Stay on desk, stay on desk. All right, the draw Steel
• 10:26
  monster book. So draw steel only has two
• 10:28
  books. They don't have like a DMG style
• 10:30
  book. And so the monster book kind of
• 10:34
  serves as your your GM book. And basically that's just
• 10:39
  because in Matt's opinion as a designer, he was like, you need
• 10:43
  2 books, You have the book for all the players stuff and the
• 10:47
  rules and the book with all the monsters for the person running
• 10:50
  the game, what else do you need? And I was kind of like, that's
• 10:53
  fair. That's a fair argument.
• 10:56
  I absolutely get that. Funny enough, I had the thought
• 11:00
  rather recently that I wanted or I've been kind of wanting ADMG
• 11:08
  style book for Fabula, but I'm not going to get too into the
• 11:16
  into that right now, but it's like a thought I had.
• 11:22
  No, I mean, I think that's a that's.
• 11:23
  A for raisins. Yeah, I mean, the book throws a
• 11:27
  lot at you. I think it would behoove the
• 11:31
  designers to create something that put a lot of the stuff that
• 11:35
  they talk about in context. Like, yeah, you get the examples
• 11:38
  in the Players Handbook and you get a couple examples in the
• 11:40
  monster book. But like practical use sense,
• 11:45
  you know what I mean? Like, oh, you know, you can
• 11:47
  think about something like this or something like this, you know
• 11:49
  what I mean? Yeah, sure.
• 11:55
  We're just going to move on. Yes, I'm not going to get 2 in
• 11:58
  the weeds because I had a lot of weeds that I could get into and
• 12:01
  that's not what we're talking about here.
• 12:02
  So, but yeah, all right. So because it serves as kind of
• 12:09
  the for the director book for Draw steel, it has a chunk at
• 12:16
  the beginning that is kind of the basics of how you should run
• 12:19
  monsters and handle it and encounters and so on and so
• 12:22
  forth. So it opens up with the like,
• 12:26
  what is the point? What is the point of having
• 12:28
  monsters? What is the purpose?
• 12:31
  And I mean, you know, they're they're for the heroes to face
• 12:36
  and you know, they're opposition.
• 12:38
  Obviously the mentions the idea. It's it phrases it.
• 12:44
  Every goblin has a story, which is basically just saying stat
• 12:50
  blocks in this book are stat blocks and stat blocks are not
• 12:57
  every facet of a monster, right? They are a snapshot of a moment
• 13:02
  in time. And that moment is when that
• 13:05
  monster is engaging the players in a fight or something akin to
• 13:09
  a fight, you know, high tension situation or whatever, usually a
• 13:15
  fight. It's the idea of like, so don't
• 13:18
  be, don't take the the stat block of a creature as a Bible
• 13:24
  for what the creature is right. Think about the creatures beyond
• 13:27
  just being stat blocks. Don't be too sterile about how
• 13:31
  you treat them. And, you know, essentially give
• 13:36
  them a little back story, think about what they are, think about
• 13:38
  how they relate to the world around them, all that kind of
• 13:40
  shit. Which is not, I mean, not saying
• 13:46
  anything too crazy. I don't know if D&D has a
• 13:51
  section where it tells you to do something along these lines.
• 13:54
  But like, you know, this is one of those things that basically
• 13:59
  back in the day, the hobby had a tendency to just, you know, when
• 14:04
  you go in and begin your dungeon fucking, you don't really think
• 14:07
  about the monster slapping. You just do it right.
• 14:10
  You don't think about any implications of it.
• 14:12
  Generally as time has gone on, though, people have, you know,
• 14:18
  thought about the implications of like going into goblin caves
• 14:22
  and killing their entire family and like, are we the baddies?
• 14:28
  So it's just the idea of like, don't necessarily just make them
• 14:33
  empty stat blocks with nothing. Going on, that being said, and
• 14:37
  this is something I appreciate, is they were like, we have
• 14:42
  provided you with plenty of monsters that do not require the
• 14:46
  moral dilemma, like zombies that you can kill with impunity and
• 14:51
  you are no less heroic than anyone else.
• 14:53
  And I was like, you know, I I like having villains that are
• 14:57
  more than just, you know, all orcs are evil.
• 15:00
  I think that's pretty common parlay.
• 15:02
  It's not to to agree that like, yeah, maybe the orcs have like a
• 15:05
  culture in our living beings with thoughts and feelings, but
• 15:08
  sometimes you want to just slap zombies, you know what I'm
• 15:10
  saying? Like.
• 15:11
  Sometimes you do. Yes, there are.
• 15:12
  There are times where you want a waffle.
• 15:14
  I think the idea is you want to go between the two.
• 15:16
  You're right, you want to go on and off You don't.
• 15:19
  Sometimes you want the moral dilemma and sometimes you don't.
• 15:21
  Right? Exactly.
• 15:22
  Yes, it's boring to do only one or only the other.
• 15:27
  Like or or maybe it's more accurate to say doing only
• 15:30
  zombies can get boring. Doing only morally grey monsters
• 15:34
  can get like, exhausting. Yeah, it's like, do you really
• 15:38
  want to like Ian Haw over how, like, Fragorak is the final
• 15:42
  dragon in existence? And if you kill it, it's like,
• 15:44
  you know, you're destroying. A.
• 15:48
  Yeah, Nah, I, you know, I don't want to worry about that today.
• 15:52
  There is a zombie there and I'm riffing to roll some dice and
• 15:55
  get head. Shots well, and also the other
• 15:58
  good thing about draw steel is draw steel gives you completely
• 16:00
  free reign to just like much like Fabula, non lethally take
• 16:04
  out anyone you fight right or like subdue them in pretty much
• 16:07
  any way you want right, Fabulous even use doesn't even use the
• 16:10
  word like fabulous doesn't say they die anywhere right,
• 16:15
  Fabulous specific says when something loses, they surrender.
• 16:19
  So when you take something yeah, would you take something down to
• 16:22
  0 HP? It could be a case of them being
• 16:24
  like, you know, they drop their weapons and they're they're
• 16:27
  winded and they're like all right, all right, I'm done
• 16:29
  fighting like I'm out. You know what I mean.
• 16:30
  It doesn't even have to be that you knock them unconscious
• 16:34
  right, it could literally just be they tap out so and draw
• 16:38
  steel takes a very similar mentality.
• 16:39
  I got to actually comparing Draw Steel to Fabulous.
• 16:43
  It's really funny. All right, maybe.
• 16:45
  Yeah, funny. Funny is not the right word.
• 16:48
  It's interesting running Fabula right now and looking at this
• 16:54
  book and going through Draw Steel and Draw Steel having come
• 16:58
  out around the the same time that I'm running Fabula.
• 17:02
  Because the two games are like doing a similar thing, but
• 17:07
  coming at it from different angles.
• 17:10
  Which is to say both games are looking at the, the traditional
• 17:19
  DND style, you know, go around heroic adventurer vibe.
• 17:25
  But they're both looking at it from a from a standpoint of no
• 17:31
  DND baggage, right? Like from a design standpoint,
• 17:34
  neither Draw Steel nor Fabula is beholden to any sort of DND isms
• 17:39
  if they don't want to be. And Fabula is coming at it from
• 17:45
  this angle of injecting Forged in the Dark and PBAPBTA style
• 17:53
  like what people call story games.
• 17:56
  Injecting that element of the hobby into the traditional DND
• 18:01
  vibe and then Draw Steel is like we're leaning, we're staying in
• 18:09
  the direction of the traditional DND vibe, right?
• 18:12
  We're not trying to break that, far from it.
• 18:14
  But design wise, we're still keeping ourselves unshackled so
• 18:19
  we can update the bits. Basically, we can keep the bits
• 18:22
  we like and then update the bits we don't like.
• 18:24
  You know what I mean? But they're both kind of like re
• 18:28
  evaluating the very classical DND thing.
• 18:32
  And I think they're doing a very good job at it.
• 18:34
  I, I think they're, they're doing something that DND, like
• 18:39
  people in DND constantly are people who play only DND say
• 18:43
  that can't be done. You know what I mean?
• 18:48
  What do you mean? So like or not not that they not
• 18:54
  that it can't be done. Let me let me redact that
• 18:55
  statement, but like this. We've talked about this before,
• 19:01
  the sort of like, oh, DND is a combat game, but you don't have
• 19:04
  to play it that way. And it's like, right, But it's
• 19:06
  the only thing the game cares about, and it doesn't seem like
• 19:08
  it cares enough to try to make it something more.
• 19:11
  Yeah. But these games have shown
• 19:13
  pretty effectively that they can be more, and it's not that
• 19:17
  difficult to make it more. No.
• 19:21
  It just takes some contemporary views on the space that DND, as
• 19:24
  we've sort of said, cannot do for a shitty CEO, or refuses to
• 19:31
  for maybe similar reasons. Acknowledge.
• 19:35
  Yeah, yeah, it's it you need Yeah, you if you just re if you
• 19:39
  reassess the tradition with some contemporary ideas, you can come
• 19:44
  at it from different angles and get some like because the core,
• 19:47
  the The thing is ultimately that that that nugget, that the the
• 19:53
  deepest core of DND, which is the going into the dungeon,
• 20:00
  fighting the scary monsters as a cool shining knight in armor.
• 20:03
  Everybody still likes that vibe, right?
• 20:06
  Like people still want to do that vibe.
• 20:08
  It's just the stuff around the vibe that's like, well, if we
• 20:12
  can keep the core vibe, but change some things mechanically
• 20:15
  so we can get rid of the annoying bits or the old school
• 20:17
  bits or or maybe just bits we're tired of.
• 20:20
  This is another thing that you always got to keep in mind,
• 20:22
  right? DN DS been around for a long
• 20:24
  time. It might just be a case of it's
• 20:27
  not even that people dislike what D&D is doing, we're just
• 20:30
  kind of tired of what D&D is doing right?
• 20:31
  Like we. Played it a lot.
• 20:33
  You want the hobby to. Play something different, not
• 20:36
  even the hobby. Or not.
• 20:37
  I think people make system to evolve, to grow.
• 20:39
  People just people just are. Well, no, what I'm, I'm, I'm not
• 20:44
  even necessarily saying that. I'm just saying right now the
• 20:47
  the vibe is shifting towards something else and maybe in 5-10
• 20:51
  years the vibe will shift back to D&D after we've been away
• 20:54
  from it for a little while. You know what I mean?
• 20:55
  Like I feel like there's also just an element of we liked this
• 20:59
  for a little bit, now we didn't, now we like it again, now we
• 21:00
  don't. You know what I mean?
• 21:01
  It's possible for sure. You know, there's a lot of
• 21:05
  different elements, but anyway, it's just interesting looking at
• 21:08
  these two games that are kind of answering a similar problem but
• 21:13
  from different angles. The reason I thought about that
• 21:19
  is the whole like taking enemies down non lethally is something
• 21:23
  that people bring up for DNDA lot as like a you know it can
• 21:28
  get weird the like overly colonialist take everything and
• 21:33
  take all their loot and kill the ball vibe right?
• 21:35
  So you know what's funny? I just looked it up because I
• 21:37
  didn't remember. In 5th edition, even 5th edition
• 21:40
  2024, the only way you cannot deal non lethal damage with
• 21:45
  spells that are not melee. No, you can't not it's even more
• 21:50
  than that. You can't deal on long lethal
• 21:51
  damage with spells, period. It's only melee attacks only.
• 21:57
  Can't even can't even range attack it.
• 22:01
  And why I I don't know. Yeah, I know.
• 22:05
  You. Know it's you know what I will
• 22:07
  say too, just that and we got to move on.
• 22:11
  But what I will say is like a last note, the idea of the non
• 22:16
  lethal takedown and whether the game should just let you do it
• 22:19
  or the game should make it more difficult or whatever, It really
• 22:23
  depends on the game. Like I'm not saying that the
• 22:27
  idea of making it harder to take enemies down non lethally is
• 22:31
  something that a game should never do right?
• 22:34
  Because if I'm playing a cyberpunk game, for example, the
• 22:38
  idea that it's harder to take someone down in like a non
• 22:42
  lethal silent way, but is rewarding if you do so in a
• 22:47
  cyberpunk setting, right? For could be narratively
• 22:51
  rewarding or could be mission rewarding, or it could just be
• 22:54
  like there's an NPC who's like on your team now because you
• 22:57
  decided to not kill everyone and they're like, OK, that I like
• 23:00
  that you guys, you know, took the time or whatever.
• 23:02
  In that kind of a game, I understand making it like you
• 23:05
  have to work for it. But in something like DND or
• 23:08
  Draw Steel, yeah, it feels silly to have to work for it because
• 23:11
  it's not really like genre wise that's not like an important
• 23:16
  element. So just let the let the paladin
• 23:20
  character like clunk the goblin upside the head and knock him
• 23:23
  out and not have to make a big deal at it.
• 23:26
  Or or maybe cast a spell at their feet that sends them
• 23:31
  flying and like takes them out of the fight but doesn't kill
• 23:33
  them, it just wins them or whatever, you know what I mean?
• 23:36
  Which is something that I literally let a player do when I
• 23:39
  was running 5/8. The most common argument I see
• 23:42
  if like the it's like, so you're telling me I can up, I can make
• 23:45
  spells stronger, but I can't purposefully make them weaker?
• 23:47
  Make them. Weaker.
• 23:48
  Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 23:50
  Like like take your, take your scorching ray and make it like a
• 23:55
  little like candlelight puke at the face.
• 23:57
  To yeah, you can't like you can't make a little zest off it
• 24:01
  like. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:04
  Going in Berner's hot every single time.
• 24:07
  Yeah, yeah, anyway, get Tucker reject so draw seal the every
• 24:15
  goblin has a story thing, something the game tells you to
• 24:17
  keep in mind. It briefly talks about when a
• 24:21
  creature becomes a monster and it's basically just saying like
• 24:26
  what's the difference between, you know, like a wild animal and
• 24:30
  a quote UN quote monster? And it's just the idea of a wild
• 24:34
  animal roams around and is like searching for food and kills
• 24:38
  things for food. Whereas a monster is like
• 24:41
  actively being cruel or malicious in some way.
• 24:44
  So if it's a bear that's just looking for food, that's not
• 24:47
  necessarily a monster, but if it's a bear that's like killing
• 24:50
  everything that walks by for funsies, then then the game is
• 24:54
  like that's where you drift into that monster territory.
• 24:59
  And it also says monsterism, being a monster in this game,
• 25:03
  you know, can be temporary, which is interesting.
• 25:08
  Like the idea that, you know, the bear killing things for fun
• 25:14
  could be subdued and like calm down.
• 25:16
  And then it stops doing that. Maybe, you know, or something
• 25:18
  like that. Or the marauding orc bandits.
• 25:20
  You defeat them and get them to agree to like cut it out.
• 25:23
  Now they're not monsters anymore, which is like, again, a
• 25:25
  thing that obviously does happen all the time.
• 25:27
  It's just interesting that the game kind of brings it up.
• 25:30
  Yeah, you know, it's funny. My I kept thinking about the,
• 25:32
  you know, the, the, the one bad day that people talk about, you
• 25:37
  know, like the Joker's evil because he had one bad day.
• 25:39
  Like just. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:41
  It's it's really good to have things like that, Like maybe the
• 25:43
  bear isn't doing it for fun at doing it because someone killed
• 25:46
  it's cub and it's just kind of on right, right.
• 25:48
  It's just on demon time for a little bit.
• 25:50
  And if you knock it out and show some compassion, maybe it just
• 25:52
  goes back to being a normal but very sad bear.
• 25:55
  Yeah, the press bear. And then it says, OK, so then
• 26:00
  when does a monster become a villain?
• 26:02
  And it says if a creature is always a monster, then they're a
• 26:06
  villain. Just to say, like, they are
• 26:09
  always 24/7 trying to impose their will upon, you, know,
• 26:14
  others or weaker people or whatever.
• 26:17
  Which, again, not a revolutionary statement or
• 26:21
  anything, but something that the game is explicitly bringing to
• 26:25
  your attention. You know, it says villains
• 26:29
  technical typically have personal relationships to heroes
• 26:32
  that other monsters don't. There are universal or moral
• 26:35
  reasons for the heroes and monsters to come to blows with
• 26:37
  one another. So just hurting people is wrong.
• 26:40
  But only a villain can take something important from a hero,
• 26:43
  stand for everything they oppose, or act as a corrupted
• 26:45
  reflection of them in a way that leaves the world worse off.
