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golentan
2015-01-12, 01:39 AM
I got this idea from Alien Isolation, where the players are stalked by an invulnerable killing machine where the best you can possibly accomplish is to drive it away and make it angrier.

My idea for this is in a tabletop game is that the monster is trapped in a dungeon or something with you and will investigate and examine its surroundings. If it picks up the trail of the PCs, it will hunt them: there are ways to avoid it, but if it catches you in the open it will chase you down and savage or kill you. You can drive it back with enough damage in a short enough period of time, but each time you do so it will get more and more aggressive and angry: when the scenario starts it won't know the PCs are there unless they get careless or unlucky, but once it knows it will go into increasingly aggressive hunting modes.

The question is, what system would be best for this sort of thing? I don't think a turn by turn game like DnD would be ideal, bogging down players in the tactical minutiae of their hunter, especially if they're going in with the mindset that they can kill it if they just do a little more damage (chasing when it flees should be a BAD IDEA), and I don't want them to realize that this is an insurmountable foe right off the bat.

Comet
2015-01-12, 04:48 AM
Lamentations of the Flame Princess published a module called the God that Crawls. It handles a monster like this pretty well and works in a D&D context. The adventure is for beginning characters, so their damage output is unlikely to overcome the monster's regenerative abilities. The monster gets stronger as it devours adventurers, with every class giving it different kinds of bonuses. The monster itself is slow-ish and its regenation is pretty obvious, so the players have plenty of opportunities to figure out what they should be doing (running).

The booklet gives two ways of handling the monster's movement:

1) the hard way: pluck the monster into the catacombs and move it towards any noise the players make per its movement rate. Old D&D makes it relatively simple to track dungeon movement, so this is doable if perhaps a bit taxing for the GM. You need to have a pretty good grasp of the labyrinth (which is not small, in this case) and the most effective route the monster can take to reach its destination.

2) the easy way: the monster is the only "random encounter" in the dungeon. Every action the players can take is assigned a number based on how much noise it makes. These numbers add up and influence how likely the monster is to show up. The monster appears from the most obvious direction based on where it was last seen.

The meat and potatoes of the adventure, meanwhile, is the dungeon itself. It's not a perfectly safe environment so the players are likely to make mistakes as they run around in a rush while trying to make sense of their environment. The monster is there to stress the players out, in other words, not to be fought. Which I imagine is what you would want from a monster like this.

golentan
2015-01-12, 05:01 AM
Well, one of the things I was considering was doing it as a high powered variety of Exsurgent in Eclipse Phase, or maybe a cthulhu variant game if I run the scenario as a fantasy setting, for example. And yeah, the real challenge of the scenario would be the surrounding environment, the monster being there to force the players to rush, keep them nervous, keep them moving, but I don't want it to be a slow creepy kind of monster, I want it to be absolutely superior to whatever the PCs can bring to bear. I want it smart, fast, strong, armed if appropriate. I want this thing to be to heavily armed PCs what Jason Voorhees is to dumb teenagers. I want the PCs to feel helpless and panicked right up until they trip it into a temporary retreat, and I want to up the pressure every time it comes back. I want it to toy with them, not because they're a threat, but because it enjoys the smell of their fear.

DoomHat
2015-01-12, 05:31 AM
As a GM I hate hack and slash encounters. I always prefer to put my players into situations that can't be solved by just stabbing the problem until it isn't a problem anymore.

Recently, I ran a game where the players were hunting a ghost ship that had been plaguing the local seas. They encountered a wandering ship from the BBEG's DreadFleet. They were massively outnumbered and outgunned, but won the day through creative swashbuckling.

When they later encountered the Demonic Ghost Pirate Admiral himself, I warned them before the encounter started that beating this guy was simply not going to be possible with what they had available to them. The challenge here would be to see whether or not they could find a way to survive. With that in mind, the atmosphere was much more tense.

Knowing that their goal was survival rather then conquest added legitimacy to their fear of the BBEG. If I hadn't warned them out of character ahead of time, they most likely would have smashed themselves against him, gone TPK, and been pissed off at me. Instead, the act of escaping felt to them like a rousing victory and everyone had fun.

