Modular Creature Design

There are more creatures in the world than there are pages in most books; however, these creatures can often be broken down into a sum of smaller parts. Many creatures share a handful of things in common, and you can use that when designing creatures of your own, specific to the setting you need.

Creatures can be designed in three total parts: a creature body, a number of kits, and some number of classes.

Creature Body

A creature body will depict the most features of it. This includes its base stats, health and stamina, subtraits, and what basic actions it will be equipped with. As well, this will decide what it takes to harvest that given creature and what may be gained upon doing so.

This is the only feature of a creature that is required. A single creature body may be used on its own, no customization required.

What type of harvestable resources a creature will have is based on its final DR. What types of components can be harvested and what type of test that needs to be made is based on the creature body. For detailed harvesting rules, see Components.

Kits

A creature can have any number of kits attached to it. Each kit has a series of stackable features, each one depicting its aptitudes. For instance, you may add three stacks of the Tank kit and a single stack of the Aggressive kit, creating a creature that can receive a decent amount of damage while still having some amount of damage output.

For each kit that's added, you'll increase the creature's SHP, DHP, stamina, subtraits, defenses, travel scores, Block Rating, and Dodge Rating accordingly. As well, it may gain some features such as points of favor on specific tests.

Classes

There are four types of classes that a creature can have: martial classes, arcane classes, support classes, and innate classes. A creature can have up to one class from each type except innate, but isn't required to have any innately.

A creature may have more than one innate class, but only up to 1 stack of each type.

Some classes offer items and equipment. When attaching a class to a creature, you may treat it as if it's equipped with the item, or as if the effects of the item are a part of the creature's innate abilities. If players receive non-component items from an encounter, an amount of XP is removed based on the item's value.

Much like kits, each class will increase the creature's stats and give it a number of actions and passive features.

Advanced Customization

There are many ways that a creature can be modified without changing how difficult it is to fight. For more advanced customization, certain stats can be redistributed, even after choosing body, kits, and classes, in the following manner.

• SHP, DHP, and stamina may be redistributed in any way as long as the total sum is the same.
• Subtraits may be redistributed in any way as long as the total sum is the same and no subtrait goes below 1.
• Block Rating and Dodge Rating may be redistributed in any way, given neither of them go below 1 die and the total sum of dice is the same.
• Defenses may be redistributed in any way as long as the total sum is the same.
• An attack or ability that observes Energy, Heat, or Chill damage may be modified to observe a different damage type amongst those three option.

You can create a character, with or without a custom species, and treat it as a creature. The creature's DR will be equal to the created character's level.