• 26:48
  So it's just sort of giving you a like a frame of the sort of
• 26:53
  muddy distinction from like a creature to a monster to like a
• 26:58
  full on like villain villain. Then after that, there's the
• 27:05
  section that says coming to the table.
• 27:08
  This is basically the thing I was talking about before where
• 27:10
  it says, you know, talk to your players about how you want to
• 27:13
  handle the idea of a quote UN quote monster.
• 27:16
  Is it do you want to do the morally grey orc tribe or do you
• 27:21
  want to just do the clinical they are the enemy take them out
• 27:25
  kind of vibe and just says like talk about it before you play
• 27:28
  basically, or at the very least, you know, just like establish
• 27:31
  that vibe. And then it mentions the thing
• 27:35
  that Isaiah it says where everyone loves zombies and it
• 27:38
  says we have provided you with assortment of undead, demons and
• 27:41
  war dogs that can be fought with impunity.
• 27:43
  So like if you want to just zombie it up, there are some
• 27:45
  options to just zombie it up, which like Isaiah said, can
• 27:49
  sometimes just be a good little pressure release valve.
• 27:53
  Look, sometimes you want to just go number, go bigger.
• 27:55
  You don't want to have to worry about the goblins family.
• 27:58
  Sometimes you want to just track your kill count.
• 28:00
  Yeah, and like, if you're killing zombies, more often than
• 28:03
  not, the family members of those zombies will thank you for it.
• 28:07
  Probably. Look, they don't want to get
• 28:11
  eaten by Grandma Yetta. You don't want to get eaten by
• 28:13
  Grandma Yetta, so, I don't know, hit Grandma Yetta with A4
• 28:18
  Megaton Tactical? Yeah, yeah.
• 28:20
  Listen. Fucking rat Rat the glack, pump
• 28:23
  the shotgun and glicky grandma Yetta.
• 28:25
  Yeah. So then we go over to the
• 28:31
  basics. So the first thing in the basics
• 28:33
  it mentions is languages, which is just to say if a monster has
• 28:36
  a language or multiple languages, it will say it in
• 28:38
  their stat block and if they don't, they don't know any
• 28:40
  languages. That's real simple.
• 28:43
  Then we have some keywords. So similar to damage typings,
• 28:48
  monsters have keywords. So like abyssal, accursed
• 28:51
  animal, beast construct, Dragon, elemental, Faye, giant, they're
• 28:54
  typings. The typings do not have any
• 29:00
  bespoke mechanical effects on their own.
• 29:02
  But as with damage typings in draw steel, but also in games
• 29:06
  like DND, they will interact with other mechanical things.
• 29:11
  So if you have a sword of undead slaying, you know, and you're
• 29:15
  fighting a plant monster, the sort of undead slang doesn't do
• 29:17
  anything. But if you're fighting the
• 29:18
  undead monster, it does, right? That kind of buddy.
• 29:22
  Then obviously also on the stat block will be the in creatures
• 29:25
  encounter value, which is it's their CR.
• 29:28
  It's how challenging, how dangerous the monster is.
• 29:33
  Then there's a little section talking about free strikes.
• 29:35
  So to make the director's life a little bit easier, free strikes
• 29:43
  for monsters, which are your reactions.
• 29:45
  Basically, you don't roll for them, it's just they have a set
• 29:50
  amount of damage. And when a monster stat block
• 29:54
  calls for a free strike for whatever reason, you just use
• 29:57
  that set amount of damage and that's it.
• 30:00
  You know, speed things up low. But other than that, free
• 30:05
  strikes will have the usual keywords and they'll have you
• 30:08
  know, like magic or psionic or weapon or whatever and they'll
• 30:11
  have the usual they, they function like the, the main
• 30:16
  character, like the heroes. Free strikes and then
• 30:25
  opportunity attacks are the same deal.
• 30:26
  The the monster uses a free strike.
• 30:28
  However, if they are, if the monster has a bane, they cannot
• 30:33
  make opportunity attacks. Signature abilities.
• 30:36
  Monsters have a signature. Every monster has one signature
• 30:39
  ability that will be their first action in their stat block and
• 30:42
  it will be called out as their signature ability.
• 30:45
  This is basically their default attack.
• 30:47
  If you don't want to do if you don't want to do any other
• 30:49
  crazy, you know, Wambo, Jambo, it just free strike or just
• 30:53
  signature ability. And then you have traits.
• 30:58
  Traits are traits. They are passive abilities that
• 31:04
  monsters will have. Well, they're not actually, I
• 31:07
  say they're passive. They're not all necessarily
• 31:08
  passive or well, no sorry. They are passive, but they can
• 31:16
  interact with actions and stuff depending on what the trait is.
• 31:20
  But basically they're just abilities that the monster has.
• 31:24
  Then you have malice. So creatures will have abilities
• 31:27
  and features that cost a resource called malice, and the
• 31:32
  PCs have their heroic resource that builds up over a fight and
• 31:37
  that is how they use their cool abilities.
• 31:39
  The director has malice and that is how they use the monster's
• 31:42
  cool abilities is via spending malice.
• 31:45
  The director also has the the stat blocks of an individual
• 31:51
  monster will have malice type abilities but also groups of
• 31:55
  monsters will have malice abilities.
• 31:57
  So the goblins for example, if you go to the goblin section in
• 32:01
  the book, they have goblin based malice ability and any goblin
• 32:05
  can use those abilities. And then there's also like two
• 32:10
  or three generic ones. Then also creatures have an
• 32:17
  ability called end effect. And this is basically legendary
• 32:21
  resistance where if the creature has an effect that has hit them
• 32:27
  and you know they have some sort of ability that the heroes put
• 32:31
  on them, they can take damage to end the effect.
• 32:36
  So the big thing about the I and I, I remember Matt Colville
• 32:42
  saying this forever ago, but he basically was like, legendary
• 32:45
  resistance is kind of a bad mechanic because it puts you in
• 32:50
  this awkward position where you want to, you don't want to use
• 32:56
  your weakest spells because then the the GM isn't going to burn
• 33:00
  the legendary resistance on a weak spell for the boss monster.
• 33:03
  But you don't want to use your best spells because then you're
• 33:05
  going to waste your spell slots. So what you end up doing is
• 33:08
  using your like as many middle of the road options as you can
• 33:12
  for a couple of rounds, which feels kind of awkward sometimes.
• 33:16
  Which I, I, I do agree it it can feel weird.
• 33:20
  And so the idea of the end effect thing is even if you do
• 33:24
  blow your load on an ability and the monster purges it, they
• 33:28
  still, you still get something out of it because they are
• 33:31
  hurting themselves to purge the ability.
• 33:32
  So that's what the end effect in a step block does.
• 33:36
  I don't know about you legendary resistance always.
• 33:41
  No, I agree. I I was, I was waiting for my
• 33:43
  chance to jump in. No, I yeah, they don't feel fun
• 33:47
  as a player to go up against and they do not feel fun as AGM to
• 33:53
  use because like you don't want your players to be like, well,
• 33:57
  what the fuck is the point of doing my cool spell?
• 33:59
  They're just going to resist it. And if they in on the small
• 34:01
  chance that they don't, they're just going to get the free W
• 34:04
  anyway. Like, that doesn't feel fun for
• 34:06
  a character to for like a player to know that, you know, Yeah.
• 34:09
  Well. But then you're also you have to
• 34:13
  play the game of well, I can't just let my my, you know,
• 34:17
  ancient dragon just randomly eat this hit like, why would that?
• 34:20
  You know what I mean? Well.
• 34:21
  Yeah, the problem is you're like, I can't let my ancient
• 34:25
  dragon get stun locked because then it's boring, obviously, but
• 34:31
  it can also feel shitty to just be like, Nope, you just don't.
• 34:35
  I think part of the problem with legendary resistance for me
• 34:37
  personally is it's like too easy to use in that it's just player
• 34:44
  uses effect, enemy just goes no you don't and like that's it,
• 34:52
  you know what I mean? Yeah, the the monster just goes.
• 34:54
  I don't think so. Yeah, like it doesn't.
• 34:57
  It's not exciting, you know, there's no role involved.
• 35:00
  There's no like, there's no back and forth.
• 35:03
  There's no you just like Nope. So I think that's always been my
• 35:08
  big that's always been one of my contentions with legendary
• 35:11
  resistance It it just feels too. Simple.
• 35:15
  Yeah, too simple, too easy. And again, it's not doesn't feel
• 35:18
  fulfilling for any for any party.
• 35:19
  Not particularly. Yeah, it's not particularly
• 35:21
  fulfilling. It's something you do as AGM
• 35:24
  'cause you like know, you kind of have to, but it's never is
• 35:27
  like you're never like super excited about using it.
• 35:31
  Yeah, you, you don't want to, but you do.
• 35:33
  You don't want Fraggarack the Invincible to die in two rounds,
• 35:36
  so. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:38
  He's not very invincible in that case.
• 35:44
  So then we have villain actions. So villain actions, the long and
• 35:50
  short of it, are more or less legendary actions from 5E.
• 35:57
  The key difference is a couple key differences.
• 36:02
  They don't cost like any kind of resource point thing right?
• 36:13
  You can just you just like activate them.
• 36:21
  They they are end of hold on, wait, hold on before I say that.
• 36:30
  Now I'm thinking, am I getting my wires crossed?
• 36:33
  Yeah. OK, Yeah, yeah, I was right.
• 36:39
  So they are end of end of turn abilities like legendary actions
• 36:45
  are. So they're similar in that way
• 36:46
  or they're the same in that way. You can only ever do 1 villain
• 36:52
  action per round, and not per creature per round.
• 36:56
  So like if you have multiple monsters in a fight that can use
• 37:00
  multiple villain actions, you still only get one per round and
• 37:04
  they have effectively a suggested order of use.
• 37:09
  This one, then this one, this one.
• 37:10
  And there's three of them. So the first villain of action
• 37:15
  is considered the opener, which will generally they give like a
• 37:20
  descriptor. The first one will generally
• 37:22
  deal some damage, summon a guy, buff somebody up, debuff
• 37:25
  somebody, that kind of deal. The second villain action will
• 37:29
  generally be like a heavy, heavy crowd control or like
• 37:34
  battlefield manipulation. And then the third villain
• 37:36
  action will be their ultimate. It's a big smack you for a lot
• 37:40
  of damage and like really fuck things up.
• 37:43
  That's that's the general flop. Something I want to add here, I,
• 37:47
  I really appreciate that. I like that they that they are
• 37:52
  explaining the theory behind the design.
• 37:54
  They're not just dropping it in your lap and telling you to
• 37:57
  figure. It out like what how they
• 37:58
  generally flow yeah because so. If turn your mind back when we
• 38:03
  were talking about legendary axe for 5th edition, this is how I
• 38:07
  would. This is literally how I designed
• 38:09
  my custom legendary actions for monsters.
• 38:11
  First one does a little damage, second one is crowd control or
• 38:15
  like some sort of get out of town like ability.
• 38:19
  Like just like either movement or teleport or not get grouped
• 38:23
  up on. And then third is the big thing.
• 38:26
  This is literally how I designed monsters when I was doing
• 38:28
  hellscapes. I love this.
• 38:30
  Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
• 38:34
  So it makes sense. It makes sense that you would
• 38:36
  have, you would come to the the same kind of conclusion that
• 38:39
  they did. You know what I mean?
• 38:42
  Yeah. And now technically you do not
• 38:47
  have to use villain actions in order, it's just generally
• 38:52
  recommended. You also don't have to use them
• 38:56
  at all necessarily, right? Like if if you want, you know,
• 39:04
  the first round to go by and just not to use the villain
• 39:07
  action like you can so that it's not you're not necessarily
• 39:10
  locked in. But the idea is that they've
• 39:13
  designed them in such a fashion that it will keep things
• 39:16
  interesting by sort of ramping things up round by round.
• 39:21
  And people keep saying, now I can't, I can't verify this as I
• 39:27
  have not played the game, but people keep saying online that
• 39:30
  fights generally don't go past two or three rounds in draw
• 39:35
  steel. So only having three villain
• 39:39
  actions might not sound like much, but that basically is
• 39:42
  going to cover the entire fight Is is what people are saying.
• 39:45
  So you know, worth considering or worth paying attention to I
• 39:51
  guess. Again, I can't really verify
• 39:53
  that, but that's what I keep hearing.
• 39:56
  That's interesting of true. I like.
• 39:58
  I don't. I don't want to say that I don't
• 39:59
  believe it. I've not played this game
• 40:01
  either. But when you look at the stat
• 40:02
  blocks, the monsters have some pretty wild shit to deal with
• 40:07
  and to with players. So just say that like, Nah,
• 40:10
  that's not really gonna happen. I don't like really.
• 40:13
  I think the reason it happens, I think the reason that it's
• 40:17
  worked out that way ultimately comes down to the not missing,
• 40:23
  right? True, true.
• 40:25
  I'm definitely not calculating that in.
• 40:27
  Yeah, because the attrition is always constant, it speeds
• 40:33
  things up quite drastically. And when you're dealing with
• 40:36
  victories, right, if you're fighting the big boss monster
• 40:39
  and you have 4 victories, you're going to start that fight like
• 40:43
  pretty loaded up on heroic resources, which means you can
• 40:46
  unload some pretty heavy shit round one right from the jump,
• 40:50
  you know? So, and with the actual play, I
• 40:54
  will watch that Matt Colville put on his channel.
• 40:57
  They killed a boss monster in two rounds, so if it might not
• 41:04
  be always the case, but it definitely can happen it like
• 41:08
  they absolutely took him out in two rounds.
• 41:10
  So yeah, do that what you will. Then we get to organization.
• 41:20
  So it says a level 1 ghoul isn't necessarily as strong as a level
• 41:26
  1 orc. Most creature types have an
• 41:28
  overarching organization that determines the power level and
• 41:32
  encounter value of the monsters within it.
• 41:34
  Some modes of organization are built around large numbers of
• 41:36
  weaker creatures, while other modes prefer few fewer, but more
• 41:39
  formidable foes. Basically, monsters have
• 41:45
  organization typings in this game, which will dictate how
• 41:53
  many of them are going to be present and how you want to
• 41:59
  literally organize the fight. So at the bottom you have
• 42:04
  minions. They die the fastest and are
• 42:07
  only really a threat in large amounts.
• 42:09
  So if you're running a fight where there's a lot of dudes you
• 42:12
  want, if if you're, if you want to run a fight where there's a
• 42:14
  lot of creatures, minions are the way to go.
• 42:21
  With the knowledge that minions die, you know, in one hit,
• 42:25
  generally maybe 2 if they're lucky and you have horde type
• 42:31
  monsters, which are, you know, they're not minion level weak,
• 42:40
  they're a threat in A1V11 horde monster versus one hero at the
• 42:44
  same level. They're like a decent effective
• 42:47
  threat against them. Then you have platoon organized
• 42:53
  monsters, which is this, this one?
• 42:59
  This is the one that throws me a little is the platoon guys.
• 43:05
  So platoon to me it like based on how it's described, it seems
• 43:11
  like you're building a platoon of mixed units.
• 43:16
  So they can't be the same right? Like a a rain please, I'm dying.
• 43:28
  Also I I just realized I misspoke before actually.
• 43:32
  Like hordes and minions, right? Like those.
• 43:33
  Those are typically, from what it seems, the same little
• 43:37
  goober, but platoons specifically have to be
• 43:40
  organized separately. So I just realized it.
• 43:44
  It's it I, I was misspeaking before I said horde.
• 43:47
  Horde monsters are the guys that are roughly equal to a hero.
• 43:51
  You know, platoon monsters, platoons are the one Platoon
• 43:55
  monsters are one to one to a hero, roughly.
• 43:57
  Horde monsters are still weaker than heroes, but they are not as
• 44:01
  weak as minions. And the other thing that I'm
• 44:05
  just, I'm just remembering now that I was forgetting, minion
• 44:10
  monsters get organized in groupings, whereas hordes don't
• 44:15
  necessarily have to. So like minions when you put
• 44:18
  them on the field will be like a group of five in a group of four
• 44:21
  in a group of three or whatever. Whereas hordes could be like 4
• 44:25
  individual guys, but they're still not platoon level
• 44:28
  dangerous. Yeah.
• 44:34
  And then you have elite creatures which are basically,
• 44:39
  you know, elite guys. They're not boss level, but they
• 44:43
  are tougher than the platoon monsters. 1 elite guy can
• 44:46
  roughly take on like 2-2 heroes of the same level.
