Homebrew Mononoke Guide

Homebrew Anons Guide to Mononoke Creation

ToC:
Class And LV [XXXC]
Descriptors [XXXD]
Stats [XXXS]
Special note on level 6 mononoke [1!!!!]
Secondary stats and HP [XXXH]
Weapon attacks [XXXW]
Abilities and talents [XXXA]
Special note on [Shift: Taken out] [2!!!!]
Other Talents [XXXO]
Materials [XXXM]
Template [XXXT]
Afterword [XXXAf]
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Class and Level [XXXC]:
	Class is simple. Just choose the one of the 8 Mononoke classes for your Mononoke
These are [Humanoid・Beast・Insectoid・Plant・Mechanical・Undead・Mythical・Chaos]
When a Mononoke becomes an Aramitama, their Class becomes [Chaos]

	Level is dependent on how strong you want the Mononoke to be
If you want it to be relatively as strong as the party, make its level approximately theirs.
If you want it to be stronger, give it 1 or 2 above the party
Keep in mind that Aramitama and boss templates increase the strength of a Mononoke by a fair amount, and stack with eachother.

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Descriptors [XXXD]:
	Descriptors are the top half of the mononoke's abilities. Size, wits, senses, and the like. They vary in importance, and some vary depending on group comp. Make sure you understand them when making a mononoke.

	Size is easily the most important. It has a direct mechanical impact on how a Mononoke works.
It determines weapon attack damage dice, amount of times a round it can declare engagements, among other things.
If a Mononoke's size is 0 it can breakaway as it pleases.
Human sized creatures have a size of 2. Things half the size have 1, double the size have 3, and above that it gets sketchy.
The main book describes this in more detail.

	Wits has no direct mechanical impact on the game. It's more a descriptor for how they act than what their actions do. Assign this as is fitting for the Mononoke in question.

	Senses can be really important, or not at all as it depends entirely on player team comp.
If your players have a method of sneaking past Mononoke with regular senses, use heat and magic senses to trip them up.
Otherwise, this becomes wholly unimportant.

	Speech can be important if you want a mononoke your players can have a dialogue with. Simple yes or no.
If it isn't necessary or it doesn't make sense for the mononoke to talk, put No.
No direct mechanical influences on the game.

	Reaction, like wits, has no direct mechanical influence on the game. It determines if the mononoke attacks on sight or not. Hostile if yes, mercurial if you want some leeway, neutral or friendly otherwise. Once again more how they act than what they actually do.

	ID is pretty important. If your party wants to identify something, this is the DC they need to beat.
This can lead to them taking advantage of things like weaknesses, so this stat should not be taken lightly.
Determine it by how common something is in your campaign. The more common, the lower the ID. The rarer, the higher.
If a person is known, but their abilities and skills are not, give it a middling number. easy ID's are usually below 10, 10 is around the median, and 11+ can be considered a high DC for this.

	Weaknesses are the second most impactful thing after Size.
If abused, these can lead to heaps of extra damage against your Mononoke.
Generally, a Mononoke will have 2 weaknesses. Becoming an Aramitama adds another one on top of its established weaknesses.
Determining weaknesses is mostly guesswork. Something to keep in mind are that Mononoke are generally good against elements they use.

	Movement Is simply the modes by which a Mononoke can move. Walk, flight, or swim.
Choose whichever ones are fitting for the Mononoke in question.
Flying creatures can ignore declarations of engagement made against themselves.

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Main Stats [XXXS]
	Stats are the core of a Mononoke. They determine the range of things a Mononoke can do without needing special talents, including the modifier for their base weapon attacks damage.

These are | ACC | EVA | CNJ | RES | CHK

While most of them are approximately the same as their player counterparts, CHK is a special stat for mononoke alone.
It determines their ability to do anything not covered by the other four stats.
These won't come up terribly often, unless your party likes using special attacks.