So invincible monsters are fine, sometimes even great, so long as your players come into the encounter with the right expectations. If they understand that they were never meant to fight it, and that it is actually more like a natural disaster that happens to act in the format of a combat encounter, then it can be a lot of fun.

Give them a goal other then "kill the thing", and they'll generally have a great time achieving that goal. If the party goes in understanding what they're dealing with, they shouldn't feel cheated when Jason Voorhees "no-sells" their best efforts to murder him.

goto124
2015-01-12, 05:48 AM
I don't want them to realize that this is an insurmountable foe right off the bat.


When they later encountered the Demonic Ghost Pirate Admiral himself, I warned them before the encounter started that beating this guy was simply not going to be possible with what they had available to them.

Knowing that their goal was survival rather then conquest added legitimacy to their fear of the BBEG. If I hadn't warned them out of character ahead of time, they most likely would have smashed themselves against him, gone TPK, and been pissed off at me. Instead, the act of escaping felt to them like a rousing victory and everyone had fun.

So invincible monsters are fine, sometimes even great, so long as your players come into the encounter with the right expectations.

If you throw a not-supposed-to-be-defeated monster at your players, they'll find themselves wondering why they had to fight an overpowered creature in the first place, and might even conclude that the DM is trying to railroad them or had adopted the DM-vs-players attitude.

Isn't there a general assumption that encounters are supposed to be doable, the enemies killable, even if it's hard? It's unlikely that your players would be familar with the concept of insurmountable foes, and if they weren't told right off the bat you run a fairly high risk of annoying them when they find out.

Comet
2015-01-12, 05:50 AM
I want it to toy with them, not because they're a threat, but because it enjoys the smell of their fear.

This helps, because otherwise the monster would just wipe the floor with them immediately. Computer games can do that because you can rewind time and get back into the fray at a relatively quick pace. Tabletop games tend to involve a lot of work, in the form of character creation, before a player can engage with the fiction again. Even if you bypass that by having quicker character creation you still take the player out of the danger while they prepare for a new round. This can quickly take the horror out of the scenario and turn it into a tactical excercise or dark comedy. These are not horrible things as such, but maybe not what you're looking for.

Still, I feel the danger needs to be real for maximum effect. The players would ideally realise that you're not playing storygames with them. You're not balancing the drama and suspense and engaging in illusionism. The creature acts by certain rules and those rules are not malleable once play has begun. This makes the danger feel more real. Once that's done, you just need to tweak the rules so that the monster only engages in horrible murder towards the end of whatever dramatic arc you want for it. Making it "play with its food" should work.

golentan
2015-01-12, 06:31 AM
I was thinking a good way to establish the danger without spelling out that it's invulnerable to their weapons might be to have it abduct one of the party members to "toy with" at leisure, stealing them away midcombat and not caring enough to disarm them. If it's sadistic enough, a quick kill won't satisfy it until it's angry enough that it just wants the party dead (as mentioned, I was planning to up it's aggression as it gets increasingly frustrated). That gives the party time to save their missing teammate before the poor victim is too seriously maimed if they can reunite and cooperate to drive off the monster.

The point of the scenario will be to manipulate the environment in ways that can seriously harm or dispose of it: just because it's basically immune to bullets or swords doesn't mean I was planning on making it an unwinnable encounter, just that destroying it will involve ancient blood rituals lost to modern man or shooting it into the sun or something similarly overpowered beyond mortal means that can't be arranged easily while you're being actively hunted.

Edit: And to be clear, I'd make it clear that this was supposed to be a horror scenario and that things would not be balanced when they could be scary instead.

goto124
2015-01-12, 07:10 AM
have it abduct one of the party members

What is the player going to do when kidnapped?

golentan
2015-01-12, 07:17 AM
What is the player going to do when kidnapped?

Presumably get carved up a bit in the process of trying to fight back.

DoomHat
2015-01-12, 08:09 AM
If you throw a not-supposed-to-be-defeated monster at your players, they'll find themselves wondering why they had to fight an overpowered creature in the first place, and might even conclude that the DM is trying to railroad them or had adopted the DM-vs-players attitude.