• 44:51
  Then you have leaders who are generally power level wise are
• 44:59
  gonna be close to elites, but leaders will have buffs for
• 45:04
  their allies and they will sometimes have villain actions
• 45:08
  because the idea is that the leader is rocking up with
• 45:12
  hordes, minions or platoons and elites or whatever.
• 45:14
  You know, like the leader shows up with other guys so they will
• 45:17
  have abilities to help out their Bros.
• 45:19
  But on an individual basis the leader and the elites are pretty
• 45:21
  close in power. And then you have solo monsters
• 45:24
  which are meant to fight the heroes solo, and they can
• 45:29
  usually go toe to toe with up to about 6 heroes.
• 45:35
  So if you have a group of 6 and you know, you can throw a solo
• 45:38
  at them of the equivalent level. Because yeah, monsters have
• 45:45
  encounter values in this game, but they also have levels, which
• 45:49
  is a little weird to me. I don't necessarily know why
• 45:58
  they went that angle, but they did so.
• 45:59
  You know, I was going to bring this up.
• 46:01
  There is a lot of math involved in designing an encounter and
• 46:06
  they give you a like down and dirty.
• 46:09
  Got to prep something real quick but.
• 46:11
  It's not that much. Quicker.
• 46:13
  It's not that much quicker. And no, I feel like you are
• 46:18
  actively doing yourself a disservice to run things that
• 46:22
  way, because you're introducing a lot of uncertainty into an
• 46:28
  otherwise pretty mathematically sound system.
• 46:38
  Maybe, I don't know without without testing the math on.
• 46:42
  In either case, I I'm hesitant to say, especially because I'm
• 46:46
  bad at math. You know what I mean?
• 46:47
  But. Fair enough.
• 46:48
  But I know what you mean. I do know what you mean.
• 46:50
  Like I definitely, I definitely looked at the quick build system
• 46:58
  and it was like, it doesn't seem that much quicker.
• 47:03
  So. That's interesting.
• 47:05
  But yes, encounter building I it's one of those ones two
• 47:10
  things I think to keep in mind with it.
• 47:12
  One, obviously the tried and true.
• 47:14
  After you use it for a while, it will start to lock into your
• 47:17
  brain better and be not as stressful, obviously.
• 47:22
  But two, the other important thing is draw steel does not
• 47:25
  expect you to do draw steel takes the fabulous approach a
• 47:28
  little bit more when you're talking about fights where
• 47:30
  you're not intended to do them all the God damn time, right,
• 47:33
  You're not really. You're not necessarily going
• 47:35
  through a dungeon and doing like every single room is a fight or
• 47:39
  whatever, right. It it's it's less fights that
• 47:42
  are more impactful is generally how draw steel goes, talks about
• 47:45
  it. So you probably won't need to
• 47:48
  prep as many encounters. I guess you could if you wanted,
• 47:55
  I suppose. But yeah, then the thing that I
• 48:00
  really love is that creatures have roles.
• 48:04
  Now. A role doesn't do anything
• 48:08
  mechanically bespoke like the just because a creature has
• 48:11
  ambusher as their role doesn't mean they have like a special
• 48:14
  ability tied to that. However, the roles will
• 48:17
  generally describe what that creature is good at in a fight,
• 48:22
  and you can mix and match the roles to make different kinds of
• 48:28
  fights. Is the, you know, long and short
• 48:30
  of it, this is a this is a 4th edition idea that a lot of
• 48:35
  people bitched about in Fory. So you in this game, you have
• 48:39
  ambushers, which are, you know, your your assassin guys.
• 48:43
  They they jump out and do a bunch of damage, but they
• 48:45
  probably are, you know, easy to kill.
• 48:50
  You have artillery guys, which is pretty much what it sounds
• 48:52
  like. They take them down from range.
• 48:53
  You have your brutes, which are like lots of health and big
• 48:57
  smack OS and they just stand in the front and bonk with hammer.
• 49:01
  You have your controllers, which are going to be your, you know,
• 49:03
  your magic or your psionic guys manipulating the battlefield.
• 49:06
  You have defenders, which generally are going to take a
• 49:08
  lot of damage and be able to protect squishier guys in some
• 49:12
  way. You have the Harriers, which are
• 49:14
  kind of like the ambushers, but the idea is that Harriers are
• 49:16
  more mobile, hit and run type creatures that are going to pop
• 49:20
  in smacks back and then leave. You have hexers, which are
• 49:24
  basically your D buffers, mounts, which are mounts and
• 49:31
  supports which are going to, you know, buff their homies, heal
• 49:33
  them, help them with action economy, movement, so on and so
• 49:36
  forth. Then it gives some rules about
• 49:43
  just like what happens when a creature takes a couple of
• 49:45
  specific actions. So a creature who takes the
• 49:47
  defend action can't take additional main actions
• 49:51
  creatures. If a creature grabs somebody,
• 49:55
  they have to commit to the grab. Basically easy.
• 50:03
  The way to put that if a creature summons another
• 50:08
  creature, then the summoned creature takes a turn
• 50:11
  immediately after the one who summoned it.
• 50:15
  Creatures who do healing or sorry, who heal via damage.
• 50:19
  Some creatures have abilities that deal damage and allow the
• 50:21
  creature to use the ability to regain stamina.
• 50:23
  Unless specified this damage. If this ability deals damage to
• 50:27
  multiple targets, the creature only regains stamina equal to 1
• 50:29
  instance. Basically this is just covering
• 50:32
  a couple of edge cases of like if the creature does this, this
• 50:34
  is how you deal with it. I then they give a generic.
• 50:37
  What the you're talking about? Sorry, before he gets to the non
• 50:40
  combatant I. Yeah.
• 50:43
  I read each of the the creature behaviors in like fighting game
• 50:48
  thought where it's like creatures who defend just don't
• 50:52
  be negative on block forehead, creatures who grab just commit
• 50:56
  to the grab forehead. Not how I thought of it, but
• 51:02
  yeah, all right. I yeah, I literally one for each
• 51:04
  of like for some and I was like, damn, I can't believe they're
• 51:07
  zoning. I don't know how you got there,
• 51:14
  but all right. I, I, I think it really started
• 51:16
  with creatures who grabbed because I just, I just thought
• 51:19
  of Brett. I'm going to be honest, I just
• 51:21
  thought about Brett and some of the absolute fucking Symbian
• 51:27
  brain level shit that Brett will do in fighting games to debate
• 51:30
  people. Oh, you weren't thinking about
• 51:33
  when Ant just grabbed loot me and I just gave up?
• 51:36
  No, no, because here's the thing.
• 51:38
  Here's the thing. Ant will run up and grab loop
• 51:40
  you. Brett will go hey, yo, watch me
• 51:42
  grab you real quick and you're like, you're not.
• 51:43
  He did it. He'll do like over surely.
• 51:50
  Surely that's the most unsafe option right now.
• 51:53
  There's no way he'll get the grab off.
• 51:55
  I'm out of range and then he'll run up and do it.
• 51:57
  You're like. You're like I should have
• 52:00
  listened to. Him.
• 52:01
  Yeah. I was like, I didn't.
• 52:02
  I didn't think he could pull it off, but he did.
• 52:04
  And now I'm getting waxed and like there's nothing I can do
• 52:07
  about it. Apologies.
• 52:16
  Keep going anyway. Yeah, then there's the they give
• 52:20
  you like a generic harmless creature non combatant stat
• 52:24
  block, which I guess I don't know if necessarily is going to
• 52:27
  come up a lot, but sure. No, actually, I think that's
• 52:31
  pretty useful to have like the just because how many times do
• 52:34
  people like, you know, the the the joke about a, a villager
• 52:37
  having three hit points? Right.
• 52:40
  Yeah, Yeah, I guess. I don't know, I feel like having
• 52:45
  a generic 1 though, like it's, it's so it's so generic that it
• 52:49
  like I don't know that I ever, I'm ever gonna I I mean, I guess
• 52:52
  the idea is you can just adjust it anyway.
• 52:53
  So I don't know whatever. Then we get into malice.
• 52:59
  So like I said before, the the heroes have the heroic resource,
• 53:03
  the GM, the director has malice. Malice is not on a creature by
• 53:10
  creature basis. Malice is for the entire, the
• 53:15
  entire battle, like the entire group of monsters.
• 53:18
  Basically you start the the the combat and you start with a
• 53:24
  certain amount of malice and then every round it goes up
• 53:27
  based on the number of enemy, based on the number of heroes.
• 53:31
  And you can spend that malice on special abilities like I said,
• 53:36
  that will be either in the stat block or be for a group of
• 53:38
  monsters. And then the two basic ones are
• 53:41
  Brutal Effectiveness and Malicious Strike.
• 53:45
  Brutal Infectiveness is a basic potency increase that cost 3
• 53:48
  malice, and the Melissa strike is just dealing extra damage to
• 53:55
  a target. Basically the malice.
• 53:59
  The way the malice math works out at the start is I don't, I
• 54:05
  don't know if it's just how they worded it or what, but I
• 54:07
  remember the first time I read this I had to reread it like two
• 54:09
  or three times 'cause I was like what?
• 54:10
  I was like, I am not understanding this math.
• 54:13
  It's not that hard. So at the start of the combat
• 54:15
  you gain malice equal to. The average victories.
• 54:19
  Sorry I was reading it again. No, you're right.
• 54:21
  This the absolute dog shit I mean.
• 54:23
  Yeah, yeah. It confused me the way they
• 54:24
  worded it. Equal to the average number of
• 54:26
  victories per hero, right? Then at the start of each combat
• 54:30
  round, you gain malice equal to the number of heroes in the
• 54:33
  battle plus the combat round Number.
• 54:36
  The round. I think the combat round Number
• 54:37
  is what threw me off. So for instance, if you have 5
• 54:40
  heroes with three victories that are starting round one, you
• 54:45
  begin that combat with 9 malice, 3 for the average number of
• 54:49
  victories, 5 for the number of heroes, and then one for the
• 54:53
  first round of combat. For some reason the one for the
• 54:58
  first round of combat just really did not compute by brain.
• 55:02
  It it makes sense. I was really overthinking it.
• 55:04
  I don't know. Then at the start of the next
• 55:07
  round, provided all the heroes are still alive, you gain 7
• 55:10
  malice, 5 for the number of heroes, +2 for the second round.
• 55:13
  So you don't gain that initial malice from the victories is
• 55:18
  only at the very start. If a hero dies, they stop
• 55:23
  generating malice for you. At the end of the encounter, any
• 55:26
  unused malice is lost. So that's it.
• 55:31
  And then yeah, like I said, they spend the malice just like
• 55:34
  heroes use it on heroic abilities.
• 55:35
  They, you burn the malice and you do the thing, whatever The
• 55:38
  thing is, boom, bang, boom. Now we get into the minion
• 55:42
  rules, of which there's a decent amount of stuff actually.
• 55:49
  So essentially, minions get grouped up as a squad and you
• 56:02
  take the stamina of each. Yeah, take the stamina of each
• 56:11
  minion and then smash it together, and that is the
• 56:14
  stamina pool of the entire minion squad.
• 56:19
  And so if the minions have 5 stamina and there's four of
• 56:22
  them, you smash them together. You'd get 20.
• 56:24
  For every five health lost from minions getting hit, a minion in
• 56:31
  the squad dies. Well, so this is specifically
• 56:35
  five health. It's every it's a minion would
• 56:39
  have so like it could be. I did be any number of health.
• 56:42
  I said if the minions have 5 health and there are four in the
• 56:45
  squad, then it would be 20. And then, yeah, I know it's not
• 56:49
  always 5. I'm just saying, yeah, if they
• 56:51
  the the other, the example it gives, they have 4:00.
• 56:54
  So it ends up being 4 and 4. You get 16 or yeah, yeah, I had
• 57:01
  to think about that one. And then I think it recommends
• 57:07
  in terms of size, I think it says you want to cap out at like
• 57:17
  8 is like you don't want to go higher than 8 to a squad.
• 57:26
  And then yeah, like I said. So whenever the minion squad
• 57:28
  stamina pool is reduced by an amount equal to the equal to an
• 57:32
  individual's minion stamina, a minion dies or is otherwise
• 57:35
  taken out of the fight. So for the spine cleavers, the
• 57:38
  goblins spine cleavers is the stamina pools taken from 40 to
• 57:40
  35. One of the goblins goes down the
• 57:46
  hold on. Let me hold on.
• 57:54
  It really deals, Yeah. If the minions take damage from
• 58:07
  any source other than area of effect, the damage reduces the
• 58:13
  squad's stamina pool by amount of the damage equal to the
• 58:16
  stamina of two or more. Yeah, what brain reduces a
• 58:24
  minion squad stamina pool by an amount of damage equal to the
• 58:28
  stamina of two or more minions. Multiple minions are taken out
• 58:32
  by the damage. So wow, I'm really cooked.
• 58:38
  I what the fuck why is this? I've already read this before
• 58:41
  and I'm now confusing myself again.
• 58:43
  It I understand it completely. I like I said, I.
• 58:47
  It's yeah, the minions are a little canoodally in a way that
• 58:52
  I felt like was maybe unnecessary.
• 58:55
  I so OK, I wanted to talk about this.
• 58:57
  So is this how they did Minions in Fantasy Flight?
• 59:02
  No, no, right. I no, I didn't read minions for
• 59:06
  Fantasy Flight, but having fought a lot of them, I feel
• 59:09
  like that system was a little bit more intuitive.
• 59:12
  Am I crazy for thinking that? So the the main thing with how
• 59:18
  it was done in Fantasy Flight is that minions were all smashed
• 59:21
  together as like a single unit and they couldn't.
• 59:27
  Well, OK, so here's the problem. Fantasy Flight didn't use a grid
• 59:31
  for like movement and positioning and stuff, right?
• 59:34
  So you didn't have to worry about where all the minions were
• 59:37
  positioned. They were just one singular
• 59:39
  unit. And then you only had to worry
• 59:41
  about how far or close they were to the player, right?
• 59:44
  Right. So that was the thing that made
• 59:46
  it easier to deal with. So in that case they were just
• 59:49
  essentially, if you imagine them on a board, minions were all
• 59:51
  represented by 1 token in this game, because the grid is so
• 59:55
  important, the minions can move freely away from each other.
• 59:58
  But basically the idea is they have 20 health if you hit one of
• 1:00:06
  the minions and deal 12 dam if you hit one of the minions in
• 1:00:09
  the group and deal 12 damage right?
• 1:00:13
  You kill two of them, and then the other two damage rolls over
• 1:00:19
  to the third minion. That's the important thing,
• 1:00:23
  right? Yes, that's the important point.
• 1:00:26
  So like what it says is allow the player to narrate how their
• 1:00:29
  hero takes out an additional minion killed by a single
• 1:00:32
  attack. For instance, if a Goblin Spine
• 1:00:34
  Cleaver takes 12 damage from the Fury's Brutal Slam, maybe the
• 1:00:37
  minions surround the hero who make a Maybe the minions
• 1:00:41
  surround the hero who makes a brutal weapon strike that cuts
• 1:00:44
  through multiple targets with a single action.
• 1:00:46
  Maybe the body of the original target is hurled into an
• 1:00:49
  unfortunate ally. Maybe additional minions
• 1:00:51
  affected by a single target strike pass out from the fright.
• 1:00:54
  Taking out multiple minions is a chance to play up the
• 1:00:56
  cinematics. Basically, the point being, even
• 1:00:59
  if they are nowhere near each other, you smack the one minion
• 1:01:04
  for a lot of damage. The leftover damage rolls over
• 1:01:08
  to his buddies. That's the important thing.
• 1:01:11
  That's the crux of it. That's the main thing that makes
• 1:01:15
  minions easier to cut through or cut down, as it were, right?
• 1:01:21
  Get it? No, I I get it.
• 1:01:23
  I just, I'm agreeing with you. I think that there was a simpler
• 1:01:26
  way of doing this and I feel like.
• 1:01:28
  There might be. Because I I I as I was reading
• 1:01:31
  this, my head kept going. Why didn't you just use hordes
• 1:01:34
  or or swarms? So like one big poken like I get
• 1:01:38
  they want to do the positioning thing and that I think that's.
• 1:01:41
  Really. All it is, yeah.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah, I just, I don't know, it just seems like a lot, it seems
• 1:01:48
  like a lot to keep track of in a game that's trying to what's the
• 1:01:55
  word I'm looking for, trying to streamline things.
• 1:01:57
  This is the opposite of the attended effect.
• 1:02:01
  It's a little, yeah, it's a little.
• 1:02:02
  It's like I said, it's it's a little noodly, but also it's
• 1:02:07
  probably not as bad as we're feeling about it.
