Scaling Problems in TTRPGs - An Argument for Small Numbers

I'm in the middle of promoting Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game (version 0.9). I had a goal to give the game some room to breathe, but I had a thought: What if the visitors on my blog who are here for something else are being starved of that something else? I write rants and half-cooked (yet insightful) game design essays from time to time. This post is about scaling problems in TTRPGs (like D&D 5e) and why Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game uses small numbers and avoids big numbers.

Here's the design philosophy:

Low Numbers = Faster Game, Simpler Game, More Tense Game, and Better Immersion

Where to begin?

Hit Points

Let's start with Hit Points (HP). In 5e, first level characters begin with 8 to 14 HP, and the game encourages people to start at third level where they'll have 20+ HP. Compare this to classic D&D where characters roll for starting hit points at first level and may have 1 HP, or potentially and realistically 10 HP at third level.

Your reservations might be that 1 HP is not enough HP. I agree. But I disagree with having 20+ HP, and I disagree with adding 5 to 12 HP per level so that fighters can potentially have 100 HP at level 10.

Our ape brains are really, really good at small numbers. 10 is a good number for us to work with. Something to do with the number of fingers. 100 is not a good number for us. If I roll 1d6 for damage, and you have 10 HP, you instantly appreciate what this means. You could die in two to three hits. Ouch. You feel that in your gut. But, if you scale this up by ten, to say 10d6 damage and 100 HP, this is not proportionate. 10d6 damage is going to average 35-40 damage with less dramatic deviation. You will die in three hits, not two to three. One die is swingy-er than ten.

Damage Dice

But 10d6 is slow! You have to watch one player pause the game to fish for loaner d6's, then roll, then do arithmetic, then give them back. It's like pausing a movie to calculate the math behind the movie physics. That breaks immersion. Not cool.

100 HP is too much because the size of the dice isn't scaling up; It's just the number of dice that are scaling up. More dice = slower game. I already said this implicitly, now I'm saying it explicitly.

Infinite Scaling

This is all a part of the illusion that characters are getting more powerful. If the game is scaling up to meet your character's power, does it matter? After a while you realize that all it does is slow the game down.

You're adding complexity to the game without necessarily improving it. It's bloat. It's counter intuitive.

IF you like crunch, you might be having fun. Scaling makes the game harder to prep. There's a new meta every few levels. The GM and the players have to learn this. There's an adjustment phase whenever the new meta is reached. A new GM is constantly underprepared for the jump in power and ability. A sixth level spell can turn five NPCs inside out. "When did you... Since when could do that? Yesterday!"

Players get more powerful, and so do the NPCs. Over and over and over and over. This is the carousel of power scaling. It leads to damage sponges.

Simpler games don't have this problem. A 1d6 damage die is objective; it describes the setting. You understand that a sword, a spear, and axe, a bowshot, etc., do 1d6 damage. You understand that a large or huge creature can do 2d6 damage. You understand that a giant or a dragon can do 3d6. These numbers imply the way the world works. It's intuitive. You don't have to think about it. The game is easy to prepare for and easy to play.

Tension

Having 10 HP makes the game more tense. If you've ever played high level D&D, you know you can take some punishment. You're less scared. Players stop taking the world seriously. The kraken or dragon can't kill you in one hit when you have 100 HP. BUT if you only had 10 HP, 3d6 damage would be very scary.

If you've ever seen a player trigger an opportunity attack and say "meh, I'll just take the damage", you know what I mean. That's a game that has encouraged a playstyle where damage is too abstract and has no meaningful consequences. To compensate for this, designers try to add meaningful consequences, like an injury system. No! Bad game designer! Shame on you! The answer is simple: stop scaling the game up! You don't need an injury subsystem to reinforce danger when you only have 10 HP and everyone rolls 1d6 damage.

Once, a DM prepped a scenario where we were on a rickety wooden bridge 100 feet above the ground. I was a 9th level fighter. I had enough HP to take a fall. I could long rest on the ground. I wasn't worried.

Better Immersion

Everyone plays TTRPGs for different reasons. I like the narrative. I play to find out what happens next. Combat is the slowest way to find out what happens next. In my opinion, there is no right way to do 5e combat. The substance of the narrative is what is meaningfully happening in this scene. In combat, the substance is "we're resolving our differences with violence" and, in my experience, it takes two hours. The dramatic question is "who wins?"

