Bestiary

This article describes animals and monsters within Yags. Specific creature statistics are given elsewhere, instead the rules and assumptions used to determine their abilities and actions is given here.

Creature Statistics

Meanings for some of the attributes.

Creature Type

The creature type defines the broad class of creature, which gives some indication to its form and properties.

Animal

Animals are non-sapient natural creatures.

Construct

Constructs are unliving, artificially created. They do not require sleep or food (at least not in the way it is normally needed by living creatures). They are often mindless, and have no vital organs.

Demon

A demon is an outerplaner creature, magical in nature. Demons are not necessarily evil, though will generally have a mindset and goals quite different from that of humanity.

Elemental

Elementals are magical constructs inhabited by a spirit, clothed in material such as rock, earth, water or air. They have no need of food or sleep, and have no vital organs. They do however have free will. They suffer fatigue, but have twice the normal number of wound and stun levels.

Ethereal

Ethereals have no physical body, and cannot be harmed by physical weapons. Likewise, they cannot affect the physical world, but may be able to strike at the spirit or soul of living creatures.

Humanoid

A human, or human like creature. A natural, bipedal creature with some degree of sapience.

Monster

A generic term for an unnatural, possibly magical, creature which does not fit into the natural ecology.

Plant

Plant based creatures may be natural or magical, and may have unique properties.

Undead

Undead are the walking dead. They have no vital organs, and have no need of food or sleep. They ignore fatigue, and have double the normal number of wound and stun levels for their size.

Vermin

Vermin are natural creatures with a tendency to swarm. They are small and numerous.

Size

The size rating of a creature gives a rough indication of how big it is. An average adult human is considered to be size five - and very few adult humans will differ from this norm. Every +5 increase in Size roughly represents a ten fold increase in body mass.

The smallest possible size is zero - a small cat or something similar. Anything smaller is difficulty to represent properly in Yags and is simply placed into the Size 0 category. Creatures such as mice and rats are covered under the rules for Swarms.

In game terms, a creature's size directly affects how many body levels it has, and also affects some combat statistics.

Size ranges are classified according to the following chart. The descriptive names simply give an indication of the rough size of the beast.

Size	Description
0	Diminutive About 10cm long or tall, diminutive creatures are the smallest that can be comfortably handled in Yags. Any creature smaller than Tiny is Diminutive, so technically it covers mice and insects.
1	Tiny A small cat or dog - about 30cm long or tall.
2-3	Small Small creatures range from 60cm (sized 2) to 90cm (size 3) in length or height. A large dog would be size 3.
4-7	Medium Medium creatures cover the range of adult humans, from about 130cm tall (size 4) to 210cm tall (size 6). A size 5 creature is about 170cm long or tall. Bulk also affects this as much as height or length.
8-11	Large Large creatures are noticeably larger than men, though are by no means the largest. Most horses are covered (up to size 10 for the largest), as are rhino (size 11).
12-15	Huge Very large land animals, such as the Elephant (size 15), or medium sized dinosaurs such as the Triceratops (size 14).
16-20	Gigantic The largest dinosaurs, such as the Apatosaurus (size 18) are Gigantic. There are no known land animals in the real world which are bigger than this.
21-25	Colossal A female blue whale, at 150t, would be size 22. This is the largest known animal.
26+	Titanic Larger than anything known in the real world.

The fact that a blue whale is less than 5 times larger than a human in terms of Size, does not mean that they are only five times tougher. There are other factors to consider as well.

Very Large Things

The blue whale (the very largest females might reach size 110) is the largest animal ever known, so practically anything else is going to be smaller. In a world rich with magic, larger creatures may be possible (even land animals), but probably aren't necessary.

For anything much larger than this, a whole new scale starts becoming useful. The default scale is zero - basically the animal world from mice up to blue whales.

Postive scales are larger, negative scales are smaller, with each scaling factor changing by a factor of five. Rules for different scales aren't given here, except to mention that they exist, but are explored in more detail in the Vehicles article.

Demeanor

A beast's demeanour is a rough guide to its behaviour. Mostly, the descriptions given below deal with how a creature will act if it is threatened, hungry or just surprised. Intelligent beasts have far more complex behaviour patterns than animals, so really this applies to animals only. Intelligent creatures will nearly always have a demeanor of Selfish.

Aggressive

Aggressive creatures are prone to violence, though are not as extreme as violent creatures are. They are easily provoked, but unless they are hunting food, they will not bother giving chase to those that flee.