• 1:02:09
  It probably is fine once you play with it.
• 1:02:11
  It just, I get the feeling it's one of those things that takes a
• 1:02:15
  little bit of time to get your brain straight about.
• 1:02:19
  Maybe. For sure.
• 1:02:21
  That being said, I'm now going to describe how area of effects
• 1:02:24
  work with minions, which I'm confused by this.
• 1:02:30
  I think I missed so I'm just honest.
• 1:02:32
  So I'm going to read this verbatim and then you'll you'll
• 1:02:37
  listen and tell me if if this makes more sense to you.
• 1:02:40
  So it says minion squads are particularly susceptible to
• 1:02:46
  damage dealing area abilities that target multiple creatures
• 1:02:50
  because the minion squad's stamina pool takes damage each
• 1:02:53
  time an individual minion takes damage.
• 1:02:56
  However, such area effects can kill only those minions who are
• 1:03:02
  in the area. For example, a tier 3 outcome
• 1:03:06
  from the talents Incinerate deals 6 fire damage to each
• 1:03:10
  target in its area. If 3 Goblin Spine cleavers with
• 1:03:13
  five damage, 5 Stamina are caught in the area, the minion
• 1:03:17
  pool loses 15 Stamina instead of 18 stamina, leaving the other
• 1:03:22
  minions and the squad unscathed. The thing I don't understand
• 1:03:27
  about that, doesn't that mean they're less susceptible to area
• 1:03:31
  of effect than single target damage?
• 1:03:33
  Yes, because a single target can wipe things that are not in the
• 1:03:36
  directive. Through.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 1:03:41
  I don't understand. I feel like there's something
• 1:03:44
  I'm missing here. I maybe I'm misleading the the
• 1:03:49
  single target damage pit, but I don't think so.
• 1:03:52
  I know. I mean, I'm going to be honest,
• 1:03:54
  that seems a little counterintuitive.
• 1:03:56
  I I really don't know. I'm sure there is a reason, but.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah, because again, the the the the paragraph before.
• 1:04:03
  If a minion takes damage from any source except an area of
• 1:04:07
  effect, and that damage reduces a minion squad stamina pool by
• 1:04:11
  amount of damage equal to the stamina pool of two or more
• 1:04:14
  minions, multiple minions are taken out by the damage after
• 1:04:18
  drop. After dropping any minions who
• 1:04:20
  took the damage first, the minion nearest to those nearest
• 1:04:25
  to those taken out suffer the same fate.
• 1:04:29
  So the damage will roll over if you single target them.
• 1:04:36
  The damage will not roll over if you area of affect them.
• 1:04:41
  So like no comprende. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I
• 1:04:46
  can think of is that retesting they were like, oh, oh, wait a
• 1:04:52
  minute, spells is way more effective than we wanted it to
• 1:04:56
  be, so we're just gonna have. To no, no, I just realized what
• 1:04:59
  it is. I just realized it.
• 1:05:01
  I just I just mapped it yes, I just had a Eureka right now
• 1:05:03
  right this second. OK let me see if I can explain
• 1:05:07
  this in a way that it'll that you'll also get it.
• 1:05:10
  So OK, the single target damage attack is 12 damage.
• 1:05:17
  So the the fury that deals the 12 damage hit the entire Minya
• 1:05:24
  Salmina pool for 12 right? The talents Incinerate only
• 1:05:31
  deals 6 damage, but because they caught three minions in it, it
• 1:05:36
  ends up being 15 damage. If it was a single target
• 1:05:40
  ability it would have only been 6 damage, but because it's an
• 1:05:44
  AOE and they could catch all three of them, it ends up
• 1:05:47
  dealing way more to the pool. OK, so follow up question then.
• 1:05:51
  Now that the pool has less damage than it should, but more
• 1:05:54
  enemies than it has, what do you do then?
• 1:05:58
  What do you mean? So if it does 15 damage and
• 1:06:01
  you've not hit as many enemies right, the total pool has
• 1:06:04
  dropped below what the enemies have are right?
• 1:06:07
  Am I not? Am I missing something?
• 1:06:11
  Huh. What did you just say?
• 1:06:13
  I don't even know what you just said to me.
• 1:06:14
  Wait, what? Read that to me again.
• 1:06:18
  Read it to me again or. No, that was no.
• 1:06:21
  Explain it to me again. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:06:23
  So normally, so like if you imagine they aren't minions for
• 1:06:26
  a second right, and the talent drops and incinerate and deals 6
• 1:06:30
  damage, the everyone in that group is just taking six damage
• 1:06:35
  because their minions and their health is tied together is
• 1:06:38
  dealing 15 damage. Because you have to think of a
• 1:06:41
  minion group as like a singular enemy.
• 1:06:44
  So effectively you're dealing more damage than you would to a
• 1:06:47
  singular enemy. Like hitting one dude with the
• 1:06:51
  AOE in the incinerate would deal 6 damage to the one guy hitting
• 1:06:56
  the minions with the incinerate is dealing 15 damage.
• 1:06:59
  To one guy actually bringing the entire health pool down 15
• 1:07:02
  points. Right, That's what I'm saying.
• 1:07:04
  So now you have more enemies than the health pool should have
• 1:07:07
  health of. No, because they all die is the
• 1:07:13
  three minions caught in it die because they only have 5 health
• 1:07:15
  and there's one minion left out of the four.
• 1:07:23
  I'm not getting this. So, OK, are you looking at the
• 1:07:27
  diagram? I am, yeah.
• 1:07:29
  OK, so you see those three spine cleavers in that AOE are dead.
• 1:07:33
  Yes. They're gone, so the stamina
• 1:07:36
  pool is only 5 left for the last spine cleaver alive because they
• 1:07:39
  each have 5 health. There's only one guy left, so
• 1:07:45
  the the talent took out three dudes and there's one left.
• 1:07:52
  OK, All right. So yes, I I guess I am getting
• 1:07:54
  it. I'm just sort.
• 1:07:59
  Of effectively the talent is getting more bang for their buck
• 1:08:04
  in terms of their damage than the Fury is on that single
• 1:08:08
  target. Right, right.
• 1:08:09
  Yes, OK. So yeah, I am getting that it
• 1:08:11
  just. Because an ability, it, it
• 1:08:13
  doesn't seem like it at first, but I just as I just worked it
• 1:08:17
  through my head, basically an ability that would normally do 6
• 1:08:21
  damage to a singular guy is doing 15 damage to a singular
• 1:08:25
  guy. Because in terms of encounter
• 1:08:27
  value and enemy strength, right, You have to think of the minion
• 1:08:31
  group as one enemy, right? Because minion groups are
• 1:08:36
  individual. Minions are so weak, the group
• 1:08:38
  is the enemy, not anyone individual guy.
• 1:08:41
  So effectively, an AOE that would deal 6 damage to a platoon
• 1:08:45
  enemy is dealing 15 damage to a minion enemy.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting it
• 1:08:53
  now. It's it's, it's more noodly than
• 1:08:55
  I. Like it, it, it takes, it takes
• 1:08:57
  a minute to like, like, I don't even think this is really their
• 1:09:00
  fault. I think it is just this is it's
• 1:09:02
  just one of those that's just how math works situations, you
• 1:09:05
  know what I mean? Yeah, it is weird.
• 1:09:08
  It is weird. But now that I've
• 1:09:11
  recontextualized like I'm like, OK, I get there now, so I get
• 1:09:14
  what they're saying. So yes, it is more effective to
• 1:09:17
  hit the minions with fireball than to just smack them with
• 1:09:20
  your sword. It is, even though that the
• 1:09:24
  rollover damage makes it seem like it's not, but it is.
• 1:09:29
  It's Yeah, Essentially, you could do more damage for less
• 1:09:33
  work is another way to phrase it, right?
• 1:09:36
  The talents AOE can deal out more damage for less effort.
• 1:09:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:41
  And in a singular turn too, right.
• 1:09:43
  Which is another thing you have to like action economy wise.
• 1:09:50
  Yeah, if a minion has damage weakness or damage immunity, you
• 1:09:59
  apply apply the effects to the squad once, even if the multiple
• 1:10:05
  minions share the same immunity. Basically if they have, you
• 1:10:08
  know, fire weakness 5, it's not 15 for hitting each minion, it's
• 1:10:13
  5 for you. Just just the one instance.
• 1:10:20
  The effects are the last thing applied when calculating damage
• 1:10:23
  and can drop or save multiple minions from any source of
• 1:10:26
  damage, including area effects. Yeah, then it mentions prepping
• 1:10:37
  stamina pools for the minions. This is basically just saying
• 1:10:41
  write down each stage of however many points chunked down to like
• 1:10:47
  count as a kill. This is how to end minions act.
• 1:10:53
  So when minions act they use their main action all together.
• 1:11:00
  Basically they like operate as a squad.
• 1:11:06
  They can burn their main action to do nothing, or they can.
• 1:11:15
  Or they can use a maneuver to alleviate 1 circumstance on
• 1:11:19
  themselves. Right?
• 1:11:20
  So if you catch one minion in a debuff, that one minion can burn
• 1:11:27
  their maneuver to get the debuff off of them.
• 1:11:30
  But then they are not part of the main action that the rest of
• 1:11:32
  the squad takes. They like take themselves out of
• 1:11:34
  the squad action. And minions also have less
• 1:11:40
  action economy, so they can only take a move and a main action, a
• 1:11:44
  move and a maneuver or two moves.
• 1:11:47
  So what that ends up breaking down to is they cannot do a main
• 1:11:51
  action and a maneuver, which is to say they can't do an action
• 1:11:54
  and a bonus action. They can do a bonus action and a
• 1:11:57
  move. They can do an action and a
• 1:11:59
  move, or they can do a double move and that's it.
• 1:12:01
  So they're a little more limited.
• 1:12:06
  They can take opportunity attacks, but they will not.
• 1:12:09
  They usually will not have triggered actions.
• 1:12:12
  They won't have special triggered actions, they'll just
• 1:12:14
  have regular opportunity attacks.
• 1:12:17
  And then minions generally have a signature ability that is
• 1:12:26
  again their entire group does the smack.
• 1:12:33
  Each target of a minion's signature ability is affected by
• 1:12:36
  only one instance of the ability, but when two or three
• 1:12:39
  at Max of a squad's minions attack the same target or object
• 1:12:44
  simultaneously, each minion causes the signature ability to
• 1:12:47
  deal extra damage to the target equal to the minions free strike
• 1:12:50
  value. So essentially, if you dogpile
• 1:12:52
  one thing, you get a flat bonus equal to the free strike value,
• 1:12:56
  which is typically going to be lower than the average damage of
• 1:13:01
  the ability on its own. Basically what this ends up
• 1:13:05
  meaning, it is usually more effective to have minions target
• 1:13:08
  different heroes, not to dogpile one hero.
• 1:13:12
  That's that's what that shakes down to.
• 1:13:17
  If the minions get a crit, everyone in the squad gets the
• 1:13:19
  crit or everyone. Yeah, yeah, one minion crits,
• 1:13:26
  they all get to go again, basically, because again, you
• 1:13:28
  have to treat them as a singular unit.
• 1:13:31
  The the problem, the really the the noodliness of the minions in
• 1:13:34
  this game really comes down to the fact that most of the time
• 1:13:39
  you treat them as one unit, but sometimes you have to kind of
• 1:13:41
  treat them as separate entities. You have to kind of bounce back
• 1:13:44
  and forth. That's where the real confusion
• 1:13:45
  comes in. And again, that ultimately comes
• 1:13:50
  down to the way that the minions are moving around on the field
• 1:13:54
  and can move around separately from each other and whatnot.
• 1:13:58
  But yes, the idea of why not just make them a swarm?
• 1:14:02
  I you know, I could see an argument.
• 1:14:04
  There for sure it just like you would have.
• 1:14:08
  You'd be sacrificing your your manoeuvring, that's for sure.
• 1:14:13
  And I know how much Matt likes the manoeuvring, but I I kind of
• 1:14:17
  have to play this game of you sacrifice your manoeuvring, but
• 1:14:21
  you cut out five or six different really noodly fringe
• 1:14:27
  rules. Yes.
• 1:14:28
  And clearly he thinks that it's worth.
• 1:14:30
  It, I mean, they're not that fringe, but yeah, I know what
• 1:14:33
  you mean. Clearly he thinks it's worth it,
• 1:14:36
  so who am I to argue? But yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Yeah, it is one of those things, right?
• 1:14:40
  Who am I to argue then there's a little bit about minions
• 1:14:45
  manoeuvres they can do. Grab, hide and knock back and
• 1:14:49
  search blah blah blah. If the minions you roll for the
• 1:14:58
  whole squad like only you can only be affected one at a time,
• 1:15:01
  again treating the minions like 1 unit free strike.
• 1:15:05
  If several minions in the squad free strike the same target,
• 1:15:08
  such as hero provoking opportunity attack, the damage
• 1:15:12
  from each minions free strike is added together and treated as
• 1:15:14
  one strike, again treating them as one unit.
• 1:15:21
  If you use multiple squads made-up of the same type of
• 1:15:24
  minions in encounter, you might. It is important to make it easy
• 1:15:28
  for the players to tell the squads apart.
• 1:15:29
  So just let the players know. Basically it's saying if you
• 1:15:32
  have two groups of you know, if you have two groups of four that
• 1:15:35
  are the same monster stat block, make sure the players understand
• 1:15:38
  that it is 2 separate minion groups.
• 1:15:41
  And again, the reason that's relevant is because of the like
• 1:15:43
  damage splash over so they can know who they're targeting
• 1:15:48
  basically, or who you know which squad is taking damage.
• 1:15:53
  You can also attach a squad captain to a minion.
• 1:15:56
  Squad captains aren't necessarily strategic leaders or
• 1:16:01
  anything like that. They might just be more powerful
• 1:16:03
  creatures, but basically a squad of minions can have a captain,
• 1:16:07
  and a creature can't be a captain to more than one squad.
• 1:16:10
  A captain takes their turn at the same time as the minion
• 1:16:13
  members of the squad, but isn't limited in their action options
• 1:16:17
  as minions are. A captain's stamina also isn't
• 1:16:20
  added to the minions Sam in a pool and is tracked as is
• 1:16:25
  tracked the same as other creatures.
• 1:16:27
  Well, a minion squad has a captain.
• 1:16:29
  Each minion in the squad gains the benefit noted at the with
• 1:16:32
  Captain entry in their stat block.
• 1:16:34
  Usually this benefit is a damage boost or a speed boost or
• 1:16:36
  something like that. Basically, if they have a
• 1:16:38
  captain, they're a little stronger.
• 1:16:41
  If a squad a minion loses their captain, a new allied creature
• 1:16:44
  can become the squad's captain at the start of the next round.
• 1:16:46
  No action. I so, OK, I, I think that's an
• 1:16:50
  interesting rule. I would want one caveat to that
• 1:16:54
  rule, OK, I would want there to be something like a battle shock
• 1:16:58
  test that you, that you see in games like Warhammer where it's
• 1:17:01
  like the captain has died, the squad leader has died.
• 1:17:05
  Have the squad make a battle shock to see if they can
• 1:17:08
  maintain cohesion or they break apart.
• 1:17:10
  And if they break apart, then they can't have a new captain.
• 1:17:16
  Yeah. Then we get to encounter
• 1:17:20
  building. So all right, like I'm not going
• 1:17:26
  to go through this on a clinical step by step because I just
• 1:17:28
  don't, it's not like interesting.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah. But you know, I'll kind of give
• 1:17:35
  you the broad strokes here. So basically they break down the
• 1:17:38
  order of operations. It's like 10 steps or something,
• 1:17:41
  9. So how many actually?
• 1:17:42
  Before I talk out my ass here, I know it's. 5 steps.
• 1:17:45
  Wow, I way over exaggerated that.
• 1:17:47
  I don't know why I did that. But basically it's just advice
• 1:17:51
  on how to build encounter, right?
• 1:17:52
  You've seen this kind of thing in D&D, things that are worth
• 1:17:55
  bringing up. So encounter difficulty, you
• 1:17:57
  have trivial, easy, standard, hard and extreme encounters.
• 1:18:02
  And effectively, these are just like your you know, your easy
• 1:18:06
  medium hards in D&D with the you know, obviously there's five in
• 1:18:11
  this game. So you have trivial and extreme
• 1:18:13
  on the far ends. Trivial encounters get you no
• 1:18:17
  reward. Easy encounters will probably
• 1:18:19
  get you one victory. A standard encounter probably
• 1:18:21
  get you one. A hard encounter will get you
• 1:18:23
  2IN extreme could get you 2 or more.