This is the approximate math for mononoke stats up to level 5. Above this there is too little data to work with conclusively:
17 level 1 entries. Average Stat total is 19.05. Max of 25, low of 14. Singular stat max of 7
16 level 2 entries. Average stat total is 21.56. Max of 26, low of 16. Singular stat max of 8
18 Level 3 entries. Average stat total of 22.61. Max of 28, low of 15. Singular stat max of 9
11 Level 4 entries. Average stat total of 23.36. Max of 28, low of 18. Singular stat max of 10
12 Level 5 entries. Average stat total of 31.75. Max of 41, low of 26. Singular stat max of 11
4 level 6 entries. Average stat total of 35.25. Max of 39, Low of 32. Singular stat max of 12
7 level 7 entries. Average stat total of 32.14. Max of 37, low of 27. Singular stat max of 13

	Max Singular stats are Lv+6. Averages can be used to make a balanced Mononoke of that level.
The reason the average stat spread goes up at level 5 is likely because your players have gained their high talents at this point.
Keep in mind that most Mononoke will have two really high stats, or one high stat, two middling, and two low.
Generally, even high level Mononoke will have stats in the 5's or 6's.
Mononoke will usually only have 1 stat at the highest allowed amount for their level. Any higher borders on overpowered.

Once you know a Mononoke's base [Combat stats] its [Fixed value] is determined by adding 7 to the combat stats.

	For the sake of creation, Choose one [Combat stat] to be the main statistic.
This is the one the Mononoke will most rely on.
For the most part, its mostly a choice between magic and physical, then offense and defense.
Mixing and matching is perfectly fine though.

[1!!!!] Level 6 Has a severe lack of data with 1/4 of it being an outlier. The actual Stat average should be near or just below 32, but there are only 4 entries. As such, this data is somewhat erroneous, and care should be taken with mononoke of this level

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Secondary stats and health [XXXH]

	Hp for Mononoke is fairly low.
This is because Aramitama and Boss templates give a minimum of +100 to health each, and they can stack.
On top of this, it goes up to +150 each at level 6+.
Generally speaking, health from levels 1-3 will be between 30-50, 4-5 will be 50-60, and 6+ will jump up to around 80.

	Initiative is determined in largely the same way as for the player. EVA+5 is your base initiative.
The number in parenthesis is their combat move speed, and is determined in the same way as a players, (INIT+5)/3.
Keep in mind, this number rounds up.
Unless otherwise noted by a talent, Base move speed is still 1 square, and Mononoke take all penalties included in moving.

	Armor/Barrier are very oddly used for Mononoke. Mononoke have extremely low armor and barrier, especially in comparison to the players.
Generally, a Mononoke that is not supposed to be tanky will have between 0-5 armor and barrier.
A somewhat tanky one will have 6-10 of only one of them.
A particularly tanky Mononoke may have above 10 to armor or barrier, but not both.
Mononoke that are meant to be tanky will generally use a larger healthpool, halving talents, or abilities that interrupt attacks to increase their chances of survival, rather than armor or barrier.

However, this is just a general trend in the mononoke in the book. Playtesting has shown that these values are rather low over all, and can be safely raised by around double with little upset to balance.

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Weapon attacks [XXXW]:
	Here is an example of a basic weapon attack
>[Weapon Attack]: Physical Attack / Engaged / 1#
>- [Form: Sword] 2d6+16 physical damage to the target.

Determining physical or magical is the first thing you should do. This will be determined by the highest damage stat between ACC and CNJ.
If you choose magical damage, after 1# also note if resist halves the damage or cancels the damage of the attack like so

>[Weapon Attack]: Magical Attack / Engaged / 1# / Resist Halves

Determine The range it can be used from, and the amount of targets it can hit. Generally, this will be either [Engaged/1#] Or [Xsq/1#] where X is the amount of squares away.

	After this, determine the form. This is dependent on the weapon used, and can range from unarmed to magic. Mostly the same as a player.
If the attack is magic, it will probably be [Form: Magic] as well.
This will also determine if you use engaged or range Xsq.

	Next determine the damage. This is determined by size and the combat stat used to make the attack.
Size will determine the amount of D6's rolled, while the combat stat will determine the modifier.
The modifier will be somewhere inbetween the [Combat stat] And its [Fixed Value]

This will be the baseline "Talent" by which you compare the others you make for a Mononoke.
Keep in mind that players will on average take more damage from magical attacks than physical, because resist will generally halve damage rather than outright avoid it like evading it.

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Attack Talents [XXXA]
	This is what you are really here for, the bread and butter of how a Mononoke does.
First, Basic attack type talents. These can be approximated from the above weapon attack. Some add elements, damage, or even change the number of targets.

	A good baseline is that a talent will always be around 1.5x to 2x stronger than its base weapon attack, and is max once per round.
So an attack talent that just increases damage may add an extra D6 of damage, or an extra +6 to the modifier. Straightforward.

	Adding elements may cause extra damage if your players have weaknesses, but is otherwise usually thematic. Element's can be safely stacked with weaker attack talents without danger of it being to strong.