For players like me who want to know what substantiative, meaningful thing happens next, if that takes two hours, that's boring. We start checking out. I start building dice towers and doodling. I'm not watching / participating in an emergent story as Klunk the Barbarian and my brave, crazy adventurer band, I'm watching nerds invoke game rules and do math.

When you roll 1d6 damage against 10 HP, things happen fast.

When you roll 10d6 damage against 100 HP, things happen slow.

That's just the way it shakes out. I have timed it. Combat turns at low levels are 45 seconds to a minute. Combat turns at level twenty are 10 minutes or more.

Conclusion

Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game is designed so that maximum Health caps at 20 + Strength (so, 23 is the cap). Average damage is 1d6 + Attribute. Some talents modify damage too, even damage die. Critical hits add 2d6. This makes hits feel meaningful. This keeps players from getting big heads about being tough, and it keeps them in the grounded fantasy. Grounded fantasy needs grounded numbers.

Related: I have a page where I list several TTRPG posts here.

Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game - Setting Primer

This section introduces the implied world of Bright‑Dark. Use it as a foundation for your own setting or as inspiration for new stories.

SETTING PRIMER

CORE TONE

Melancholic but Warm - Melancholy is a feeling of sadness with seemingly no particular cause that feels unending. Maybe we can identify a cause, but then we find it to be another symptom rather than the root cause. People are sad, but not gloomy caricatures. Even the gloomiest people can still open up and be warm. 

Quiet Courage - Courage is not bravado. Everyone has courage inside them, and they use it a little bit every day when they endure unmet bills or chronic pain or some other silent burden instead of withdrawing from it, or dulling it with indulgences and distraction. They reach out to others who are also struggling when it's risky.

Small Kindness: Kindness encourages people to keep trying. Kindness is a choice. You can keep going about your day and you can overlook things and people, or you can offer someone a friendly smile and a pleasant greeting. Greater kindnesses take effort and sacrifice. Kindness is sometimes a trait of weak people, but it's also a trait of people who are empathetic and who know what it's like to hurt. Small kindnesses have a butterfly effect. They don't magnify in intensity; they just radiate outward.

Fragile Hope:  Hope is easily lost. You can choose to keep hoping even when it's hard, or you can choose to abandon hope and accept despair, the overwhelming feeling that nothing matters and nothing is worth doing. Despair is an intensely awful feeling. Giving into despair is tragic. Accepting that things aren't going to improve is not always giving into despair, sometimes its reorienting your hope around your circumstances. Hope is fragile because in Bright-Dark stories, it's easily lost. When people lose hope, that's when they start making poor decisions that cause more harm in the world.

Human Stakes: At its core, this means stories that explore the human condition, but not the rare and extreme expressions of it. Explore why the little things matter to us. It's because they often represent safety and comfort. Explore how fragile people are under pressure and why human relationships are so important. When one person is changed by a loss, how does that effect others? What do they notice? What does it cause them to change about themselves?

Bittersweet Beauty: A scar reminds you of a time you fell. At that time, it felt like something you had to endure, but with time and perspective, it becomes a reminder of something your withstood. You're still here and you're wiser. Marks tell stories. A perfect, pristine tree is not as awe inspiring as one that withstood a lightning strike. Perfect things don't exist. The flaws tell us something. 

Gentle Darkness: Darkness is a metaphor; it's not literal darkness. It's the things in life that burden us, make us grieve, make us struggle, makes us afraid, or long for something. It can be the things that cause imperfections in the world to the things that cause more darkness and perpetuate it. Everyone lives with these things. Some cope better than others, but the ones who can't are never painted as evil, cruel or monstrous. Once you go there, you're not exploring a normal aspect of the human condition anymore, you're exploring an extreme, rare aspect, and that's not telling a Bright-Dark story anymore.

Wounded Wonder: Wonder is the sensation of enjoyment you get from wondering about something or imagining what it is and how it works. They make the world seem bigger, brighter, and they give you something to hope for. The older you get, the more you understand, and there's less to wonder about.  Wonders are things that you and others don't understand. They're rare. They need not be fantastic, but they can be. A wonder can be how a person survived disaster, how a once sickly tree managed grow into the biggest tree in the forest, a desert oasis, a flower that blooms in the moonlight, or how a deep underground cave formed and what it hides. They have different meanings to different people. The phrase wonders never cease means that just when you think you've figured the world out, you discover there's still more wonders and the sensation of wonder returns to you. These wonders inspire feelings and actions. A wounded wonder is a wonder with a flaw that reminds us of something tragic, like the ruins of an ancient monument defaced by soldiers in the last war, or a broken artifact with a missing piece. The wounds themselves also inspire.