• 1:18:27
  Basically because this game doesn't use XP on a monster by
• 1:18:31
  monster basis. Thank God, fuck that noise.
• 1:18:37
  The the type of the encounter dictates how many victory points
• 1:18:41
  you give to the players, which dictates their XP.
• 1:18:43
  Boom bang boom nice and simple. Also, can I just say too, with
• 1:18:49
  the whole victory system in this game, like I like that victories
• 1:18:53
  are tossed out for all sorts of different challenges and stuff
• 1:18:57
  'cause it means you can keep the like, levelling momentum and the
• 1:18:59
  pacing and stuff good without having to be like fight after
• 1:19:03
  fight after fight after fight, you know what I mean?
• 1:19:05
  Yeah, it's really something. The fact that like effectively
• 1:19:09
  this game has a built in mechanic for like quest XP and
• 1:19:13
  puzzle XP and fight XP at like all these different, you know
• 1:19:17
  what I mean? Yeah, I mean for fear of getting
• 1:19:20
  locked in the pillory again by the comment section.
• 1:19:24
  Yes, the victories are a lot more robust.
• 1:19:28
  Robust. Fuck me robust than I gave them
• 1:19:30
  credit for. Fair enough.
• 1:19:34
  Yeah. I just, I just like having a
• 1:19:38
  system that rewards the different elements of expected
• 1:19:41
  play, right? And not being too like locked
• 1:19:46
  into anyone mentality, right? Because that's the thing a lot
• 1:19:50
  of people play D&D and want to do like puzzles and like montage
• 1:19:55
  style challenges and stuff like that.
• 1:19:58
  And they're like, they feel like it should be XP worthy because
• 1:20:01
  you're doing the adventuring thing.
• 1:20:02
  But the game rules is written kind of doesn't do that.
• 1:20:06
  Except it kind of does and kind of doesn't.
• 1:20:08
  It's weird because the DMG does actually show hints of saying
• 1:20:13
  you should do that, but doesn't really tell you how very well.
• 1:20:16
  Yeah, it doesn't really explain how the fuck you're supposed to
• 1:20:19
  go out go about it. It does very briefly in the 2024
• 1:20:23
  DMG, but yeah, I would like a little more to that.
• 1:20:29
  And it does actually give an example of those little mini
• 1:20:31
  adventures in the 2024 DMG do actually give examples of
• 1:20:35
  rewarding quest XP in there. So they they they've thought
• 1:20:41
  about it, but they they like didn't bring enough attention to
• 1:20:45
  it, I guess is the easiest way to put it.
• 1:20:50
  Once you have determined your like what challenge level the
• 1:20:59
  encounter, so you know, easy or standard or hard or whatever.
• 1:21:04
  Oh, and I mean, I don't need to explain what those mean, right?
• 1:21:08
  That's no, I'm not What? Yeah.
• 1:21:09
  What am I asking you? Good.
• 1:21:14
  So you good. I was about to explain what
• 1:21:17
  those like encounter words means and I was like, why am I
• 1:21:19
  trivial, easy, standard, hard, extreme.
• 1:21:21
  I think that's explanatory. I.
• 1:21:23
  Don't. Yeah, I don't think you.
• 1:21:25
  Need to. So then you need to determine
• 1:21:27
  your encounter strength, which is basically your budget for how
• 1:21:34
  many monsters you could put in there.
• 1:21:38
  Or no, sorry. The encounter strength is
• 1:21:43
  roughly how powerful the players are.
• 1:21:48
  So to determine how many creatures and other types of
• 1:21:50
  challenges you have in an encounter, you need to figure
• 1:21:52
  out the hero's encounter strength.
• 1:21:55
  A party's encounter strength is used as a benchmark for buying
• 1:21:58
  monsters for your encounter, as explained below.
• 1:22:03
  So you calculate the party's strength.
• 1:22:07
  So in the example it it gives, you start at a baseline of four
• 1:22:13
  and then you add 2 for each level of the heroes.
• 1:22:16
  For instance, a third level hero has an counter strength of 10,
• 1:22:20
  so 4 and then 2 + 2 + 2 because they're Level 3 and then you add
• 1:22:25
  them all together. So if you have a group of five
• 1:22:28
  third level heroes, your your counter strength is 50.
• 1:22:33
  Then now you do also have to factor in victories.
• 1:22:37
  So for every two victories that the heroes have on average,
• 1:22:44
  increase the party's encounter strength as if there was another
• 1:22:48
  hero in the party. So if the third level heroes
• 1:22:51
  have two victories, increase the encounter score by 10.
• 1:22:56
  So basically every two victories you slap another player in there
• 1:23:00
  another. Oh I thought it was increase it
• 1:23:02
  by 4. No, it'd be 10 for that 10.
• 1:23:08
  Every two victories counts as one more PC.
• 1:23:13
  Yeah, but I just, I didn't know if they specified PC at level or
• 1:23:16
  PC base. At level.
• 1:23:19
  At level, yeah. For instance, if a third level
• 1:23:22
  hero, if a party of third level heroes has two victories,
• 1:23:26
  increase the encounterscore by 10.
• 1:23:29
  If they had six victories, you would increase the
• 1:23:31
  Encounterscore by 30. Because. 6 victories would be a
• 1:23:35
  six victories would be adding in three more characters.
• 1:23:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason for that being
• 1:23:42
  victories make it that when they start fights they have more of
• 1:23:46
  their heroic resource, so they will be able to dump out more
• 1:23:48
  damage or more effects or whatever right from the jump.
• 1:23:53
  Then once you have your encounter strength of your
• 1:23:56
  characters, you then compare that to the degree of encounter
• 1:24:00
  you want to do. So for an example, if you want
• 1:24:03
  to have a standard encounter, the standard encounter will have
• 1:24:06
  a budget that is between the encounter strength of the heroes
• 1:24:11
  and the party's encounter strength plus the encounter
• 1:24:13
  strength of one hero. So effectively, if their
• 1:24:17
  encounter strength is 50 and you want it to be a standard
• 1:24:21
  encounter that they're facing, you have a budget between 50 and
• 1:24:25
  60 for your encounter value of the enemies, right?
• 1:24:29
  Because it's encounter strength plus one hero.
• 1:24:32
  A hard encounter would be the the parties in counter strength
• 1:24:37
  plus 3 heroes. So in that case you'd go from a
• 1:24:40
  budget of you'd have between a budget of 50 and 80.
• 1:24:46
  Yeah. Once you have the value, you
• 1:24:53
  then spend money money. You then spend the encounter
• 1:24:58
  value on the creatures that you have and basically you know, if
• 1:25:03
  a creature has an encounter value of 10 and you have a
• 1:25:05
  budget of 60, subtract 10 from the 60, you have 50 leftover.
• 1:25:09
  That's it. That part, that part's easy.
• 1:25:13
  The only part that's a little tricky is like figuring out what
• 1:25:15
  your players encounter strength is and then comparing at the
• 1:25:20
  various degrees of encounter of trivial, easy, standard,
• 1:25:23
  etcetera. You know, that's where it can
• 1:25:25
  get, you know, a little like numbers, noodling numbers.
• 1:25:31
  And then also creatures have levels, which basically you
• 1:25:39
  don't want to go greater than two levels of the heroes.
• 1:25:43
  So for instance, creatures of level 7 and below are
• 1:25:46
  appropriate for fifth level heroes.
• 1:25:48
  If the heroes have six or more victories, you can push the
• 1:25:52
  upper limit to within 3 levels of the heroes.
• 1:25:54
  It doesn't say beyond that. And I think the reason it
• 1:25:56
  doesn't say beyond that is because it's unlikely it's for
• 1:25:58
  your characters to get past six victories.
• 1:26:00
  That's kind of a lot. They probably won't have the the
• 1:26:03
  resources to keep going at that point.
• 1:26:05
  That yeah, I mean 6 is the limit for what the game says they
• 1:26:09
  should be doing without a a respite.
• 1:26:12
  Yeah, because six would mean 6 encounters of some kind, right?
• 1:26:16
  So that could be like 3 fights and three montages or like, you
• 1:26:19
  know, so unlikely for you to go beyond six.
• 1:26:22
  Ironically, that's also the number.
• 1:26:24
  That, and maybe not ironically, but funny enough, that that's
• 1:26:26
  also the number that D&D recommends.
• 1:26:29
  Is, yeah. 6 standards I think is what it or 6 medium or whatever
• 1:26:37
  yeah, whenever you buy minions for encounter value, group them
• 1:26:43
  in fours. You know purchase them in sets
• 1:26:47
  of four. Basically you can.
• 1:26:52
  You can also split the minions up in whatever way you want.
• 1:26:56
  So don't go higher than a squad of eight though.
• 1:27:01
  But so if you had eight minions, you could have one squad of
• 1:27:04
  eight, or two squads of four, or a squad of three and a squad of
• 1:27:07
  five, or a squad of 332. Basically you can chop them
• 1:27:09
  whatever you want. Don't do too many creatures the
• 1:27:17
  game recommends. Don't go more than 8IN general
• 1:27:22
  you don't want more than 8 creatures per hero, and then if
• 1:27:30
  the encounter has three creatures per hero, at least
• 1:27:33
  half of the creatures in the encounters you probably want to
• 1:27:35
  be minions. Basically, don't you know
• 1:27:40
  minions let you swarm, but don't swarm too much.
• 1:27:43
  Mostly a 'cause you don't want to like crush them, but also B
• 1:27:47
  cause for your own sanity of just keeping track of things.
• 1:27:51
  Yeah, I mean it, as someone who's run minions in Lancer, and
• 1:27:55
  yes, Lancer was a little more noodly than this.
• 1:27:58
  It do be getting a little crunchy and you're kind of like,
• 1:28:02
  wait, what the fuck? Who does what now?
• 1:28:04
  Shit. And then it says when it comes
• 1:28:08
  to number of stat blocks, you typically don't want to use more
• 1:28:10
  than six different kinds of stat blocks. 6 is a lot. 6 seems like
• 1:28:16
  a lot 6. Six different stat blocks bro.
• 1:28:22
  Back to Lancer 3. At 3:00 I'm like.
• 1:28:25
  Yeah, I mean, I Lancer says everyone who's wrong.
• 1:28:28
  Lancer says 4. You want 2 attackers, like two
• 1:28:32
  different attack units, 1 defender, one supporter.
• 1:28:35
  That's the the method for Lancer and being more crunchy than
• 1:28:38
  this, I'm going to say 4. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:44
  And then your last step is building your initiative groups.
• 1:28:46
  So I said that the the way initiative works was the same as
• 1:28:50
  five, EI like slightly misspoke in that technically you build
• 1:28:55
  the initiative groups yourself, but generally you're going to
• 1:29:04
  keep like, you know, similar type, you're going to keep the
• 1:29:07
  same creatures together, but like you do technically build
• 1:29:10
  them yourself. Yeah.
• 1:29:14
  And then in terms of how many initiative groups, you want to
• 1:29:19
  have as many initiative groups as there are heroes ±1 or two.
• 1:29:24
  Basically, this is simple. It gives a quick, yeah, it, it
• 1:29:32
  gives a quick encounter builder. Like, I don't even really,
• 1:29:39
  basically it just tells you like 2 basically.
• 1:29:42
  It's like figure out how many heroes you have.
• 1:29:44
  Each hero is a slot, throw in this many creatures per hero
• 1:29:49
  slot of each type of each organization if that you want to
• 1:29:53
  have in there. And then for like easy medium
• 1:29:57
  hard encounter, like subtract 1 hero slot or add 1 hero slot or
• 1:30:02
  whatever, and then throw in some dynamic terrain stuff to spice
• 1:30:07
  things up. Basically, yeah.
• 1:30:14
  And then it just tells you how to use creature roles and their
• 1:30:17
  organization. I'm not going to go through this
• 1:30:19
  cause again, it's like kind of dry shit.
• 1:30:22
  But I really like that it's here because I just really love being
• 1:30:28
  like, you know, we give you these different types of
• 1:30:32
  monsters that do different things, right?
• 1:30:33
  We have ambushers and artillery and whatnot.
• 1:30:36
  Also, here's how to use them. Thank you.
• 1:30:42
  I would love 5E to do something close to this at least.
• 1:30:45
  I don't know about you, but like.
• 1:30:46
  No, that's what I said before, right?
• 1:30:47
  The game. This this rule book provides
• 1:30:49
  real, practical, useful information in like a testing
• 1:30:54
  setting. Yeah, I love that.
• 1:30:59
  Give me more of that. And then after it describes how
• 1:31:02
  to use the heroes or how to use the, the, the, the not the
• 1:31:05
  heroes, the creature organization types and
• 1:31:07
  everything and the different kinds of creatures, it said, Oh,
• 1:31:10
  it also gives you guidance on if you want to turn a regular
• 1:31:13
  leader or an elite or something like that into a solo creature.
• 1:31:17
  It tells you how to like bump up their stats and make them a
• 1:31:19
  solo, which is nice. I like, yeah, that's definitely
• 1:31:23
  the the ability to adjust big boys down or little guys up.
• 1:31:27
  Yes, please. And then it talks a little bit
• 1:31:32
  about how to choose maps. And you know, basically the crux
• 1:31:36
  of it is like, because this game is big on the tactics and the
• 1:31:39
  moving around and the positioning and so on and so
• 1:31:41
  forth. Make sure there's terrain stuff
• 1:31:46
  around for them to do so. And then it so right, sorry.
• 1:32:01
  So after talking about the maps, oh, it also tells you
• 1:32:04
  verticality is really useful in this game, which makes sense
• 1:32:07
  because again, the like ability to move around a lot.
• 1:32:12
  It then talks about encounter objectives and different kinds
• 1:32:18
  of encounter, different kinds of encounters that you can build
• 1:32:22
  and what I really like about this.
• 1:32:24
  So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because it would
• 1:32:27
  take forever, but and we're already, you know, deep enough
• 1:32:31
  into this, but I love this. So essentially it gives you the
• 1:32:36
  last little chunk of the monster book is it tells you all right,
• 1:32:42
  for this kind of encounter with this kind of objective, you want
• 1:32:46
  to have these kind of monster roles and organization, this
• 1:32:50
  kind of a map, this kind of difficulty adjustment, these
• 1:32:54
  kinds of wind conditions. This is how many victories you
• 1:32:57
  want to deal with. And this is the kind of failure
• 1:32:59
  condition and So what that means?
• 1:33:01
  IS blew me away about this. Do you know what these are?
• 1:33:04
  What these are reps? These are literally.
• 1:33:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So these are great.
• 1:33:11
  Love the shit out of these. So like the first one on the
• 1:33:13
  list is just diminish the numbers, which is, you know, the
• 1:33:16
  most obvious like, right, beat them before they beat us.
• 1:33:19
  But then it's a then you have defeat a specific foe, get the
• 1:33:23
  thing, destroy the thing, save something.
• 1:33:28
  And every single one of them has what kind of monster roles and
• 1:33:32
  organizations, what kind of maps, any kind of modifications
• 1:33:37
  to the difficulty based on the objective.
• 1:33:39
  What the wind condition are is victory rewards and then failure
• 1:33:46
  conditions. Yeah, love it, love it.
• 1:33:50
  And there's a bunch of them, right, escorts in there.
• 1:33:53
  There's a hold them off 1 assault.
• 1:33:56
  The defenses like yeah, these are sick.
• 1:33:59
  And I definitely, if I was running this game, would
• 1:34:01
  definitely want to use these. I will say, by the way, I know
• 1:34:04
  when last time we were talking about this game, I was like, I
• 1:34:06
  don't know if I necessarily want to run Draw Steel.
• 1:34:09
  Reading through the monster book does start to make me want to
• 1:34:12
  run it a little bit. I why?
• 1:34:15
  You know, I'm still kind of in the like me.
• 1:34:20
  I mean, it's fine, I know you hate this game, but I don't
• 1:34:22
  know. Here's the thing.
• 1:34:23
  I don't hate this game. I really don't hate this game.
• 1:34:25
  I just, I don't know, I I just don't want another medieval
• 1:34:31
  fantasy thing right now. It's.
• 1:34:33
  So easy to get your goat. I look because I, I've, I've
• 1:34:38
  kind of, I, I've critiqued this game a lot over the five now
• 1:34:42
  episodes that we've done it. And I'm sure there is this
• 1:34:44
  belief that I do hate this game and I don't hate this game.