Isn't there a general assumption that encounters are supposed to be doable, the enemies killable, even if it's hard? It's unlikely that your players would be familar with the concept of insurmountable foes, and if they weren't told right off the bat you run a fairly high risk of annoying them when they find out.

Only if they're operating on videogame logic, and assuming that the correct response to every situation is murder. I like creating living worlds for my players, where things are encountered organically. The world shouldn't contort around the party in such a way that they can overpower and bully their way through the world, meeting only things small enough for them to conquer with brute force at their current level.

If you "encounter" a group of orcs, there's no reason such a meeting should have to end in violence. Those orcs want to survive to see the next sunrise just as much as you do.

There should generally be bigger fish in the world then the party. There's no magic force that prevents any particular person or group from running afoul of something way outside their pay-grade.

I don't run games for players who expect every hostile force to be one they have a fair chance of beating in a random brawl. Its up to them to pick their battles, know when to hold um, know when to fold um, know when to walk away.

If they don't understand that, I'll try to teach them why it's fun. If they don't want it, and would prefer a string of balanced combat encounters, then they can go play World of Warcraft or something.

Palegreenpants
2015-01-12, 08:28 AM
This is a fascinating idea. A near-unkillable predator hunting a single group of characters in a labyrinthine setting sounds, at the least, interesting. However, I would keep a true predatory mentality in mind for the beast. Actual predators, such as wolves, do not 'play' with their prey if they wish to eat. There is no sadism in a wolf. Any viciousness or evil that we see in a predatory animal is purely a human reflection. I'd even go so far as to say that the Alien (from, say, Isolation) is not a malicious creature; it's just trying to procreate. Anyway, there's my two cents. If a hunting creature seems evil, it's probably just doing what it thinks will kill its prey in the most efficient way possible.

Edit: I'd also point out that the intentional addition of malice/sadism to the predator's behavior may reflect as antagonism by the DM.

goto124
2015-01-12, 08:42 AM
Only if they're operating on videogame logic, and assuming that the correct response to every situation is murder.

Which brings us to the question of What kind of players does the DM have?

Though, for the purposes of answering his questions, it might be reasonable to assume that the players are experienced TTRPG players.

prufock
2015-01-12, 08:43 AM
A near-unkillable predator hunting a single group of characters in a labyrinthine setting sounds, at the least, interesting. However, I would keep a true predatory mentality in mind for the beast. Actual predators, such as wolves, do not 'play' with their prey if they wish to eat. There is no sadism in a wolf. Any viciousness or evil that we see in a predatory animal is purely a human reflection. I'd even go so far as to say that the Alien (from, say, Isolation) is not a malicious creature; it's just trying to procreate. Anyway, there's my two cents. If a hunting creature seems evil, it's probably just doing what it thinks will kill its prey in the most efficient way possible.

Your basic point seems valid, but depending on the system you're playing in, morality can actually be black and white. Take D&D for example. It's perfectly okay in that type of setting to have an aberration which is literally sustained by fear or suffering. It toys with you because the longer you live and the more fear/suffering you experience, the more nourishment it receives. Such a creature could be considered evil with D&D alignment system.

golentan
2015-01-12, 08:54 AM
This is a fascinating idea. A near-unkillable predator hunting a single group of characters in a labyrinthine setting sounds, at the least, interesting. However, I would keep a true predatory mentality in mind for the beast. Actual predators, such as wolves, do not 'play' with their prey if they wish to eat. There is no sadism in a wolf. Any viciousness or evil that we see in a predatory animal is purely a human reflection. I'd even go so far as to say that the Alien (from, say, Isolation) is not a malicious creature; it's just trying to procreate. Anyway, there's my two cents. If a hunting creature seems evil, it's probably just doing what it thinks will kill its prey in the most efficient way possible.

Edit: I'd also point out that the intentional addition of malice/sadism to the predator's behavior may reflect as antagonism by the DM.

Well, the original inspiration was from the way that game handled the alien's AI and nigh invulnerability, but I wasn't actually envisioning the monster as an animal (and I'm not sure I'd classify the Xenomorphs as predatory animals either given how they latch onto targets with singleminded devotion and kill without feeding or taking potential hosts to their nest more often than not).

