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(TFT) Monster Creation

Monster Creation
Gigamax first tried tattoos. Instead of enchanting armor or an item, a person could be tattooed. The enchantment could never be stolen. Then he noticed side effects from ink seeping into the blood over time. At this point he wondered if an enchantment could be inherited. Thus it could multiply. Of course he was no where near that point yet. The shapeshifting spell as it already exists can be used to make intelligent monsters out of almost anything. Of course after the monster is killed it would revert back to a poor little cat or nuisance creature that it was before. An effective method if one only needs a monster for a few days. Another way of making monsters is through disguise. They only come out at night. Not even mage sight can penetrate their masks. No one knows who they really are. This kind of monster only works if one can control when the first one will be killed or captured. That's where to lay the real horror. Then one skeleton, zombie, elemental, or demon will make everyone think that all of the disguises hide more of the same. One can get a kind of multiplication out of one magical creature this way, but it is not really a self powered monster. Self powered enchantments generally cost ten times as much as regular ones. The tattoo spell cost generally the same as a regular item enchantment did. Maybe it was time to invent something like a self powered tattoo also. A tattoo isn't going to work. Its not something that can be inherited. Lets see if there is any evidence that the Mnoren had this kind of technology, but first a quick stab a AD&D. It wasn't a game that was fair to the monsters. Players in AD&D start with up to ten sometimes fourteen hit points. The poor old monsters only get a maximum of 8. That's a huge discrepancy in the players favor. A game has to be fair to both sides. TFT is very strong in this area. Fair to both sides is a method I use to test games and rules within games. For instance, if I am talking about creating monsters with the existing magic item enchantment table then I should be able to deconstruct the existing monsters using the same table. Three existing TFT rules are brought in and used to determine cost. First the tables for buying and selling horses are used to value the creatures' attributes. Second the enchantment table is used to price any special effects the creature has. And lastly the Job table to determine their talent and spell values. There are two exceptions: multiply the total attribute value by the characters' IQ (instead of x10 for anything 7 IQ or over), and multipy the job pay by 52 weeks to get a standard year. Following are three samples. 

    ST x 10
    DX2
    MA x 3
    Total x IQ
    +Enchantment cost
    +Talent and Spell cost.

   For humanoid races with variable point alocation use this order
    DX  1st remainder
    IQ 2nd remainder
    ST  divides evenly

    Man 10,11,11,10
 100
 121
 +30
 251
x 11
2,761
no enchantments
no manditory talents

    Man with running 10,11,11,12
 100
 121
 +36
 257
x 11
2,827
no enchantments
Running (job of town laborer $5 x 52 weeks = 260)
3,087

    Sasquatch 18,14,10,12
 180
 196
 +36
 412
 x12
4,944
2points of fur armor = $2,000 armor enchantment
Acute Hearing, Silent Movement, Naturalist, Tracking, and Tactics (Forester $30 x 52) = 1,560 
6,504
Now here are more examples. These are presented without all the math, just the grand totals. It the case of an interesting enchantment it has been listed. 

  OGRE  $2,064
  CAT ¾ of a blur  $3,648
  OCTOPUS (2 pt armor enchant, self powered eyes behind) $36,490
APEP (22 hexes of darkness, self powered dark vision, 3 pt armor, ¾ of a blur) $83,562 
  WRAITH (base cost of a man, self powered insubstantial)  $422,761
  LESSOR DEMON (3 pt armor, self powered teleport(20 hex)), $3,013,704
GREATOR DEMON (4 pt armor, self powered long distance teleport (20 fatigue)) $10,027,920
So it seems to me that if the existing price rules can be used to deconstruct a creature, then the same rules may be fair to create a new creature. As a GM I have never allowed the ability to create monsters fall into the hands of the players. If I did the magical laboratory required would cost ten times as much. A cool one hundred thousand just to get started. 

    David Michael Grouchy II


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