Monsters & Encounters

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

MinorMajorSovereign

Monster Roles: Minors, Majors, and Sovereigns

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

Minors have no Vitality. Their whole pool is Vigor equal to their Tier, with a past-breaking overflow of equal size behind it:

• At 0 Vigor, a Minor FLEES: it breaks, routs, or surrenders. Out of the fight but alive. Creatures marked Fanatic are the exception: they fight into the overflow instead of fleeing.
• Total damage reaching TWICE its Tier kills the Minor outright. A single blow of 2x its Tier or more kills it on the spot.
• Minors never regenerate Vigor.
• Vigor damage against a Minor is simply damage (its pool IS Vigor). Mystic attacks and Vigor-damage AoEs are the mook-clearers.
• Retainers are Minors in the party's colors: pool = Tier, same flee and death rules.

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

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

Sovereigns

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

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

When a Creature Is a Sovereign

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

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

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

Sovereign Statline

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

Sovereign Actions

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

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

Sovereigns, Telegraphs, and Morale

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

Monster Statline

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

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

Monster Tier Scaling

The Tier die is what a Major or Sovereign rolls on a hit (two of them on a crit); a Minor deals the flat Minor Hit instead. Vigor is not on the table: a Major's and a Sovereign's cap is Tier + Heart modifier, and a Minor's pool is the Minor Pool column.

Telegraphs

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

1. Declare in the enemy tactical window, loudly: name the move, show the dread.
2. It resolves at the start of that creature's next turn unless disrupted.
3. Disruption: any Vitality a Major or Sovereign loses while the telegraph is pending forces a roll of its disruption die (usually a d6, listed per ability): on a 1, the telegraph is lost. A Minor has no Vitality, so any damage at all disrupts a Minor's telegraph.
4. Telegraphed nukes hit hard: flat Damage equal to the creature's Tier to everyone in the area on a failed save (1 Vigor damage on a save), or a battlefield-changing effect. A telegraph should cost at least as much as an average basic hit.

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

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

Converting Creature Abilities

For material written with damage dice:

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

Morale

Creatures fight to live. A Minor at 0 Vigor flees on its own; morale is the group-level version. When a group loses half its number (fled or dead), or a Major hits one-third Vitality, check morale (Heart save vs the party leader's presence, or GM judgment): failures flee, surrender, or bargain. Morale is how fights end early; use it.

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