Core Themes

Kindness - People who show kindness are special.

Burden - Everyone has them.

Connection - Friends, family, important relationship. Found Family.

Sacrifice - Earning anything costs something.

Healing - Objectives can be achieved by helping, not harming.

Small Victories - Characters don't win big. They may accumulate many small victories over time and progress towards somewhere big, but they never receive a great big win.

METAPHYSICS

Philosophy about the afterlife, what religion teaches, how the cosmos work, and what gods think; We don't need complex religions and philosophies in a Bright-Dark world because the stories of Bright-Dark are all human scale. There is however, one critical thing you need to know to create a world with a Bright-Dark tone: nothing is certain. It's not a message, it's a vibe. Certainty that gives people confidence that things will all work out in the end gives people confidence and makes hope, quiet courage, and kindness, less meaningful.

Bright-Dark Faith

Faith is not contrary to Bright-Dark, but certainty is. Bright-Dark faith is fragile, wounded, and chosen, not guaranteed. It is the belief that something matters, even when the outcome is uncertain. Faith becomes part of the tone when it behaves like hope: vulnerable, human, and quietly brave. Faith in Bright-Dark is an emotional commitment, not a cosmic certainty. Faith can give comfort in Bright-Dark like a hand on a shoulder or a small lamp in the dark, but not certainty like a prophecy or a final destination. Certainty breaks the tone and tension of bright-dark. Bright-dark faith is not about knowing things will be OK, it's about believing something matters enough to keep going.

Clerics in Bright-Dark

Traditional clerics who channel God are anti-Bright-Dark. Instead, Bright-Dark clerics (if part of the setting) tend to fading lights. They nurture wounded wonders. Power is not granted, it's coaxed. Their miracles are small, fragile, flickering, unreliable, and emotionally costly. Their god is not triumphant, it's fading. The deity is quiet, distant, wounded, dim, and barely present. Certainty is not offered. The cleric's role is not to serve a powerful god, it's to protect the last embers of something sacred. Every miracle is a risk, every blessing is a prayer, and every healing is a plea. Faith hurts, but clerics choose it anyway.

Clerics of Darkness in Bright-Dark

Darkness in Bright-Dark is not evil, malice, demons, cosmic shadows, villainy, a cult, or moral darkness. Darkness is burdens, grief, fear, exhaustion, corruption, trauma, loneliness, illness, the weight that presses on people, and the wound the world carries. Bright-Dark is about coexistence, not opposition. A cleric of darkness in Bright-Dark (if part of the setting) is not a cultist or a necromancer. They tend to the dark things; they don't glorify pain, spread corruption, or serve evil. They show that darkness is something to understand, not defeat. If a bright-dark cleric is a nurse, then a bright-dark cleric of darkness is a hospice nurse.

Magic and Mages in Bright-Dark

Magic is not common or ordinary. It's rare and mysterious like a wonder, and dangerous too. It's also a mark of quiet prestige as the path of magic teaches you how small you are in the world, while potentially making you bigger in it. People do not casually wield magic openly or show it off. They respect it and fear it.

Magic is not a skill you improve at through study and practice. Skills are natural, technical. This is something supernatural. It's harnessed by knowledge, emotion, or will. You improve your knowledge, you grow in emotion, you build your will. Improving these qualities improves your use of magic.

Mages who misuse magic are hated. Mages are sought by those who want power.

WORLD BUILDING - THE WORLD'S WOUND MADE PHYSICAL

The World Doesn't Belong in an Encyclopedia

You'll find that the advice here encourages building the world based on need. Create what you need, when you need it. Nothing more. Everything else is implied. The world is a stage for conflict, drama, and tension. The stage dissolves when the scene ends. From scene to scene, the world should be tonally, emotionally, and thematically consistent, with consistent and grounded conflict. Deep lore, history, geography, or cosmology are neat, but are not playable content and it frees GMs to build confidently without being chained to lore. The world is functional, but story-first.

