Building Creatures

A creature file has no statistics. It has a description, a type, a disposition, behaviour, tactics and a Threat.

Threat is the whole balance system. Harmless, Minor, Dangerous, Deadly or Legendary. It is a promise to your players about what they are looking at and you are expected to honour it.

Harmless cannot hurt someone paying attention. Minor is a real problem for one unprepared person. Dangerous can badly hurt a capable character and will beat a careless group. Deadly will kill characters who take it on without a plan. Legendary is not to be beaten. It is a situation to be survived, avoided or changed.

Because there is no combat system, Threat and Tactics are what the Game Master actually runs the creature from. Write Tactics as behaviour rather than mechanics. What it does first, what it does when it is winning, and what it does when it is losing.

Link two or three Creature Abilities and no more. A long list is harder to run, not scarier. The library that ships with the project covers natural, arcane, cybernetic and humanoid origins, and every entry is reskinnable.