	Talents that increase the number of targets generally will not raise the amount of damage, and may even lower it.
If you increase the number of targets by 1 to 2#, then raising the baseline damage a bit is okay.
Any higher and its better to leave the damage as is.
If you go to Area, leave the damage as is. The damage here will be determined by how effectively your party tanks or you make mononoke clump.
If you go up to combat zone, weaken the damage just a bit. It will hit all the members of a party, and if its too strong this can potentially cripple them.

	If you wish to use Shifts, keep the baseline damage about the same. The Shifts you inflict rob people of actions and functionality, and can be very crippling if used right.

 [2!!!!]	A special note to make is that if you want a talent to use [Shift: Taken out] There needs to be a limitation on it. Whether thats making it 1/combat, Needing to inflict another shift like [Shift:Immobile], Or just lowering the attack stat for that talent alone, there needs to be some reason not to use it, or you will wipe your party in no time flat. This isn't fun for anyone. Use Responsibly.

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Other talents [XXXO]
	These are talents that in some way give special functionality to the Mononoke. These are things like Halve talents, interrupt talents, talents that improve mobility, talents that allow healing, summoning other Mononoke, and anything else you could think of. These are the ones that make a Mononoke really interesting.

Generally speaking, feel free to go nuts on these. Just keep Some basic rules in line.

Healing talents Need some form of limit to them. Whether thats just having a set amount healed per round, or a usable 1 a round talent that takes up an attack timing, these cannot  be too powerful. A Mononoke is intended to be defeated, after all. For Per round healing, a Mononoke's Lv is around the maximum you should give them. For an attack action, make it about half the strength of their weapon attack.

For Mononoke Summoning, the more individual Units it summons, the weaker each one should be. These units should almost always be weaker than the main Mononoke, and this should generally be a 1/Combat thing unless its intended to swarm with large amounts of inconsequential Mononoke.

Movement type talents come in 3 types. Those that increase speed outright, those that ignore engagements, and those that give new Movement modes. These can overlap. Be careful with ones that ignore engagements, as these are akin to teleporting. Too many Mononoke or too strong of one teleporting on a whim is not a good idea, so make sure to add a limit.

For Halving damage talents, generally speaking Mononoke will have only one of the two damage types, and it will be a once per round talent. If you want it to last an entire round, make it so that it eats up their attack action.

Talents that interrupt the players actions aren't uncommon. Generally, these are once per round things. Basically the same as Halving talents. If you want it to be an entire round thing, make it eat up an action, or have a long cooldown. Its on you to make sure your players can do something to this monster.

Talents that are constant should be kept somewhat low key. They can include movement, increases to checks or armor/barrier, and a host of other things, but a rule of thumb is that the longer the talent lasts, the weaker it is or the harder it is to use.

Anything past this gets increasingly shady. You will need to play by ear, and maybe ask others for their opinions.

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Materials [XXXM]

The Main book has a really good guide for rolling randomized materials, so i don't think a section is needed on this. However, i will mention here that if you want a material to have a unique effect or none at all, this is also an option. Most of what you could want a material to do though, there are very conclusive tables to roll on for this.

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Template [XXXT] The Template for making homebrew mononoke. Due to pastebins formatting, this template can't be copied directly without some formatting issues. To resolve them, simply post this into a notepad doc where the formatting is invalidated and copy that.

>Name/ Class:/ Lv:
>Size:
>Wits:
>Senses:
>Speech:
>Reaction:
>ID:
>Weakness:
>Movement:

>| ACC | EVA | CNJ | RES | CHK
>{Combat Stats} |  |  |  |  |
>{Fixed Values} |  |  |  |  |

>HP:
>Initiative: ()
>Armor:
>Barrier:

>[Weapon Attack] : Physical-Magical Attack / Range / Target
>- [Form: Sword/Axe/Spear/Hammer/Ranged/Magic] d6+ Phys/Mag damage to the target.

>«Talent Name» Timing/ Range/ Target
>- Effect

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Afterword: [XXXAf]

This is the brunt of my advice and math on making mononoke. Most of this will seem common sense, other parts maybe not. I sincerely hope this guide will help all the GM's out there that really wanna make the game their own. If you find any typo's, have advice of your own, or anything else, please tell me and i'll see what i can do about it. And don't feel embarrassed or shy about sharing your homebrew creations. Anything you make is something everyone can use.