The "Wound"

Start with the wound of your world. The wound is a metaphor for something in writing called a central conflict or central tension of your world. It's a single major problem that affects everyone, everywhere. It could be a civil war, the fallout from a natural disaster, a new religion being imposed on people or an old religion forbidden from them, a country being conquered and occupied by invaders, or an illegitimate leader who. This problem shapes circumstances for anyone. This is not a problem that can be solved by any one person or group within the setting.

Write one sentence and describe the wound. Then, write a few sentences describing its major effects on people and the setting. For example, in the Empire of Loria, the emperor is dead and there are no legitimate heirs. That's the wound. It's a power vacuum and everyone is trying to fill it. Some of the major consequences are: The nobles are fighting each other for power; the clergy is conspiring to form a theocracy; the industrious merchant class is plotting to form a republic, but they have to be careful not to cross a very thin line of treason.

Now consider how this affects people on an individual level. While the nobles, clergy, and merchants are distracted, people are being taxed higher, worked hard, and conscripted to fight. Neighbors are being pitted against each other by this question: Do you side with the empire, the church, or the people? Resources once meant for the people are going towards the soldiers. There are shortages of basic goods. Laws are getting stricter and crime is on the rise. Foreign barbarians are raiding villages on the boarders.

A Place

Adventures in Bright-Dark are character-driven. Deep world building is a low priority. A historically rich world that is scientifically sound creates believability but only a little bit is needed for the fiction. Discover it with your players as they explore it and develop as you go.

There are two approaches to world building: Top-down and bottom-up. I propose a mix. Start with one, then go to the other.

Start top-down. Zoom out and establish a major region: a county, a province, or a small kingdom. Create a skeleton, not an atlas or gazetteer. Name a few important settlements (cities, towns, shrines, lairs, etc.) and a short description about how the wound shapes it.

Next, go bottom-up and establish the starting point: a small village, a shrine, a frontier outpost, or a trade town. Ask how the wound affects this place. Then, write a once-sentence explanation for each aspect below, always tying it to the wound.

• Society or Culture: What kind of people or society is it?
• Politics or Government: How is it run?
• Economics: What do they make?
• Religion or Spirituality: Who do the worship?
• Military or Militia: How do they defend themselves?
• Geography: What is the climate like? What are one major and two minor geological features?
• History: What is something important about this locations history.

Name an NPC who embodies each aspect. Write about how they are affected by the wound.

For example: Economics. The town of Little Seriphin grows grain for nearby villages. Thanks to the civil war, men have been conscripted and the village must work harder and longer to work the fields and mills. The local outfitter Edward Hunt no longer has consistent business and is struggling to pay taxes.

World-Building should always point back to people. If a world-building detail doesn’t affect how people live, feel, fear, or hope, it's extraneous.

Anchor NPCS

Every story has a few important side-characters. Create one named NPC to fill these roles in your setting. Give them a reason why they don't join the player characters on adventures. They just help player characters in small ways. Sometimes the help comes with a cost. Tie it to the wound.

• A mentor to give wisdom, advice, and expertise. Think Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• A patron to provide resources, opportunities, usually as work.
• An antagonist who challenges the character. In Bright-Dark 3d6, this is not a villain, but it is a person who puts pressure on the setting and the characters. Think about a stickler for rules or tradition, a troublemaker looking for fun, or a rival who wants to beat the characters to some goal.
• A contact in high or low places describes someone with connections to NPCs that would not ordinarily be accessible to the players. Think of a low-level member of an organization or faction who could potentially introduce the PCs to someone important.

You may begin play already having established your player characters relationships to these anchor NPCs.

Rumors, News, Gossip, Lore

Think of rumors, news, gossip, and lore is a list of conversation topics for NPCs. They describe what's going on within the setting and they flesh out the players knowledge of the world. This can include hints players might need to solve oncoming problems. They can also lead the players to local troubles. Come up with a short list. Choose or roll when the players engage with NPCs.

Local Troubles

These are the local troubles. Create a few, no more than 1d6. They could be ways to hook the players to action, but not necessarily, and they describe the setting.

FACTIONS - THE WORLD'S WOUND MADE SOCIAL

Factions are organizations shaped by the wound. They are groups with power, or groups desperate to gain it. They compete if not oppose each other. Nobles, clergy, merchants, militias, gangs, and guilds can all be factions, but each must be personified by a complex NPC, usually a leader or an important person, with a goal, a wound, an obstacle, a shield, and redeeming qualities.

