Wise Turtle Publishing

Mooks

Mooks are a type of undeveloped NPC for the purpose of having quick enemies to challenge the heroes. It is not necessary to focus on details for these characters, although some GMs may want to add details as they see fit.

A Mook has a base Health of 10 and a base Endurance of 10. They roll 2d6 for Attack rolls, Defense rolls, and Ability rolls. They have a Damage Multiplier of x1. Mooks have a special Mook Level Ability that increases their Health by 10, their rolls by 1d6, and their Damage Multiplier by 1 per level, up to level 5.

Mooks will usually have whatever Abilities the GM deems relevant to the character type. For example, a Ninja would most likely have Art of Invisibility and Teleport. If a GM wants to limit the number of Abilities a Mook has, than a Mook will have 1+ Mook Level in Abilities. Alternatively, NPC Fragments (pages 142-144) can be applied as templates onto Mooks.

Mooks
lvl 0- 10/10, Def: 2, Attk R:2, DX: x1, Ability: 2d6
lvl 1- 20/10, Def: 3, Attk R: 3, DX: x2, Ability: 3d6
lvl 2- 30/10, Def: 4, Attk R: 4, DX: x3, Ability: 4d6
lvl 3- 40/10, Def: 5, Attk R: 5, DX: x4, Ability: 5d6
lvl 4- 50/10, Def: 6, Attk R: 6, DX: x5, Ability: 6d6
lvl 5- 60/10, Def: 7, Attk R: 7, DX; x6, Ability: 7d6

How to Use Mooks

Mooks are designed as a quick collection of basic stats for GMs to know what to send against players. Mooks can be seen as the random punks fighting across the sprawling city, the ninjas guarding a fortress, the security drones patroling the factories, the monsters roaming the countryside. Mooks are generally suitible for games with a lot of combat, such as dungeon crawl games. As creating a whole menagerie of enemies can be daunting and exhausting, Mooks instead distill what they can do into the most basic of stats. A quick sentance describing the Mook should explain what they can and cannot do. Higher leveled Mooks can represent either recolored enemies that are more experianced and dangerous, or different enemies that are naturally better than lower leveled ones. Most Mooks encountered will only be levels 1 or 2. 3rd level Mooks will generally found either leading the lower leveled Mooks or located guarding important locations. 4th and 5th level mooks are rarely encountered and are usually considered 'stage bosses', although they might be encountered more often at the end of a game.

Example Mooks
Black Ninja (lvl 1): 20/10, Def: 3, Attk R: 3, DX: x2, Ability: 3d6
Red Ninja (lvl 2): 30/10, Def: 4, Attk R: 4, DX: x3, Ability: 4d6
White Ninja (lvl 3): 40/10, Def: 5, Attk R: 5, DX: x4, Ability:5d6

Goblin (lvl 1): 20/10, Def: 3, Attk R: 3, DX: x2, Ability: 3d6
Orc (lvl 2): 30/10, Def: 4, Attk R: 4, DX: x3, Ability: 4d6
Ogre (lvl 3): 40/10, Def: 5, Attk R: 5, DX: x4, Ability: 5d6

This is a handy chart for any new GMs out there. Thank you.

With the recent re-release of Diablo 2, I got to thinking about mass combat in OVA. Mass combat is always a tricky thing, since it can quickly bog down any game. Here's an easy idea to randomly generate a horde to throw at players, as a single stat block.

Roll 1d6+4. This determines the size of the horde (5-10 members). The size determines the health, dice rolls, and DX of the horde.

Horde Size
1 member- Health: 10, Roll: 2d6, DX: x1
2 members- Health: 20, Roll: 2d6, DX: x2
3 members- Health: 30, Roll: 2d6, DX: x3
4 members- Health: 40, Roll: 2d6, DX: x4
5 members- Health: 50, Roll: 3d6, DX: x5
6 members- Health: 60, Roll: 3d6, DX: x6
7 members- Health: 70, Roll: 4d6, DX: x7
8 members- Health: 80, Roll: 4d6, DX: x8
9 members- Health: 90, Roll: 5d6, DX: x9
10 members- Health: 100, Roll: 5d6, DX: x10

Every 10 health lost destroys one member of the horde. Adjust the stats according to the current number of horde members. A horde can normally make one attack to each player on it's turn. If a player does not have Area Effect or Multiple Targets, then they can only destroy one member of a Horde even if their attack does more than 10 points of damage (this overflow of damage is effectively negated). A GM can choose to ignore this, though, allowing players to cut through multiple members of the horde if their damage allows it.

Since hordes are a mass of combat, generally Abilities and Weaknesses are not going to be necessary, and in fact can complicate the encounter. However, some Abilities and Weaknesses can be applied similar to NPC fragments. Use the Roll dice pool for whichever Abilities you need the horde to do (for example, Initiative or Flight). For everything else, a descriptive text should be sufficient to inform what abilities the horde can do. A shambling horde of rotting flesh moaning for brains. A clattering horde of white bones. The buzzing of wings and clattering of chitinous horrors. The roaring, slobbering horde of infernal red muscle. The alluring whisper and beating wings of devilish delights.

Boss Generator

Previously I have provided an idea on how to generate stats for individual encounters and horde encounters. Now, here is an idea for random boss encounters.

Boss Health: (1d6+4)x20
Boss Rolls: 1d6+1
Boss DX: 1d6

Bosses can have twice as much health as other characters, so this gives a range of 100-200 Health, which would be the equivalent of having Tough level 1 through 5.

Rolls is the number of dice a boss uses for their checks. The boss could be unskilled (2d6, equal to having no levels in abilities) to extremely skilled (7d6, equal to having level 5 in abilities). For simplicity sake, use the same number of dice for their attacks, defense, initiative, and relevant Abilities. The GM should assign Abilities to the boss that make sense- a winged Demon could roll for Flight checks, for example.

The Boss’s base DX has a similar range as their Roll dice pool, representing an unthreatening boss (DX 1) to an overwhelmingly deadly threat (DX 6), again equal to having levels 0 to 5 of the Attack Ability. With this base DX, a GM can create unique attacks using the Perks and Flaws, or just use the base DX as is for quick combat.

A GM can decide on the Health, Roll, and DX of a Boss instead of rolling by choosing a value between 1 through 6 for each stat. This can be useful for planning ahead. But if a GM instead just wants to throw a random challenge out, this should provide random stats that a GM can improvise into a unique narrative.

After all this time it still hold up.