Update in Progress
NPC Creation
Witchgates runs on the philosophy that all NPCs should be quick to develop and easy to add depth to. More importantly, Witchgates runs on the philosophy that numbers don’t make an NPC, and thus actual number tracking should be minimized. Since witchgates fits multiple themes, it should be easy to introduce monsters from other games and media into your game. To follow this, NPC stats are based on generalities, with stats fitted based on the general capabilities of the type of NPC and capabilities assigned to simplified attributes which represent the core concepts of the character.
NPC Stat Block
| NPC Name | Motive/Drive: | ||
| Health: | Sanity: | ||
| Armor: | Damage: | ||
| Attributes: | |||
| Skills: | |||
| Abilities: | Weaknesses: | ||
| Description: |
Character Description
This section is the most important and is required for all NPCs that the players may interact with. It has three components: visual, personality, and drive. The visual component represents a characters appearance to others, while the personality component represents the characters core personality and behavior traits. Many GM’s find it easiest to give the first two details to an NPC since those details represent what the players see and influences how they interact with the character.
The last detail, drive, is initially there for the GM. Drive details what motivates an NPC to do what they do. They can be driven by instinct, avarice, or something much more complex. Knowing a NPCs drive and personality lets the GM figure out how that NPC will affect the story and react to changes in the world.
At its simplest, each component of a character’s description can be a single word, together summarizing the core nature and impact a character will have.
Weaving Player NPC Favoritism with NPC Utility
In general, the GM will not know what NPCs the players like or dislike until the players interact with the NPC themselves. However, players do tend to like help.
When you make an NPC, don’t just think of his mechanic in the story, but also ask yourself “how will this character provide, or take away utility to the party?”
Forcing players to rely on an NPC might be a good way to get them to dislike the NPC, while an NPC that provides an easier or more fun option is going to start on more positive terms.
While a good ally might provide some boon, a villain might threaten to take a boon away.
Perhaps Mike the engineer keeps the airship afloat so that PCs don’t have to travel by land. On the otherhand, maybe Chuck the cultist is trying to invoke powerful storms across the country for a powerful summoning, interrupting air travel at the same time.
Whether players like an NPC doesn’t mean that the NPC is necessarily on their side. In the examples above, Chuck might be threatening, but a betrayal by Mike would have a stronger impact.
Core Stats
NPCs need to roll too at times, and you may want to show that they vary in skills and talents. They also might get hit and knocked around a bit. This section makes it easier to create and track the necessary stats of an NPC. Remember, technically any character can be fully fleshed out on a character sheet and those who want precise details are welcome do so.
Simplified Attributes: By default, an NPCs attributes are 0 unless declared otherwise. In this way, the GM only needs to declare the details of an NPC that make them stand apart from an average human. The below list for an idea of modifiers to give Attributes:
(-2) Below Average: This attribute is one of the character’s weaknesses, or represent a value in a weak creature.
(1) Talented: This value is representative of the higher end of humanity’s natural capabilities.
(3) Exceptional: The attribute is far above what most humans will reach, but still feasible. Strong creatures and animals may have physical Traits this high.
(5) Godly: The creature’s attribute is far above what a human could hope to achieve. The talent in the Traits is hard to imagine. Legendary creatures, such as giants and dragons, may have 1 or 2 physical or mental Traits this high.
Only Specialties: NPC are distinguished only by their specialties – generalized 1-3 word concepts that represent a character’s capabilities, such as “Blacksmith,” “Cat,” or “Novice Woodsman.” When an NPC’s trait only loosely applies for a roll, it provides only half of its value to the roll. For example, the trait “Blacksmith (3)” might provide a +3 to crafting swords and metal knowledge checks. If a trait only sorta applies, such as how a blacksmith might have historical sword knowledge, they only would roll half of the dice from the modifier; in this instance 2 as 1.5 is rounded up. Just as a specialty determines the number of dice for an NPC’s roll, they also determine the penalty to the rolls of players who are acting against them.
(1) Knowledgeable: The character has rudimentary knowledge of the subject.
(2) Trained: The subject is strongly tied to the character’s identity.
(3) Expert: The character is a master at this subject.
Set Health and Sanity: Health and Sanity is tracked in the same manner as player characters, but the value is instead chosen from the below options.
- (1 Box) Mook: Generally a single hit on the creature will knock it out. Useful for large numbers of individually unimportant characters and monsters.
