Creatures with Ranged Attacks (for a Swamp / Forest Encounter)

Still trying to come up with some :sweat_smile:
It might be viable to just stop, drop & roll or rub it off with dirt / earth might also work.

Maybe I could also just change Acid Spit to Poison Spit or something along these lines.

Edit:
Since I have just finished statting the larger variant of these pests, the Rhak-skuri Swarm Guard (Rival), I might just delete the Acid Spit from the Warriors and put it onto the Swarm Guard.
Might be a better fit and balance out that the Acid Spit is a bit too strong for the Minions.

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Revamped Profile for the Rhak-skuri Warrior (Minion):
Brawn: 3, Agility: 3, Intellect: 1, Cunning: 2, Willpower: 1, Presence: 1
Wound-Threshold: 5, Soak: 4, Defense: 0/0

Group Skills: Athletics, Coordination, Melee, Ranged Light, Resilience and Vigilance

Weapons:
Chitinous Pincers =
Range: Engaged, Skill: Melee, Damage: 6, Crit: 3, Special: Vicious 1

Abilities:
-Silhouette 0
-Seething Swarm:
When used as a Phalanx, will induce an Average (2 Difficulty) Fear check (Discipline).

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Profile for the Rhak-skuri Swarm Guard (Rival):
Brawn: 4, Agility: 3, Intellect: 1, Cunning: 2, Willpower: 2, Presence: 1

Wound-Threshold: 15, Soak: 6, Defense: 0/0
Skills: Athletics 2, Coordination 2, Melee, 3, Ranged Light 3, Resilience 2, Vigilance 2.

Weapons:
Chitinous Pincers =
Range: Engaged, Skill: Melee, Damage: 8, Crit: 3, Special: Vicious 1

Acid Spit =
Range: Short, Skill: Ranged Light, Damage: 6, Crit: 2, Special: Pierce 3, Burn 2, Slow-Firing 2
(the Burn effect of the Acid Spit can be removed by spending an Action to make a Coordination check to rub the Acid off with dirt without burning oneself, or by following the usual rules for putting out fire on a soft surface, other than that, removing the affected clothing / armor can remove the effect as well).

Abilities:
Swarm Guard Pheromones =
When other Rhak-Skuri are within Short Range of an Rhak-Skuri Swarm Guard, they add 1 Boost to all their checks.

Panic Pheromones =
When engaging with / being engaged by a Rhak-skuri Swarm Guard for the first time, characters have to make a Hard (3 Difficulty) Fear check (Discipline).

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Let me know what you think of these.

If you do poison, instead of having the Burn quality it could force a Resilience check. The drawback is that it would likely not do straight damage unless the check was failed, relegating the attack to a secondary attack of sorts. Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily, but you were wanting a ranged attack.

Seeing your edit, that seems reasonable and solves that particular dilemma.

A warning on melee phalanxes: The rules for phalanxes are intended for ranged attackers. When they engage an enemy, they get to attack each engaged character as an incidental in addition to their normal action. When you are using Ranged Heavy, that’s a Hard difficulty check with a decent chance of missing. When you are just using Melee or Brawl, now it’s only the base difficulty (Average). I’d suggest reworking the rules slightly, or else telling your players that they really need to avoid getting overrun at all costs, and that retreat is an intelligent move.
Suggestions for reworking: Require an additional maneuver while already engaged to overrun, or simply allow a single attack against each engaged enemy at the end of the turn, with no actual action (if you take this option, possibly grant them a second maneuver, see below).

The other factor is that they don’t get to take any actions until they reach engaged range, so you might want to allow them to substitute their action for a maneuver (they wouldn’t normally be able to), representing increased speed. That way they will close with the PCs unless the PCs take more than one maneuver to move away (excepting where the PCs wipe out the front row).
I think this would better represent the swarm mechanics.

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Good feedback on the Melee Phalanx.

Yeah I though about not using the overrun mechanic altogether but I like the Idea of them attacking each overrun character at the end of the turn.
To clarify, would you not let them attack at all using actions then?

And yes I would definitely let them convert their action to move faster, just makes sense for a melee only swarm.

Correct. No actions. That way nobody gets doubled-up on.
So instead of one action and one maneuver, they get two maneuvers.

Something to consider is that in a normal phalanx, it’s marching forwards and firing. So it doesn’t take too many casualties to slow it down. With these, I think it would make sense to require them to down two ranks. One to stop the first maneuver, then one to stop the second maneuver, then another to push it back. Or maybe two more ranks to push it back because of how fast they’re coming on.

Yeah I think I will go with that.
Eliminating two ranks seems fine, since the swarm won’t be entirely alone (2-3 Swarm Guards wiil show up).

Currently it feels like the swarm will not achieve much, but I will have to wait and see how it goes,
positive thing with the Phalanx is, that when they’re pushed back too heavily I can always broaden the rank and make it harder that way.

Goal of the Encounter is driving the pc’s away or manage to somehow to stave the swarm long enough that it breaks up (or the Swarm Guard is eliminated).

There’s a bog spitter monster in “Onslaught on Arda 1.” Star Wars: Adversaries. The arboreal octopi (sp) from “Beyond the Rim” are fun too. When all else fails, I sometimes go to the Genesys Adversaries compendium to find something that might work:

http://genesysadversaries.dylanpetrusma.com/

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Ah I didnt know that kind of Adversary database existed for Genesys as well.
That’s a great resource together with the Star Wars Adversaries Database =D