Again, it depends on the system, but I was envisioning it as some vicious strain of exsurgent (which are part of transhumanity and are often almost unremittingly and irrationally hostile and sadistic towards their former kin- human descended life) if I was going with eclipse phase, or perhaps some sort of demon, undead, or ancient horror in a more classic fantasy setting or a lovecraftian milieu. Either way, I figured making it human (or human++) level intelligent, and sadistic, would allow me to make it aggressive and threatening. But sadism might lead it to make mistakes, underestimate its prey. A pure predator is likely to lose interest when hurt, perhaps seek an easier meal elsewhere. If there's no food to be had save for those locked in with it, it might starve if its concerns are primarily hunger based and that hunger has any real meaning to it.

Maybe I'm approaching that side of things wrong. But I'm worried if I make it too predatory and not... malicious enough, that it may be too practical for the PCs to stand a chance against. If it has the power to kill them outright if they slip up, if it's just looking for a quick meal it will drop a PC and drag the corpse off to feed, and unless it has the metabolism of a blast furnace maybe that's the last they see of it? Or it kills them all and strings them up in its lair for later, because it doesn't care about making them sweat.

Plus, most of us with cats have seen them toy with some living creature before disposing of it. There was no chance that beetle was getting away from my kitty, he had no interest in eating it, and he still tormented it and killed it before losing interest and wandering off to take a nap.

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-12, 10:09 AM
Isn't there a general assumption that encounters are supposed to be doable, the enemies killable, even if it's hard?

Only if they're operating on videogame logic...

This can be VERY QUICKLY remedied by making them play proper sorts of video games. Namely, roguelikes and old open world CRPGs which seek to emulate old-school D&D.

Because those games, just like wargames and old-school D&D proper, have / had plenty of unwinnable fights, or at least fights you could not hope to win until much later into the game. They'll teach anyone a lot about picking their own fights and not trusting the game engine / master just feed them "fair fights" in a line.

Red Fel
2015-01-12, 10:53 AM
Throwing an unkillable monster at the party can be either hit or miss, depending on - as others have mentioned - whether the PCs understand what they're "supposed" to do and run, or whether they throw themselves into its waiting jaws. If they do what they're "supposed" to do, it can be fun and scary, but if not, it's a TPK. (Please note that I put "supposed" in quotation marks, because it really annoys me when a GM tries to dictate party actions and the alternative is death.)

Instead, consider throwing a monster at the party that seems unkillable. Something mostly concealed, which adds to its horror. Ponder this.

The creature is buried beneath the floor. As it moves, the floor trembles; in weaker spots, it cracks and crumbles. The creature can neither attack nor be attacked while immersed. As a result, while the players have warning of its approach - the shaking grows louder and closer - they can't attack it. In that sense, there's also a certain safety - if you can't see it, it can't attack you, either. Of course, if it gets too close, it bursts through the floor, and they get a quick, terrifying glimpse of massive jaws with far too many rows of far too many teeth. That should be enough to hammer home the impression of "Run, now," before it dives back into the floor.

Don't want to use the floor? Use the shadows. A creature that literally dwells in two-dimensional shadows, lunging out to attack before sinking back into the darkness. Again, it's a creature they can't see, can't attack, but know it's there, following them. Or, have it attack from bodies of water - use a dripping sound as the cue that it's getting closer, and the players will learn to cringe away in terror from small puddles.

Fear doesn't just mean being actually powerless. It means feeling powerless. Facing the unknown - a mystery beast beneath the floor, or in the shadows - is a start. We fear the unknown, the unseen. Being literally unable to fight it (because it's immersed) means that the PCs won't feel "ripped off" if they try to attack it, and are told that it's invulnerable. You still generate the fear, the dread, the need to run, without fiat invulnerability.

Laughingmanlol
2015-01-12, 12:40 PM
You might be interested in another videogame creature from Dead Space called The Hunter (http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/The_Hunter), which regenerates constantly. The wiki article contains a number of tips for dealing with it that could be applicable, although it's main purpose is to encourage players to waste their bullets to no avail, making it more suited to resource-scarce survival horror.

Slipperychicken
2015-01-12, 04:29 PM
I'm going to echo the people saying you need to make it clear they're supposed to run instead of fight. Having NPCs say it's really strong isn't a clear message, because that could easily mean it's just a boss-monster.