• 1:34:48
  It does look really cool and I do have ideas for characters.
• 1:34:51
  I just am not in love with it. And I, I think it's mainly
• 1:34:55
  because I just don't want another heroic fantasy at the
• 1:34:58
  moment. I mean.
• 1:35:01
  Sure, yeah, it is still doing the the similar similar genre
• 1:35:05
  vibe to DND at the end of the day.
• 1:35:07
  Yeah. I guess for me, I just don't get
• 1:35:11
  that sick of the heroic fantasy thing, right?
• 1:35:12
  I'm sick of I. I get sick of DND from a
• 1:35:15
  mechanic standpoint more than anything.
• 1:35:18
  I like, I think I said it before I got to work this, I have to
• 1:35:21
  work games out of my system. So like, I still want to play
• 1:35:26
  Daggerheart. We're working through Fabulous
• 1:35:28
  right now. And what was the other game I
• 1:35:30
  was looking at that I wanted to play?
• 1:35:34
  Avatar Legends, which is like, you know, it's, it's, it is
• 1:35:37
  heroic fantasy of another kind. Different vibe, very different.
• 1:35:40
  Vibe. Once I get those off the table
• 1:35:43
  I'm sure I'm going to think about draw steel and be like,
• 1:35:45
  shit, I kind of want to play the fuck out of this now.
• 1:35:48
  It's a good chance. Well anyway, as someone who
• 1:35:51
  doesn't hate the game like Isaiah, reading through the
• 1:35:53
  monster has sort of enticed me, enticed me to want to run it
• 1:36:00
  more for sure. Especially when I looked at
• 1:36:01
  this, the encounter object, the the sitreps, as it were.
• 1:36:05
  These definitely made me like, oh, all right, you know what I
• 1:36:08
  mean? I you know I one thing I have to
• 1:36:11
  say for this game, Encounter objectives is a better name than
• 1:36:15
  Sitreps. Yeah, Sitreps.
• 1:36:17
  Well, Sitreps makes sense thematically, you know.
• 1:36:20
  And it makes sense thematically in Lancer, but if you're trying
• 1:36:23
  to explain sitreps to people, explain it.
• 1:36:24
  Yeah, people are like, what the fuck is the sitrep?
• 1:36:27
  You're like, yeah, yeah. It works in the genre of the
• 1:36:31
  game, but is a little confusing outside.
• 1:36:33
  Yeah. Also, not to bring up the art
• 1:36:36
  thing again, but I just want to point out this piece of art on
• 1:36:39
  page 19 of the house that's like burning down in green fire.
• 1:36:44
  Love that. Love this one a lot.
• 1:36:47
  Yes. And you know why?
• 1:36:49
  Because it feels a little brushier, a little looser, a
• 1:36:53
  little more energy to it. Yeah.
• 1:36:56
  I mean yes, like especially the dude in the.
• 1:36:59
  Foreground. I like that the lighting on him
• 1:37:01
  feels very brushy, like very washed on there.
• 1:37:04
  Very like quick with a quick hand, you know?
• 1:37:06
  Oh, same thing. I mean, if you look at the the
• 1:37:08
  orc and the orc and her little man thing over in the corner,
• 1:37:14
  very similar vibe, very brushy, very gestural.
• 1:37:17
  Work in Herman thing? What are you talking?
• 1:37:19
  About on page 6 The Orc and the Captive.
• 1:37:23
  Oh, God, I got to hold on. Wait, now I got to.
• 1:37:26
  Oh, no, I had to. I'm scrolling.
• 1:37:29
  I'm scrolling. I'm scrolling.
• 1:37:31
  Oh, yeah, scrolling. Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:37:34
  I do like that one too, actually, Yeah.
• 1:37:37
  And you know, and page 17 like right, right above the fire when
• 1:37:40
  it's you get that like hyper rendered a little more like what
• 1:37:44
  I you know, what we've expected so far from it like.
• 1:37:48
  Yeah, that's yeah. But yeah, like in general, I've
• 1:37:54
  been liking the art better that we said this before we started
• 1:37:57
  recording, but I've been liking the art better in the monster
• 1:37:59
  book for sure. There's one.
• 1:38:03
  There's one piece of art that drives me up a wall in this
• 1:38:09
  book. I'm wondering if you can guess
• 1:38:12
  which one it is? I can't, no, I can't even be get
• 1:38:16
  like I got that out really. I don't know.
• 1:38:22
  It's the one on page 28 but the definitely not beholder the the
• 1:38:29
  weird the tiefling or the the devil with that cloak made of it
• 1:38:35
  looks like a scrotum. Like I don't know what they were
• 1:38:37
  going for. I don't know what the intent was
• 1:38:40
  though. It doesn't work on any level.
• 1:38:43
  It looks just. You mean the one with this hero
• 1:38:45
  turned to stone at the forefront?
• 1:38:47
  Yes, OK. Is it that he?
• 1:38:49
  I think he's turned to stone. Yeah, if you actually mouse over
• 1:38:54
  the image, it has a little descriptor.
• 1:38:55
  I was wondering if that was. Yeah, I was wondering what that
• 1:38:58
  was. Yeah.
• 1:38:59
  Yeah. That.
• 1:38:59
  That's not clear because his feet are still red, so I just
• 1:39:03
  figured he was wearing a cloak or some armor or some shit.
• 1:39:06
  No, the feet are red from the light, the light of the like
• 1:39:10
  whatever is the magical effect in front of him.
• 1:39:12
  But I think the intention of that piece is to get a little a
• 1:39:16
  little Frank Frazetta with it, a little older school oil painting
• 1:39:21
  D&D. Yeah, yeah, I can see.
• 1:39:24
  This is why it feels a little almost like as like a little bit
• 1:39:28
  of a lumpiness to it in a way. Yeah, but that that texture,
• 1:39:32
  that cragginess just kind of looks like veins on a nut sack
• 1:39:36
  and. Oh well, that's.
• 1:39:39
  Not a vibe. This could just be a problem of
• 1:39:44
  composition. If you, if we saw the
• 1:39:46
  character's face, you could have it locked in like a in a, you
• 1:39:51
  know, have it look panicked or, or, or scared or something like
• 1:39:54
  that. Seeing it from behind, you're
• 1:39:56
  just like, I don't know what I'm looking at.
• 1:40:00
  To be clear, it's better than anything I can draw, but.
• 1:40:04
  Right. I mean, that's, yeah.
• 1:40:06
  Inversely, the frogman on page 34 is my favorite.
• 1:40:08
  I love him so much, he looks so happy.
• 1:40:11
  The frogman, Yes, the the angle. The angle lots.
• 1:40:15
  The angle lot, yeah. Yes, I cannot.
• 1:40:18
  Yeah. Angle angolatos.
• 1:40:19
  Yes, they're cool. He looks so happy, he's so
• 1:40:22
  excited. He he's like random bullshit,
• 1:40:24
  No. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly gotcha
• 1:40:28
  bitch. So the last last little bit of
• 1:40:34
  the sort of opening section of this book, it just talks about
• 1:40:40
  running the encounters, you know, remembering to use default
• 1:40:47
  maneuvers, keeping the creatures moving, spread the damage
• 1:40:50
  around, modify the stamina as you see fit, use reinforce, just
• 1:40:54
  kind of general running encounter advice.
• 1:40:57
  And then the last little, the like the the last chunk with
• 1:41:02
  some technical stuff to it. You know, it talks about it
• 1:41:06
  tells you how to reskin monsters.
• 1:41:07
  If you're like, oh, I this monster works, but I need
• 1:41:09
  something different, you know, it's like just reskin shit,
• 1:41:11
  which, you know, obviously, of course they give you the math on
• 1:41:15
  adjusting monster levels and adjusting.
• 1:41:20
  Basically they tell you how they do their math.
• 1:41:24
  So if you want to make your own monster or change how the math
• 1:41:31
  works for your monster, the this is the method that you can use
• 1:41:34
  to do so. It's very new.
• 1:41:37
  It's newly math. So like, I'm not that is like
• 1:41:40
  going to like describe it here, but basically it's like you have
• 1:41:47
  a the role or the organization of the monster and then you have
• 1:41:50
  a role modifier and a damage modifier, and then you also have
• 1:41:53
  an organization modifier. And then you plug those
• 1:41:56
  modifiers into some equations they give you to figure out
• 1:42:00
  encounter value, stamina, damage, power, roll tiers,
• 1:42:06
  characteristics, the, you know, the save abilities and how they
• 1:42:11
  should work. Basically the like this is
• 1:42:15
  based, this is roughly how we math out our monsters.
• 1:42:17
  It is not 100% how they math out their monsters.
• 1:42:19
  Because for sure, I, I did a couple compare and contrasts of
• 1:42:23
  some stat blocks versus the math.
• 1:42:27
  And for sure the the math is like an average but it is not
• 1:42:31
  how they use. They don't stick to it 100%
• 1:42:33
  which I wouldn't expect them to but it's a great starting.
• 1:42:37
  But basically it's a little mini advanced fuckery chapter which I
• 1:42:42
  always love. It's also worth mentioning that
• 1:42:45
  they specifically tell you like a it's not a perfect system.
• 1:42:50
  There is no perfect system. Yes, you know, you are going to
• 1:42:53
  have to take a little bit of onus and play with it.
• 1:42:57
  Figure it out. Yeah.
• 1:42:59
  And I appreciate that. That being said, when I started
• 1:43:03
  looking over the math, when I just give my initial look at it,
• 1:43:06
  my brain did a little what huh. What, what are we doing here?
• 1:43:10
  Took me a minute to like, because I like, I looked at the
• 1:43:14
  tables and it said like the role modifier and the damage
• 1:43:16
  modifier. And I was like, wait, where do
• 1:43:18
  those plug in? What do those apply to?
• 1:43:20
  And then I looked at the equations and I was like, what?
• 1:43:23
  And I I had to do the like flip between the pages a couple of
• 1:43:26
  times before I could make sense of it.
• 1:43:29
  I look, I'm going to be honest, I read this bit, didn't really
• 1:43:32
  get it and went he's probably going to explain it.
• 1:43:36
  It's basically if you want to build your own monster or adjust
• 1:43:39
  the numbers of an existing monster.
• 1:43:41
  This is how you can go about it. Yeah, yeah, that I get.
• 1:43:43
  But I didn't really understand like like you said, where things
• 1:43:46
  plug into what they're about. Yeah, if you if you just take a
• 1:43:50
  moment and and follow the equations step by step, they do
• 1:43:54
  make sense. You just have to kind of take
• 1:43:58
  the time to follow the go through them, you know what I
• 1:44:00
  mean? Yeah, I guess.
• 1:44:04
  Yeah, so that's like that. Then that's the end of the,
• 1:44:07
  like, general rules. And then it's just stat blocks,
• 1:44:11
  baby. So like, I don't know, you got a
• 1:44:13
  stat block. You want to jump around to
• 1:44:15
  anything that really like spoke to you.
• 1:44:19
  I mean, I definitely like Ajax's stat block.
• 1:44:22
  He's got a lot of shit going on and.
• 1:44:25
  Can I just say by the way, actually, since you're, since
• 1:44:28
  you're mentioning Ajax, I think it's really funny that the very
• 1:44:32
  first monster in this book is the, the, the like the terrace
• 1:44:37
  basically like he's the highest, he's the most powerful, most
• 1:44:42
  dangerous, most complicated monster in the whole monster
• 1:44:46
  book. And he is the first thing
• 1:44:47
  listed. And I just kind of love that
• 1:44:49
  like. He's kind of just crazy like he
• 1:44:52
  is. Yeah, the stuff he does like
• 1:44:55
  size 1 large speed, 7700 stamina, 2 stability, free
• 1:44:58
  strike, 11 damage, no immunities, no weaknesses, has
• 1:45:01
  hover everything from his blade and how much that does or like
• 1:45:06
  his ability to just command people or essentially use the
• 1:45:11
  the he kind of has like a weird version of the law blasphemy
• 1:45:17
  from Kane where you just sort of set battlefield rules.
• 1:45:22
  Yeah, the like, is that what they taught you or who's
• 1:45:26
  hesitating? Like they're not actually rules,
• 1:45:31
  but it almost feels like the character, the the boss is
• 1:45:35
  setting rules down. Like I don't know how else to
• 1:45:37
  put it. You know, yeah, I mean, I think
• 1:45:40
  what you're hitting on is that he has very thematically fun
• 1:45:44
  abilities that invoke his vibe as a, like, tyrannical king.
• 1:45:50
  Yeah. You know.
• 1:45:52
  Where is that thing he has? It's like it's called like
• 1:45:54
  reasoning. Yeah, reason.
• 1:45:57
  Ajax attempts to instill doubt into a creature with a line of
• 1:46:00
  effect of logic and reason. The creature aid and Ajax make a
• 1:46:03
  pose. Reason checks.
• 1:46:04
  If Ajax wins, he chooses either to deal 11 damage to 1 target on
• 1:46:07
  his next strike to gain, or to gain an additional triggered
• 1:46:11
  action. Like, that's really cool.
• 1:46:15
  This is it's he's he's hitting you with.
• 1:46:17
  He's hitting you with his villain speech before he hits
• 1:46:19
  you. He literally has an ability
• 1:46:21
  called fucking draw steel and I just.
• 1:46:24
  Yes, he has the yes. And it's the oh God, it's
• 1:46:28
  Paladin has this in fucking 14 with like the swords that shoot
• 1:46:32
  out of the ground. Yeah.
• 1:46:35
  Oh God, what's that called? I can't remember either, but I
• 1:46:38
  know what you're talking about. Yeah, he.
• 1:46:39
  Just it's not, it's not Paladin, it's Dark Dark Knight.
• 1:46:42
  No, it's Paladin. Is it?
• 1:46:43
  It's Paladin OK. Yeah, I I believe they drop from
• 1:46:46
  the sky more. Oh, no, no, no, they have one
• 1:46:49
  that does come up from the ground and then have the
• 1:46:51
  different one that comes from the sky.
• 1:46:52
  Yeah, Paladin summons a bunch of swords in that game.
• 1:46:55
  Yeah, I know Darkly has an equivalent.
• 1:46:57
  Is it? Is it like teeth that it does,
• 1:46:59
  or horns or? It's more like teeth.
• 1:47:01
  Yeah, it has a unleashes more like teeth.
• 1:47:05
  Yeah, it says. Ajax raises the blade of the
• 1:47:07
  goal king above his head as four giant blades emerge from the
• 1:47:10
  ground to fill the area. Each target is pushed into an
• 1:47:14
  unoccupied space adjacent to the area.
• 1:47:16
  After the power rule is resolved, each blade blocks line
• 1:47:19
  of effect and can be dismissed by Ajax at will.
• 1:47:23
  Very cool. So yeah, just summons up a bunch
• 1:47:26
  of weapons and it's called draw steel cause of course it is.
• 1:47:30
  That's his level. That's his 10 spender malice
• 1:47:33
  ability. So it's his highest spend,
• 1:47:35
  highest cost malice ability. Also, I, I like that.
• 1:47:44
  I love that his the reason thing you're talking about is
• 1:47:46
  literally just like him talking shit before he slaps you around.
• 1:47:50
  It was funny. He's not even.
• 1:47:51
  He's like, look, you really don't want to do this like.
• 1:47:55
  Yeah, yeah. He's basically like, he's like,
• 1:47:57
  you don't want this smoke, bro, you ain't going to win.
• 1:47:59
  Yeah, this is what I'm slapped. This is what I was talking about
• 1:48:03
  before podcast with fucking Sephiroth and Decidia.
• 1:48:06
  Every villain talks wild shit and he's like, no, I don't think
• 1:48:10
  you understand. I'm literally him.
• 1:48:12
  I don't think you get that. I'm that guy I will fucking
• 1:48:16
  annihilate. I don't care that you're Garland
• 1:48:18
  or Golbes or S Death. I will slide you.
• 1:48:23
  Yep, Yep, it's true. Yeah.
• 1:48:27
  And again, first step block, which is just so funny.
• 1:48:33
  I so a thing that I really like to there's actually there's
• 1:48:37
  quite a few things in terms of the step block.
• 1:48:39
  So did you look at the animals at all?
• 1:48:42
  I looked at them a little bit. When I saw that they were
• 1:48:44
  generic step blocks, I skimmed them a little more.
• 1:48:48
  OK, you can look at the part, the traits before.
• 1:48:51
  Yeah. So the thing I was gonna Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  So the thing that I love. So the animal section doesn't
• 1:48:56
  actually start with stat blocks. It starts with animal traits
• 1:48:59
  that you can plug, plug in or pull out of the default.
