Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Seven

The seventh chapter, Bestiary, is one of the areas where Dragonbane shines, because of one peculiar feature of Dragonbane: monster attacks succeed automatically. My mind went boom 🤯 when I realised the implications. The days and nights spent at trying to create interesting challenges for my players, which they destroyed in a few lucky rounds… The yawn elicited at the mentions of the creatures I’d throw onto their player characters… If monster attacks succeed automatically, fear will change sides.

How does this work? The GM will draw an initiative card per each monster attack (monstrous creatures often have multiple attacks per round). When it is the monster’s turn to act in the combat round, the GM determines who the unlucky target of the monster attack is, rolls a D6 on the monster attack table, and applies the results to the hapless victim.

Each monster has its own unique ‘monster attacks’ table; it’s not simply a ‘roll D-something for damage’ (well, it can be, but it’s usually just one of the entries in the table).

Demons possess or curse their opponents; dragons flap their wings and create hurricane-strong winds; ghosts inflict all kinds of conditions… Even more mundane monsters such as giant spiders have deadly poison attacks or may mesmerise you with their many eyes.

The monster becomes the ultimate foe in an adventure, not a mere passing threat.

The only drawback is that, since each monster takes up several pages, the selection in the bestiary is quite limited.