Bright-Dark is human-scale. Players rarely meet the leaders of powerful factions. Instead, they meet a complex NPC member of lower standing who personifies of the faction: A sheriff, a priest, a merchant, a soldier. They are someone who's life is shaped by the faction's pressure.

Factions create tension by dividing communities. They force people to choose sides. They turn neighbors against each other. They create fear, loyalty, resentment, and desperation.

Sub-factions and rival factions deepen the wound. Deputies betray sheriffs. Clergy undermine nobles. Merchants exploit scarcity. Every faction is wounded, and every faction wounds others.

Factions don’t give quests. They create pressure that shapes NPC behavior

The wound shapes the land. The wound shapes the people. The people shape the story.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Adventures in Bright-Dark are not about saving the world, slaying the monster, or finding treasure; at least, not for their own sake. Bright-Dark should feel less like a video game and more like a book or a film, where participants play characters and make choices that shape the fiction. We enjoy stories because they make us feel things. We follow characters through complete emotional journeys, sharing their experiences vicariously.

To create that feeling at the table, you must build meaningful conflict, not functional conflict. Players need something personal to care about. Emotional stakes come from three elements

1. A Goal: A goal is something two parties cannot share. “I want Thing A. You want Thing A. Only one of us can have it.” This creates friction, competition, and inevitability. Someone will lose.

2. Stakes: Stakes are what the character stands to lose if they fail. They must be personal, high, and felt. Life-and-death stakes are not the strongest stakes in Bright-Dark. Emotional stakes are stronger:

• The treasure matters because it pays for your sister’s medicine.
• The beast must be stopped because it’s destroying your village’s food for winter.
• You confront the wizard because your son is cursed, even though he might smite you; and then who will care for your son?

Stakes create tension. Tension force choices. Choices lead to consequences. Stakes should feel like a metaphorical death if lost: a once-in-a-lifetime chance, a fragile hope, a relationship, a future, a promise.

3. An Antagonist: Antagonists must be individual characters, not factions or abstract concepts. They must have a wound of their own, and power over the situation

They are someone who can stop the players from achieving their goal; someone who holds the leverage. Confrontations happen on their terms. This makes conflict intense, personal, and messy.

Factions create background tension. Antagonists create scenes. In Bright-Dark, keep everything human in scale, personal, and intimate.

Adventure prep begins with the player characters, not the plot. Emotional stakes require knowledge of the player characters. Their goals, wounds, and connections should inform the conflicts you prepare. In Bright-Dark, every story is tailored, never generic.

THE "WOUNDED WORLD" CONCEPT

IIn Samurai Jack, the world is dominated by Aku. That domination is the world’s wound. You can see and feel it everywhere: people live in fear, cities decay, cruelty is common, indulgence distracts from despair, and nature is plundered. For ordinary people, Aku is not a problem to solve, he is a condition they have learned to live with.

A wounded world is a setting defined by a pervasive, unresolvable tension that shapes every life within it.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the wound is a century of war that has reshaped every culture. In The Empire Strikes Back, the wound is an oppressive regime backed by a planet-killing superweapon. In Spider-Man (2004), the wound is simply New York itself, a hard city full of hard people.

A wounded world is your setting’s central tension. It is not a literal injury; it is a pervasive, entrenched conflict that affects the setting on a macro-scale and is not going away. Everyone knows about it. Everyone is shaped by it. Everyone has a stance on it. The central tension makes the world feel fuller, alive, and real.

Your world’s wound is the flavor of that tension, the thing that makes the world feel dangerous, dim, and strained, with only small pockets of safety where the danger softens but never disappears.

The wounded world does not directly create obstacles or opportunities for the players. Instead, it creates conditions that everyone must live with. The people living in those conditions, their fears, hopes, wounds, shields, and choices, are what create obstacles or opportunities.

As GM, use the wounded world as a tool for world-building. When you describe places, people, or events, ask how the wound affects these people.

Importantly, there is no quest to solve the wound. This is life.

Scene Framing (how to start a scene with emotional clarity)

Adventure Structure (how to build a 3-act Bright-Dark adventure)

GM Prep Checklist (a one-page summary of your philosophy)

Next: Examples of Play

Previous: Monsters

Main: Table of Contents - (Full game single post)

Download: Full Rulebook PDF version 0.9

Download: Character Sheet

Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game - Monsters

Monsters in Bright‑Dark are wounded, sorrorful beings shaped by fear, temptation, or despari. This section explains how to portray them, how they behave, and why they matter emotionally.