• 1:49:05
  Like the generic animal stat blocks are just that.
• 1:49:07
  They're like big animal, small animal, you know, water animal,
• 1:49:10
  whatever. But you can slot in, there's
• 1:49:15
  mobile traits, defensive traits, offensive traits and
• 1:49:18
  supernatural traits. So you know, if you want to make
• 1:49:21
  like a fucking squid, there's this trait that makes them multi
• 1:49:25
  limbed. You know, if you want to make a
• 1:49:27
  Panther, there's one that's a pouncing trait.
• 1:49:30
  And then it gives a couple examples of animals that would
• 1:49:34
  be used by. So like there's one that's
• 1:49:37
  called frenzy under the offensive traits and it says
• 1:49:40
  blood bats, piranhas, sharks. And then there's supernatural
• 1:49:44
  traits like elemental or gelatinous or death fumes, which
• 1:49:49
  you take damage from being around him because he's stanky.
• 1:49:54
  And I just love the idea of, I mean, I always love mix and
• 1:49:59
  match build a build-a-bear monsters in general in games,
• 1:50:02
  but it being animals I feel like is really cool.
• 1:50:07
  Like I wouldn't think to do that with just regular animal stat
• 1:50:10
  blocks, you know what I mean? Yeah, you don't want to try to
• 1:50:13
  make one for everything or do the newer DND where they're just
• 1:50:16
  generics. I think this is.
• 1:50:18
  Obviously the way to do it. And then there's also a table of
• 1:50:23
  like thematic draw steel animals and it says so like a rock bat,
• 1:50:29
  for example. It says their environment and
• 1:50:31
  then which stat block to use, which generic stat block and
• 1:50:34
  then to and then give them the traits flight, hunter and
• 1:50:37
  elemental. And then that makes it a rock
• 1:50:40
  bat. And I was like, Oh yeah, I love
• 1:50:43
  that. Sick.
• 1:50:48
  Another thing that they did in this book that I like is not for
• 1:50:52
  everything, but for a lot of monster types, they actually
• 1:50:59
  have multi echelon versions, right?
• 1:51:04
  So the echelon is are the tears in this game.
• 1:51:08
  So like the demons, for example, you get to the demons section
• 1:51:12
  and you're like OK, demons, but then there's first echelon
• 1:51:15
  demons, second echelon demons, third echelon and 4th echelon.
• 1:51:18
  So basically you can use them throughout the entire game.
• 1:51:23
  They also did this for undead and the war dogs.
• 1:51:29
  And the reason I like this a lot is because there's certain types
• 1:51:35
  of enemies, undead being a perfect example, right?
• 1:51:38
  I think a lot of people like do this with undead where you're
• 1:51:42
  like, I want to use undead for my whole fucking campaign or
• 1:51:46
  like most of the campaign, right?
• 1:51:47
  Like, I want undead. They're like constantly fighting
• 1:51:49
  undead, right? But in a game like DND, there
• 1:51:53
  will be certain levels you get to where there's like a gap and
• 1:51:55
  you're like, there's no undead that apply in this range.
• 1:51:59
  So what do I, what do I use? And then you start like cobbling
• 1:52:02
  together like, I'll take this monster and turn it into an
• 1:52:06
  undead something or whatever. Or the other problem is there's
• 1:52:10
  a couple of undead stat blocks at the level you want, but
• 1:52:13
  there's only like one or two. And you don't want to keep
• 1:52:15
  reusing the same monster over and over again.
• 1:52:19
  So the fact that they broke downs the the undead in this
• 1:52:22
  game into the various echelons. So at level, you know, echelon
• 1:52:26
  one, which is, you know, the bottom level stuff, you have
• 1:52:29
  your ghouls and your skeletons and your zombies or whatever.
• 1:52:31
  And then at echelon 4 you have, you know, fucking litches and
• 1:52:35
  dracolich shit and skeleton nights and all that fun shit.
• 1:52:41
  So that's a that's a fun one. I thought it was funny that I
• 1:52:46
  don't know if you noticed, there's no generic vampire stat
• 1:52:49
  block. Instead there's Count Rodon van
• 1:52:52
  Glauer. Rodar van Glauer.
• 1:52:53
  I didn't von Glauer. Yeah.
• 1:52:56
  So there's no generic vampire. The only vampire stat block is a
• 1:53:00
  named dude, Count Rodar von Glauer, and he's kind of like.
• 1:53:06
  He's not as strong as Ajax, but he's pretty close and he's like
• 1:53:10
  a big, big Dick vampire boss. Basically.
• 1:53:13
  He's Strad, right? He's the Strad equivalent.
• 1:53:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He also has a lot of really cool
• 1:53:19
  abilities as you might imagine. Is he a rival?
• 1:53:22
  Where is he? In what section is he in?
• 1:53:24
  He's no. So he's literally right above.
• 1:53:27
  He's under. He's under undead right above.
• 1:53:30
  Lit Oh, there we go. There we go.
• 1:53:32
  Yeah, he's kind of a weird spot, in case anyone's worried about
• 1:53:40
  that. Why is the elf lich so pretty?
• 1:53:46
  Why are you asking questions? He just, he's a very pretty man.
• 1:53:51
  He's a, he's a, he's a sexy lich.
• 1:53:53
  I don't. I don't like the idea of a sexy
• 1:53:56
  lich. I just.
• 1:53:57
  He does have a giant hole in his chest though.
• 1:53:59
  That's a little. Concerning.
• 1:54:00
  Yeah, so does the new the the new assistant character in Code
• 1:54:03
  Vein. I'm not judging.
• 1:54:05
  Sure, yes. What Isaiah is referencing is
• 1:54:09
  the the, the, the full page art of the Lynch.
• 1:54:12
  He's kind of hot, which you know.
• 1:54:16
  You know, I really appreciate that.
• 1:54:18
  That fucking count Rd. art. They were just like, we need to
• 1:54:22
  instill as much Alucard vibes into this character as humanly
• 1:54:26
  possible, yeah. He is very Alucard, Yeah, it's
• 1:54:30
  true. The pretty white hair, the big
• 1:54:33
  cloak, black sword. Yeah, the like Spears made of
• 1:54:37
  blood. Yeah, what a what a Shad.
• 1:54:40
  Yeah. Other notable you know, there's
• 1:54:47
  a lot of the monsters you would expect.
• 1:54:49
  You know they have they have an Erics, which is a fucking what
• 1:54:54
  are they called the brain? I love this monster and I can't
• 1:54:57
  even think. Of their name indeed the on.
• 1:54:59
  Cakes. On cakes, yeah, they have erics,
• 1:55:01
  which are like their on cakes. They have the ungulatos that
• 1:55:04
  Isaiah mentioned, which are like your frog dudes.
• 1:55:06
  They have, you know, there's basilis and bug bears and
• 1:55:10
  chimeras, you know, the usual fair, but a couple fun notable.
• 1:55:16
  Oh, there's the Kingfisher worm. That's a that's a fun one.
• 1:55:18
  It's it's Shihalud. Let's not it's Shihalud, Yeah,
• 1:55:23
  although a little more spiky. Another fun one.
• 1:55:29
  There's the voiceless talkers, which Matt hates.
• 1:55:33
  He hates these dudes because he thinks they are too sci-fi, but
• 1:55:38
  basically they're. They're to fucking sci-fi, but
• 1:55:42
  the Ashen Hoarder isn't. I don't know if he said anything
• 1:55:47
  about the Ashen Hoarder. I'm going to be honest, it's a
• 1:55:50
  it's a quadruped bone mech armoured core.
• 1:55:54
  It's a bone mech. Yeah, it's a big bone mech.
• 1:55:58
  The voiceless stalkers, I was going to say, are your your
• 1:56:03
  illicit, you know, they're your mind flayer guys.
• 1:56:06
  They have mind killers which are floating brains with tentacles
• 1:56:10
  coming off their head which also have a spinal column coming out
• 1:56:13
  from the bottom of the floating brain, which is awful.
• 1:56:18
  Little horrifying. Yeah.
• 1:56:19
  Yeah. And they have a king.
• 1:56:22
  They have a king. Lord Seal.
• 1:56:25
  The Yeah Lord seal the Voiceless Talkers, unlike Ilithid where
• 1:56:30
  their faces are tentacles. No, no, the Voiceless Talkers
• 1:56:33
  are just entirely made of tentacles.
• 1:56:35
  Yeah. They're awful, The.
• 1:56:38
  Thing So the thing that bugs me is not the spinal cord, it's the
• 1:56:41
  fact that they have crab legs. They do have crab.
• 1:56:45
  I guess the floating brains have crab legs.
• 1:56:48
  They remind me of fucking sham shell from Evangelion.
• 1:56:54
  The big the big manta ray with the lightsaber pentacles.
• 1:56:58
  I definitely don't remember that thing, but I'll take a word for
• 1:57:00
  it. I will send you a.
• 1:57:01
  Picture. Fair enough.
• 1:57:05
  Fun little Laura tidbit with the Lord Sewell and the voiceless
• 1:57:08
  talkers. So Matt did a Laura stream a
• 1:57:13
  little while ago or he did a Patreon Laura stream that he put
• 1:57:17
  on YouTube for free recently. And so the Ajax has these undead
• 1:57:25
  Franken. I feel like we have to bring
• 1:57:26
  these guys up. Ajax has these.
• 1:57:29
  Oh, it does kind of look like that Ava monster.
• 1:57:33
  Ajax has these things called the war dogs and they are basically
• 1:57:36
  they are dead people and body parts that get thrown into a
• 1:57:43
  giant VAT of body parts called the body banks.
• 1:57:49
  And then you pull biological material out of the body banks
• 1:57:53
  and make it into a person shaped thing, a vaguely person shaped
• 1:57:57
  thing. And that's a war dog.
• 1:58:00
  So basically they're like horrifying body horror
• 1:58:03
  Frankenstein monster soldiers. And they are what make up Ajax's
• 1:58:07
  immortal army, how he plans to peacefully rule the world with
• 1:58:14
  peace. The thing that's kind of funny
• 1:58:18
  about them, though, is that the body banks and the technology to
• 1:58:22
  make the war dogs comes from the voiceless talkers, and Lord
• 1:58:26
  Sewell specifically is the one who taught him how to do it.
• 1:58:30
  Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so the Mind players taught
• 1:58:33
  the awful tyrannical king how to make horrifying Frankenstein's
• 1:58:37
  monsters soldiers. The War Dogs are another another
• 1:58:46
  enemy type that they put in the game that have stat blocks at
• 1:58:51
  every echelon at all four echelons because they expect you
• 1:58:54
  to use them a lot, basically because they are kind of the
• 1:58:58
  they're the army of the main bad guy.
• 1:59:00
  Ajax the Invincible is kind of the main bad guy of the setting.
• 1:59:03
  So these guys are the soldiers of the main bad guy.
• 1:59:07
  I mentioned that groups of enemies will have group malice
• 1:59:12
  effects. So if you go to the section with
• 1:59:14
  the war Dogs first echelon, it says war dog malice and it says
• 1:59:19
  at the start of any war dog's turn you can spend malice to
• 1:59:23
  activate one of these features. So anything that falls under
• 1:59:25
  this group can use these abilities.
• 1:59:30
  And the war dogs cover all sorts of different.
• 1:59:34
  Like they have they have dudes with guns and big brute guys and
• 1:59:40
  wizard war dogs and fucking weird like technomancer psionic
• 1:59:44
  war dogs and war dogs with twin flamethrower sticks.
• 1:59:49
  Basically just all sorts of chain whips.
• 1:59:52
  And like all sorts of the the art of them is very cool.
• 1:59:55
  But also, they are kind of horrifying.
• 1:59:58
  Yeah, I mean they, I think the war dogs are probably my
• 2:00:00
  favorite. I had monsters not because, not
• 2:00:05
  just because. They are, as you put it, very
• 2:00:06
  40K coded. They're very 40K.
• 2:00:08
  They just have so much personality.
• 2:00:13
  They have aura. You might say well that too, but
• 2:00:16
  they have a lot of personality like the the the weird sevlar
• 2:00:20
  chem dog with the twin flamethrower torches has a
• 2:00:23
  different personality than the eviscerite with the cool chain
• 2:00:27
  flail who has a different personality than the the
• 2:00:32
  talatilite who looks like an honorable warrior like they have
• 2:00:35
  like. Vibes to them.
• 2:00:38
  Yeah, like each character you could feel like, oh, this is
• 2:00:41
  just a nameless enemy, but if you wanted them to be cool and
• 2:00:44
  have a personality, you could make them as complex or as
• 2:00:47
  simple as you wanted and it would be completely valid.
• 2:00:50
  Yeah, and it does also specifically say at the
• 2:00:54
  beginning of the War Dog section, you know, there is some
• 2:00:58
  monsters have let more lore than others, you know, depending on
• 2:01:01
  how important they are. But it mentions at the beginning
• 2:01:04
  of the War Dog session that the war dogs aren't undead.
• 2:01:08
  They are like, they have mines and wills and drives like they
• 2:01:12
  are people. They're not just zombies.
• 2:01:14
  However, they are heavily brainwashed.
• 2:01:18
  So like they have personality and and like opinions and shit,
• 2:01:23
  but they won't betray Ajax because they're so indebted and
• 2:01:27
  brainwashed to him. The, the, the, the key
• 2:01:31
  difference is that they don't have souls.
• 2:01:32
  That's what makes them like, especially undead.
• 2:01:36
  And they're also really adherent to the chain of command.
• 2:01:41
  Like, they're very militaristic and they don't ever break that
• 2:01:46
  military, like, you know, chain of command, literally.
• 2:01:51
  Personal favorite of the War Hounds.
• 2:01:53
  I I really like Iron Champion Doru, he's really cool.
• 2:01:57
  Which one's that? The The dude who looks like
• 2:01:59
  Vandal Savage on page 131. Sorry 317 yeah just the big
• 2:02:05
  gamuk with the crazy eyes and the laughs Yeah the ill buttons.
• 2:02:09
  Exactly like I just like his abilities.
• 2:02:12
  Things like laugh it off for the scarless champions loyalty
• 2:02:15
  collar. You're like what the fuck does
• 2:02:17
  that mean? When you beat him, the collar
• 2:02:20
  explodes, blows his head clean off, and deals 20 damage to each
• 2:02:26
  enemy within 3 squares of him. I think all I think all the war
• 2:02:30
  dogs have like Suicide Squad collars.
• 2:02:32
  It is part of their lore too. I.
• 2:02:34
  Think. They all have a loyalty collar.
• 2:02:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing that's but like you
• 2:02:41
  were saying with Ajax, right, like the abilities give you,
• 2:02:45
  they give you the vibe of the guy, right?
• 2:02:47
  So like Iron Champ and Doru, he has an ability called Laugh it
• 2:02:50
  Off and you look at his art and he's this big Darius looking guy
• 2:02:55
  with a huge axe, massive arms, and he has this like crazy joker
• 2:02:59
  smile on him. So you see that and then you
• 2:03:01
  look at the ability, laugh it off where he basically can like
• 2:03:04
  ignore a debuff and you're like, Oh yeah, that absolutely fits
• 2:03:08
  the vibe I'm thinking. You know what's great too is,
• 2:03:11
  is, and we've talked about this several times, but I really like
• 2:03:15
  the way that the the wording and the flavor of the abilities back
• 2:03:20
  up what the character is like. Yeah, if you're like, how do I,
• 2:03:25
  how do I want to play this character in this fight?
• 2:03:27
  Oh, he's got an ability called to laugh it off that tells you
• 2:03:32
  pretty much everything you need, like, and this guy's like a
• 2:03:36
  chest pounding maniacal psychopath.
• 2:03:40
  He's like Bane if Bane. Also has an ability called.
• 2:03:42
  He also has an ability called Iron Juggernaut.
• 2:03:45
  Yeah. Right, which is another grading.
• 2:03:47
  They're like, oh, OK. And if you, if you look at that
• 2:03:52
  kind of stuff and you're like not still not 100% sure you can
• 2:03:57
  look at his monster type. He's a brute and you go, oh, OK,
• 2:04:01
  so I play him like a brute, right?
• 2:04:03
  Like that's why stuff like monster types like that are
• 2:04:05
  really helpful because, you know, oh, OK, brute enemies.
• 2:04:10
  I wanna, you know, he's gonna have this kind of a vibe to him.
• 2:04:13
  You know what's also great? Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you
• 2:04:16
  off. You were saying?
