What would a perfect monster statblock look like?

What would a perfect monster statblock look like?

I’ve done a lot of work writing up monsters for GURPS, be they D&D conversions or something else. Because of that, I got to see many types of monster descriptions and statblocks from different systems and editions. Many times, I could not find some piece of information either on the statblock or in the description, and I had to consult other sources. This made me think – “What would be the perfect monster statblock?”

Let’s take a look at a GURPS monster statblock. We have all the characteristics, hit points, fatigue points, movement rates, active defenses, and DR. Under this table, you have your most commonly used attacks and abilities, and then a list of traits not covered before, skills, techniques, and spells. Some monsters also have additional notes. For most simple monsters, this is enough. But with more complex enemies and when more detailed rules are used, you have to do some extra work, and sometimes guesswork. For example, the Dungeon Fantasy ice wyrm is said to have SM+5. How many hexes does it take up on a battle map? The description says that it is 35 feet long. That is around 12 yards, meaning 12 hexes in length. But what about the girth? You just have to guess. Hex layouts are like that in GURPS.

If you’re observant, you might’ve noticed that the stablock doesn’t list basic thrust and swing damage, and basic lift. Sure, in most cases these things do not matter, but if you want to slam, trample, or perform a neck snap, then you need to know your basic thrust and swing damage values. Basic lift may be important not only for lifting things, especially for beasts of burden and mounts, but also for calculating weapon breakage. Speaking of lifting, how much does the monster itself weigh? This is something that comes up surprisingly often, as the characters may have to move dead bodies around or do butchering and crafting, and all this depends on the monster’s mass. Most of the GURPS monsters and many D&D monsters do not have this information.

By the way, all the Gaming Ballistics bestiaries for DFRPG list both basic thrust and swing damage values, and basic lift. Also, they have precalculated control thresholds for Fantastic Dungeon Grappling. I appreciate that, and I think that these statblocks are a strict improvement over the normal GURPS ones.

However, I think it could be improved. For example, you could follow the D&D example and divide traits into categories, such as “defensive traits”, “sensory traits”, and “communication traits.” These traits come up often, and such division would make it easier for the GM to find relevant information.

But what sort of useful information also could be present on the statblock? I believe that it would be great to expand the speed and movement section. GURPS statblocks simply list Basic Move and sometimes Top Speed. I think it would be great to get hourly and/or daily movement rates. This would make overland movement calculations much easier.

There are many monsters that can be tamed, trained, or used as mounts. From my experience, I can say that most players do not like doing that, but not because they hate the idea, but because it adds a lot of bookkeeping. How much food does a horse eat? How much does it cost? How much does it weigh? If you simply had, for example, “weekly supply cost and weight” on the statblock or in the description, that problem would be much more manageable, and your players would be more open to the idea of mounted transportation, mounted combat, animal companions, and monster training.

Speaking of mounts and trained monsters, how much would such a creature cost? It would be great to know how much an untrained captured monster would cost, how much a trained one would cost, and how much a baby or an egg would cost. This would open up even more opportunities for adventures. GURPS Basic Set does have this information, but only for a very limited number of animals. It also has guidelines for pricing slaves, which is something I appreciate.

But what if we go further than that? What if you want to setup a monster breeding operation for the purpose of training and selling them? Then you would need to know the information about the lifespan, maturation rate, gestation duration, reproductive strategy, litter size, etc. For real-world animals, this can be looked up online, but for fantastical creatures, you’re often out of luck. When converting D&D monsters to GURPS, I found out that many of them do not even have any information on their lifespan, not to mention all the other stuff. This sort of lore usually could only be found in specialized books, such as Draconomicon for dragons, or “The Ecology of …” articles from Dragon Magazine.

Now, I already mentioned that butchering is based on weight in GURPS, but the generic formula won’t work for all the monsters. It would be nice to have a butchering section in the description that says how much meat, skin, and bones you can get by butchering the monster, and the properties of these parts. While we’re at it, we could also list all the special or valuable parts that can be extracted. For example, there are rules for extracting poison from the glands of dead monsters, but how many doses? How much does it cost? Things like mana organs and other supernatural monster bits also should go there. How do you extract them? How much do they cost? How much do they weigh? I’ve always entertained the idea of writing up how such monster parts can be used for crafting and enchanting, but I am waiting for GURPS Meta-Tech to be released first.

For the GM, it would be nice to have a section that describes the monster’s combat tactics. Some of the D&D books had this for some monsters, and I appreciate that.

Is the GURPS monster statblock perfect? No, not at all! But is there an RPG with a perfect statblock? I don’t know, but the main inspiration for this post was ACKS II. While the system still is a work-in-progress, I am absolutely astonished by the sheer amount of useful information I found in the documents. What’s even better is that most of them can very easily be adapted to GURPS. The ACKS II monster statblock has almost everything I talked about in this post and even some stuff that I did not mention, such as Battle Rating. However, I do remember reading an interview with the author where he said that this was the most tedious part of writing the system, but I really appreciate it. The more I read ACKS II, the more I think that if I hadn’t found GURPS years ago, I definitely would’ve switched to this system instead. But now, I can easily adapt the parts I like about ACKS to my GURPS games to make them even better. I'm especially interested in domain management, as GURPS Realm Management was a big disappointment.