What if you do something like making it respawn when killed? That way the PCs can beat it up to get a respite, but still could realize that they aren't supposed to fight it.

supermonkeyjoe
2015-01-13, 10:23 AM
I would go with making it unkillable rather than invulnerable, have it regenerate health raster than the PCs can dish it out and most importantly let the PCs know this is happening If the PCs think they have any chance against this thing they will likely throw themselves against it until they are all dead.

Alternatively let the PCs kill it and then describe how the body starts to pull itself back together and regenerate, even if they stay and repeat the process several times they will eventually start running low on resources and have to retreat (similar to the aforementioned hunter from Dead Space.)

1337 b4k4
2015-01-13, 11:54 AM
To answer your question about "what system would be best", assuming you don't want to house rule the attacks / damage rules into something that allows your players and the monster to fight without immediate death resulting, I would (at the risk of sounding like a broken record around here) strongly recommend Dungeon World. As the GM in Dungeon World you never "attack" with your monsters per se. Your players act and you react to that. If your players try to do something and fail, you as the GM get to make a move and your moves can be hard (dealing damage, consuming limited resources) or soft (pushing players into corners, making a bad situation worse) and you are never required to deal damage if that's not something you want to do. Also, because the core of the game is that the play derives from the fiction, your players can attack and fight and fail to make progress without it simply feeling cheap or without having to be underpowered relative to other enemies they might encounter. Dungeon World is the system that allows you to run a game with a 16 HP dragon (http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/). Specifically in your case, come up with fiction as to why regular attacks wouldn't harm this creature and come up with how it would react beyond simply dealing damage and how encountering it can go very very wrong (split the party? yes please!).

Otherwise, your idea of either the eclipse phase exurgent virus, or a CoC (or if you want more powerful characters, Delta Green) game would work as well.

Absol197
2015-01-13, 01:33 PM
A friend of mine did something like this in a game: the monster wasn't invulnerable, per se, but it was so much stronger than us that we had no hopes of living if it caught us.

It was a Fiendworm from the MMII, and we were about 10th level. We were in what we now not-so-affectionately call the "Snake Pit", a winding labyrinth of tunnels. The big tunnels were the straightest and the easiest way to get to where we needed to go, but the fiendworm could fit in the big tunnels. We had several tense situations where we were trying to navigate the bigger tunnels only to encounter it, and then got chased into a smaller tunnel, and then we needed to revise our route, because the ugly thing was blocking our path.

It worked well, and was really memorable! Not quite what you're talking about, but something similar. Just goes to show that this concept can work in D&D.

DigoDragon
2015-01-14, 08:27 AM
Only if they're operating on videogame logic, and assuming that the correct response to every situation is murder.

I have experience running ideas like this, and I like to throw an early encounter where the PCs stumble upon the dead remains of a party that came in before them. One of the bodies will have a journal with notes on what they saw in the dungeon, plus numerous mentions of a creature the party can't seem to harm. Bits of description help (bonus points if the dead journal writer liked being poetically descriptive).

It's a pretty obvious hint, yes, but at least the PCs will have the forewarning to think before attacking everything. It usually works too. When I ran Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, I had various townsfolk allude to Strahd being nigh-unkillable (he could be, just would be a hard fight). First time the PCs encountered him they collectively pee'd themselves and ran. They had fun though, so know your audience first.

golentan
2015-01-14, 08:28 AM
I have experience running ideas like this, and I like to throw an early encounter where the PCs stumble upon the dead remains of a party that came in before them. One of the bodies will have a journal with notes on what they saw in the dungeon, plus numerous mentions of a creature the party can't seem to harm. Bits of description help (bonus points if the dead journal writer liked being poetically descriptive).

It's a pretty obvious hint, yes, but at least the PCs will have the forewarning to think before attacking everything. It usually works too. When I ran Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, I had various townsfolk allude to Strahd being nigh-unkillable (he could be, just would be a hard fight). First time the PCs encountered him they collectively pee'd themselves and ran. They had fun though, so know your audience first.

Oh. OH! That's GOOD! Beats the kidnapping hollow, thanks!