There’s something new in the way we’re presenting monster stats in 13th Age. Jonathan came up with it. I’m calling it the descriptor approach. After using something similar in Ars Magica and in Over the Edge, Jonathan was working on monster stats for a living dungeon on a spreadsheet. He found himself wanting terms to describe the raw numbers, especially for armor. So he came up with descriptors. It was too late to use them in the Gamemaster’s Guide, but you’ll see descriptors used in everything we’re doing now, including the upcoming starter set, Bestiary 3: Icon Followers, and the 13th Age Freeform Demo.
Each of the monster defenses and the hit point entry gets a word or a phrase that gives the GM something to play off when describing combat with the creature.
For example, here’s one of the descriptor sets that Jonathan originally used to sell the idea, stats for a humanoid-bug creature in a living dungeon:
And here are the stats and descriptors for a weird little messenger demon that plays an unusual role in the starter set adventure:
And a couple more that worked well for me in a demo game this weekend. First is the decayed wight, that made it clear it was not like other creatures by not bothering to dodge.
And finally, descriptors from a ghoul I referred to as ‘the ancient one,’ an NPC that one of the heroes had become acquainted with earlier in life while being raised on a “crypt farm” run by the Lich King. (Ghoul art above by Rich Longmore.)
You'll see more descriptors in the 13th Age 2E Freeform Demo that should be going up on the Pelgrane Press resource page later this week.
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