• 2:04:19
  It's fine, I lost it, so go ahead.
• 2:04:21
  He's got reason 1, intuition 4. He's quite smart.
• 2:04:26
  Yeah, like his his his actual intelligence.
• 2:04:28
  His reason is only being plus one.
• 2:04:30
  He he's smarter than an average person.
• 2:04:32
  His intuition is really high. So this character is talking
• 2:04:37
  crazy shit to you the whole fight.
• 2:04:41
  Yeah, yeah. Love it.
• 2:04:44
  Yeah. It's it's, it's all that, yeah.
• 2:04:47
  And and you know, we're, we're talking about the war dog guys,
• 2:04:49
  but it really does apply to pretty much every stat block.
• 2:04:57
  Couple other little notable things I picked up on and I'm
• 2:05:03
  sure we will. I'm sure there's stuff that I'll
• 2:05:06
  have forgotten about mentioning because there's quite there's
• 2:05:08
  good, good chunk of stat blocks. I mean, the book is like 304
• 2:05:12
  hundred pages on them. There are rival stat blocks and
• 2:05:20
  you mean like rivals? What do you mean by rivals?
• 2:05:23
  They are rival classes so rival, conduit rival, elementalist,
• 2:05:29
  rival, fury rival. No, they are literally stat
• 2:05:32
  blocks that are meant to be like enemy party that has the same
• 2:05:38
  class levels as the players. And that's just a fun idea that
• 2:05:44
  I feel like a lot of games don't touch upon the idea of like, oh,
• 2:05:48
  they're like us but evil, you know what I mean?
• 2:05:51
  Like it's a concept that people kind of shit on in like movies
• 2:05:55
  and stuff, especially like superhero media 'cause it gets
• 2:05:58
  overused. But in the tabletop world, I
• 2:06:00
  feel like mechanically it doesn't get touched upon that
• 2:06:04
  much. No, I don't think, I don't think
• 2:06:07
  there's a lot of rule sets that provide you adequate at the very
• 2:06:10
  least jumping off points, right like.
• 2:06:13
  Yeah. You kind of just have to go like
• 2:06:16
  with DND, more often not you're like, OK, I'm going to make a
• 2:06:19
  champion or a warlord or whatever the fuck, and I'm just
• 2:06:24
  going to pull some shit off a character sheet and stick it in
• 2:06:28
  there. Yes, yeah.
• 2:06:29
  And that doesn't always. That really never feels
• 2:06:31
  satisfying. I mean, it could work, but yeah,
• 2:06:35
  it's like having stat blocks that are specifically for this
• 2:06:38
  purpose can feel a lot more satisfying.
• 2:06:41
  Basically, yeah. What was the other one?
• 2:06:46
  What was the other thing? Oh, and then you have the
• 2:06:49
  rivals, you also have your retainers, which is kind of its
• 2:06:53
  own little sub mechanic, but basically you can have sidekicks
• 2:07:03
  that will come along with you in fights.
• 2:07:06
  And then they provide with a bunch of, you know, retainers
• 2:07:10
  based on based on monster type. So like ambusher or artillery or
• 2:07:16
  controller, and then they give you various abilities for the
• 2:07:21
  monster type. I keep saying type, but that's
• 2:07:24
  what's the word I'm looking for. It's organization and something
• 2:07:27
  else. Why can't I think of what the
• 2:07:28
  other word is? Brain?
• 2:07:31
  What is it? Come on.
• 2:07:36
  Not but it's not their Organism. Where is it?
• 2:07:40
  Hold on, hold on, hold on. Vamp.
• 2:07:42
  Vamp for me. Vamp for me.
• 2:07:43
  I got this roll. Roll is the word I was looking
• 2:07:47
  for. They're roll.
• 2:07:49
  Jeez. Fuck it.
• 2:07:50
  Christ. Yeah.
• 2:07:54
  So they give you because retainers can level up with the
• 2:07:58
  party. So they give you a level up
• 2:08:02
  table. And then at levels 47 and 10,
• 2:08:06
  they get inability based on their role.
• 2:08:10
  So like ambusher versus controller versus artillery
• 2:08:13
  versus brute. And then you have a bunch of
• 2:08:18
  sample retainer stat blocks that start at level 1 and you could
• 2:08:25
  just, you know, go down the list and level them up and boom bang
• 2:08:28
  boom. So you have like a bug bear
• 2:08:30
  commando and there's an angulot hopper and a devil defector and
• 2:08:35
  a nameless, which is a draconian dude, a drag.
• 2:08:39
  I guess it's supposed to be a dragon knight.
• 2:08:40
  I think. Point being, they give you it's.
• 2:08:46
  It's like DN DS sidekick system but more robust I would say.
• 2:08:50
  Definitely more robust I'm sure. Yeah, and also retainers can tie
• 2:08:55
  into can potentially affect like downtime action stuff too,
• 2:09:00
  right? Like they can help you there
• 2:09:02
  depending on what the, you know, what kind of person they are,
• 2:09:04
  whatever what kind of retainer they are.
• 2:09:09
  So that's I mean, that's fun. I don't like it's fun.
• 2:09:19
  Oh, I get I have another port. Really.
• 2:09:20
  This is a Oh well, actually before I said this and then
• 2:09:24
  another thing. So you might be like wow,
• 2:09:26
  monsters and retainers and and rivals and stuff.
• 2:09:29
  That's all well and good. What else you got in there?
• 2:09:31
  What about also dynamic terrain stat blocks?
• 2:09:35
  Yes, that was a cool one. Do you look at these?
• 2:09:37
  And so they're basics and like, yeah.
• 2:09:39
  Yeah, so like angry beehive, brambles, corrosive pool, frozen
• 2:09:46
  pond. They are various environmental,
• 2:09:52
  various dynamic terrain things that can be used as like a
• 2:09:56
  pseudo enemy. And they have their own
• 2:09:58
  encounter value and their own abilities to use and attacks and
• 2:10:02
  all this shit. So and then they're broken up
• 2:10:04
  into environmental hazards, fields, work mechanisms, power
• 2:10:08
  fixtures, siege engines and supernatural objects, which is
• 2:10:14
  sick. And the other thing that I
• 2:10:17
  particularly like about these is that because of the rules,
• 2:10:21
  because of how victories work, and because you have stuff like
• 2:10:24
  montage tests and whatnot, you can very easily work these.
• 2:10:32
  Kind of because like DND has a little bit of these, right?
• 2:10:36
  But they're kind of hard to work in sometimes because they don't
• 2:10:42
  they don't follow the same flow as like regular monster stat
• 2:10:45
  blocks and they might not have like XP attached to them and
• 2:10:48
  stuff. So like you might be like, you
• 2:10:50
  know, all right, what do I do with these?
• 2:10:53
  And then also DND doesn't have a lot of subsystems to properly
• 2:10:58
  utilize, you know, not just, you know, to probably utilize
• 2:11:01
  something other than like a fairly standard monster stat
• 2:11:04
  block. But with this game, because you
• 2:11:06
  have your montage tests and you're like dungeon travel,
• 2:11:13
  basically the, the mechanical field is a little more open so
• 2:11:16
  that slipping these in there is is easier.
• 2:11:23
  Yeah. So the, the the dynamic drain
• 2:11:28
  stuff, I was particularly like, I like this a lot.
• 2:11:33
  And it's one of those, it's one of those mechanics that I look
• 2:11:37
  at and go, oh, future splat books are definitely going to be
• 2:11:41
  able to build on this in some cool ways, you know?
• 2:11:45
  Oh, for sure. Like, yeah, like they set
• 2:11:47
  themselves up for future success with dynamic terrains, for sure.
• 2:11:51
  I have to ask you a very important question, though.
• 2:11:54
  What up Did you look at the? Knowles.
• 2:11:57
  I did look at the Knowles I really liked.
• 2:11:59
  Them I was going to say the Knowles are.
• 2:12:02
  Fucking sick. They're so fucking cool.
• 2:12:06
  Also they have like evil wizard Knowles they.
• 2:12:09
  Do yeah the fucking the the Abyssal Summoner the yeah the
• 2:12:16
  the Tusker demon looks so gross but so sick.
• 2:12:18
  Tusker Demon, the mage Mauler, Yeah, like love it.
• 2:12:24
  They and there's a lot of Knowles.
• 2:12:28
  There's a lot more Knowles to have blocks than I was
• 2:12:31
  expecting, to be honest. There's not.
• 2:12:37
  I mean, it's not like, it's not like there's as many as like war
• 2:12:39
  dogs, but there's still quite a lot of knolls where I'm like,
• 2:12:41
  oh, I could really do some something with some knolls.
• 2:12:44
  Yeah, I mean. You got 11 of them.
• 2:12:45
  It's not bad. Yeah, also just, you know, I
• 2:12:52
  just need to bring up art briefly.
• 2:12:54
  Did you look, did you look at the full page art of the goblin
• 2:12:58
  section? Horrifying.
• 2:13:01
  Why she so thick? She very thick.
• 2:13:08
  I cannot. Tell if that.
• 2:13:11
  Thing on the right is her boob or her shoulder.
• 2:13:16
  It's boobs. Those are boobs in the front.
• 2:13:18
  I those things are she got. There's a full page to describe
• 2:13:24
  what we're seeing here. There's a full page art for the
• 2:13:26
  goblin section and it shows like 3-4 different goblin like
• 2:13:30
  warriors and then a big goblin like queen in the background and
• 2:13:34
  her bazongas are massive. Yeah, unreasonably so.
• 2:13:42
  It's funny, she's not actually that.
• 2:13:45
  Like she looks different. The the Monarch is the same art
• 2:13:48
  and she looks a lot different there.
• 2:13:53
  Yeah, I don't know if it's intended to be the same
• 2:13:55
  character or not, to be honest, but maybe.
• 2:13:58
  But either way. I don't like their faces.
• 2:14:03
  Oh, they're really long gated faces.
• 2:14:05
  Yeah, I don't like their. Snouts.
• 2:14:07
  Yeah, no. I actually kind of like their
• 2:14:09
  snouts in case anyone is worried.
• 2:14:14
  There's a lot. There's a lot of goblin step
• 2:14:17
  blocks too. Yeah, I mean 1234 on the
• 2:14:21
  567-8910. Kind of kind of surprised there
• 2:14:27
  isn't like higher echelon goblin stat blocks.
• 2:14:32
  I would have liked that. But you know, maybe in the
• 2:14:34
  future. I know it's because goblins are
• 2:14:36
  considered like little little bitch losers in terms of like
• 2:14:40
  how powerful they can get, but I don't know, I feel like it'd be
• 2:14:41
  interesting to have like, what is a higher echelon goblin look
• 2:14:45
  like? Oh.
• 2:14:45
  Yeah, they don't. None of them break level 1.
• 2:14:47
  I didn't notice that. Not on the goblins, no.
• 2:14:51
  I feel like, I feel like that's a missed opportunity.
• 2:14:54
  Yeah, I agreed. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm sure other
• 2:14:59
  people this is, this is one of those unfortunate things where
• 2:15:02
  I, I almost kind of wish we were live streaming because then it
• 2:15:05
  could be like AO chat, what's that?
• 2:15:07
  Any stamp blocks you want to look at?
• 2:15:08
  But obviously we can't do that so.
• 2:15:10
  Yeah, I know. We just had to.
• 2:15:13
  We just kind of jumped around and looked at what we wanted.
• 2:15:15
  Oh, and you know, for my own personal aggrandizement Cobalts,
• 2:15:21
  also fucking awesome. I do love the Cobalts, yeah.
• 2:15:25
  Cobalts are great and plenty of Skobold stat blocks.
• 2:15:27
  Love them. I and lots of very different
• 2:15:32
  vibes with the cobalt stat blocks too.
• 2:15:34
  Like different kinds of cobalts which?
• 2:15:36
  Is great. Oh, I mean we didn't talk about
• 2:15:38
  this thing at all, but it the piece of art that I have to
• 2:15:40
  bring up is the fucking light Bender, the crazy crystal lion
• 2:15:46
  per lesson dog Saber tooth thing with two tails.
• 2:15:51
  I love this thing. Pretty sick.
• 2:15:54
  Yeah, it's true, it's true. Oh man.
• 2:15:59
  And the lizard folk have lots of craziness going on.
• 2:16:02
  Those are folk are good lizard folk.
• 2:16:03
  Medusa's are sick, the minotaur's cool.
• 2:16:06
  I honestly I think my favorite monsters are unironically the
• 2:16:10
  Ongolottos. They just.
• 2:16:12
  Each one of them like them. Like the fucking the Ongolotto
• 2:16:16
  they. Are a good vibe is.
• 2:16:17
  It the wave. I think it's the wave, yeah.
• 2:16:21
  Yeah. And he's just doing his little,
• 2:16:23
  doing a little dance. It just look like they're having
• 2:16:28
  so much fun doing everything. I wish I was having as good a
• 2:16:33
  time as as any of these angolatos are.
• 2:16:36
  The the the horrifying dark wizard frog man.
• 2:16:40
  Love him. Did you see there's this little
• 2:16:41
  splash, like this little fluff piece where it's like angolatos?
• 2:16:45
  Really. Like humans, Adults tend to
• 2:16:46
  freak out a little bit. Yes.
• 2:16:49
  Yeah. They don't think normal.
• 2:16:51
  Like, adult humans are the same species as child.
• 2:16:53
  Humans as children. Yeah, I kind of love that.
• 2:16:58
  Yeah, they're weirded out by adults.
• 2:17:00
  They're like, why are they such different?
• 2:17:02
  Why are they so? Fucking big.
• 2:17:04
  Yeah, yeah, the Algalos are wild.
• 2:17:08
  They're very, I don't know, it's funny because you look at this,
• 2:17:11
  you look at they have like stat blocks.
• 2:17:13
  You go like, I don't want to fight them.
• 2:17:15
  Yeah, I don't. I don't want to fight any of
• 2:17:16
  them. I feel bad.
• 2:17:21
  Also the the red one with the hook thing has got a fucking 6
• 2:17:24
  pack, did you catch that? No.
• 2:17:27
  Lo and throw the first one you see with the dart.
• 2:17:29
  Look real close. He's got ABS.
• 2:17:32
  Oh Oh yeah, he do see why he jacked he.
• 2:17:36
  Little jacked, I'm not going to lie.
• 2:17:37
  Why the frog boy Jagged? You about it?
• 2:17:42
  I don't want to fight him. You got it.
• 2:17:46
  All right, let's get out of here before Brett Tactical nukes us.
• 2:17:51
  I don't know any any closing commentary on the monster book.
• 2:17:54
  I liked the monster book more than I thought I would.
• 2:17:59
  More. Yeah.
• 2:18:01
  As someone who was very hesitant to read it, once I got past the
• 2:18:06
  brain numbing math at the very beginning, the more I looked at
• 2:18:09
  the monsters I was like shit these are really cool.
• 2:18:13
  Yeah, I mean, there's, there's lots of, I think the thing that
• 2:18:16
  they're really nailing that a lot of people have been feeling
• 2:18:22
  is lacking in 5E is evocative abilities.
• 2:18:27
  You know, stuff that really stuff that really makes the
• 2:18:31
  monster feel like the monster that it is as opposed to just,
• 2:18:35
  you know, the bag of hit points or whatever.
• 2:18:36
  Like some kind of, and The funny thing kids do, you only need
• 2:18:40
  like one or two abilities that feel on theme for the creature
• 2:18:44
  to make it memorable. It's not like you need, you
• 2:18:46
  know, 8 or anything you like, you know what I mean?
• 2:18:50
  So it's like it, it doesn't take that much, but, you know, here
• 2:18:53
  we are. So.
• 2:18:56
  Yeah, that has been us, will be us for all eternity until the
• 2:19:05
  heat death of the universe or something.
• 2:19:09
  I hope not. I got ideally Moon is coming on
• 2:19:12
  next week. Talk about Cain.
• 2:19:15
  Ideally I. Don't know what that has to do
• 2:19:18
  with the heat death of the universe, but OK.
• 2:19:19
  Since the last time we were here, they were going to see us.
• 2:19:23
  No, no, I meant. That wasn't what I never meant.
• 2:19:27
  OK, not what I meant, but sure. I'm off to bat next week and
• 2:19:30
  we're hopefully going to have our guest newbie DM friend Moon
• 2:19:34
  who is going to explain to us her her trials, tribulations and
• 2:19:40
  general time being a first time DM to a new system that is not
• 2:19:44
  5th edition. Yeah, with a weird with a weird
• 2:19:47
  system choice too. Yes.
• 2:19:53
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