Hello @all & Monster Statblock

Hi @all
first post here, and fairly new to ACKS, although not to RPGs in general. I started with BECMI about 25 years ago and have tried many other RPG-systems. I’m currently running a PRPG campaign once per week, but lately I’m growing tired of all those complicated rules. In a fit of nostalgia I found ACKS and ACKS reminds me of the good old times, but at the same time new.
So, after my first read through of draft 3.2 (i already send it to the devs) i’ve started to take a second run through, this time taking a deeper look at spells and monsters. since i started with the monsters, i have a proposal: wouldn’t it be useful to have an entry for climate and/or terrain in each stat block or would it be possible to have a terrain and/or climate list?
And, can we have a size listing? I’m sometimes unsure if a monster is small or medium or giant.
Don’t know if this would be going to far, but if weapon’s would also be assigned a size small, medium, large), you would know which creatures can use which weapon (in BECMI for example halfling can only use small weapons)…

I actually wouldn’t mind climate too. I know it helps me fill out my region encounter tables.

I find myself going in the other direction: I fill out my encounter tables, and that describes where the monsters live.

//I find myself going in the other direction: I fill out my encounter tables, and that describes where the monsters live.//
I guess I do this for dungeons, but not for wilderness.

Hi Beastman! Thanks for joining the ACKS community.
I thought about doing a climate/terrain entry but ultimately abandoned it as more limiting than helpful. In actual practice, I have found that terrain is less important to a campaign’s choice of monster than other factors - HD, powers, and a vague choice of “feel”. For instance, the Auran Empire has an “ancient world” rather than medieval feel, so in placing monsters I skewed towards monsters like the chimera, hydra, lammasu, and sphinx. These creatures appear in various forms throughout the world. Such factors, I find, always trump terrain and climate - for instance, if I needed some cold-themed monsters for Auran Empire, I’d be more likely to introduce an “ice hydra” than to put in creatures from, e.g., Eskimo myth even if a Monster Manual says that’s appropriate for the terrain. In any event, the Wilderness Encounter tables in the Secrets section show my presumptive terrain allocations for the creatures in the book.
In terms of sizes, I haven’t precisely defined sizes as in 3.5e. Where it seemed essential I’ve mentioned the creature’s size, but in other cases it’s left open to the Judge. Opinions differ as to how big dragons are, or ought to be. A 20HD dragon could be 30’, 60’, or 90’ long, depending on who you ask. Do folks feel we should have an official size? It’s too late to make it into the print rules but I could certainly write something up as a web addenda.

Alex, I forgot about the Terrain tables you have in the back. In fact, that’s what I used. :slight_smile: So, example terrain tables helped a lot. Good call.