- (4 Boxes) Animal: This represents the general amount of health a medium sized creature might have.
- (8 Boxes) Healthy Human: A healthy human or equivalently sized creature.
- (14 Boxes) Supernatural Resilience: The creature has an unnatural amount of health and soaks damage easily. Werewolves, ghouls, and other tough monsters may have this much health.
- (20 Boxes) Godly: Much like with the godly attribute, the creature is far above mortal weakness. Creatures with this much health or sanity generally have other defenses as well, and knowing the creature’s weakness is generally needed to have a chance of killing the monster or driving it insane. A very large monster (see the bottom) may have even greater health, with multiple sections of their body split up with their own health boxes and creature stats.
Armor: Many creatures and well prepared humans come to combat armored. Remember to provide an NPC with two armor values, one for ranged and one for melee. Here are the general values to provide an NPC with:
- (0) None: Your general value.
- (2) Cautious Human or Natural Hide
- (5) Fully Armored Human, Stone Gollum, or Supernatural Hide.
- (10) Dragon Scales, Iron Gollum. (I suggest adding a weakness to these creatures that can allow players to circumvent some of the armor)
Damage: Damage can be one of the hardest values to assign. In general, try to assign damage values equal to those to similar equipment when appropriate. However, many monsters will have supernatural damages that are harder to assign. In these cases, for each of a creature’s unique attacks, give a number of Damage Points based on the attack’s threat level, and spend the points on the following table to create or match the ability.
| Threat Level | Damage Points |
| Minimal | 2 |
| Medium | 4 |
| Dangerous / Life Threatening | 7 |
| Terrifying / Dragon’s Breath | 12 |
| Damage Point Cost | Effect | Damage Point Cost | Effect |
| -1 | 1 | 2 damage | +4 | Attack cannot be used until it recharges in 1d10 turns |
| -2 | 2 | 4 damage | +4 | Ability is 1 time use |
| -4 | 3 | 7 damage | -1 | Range Nearby |
| -8 | 5 | 10 damage | -2 | Range Far Away |
| -6 | Attack is deals Aggravated damage | -1 | Area Engaged |
| -4 | Area Nearby |
For example, an ancient dragon’s breath of fire is kinda terrifying, but there claws are still life threatening.
So I used the initial 12 points to create the attack: Fire Breath: Range Far Away (-2), Area Nearby (cone) (-4), Damage 3 | 7 (A) (-10), Recharge (+4)
And the life threatening 7 points to create the attack: Claw Swipe: Melee Range, Area Engaged, Damage 2 | 4 . (Note a dragon’s strength may also increase this damage).
Weakness and Abilities
This section deals with a simple concept, the unknown. A normal tiger is fearsome and weak to bullets (sad, I know). A ghoulish tiger may be able to heal when it eats its victims, but might also be unable to step into direct sunlight.
Abilities are unique, spell-like effects that a creature can utilize. Abilities can have nearly any effect, but they must also have a limit, something that prevents it from being all powerful and allows the players to formulate plans against it, should they figure out what the limit is. Spells, for example, are limited by Sunesis, their own DCs, backlashes, and the very ideas that form them. The ghoulish tiger might only be able to heal on fresh corpses and while in darkness.
Weaknesses are the unique traits of an NPC which can put it at a disadvantage. A GM doesn’t need to describe the specific mechanical effect of a weakness, but they should understand it well enough should it come up. Weaknesses help balance powerful monsters and an entire campaign could revolve around the PCs trying to find out a monster’s weakness. Therefore, weaknesses should have a noteworthy, debilitating impact on the creature. That said, weaknesses should not pigeon-hold players into interacting with a monster in only a single way. A monster that takes more damage from fire pigeon-holds the party to dealing mostly fire damage to it, making other attacks sub-optimal. However, a monster that is afraid of standing fire allows the players to use fire strategically, without diminishing the value of other options.
Very Large Monsters (VLMs)
VLMs are a concept inspired by the game Fate Core. These rules represent how some monsters are so large that they can be treated with several zones, each with its own threat. PCs must navigate between zones dealing with each to neutralize the various threats of each zone. Some VLMs must have each Zone defeated in order to be taken down, while others may have a core Zone (such as the head) that will take out the creature by itself when defeated. Zones act on independent turns. VLMs do not have a Speed, are considered to always be in range of their targets unless the GM says otherwise (use common sense).