Monsters

Monsters in Bright-Dark are characters, not things to kill. They don't give out experience points or loot. They aren't morally evil or mindless swarming hoards. They're wounded beings who live in the darkness. They don't worship it. They're dangerous because they're wounded. They're lashing out because they're hungry, confused, sad, or frightened, not angry or cruel or warlike.

Bright-Dark does not have a catalog of monsters. Traditional fantasy monsters must be recontextualized for Bright-Dark. Bright-dark is a tone that is built on emotion, wounds, and meaning. A monster that doesn't fulfill this doesn't fit. Monsters must be tailored, not generic.

Monsters should challenge players emotionally, not just mechanically. When creating a monster, there should be consequences for killing it besides life and death like a failed objective, a lost opportunity, a ruined relationship, a hidden truth that stays a secret, or the weight that they're hurting something gentle or noble that can't help itself. These are emotional stakes. Monsters do not simply fill space in the dungeon.

Create monsters who are dangerous yet sympathetic, even if that sympathetic quality isn't immediately obvious. A goblin is not malicious, it's hungry and anxious. It uses tricks first, violence if cornered. A wolf is not a predator, it's a mourner of its lost pack. An ogre is not a brute, it's a misunderstood creature that can't control its strength; It's not his fault he breaks people. A sanctuary guardian feels betrayed because his shrine has been desecrated. A ghost can't pass on until she finds out who stole her precious wedding ring.

Keep the scale human, not cosmic or ecological. Bright-Dark is too delicate for generic threats. Everything must be emotionally anchored.

Monsters are fixable by calming, cleansing, comforting, guiding, healing, and understanding. Violence is possible, but compassion is powerful.

Design, portray, and describe monsters like Complex NPCs with a wound, a shield, redeeming traits, a goal, and an obstacle. Complex NPCs are described in the Game Master section. For your benefit, consider how these complex NPC traits affect its behavior and include small notes within the traits. Players can soften conflict, possibly resolve it, by helping the monster rather than hurting it.

MONSTER STATS

Monsters are not designed with the same logic as a player character. Monsters only need a few stats:

Health: Either a range for the average monster of its kind (example 2-5), or a specific amount (example 10) will do.

Two Attributes: Monsters don't need attributes. They need two numbers, a high one and a low one. For actions that it should be good at, use the high number. For actions it's average or poor at, use the low number. For example, a +1 and a -1 or a +3 and a 0.

These numbers added to any of its 3d6 rolls.

Defense TN: The number that players need to roll against to hit the monster. When in doubt, assume 10. Sometimes, an arbitrary Defense TN is better for the fiction or the game than a Defense TN based on the logic of armor.

If a star appears by Defense TN (*), this means the monster may not be harmed by mundane attacks, and a silvered weapons or magic is needed. A double star (**) means only magic may harm the monster.

Damage: How much damage the monster rolls when it makes a successful attack. If a dice value appears, use the dice value for all its attacks. If Special appears, the attack does something other than reduce health; see its notes.

Size: Size is omitted if a creature's size is intuitive. Some creatures are much larger than a man such as a lion, bear, or ogre. Such creatures cannot be conventionally grappled.

Movement: Assume creatures have Normal Movement (30 feet). Movement is omitted unless the creature has a distinct movement such as slow, fast, flying, teleporting, etc.

Morale TN: This number describes bravery or cowardice. The lower the Morale TN, the braver the creature. 10-11 is average. Refer to the Morale Checks rule in the Core Mechanics section for a full description of the rule.

SAMPLE MONSTERS

Bear: Health 15, Attributes +3, -1, Defense TN 10, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 10, Movement climbs at normal speed rather than slow speed

(Variant) Direbear: Health is 25, Hit +4, Defense 12, Damage 2d6

Wound: Grieving because its mate and cubs were hunted by poachers

Shield: Humans will never hurt bear cubs again

Goal: To keep humans out of its territory

Obstacle: Human hunting grounds overlap with the bears territory

Redeeming Traits: it's a perfectly normal bear when no humans are around; not some maladjusted man-eater as believed

Ghost: Health 8-16, Attributes +1, -1, Defense TN 8**, Damage Special, Morale TN 10, Movement Fast, Flying, Hovering

Vitality Drain: On touch, reduces maximum health by 1d6-1 (min 1).

Flight: The ghost can fly.

Intangible: Can move and stop in solid objects.

Possession: The ghost can enter a character's body and take control of it. The character gets one chance to resist being possessed by rolling 3d6+Heart.

Wound: Believes her wedding ring was stolen. This is an injustice.

Shield: Thief should be punished.

Goal: Find her ring.

Obstacle: Her wedding ring is missing, not stolen.

Redeeming Traits: Was a kind person in life.

Goblin: Health 2-5, Attributes +1, -2, Defense TN 9, Damage 1d6-1 (minimum 1), Morale TN 12

(Variant) Goblin Priest: Revered by other goblins. Goblins gain a significant morale boost in the presence of a living goblin priest: Moral TN 9.

(Variant) Goblin Warrior: Health is 10 rather than 2-5, Attributes +2, -1, damage is 1d6.

Wound: Rejected because of their ugliness, mischievousness, and superstition. They are fearful of humans who occasionally try to kill them, and anxious because they're small than most things.

Shield: They need to eat, and humans hurt them first

Goal: Basic survival needs

Obstacle: Forced to live in the most remote parts of the world.

Redeeming Traits: Cunning and clever. Capable of small kindness and quiet courage

Grove Guardian: Health 18-24, Attributes +2, 0 Defense TN 8, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 9, Size equivalent to a very large bear

Charge: Antlers and hooves; If hit for at least 5 damage, you are knocked prone and trampled for an additional 1d6 damage.

Wound: Its grove, its home, was burned by careless humans. Now it grieves by howling and moaning. 

Shield: Right to a home. Won't let anything happen to its home again!

Goal: It roams to find a new home. It's settling into woods at the edge of human territory. It's quick to defend itself and anything it considers its new territory.

Obstacle: Humans are scared of it. They think it's a man-eating monster.

Redeeming Traits: A gentle giant and a noble creature that ordinarily grooms the woods and takes the forests resources responsibly.

Lion: Health 20, Hit +3, Defense TN 12, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 13 because of its injury, 8 normally, Movement is normal (30 ft) because of its injury

(Variant) Liger: Health is 30, Hit +5, Defense 14, Damage 2d6+1 (3-13 damage)

Wound: A debilitating physically injury has made it vulnerable, now it can't hunt its normal prey and resorts to humans. It is ostracized from its pride and is lonely.

Shield: Everything needs to eat.

Goal: It is waiting to heal.

Obstacle: Its wound isn't healing, its rotting.

Redeeming Traits: Doesn't want to eat humans.

Ogre: Health 20, Attributes +3,-1 Defense TN 8, Damage 2d6, Morale TN 10

Wound: Misunderstood and lonely. Not a brute, just doesn't understand its strength and others' fragility. Sad because he keeps accidentally killing his friends.

Shield: I no mean to do it! I good!

Goal: Make a friend.

Obstacle: Everyone is afraid of him and they hunt him.

Redeeming Traits: Kind

Troll: Health 15, Attributes +2, -1, Defense TN 11, Damage 1d6+2, Moral TN 8

Regeneration: At 0 Health, the troll appears dead. It will come back to life in 24 hours unless it is decapitated, de-cored meaning to remove its heart, or fully immolated (burned). Every time the troll comes back to life, it gains 1d6 maximum health, and its damage goes up in the following fashion: 2d6, 2d6+1, 2d6+2, 3d6, 3d6+1, 3d6+2, 4d6, etc.

Wound: Humans attack it first! Humans killed mate! Humans bad!

Shield: Believes its indiscriminate violence is justified.

Goal: Revenge on the man who killed his mate.

Obstacle: Trolls can't go into human societies without facing a pitchfork mob.

Redeeming Traits: Was capable of peace once.

Wolf: Health 7, Attributes +1, 0, Defense TN 11, Damage Bite (see description), Morale TN 9 (in a pack), 12 (alone)

Wolves attack in packs. When they bite, they do 1d3+1 damage, and they can choose to grapple the victim in their jaws which happens automatically. The victims must use their action to break a grapple, and they can only break one grapple per action.

Wound: Its pack died due to a harsh winter. Now it mourns and survives alone.

Shield: Forced to steal human livestock because it can't hunt big prey without its pack.

Goal: Find a new Pack.

Obstacle: Wolf packs are scarce.

Redeeming Traits: Capable of dog-like empathy. 

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