Herd

Herd animals are generally passive, but can get aggressive if threatened. Normal reaction to danger is for the herd to run, though animals with suitable defensive abilities may turn and fight if running is not seen as a viable option. Herd does not necessarily mean herd in the zoological sense.

Passive

Passive creatures have a poor sense of danger, and are unable to defend themselves. They may run from danger, but danger is often not noticed until something is actually attacking them. It is possible to walk up to such beasts, without scaring them.

Predator

A predator is a carnivorous hunter, who will stalk and kill prey for food. Creatures it does not consider prey it will generally ignore, unless it feels threatened. If the prey it attacks puts up a good fight, then it will generally retreat before it can be seriously injured, unless it is already very hungry.

Scavenger

A scavenger seeks food that is either already dead, or looks like it is about to become dead. It will avoid healthy food, and patiently wait for injured food to weaken rather than risk injury by attacking something still able to put up an effective defence.

Selfish

Sapient creatures are often selfish. They will act in their own best interest (though what their best interest is will not always be obvious, or simple). They will generally be suspicious of things they do not know, but only attack if they feel threatened or they think they will get something from it.

Unintelligent

Unintelligent beasts are generally constructs. They have no free will, and no sense of self preservation. Depending on their programming, they may defend themselves if attacked, and will always fight to the death unless specifically programmed not to. Some plants may be unintelligent - they may have the ability to grab and hold prey, but will have no concept of fleeing.

Violent

Violent beasts are very rare, and are generally unnatural, magical or insane types. A violent beast will attack for no reason other than because it enjoys killing. It will often fight until heavily injured, and persue prey that flees.

Combat

Beasts tend to have a wide variety of ways in which to defend themselves.

Combat Modifiers

Creatures of a certain size will tend to have similar modifiers to their basic combat scores - things such as initiative, attack and defence. Damage is never modified upwards by size, since it comes straight off strength, which goes up with size anyway.

Large creatures get bonuses in combat simply because their attacks have greater reach, are harder to parry, and are dangerous enough to keep attackers at bay.

Size	Initiative	Attack	Defence	Damage
Diminutive	-15	-9	-5	-10
Tiny	-10	-6	-2	-5
Small	-5	-3	+0	+0
Medium	+0	+0	+0	+0
Large	+2	+3	+2	+0
Huge	+5	+6	+4	+0
Enormous	+10	+9	+6	+0
Gigantic	+15	+12	+8	+0
Colossal	+20	+15	+10	+0
Titanic	+25	+18	+12	+0

Damage

There are three types of damage in Yags - stun, wounds and mixed. Wound damage is the most deadly, and is caused by weapons capable of penetrating deep into a target (such as swords and spears). Claws and bites from animals is rarely this deadly, and as such most animals will do either stun or mixed (a mixture of stuns and wounds) damage.

However, whilst the blow from a whale's tail may be considered stun damage by other whales, to a small human, such damage can be deadly. Likewise, whilst a sword blow can kill a human, it's going to be little more than a surface wound to the whale. For this reason, large differences in size can modify the type of damage done.

If the attacking creature is at least twice the size of the defender, then the damage type is shifted up a category. If the attacker is three times the size, then shift up three categories.

Similarly, if the defender is at least twice as big, shift down one category, and for three times as big, shift down two categories.

There is an exception to this, in that some very large creatures might have attacks which aren't considered quite so large. A huge bulbous beast with lots of writhing tentacles might be colossal in total proportions, but each tentacle might only count as a large attack. If this is the case, then this will be mentioned in the creature description.

Base Soak

By default, all medium sized creatures have a basic soak of 12. Larger or smaller creatures can change this however. A huge creature may not be totally immune to damage from normal sized weapons, but they may be too small to do anything other than superficial cuts, which aren't worth even a single wound level.

Creature Size	Soak
Diminutive	3
Tiny	6
Small	9
Medium	12
Large	15
Huge	20
Gigantic	25
Colossal	30
Titanic	35

Large creatures will tend to have strengths of a suitable value in order to injure creatures of a similar size.

Natural Armour

Some creatures, especially the larger ones, will have natural armour which helps them soak damage. Natural armour ranges in protection from +0 up to +9, though a creature may have more than one type of natural armour, all of which will stack. For example, a bear has both thick fur and a tough hide.

Examples of Hide Armour

Soak	Description
0-2	Thin
3-5	Medium
6-7	Thick
8-9	Very thick

Examples of Fur Armour

Soak	Description
0-2	Thin
3-5	Medium
6-7	Thick
8-9	Very thick

Multiple Attacks

It is normal in Yags for creatures to be only able to make a single attack in a round. In most cases this holds true, and all attacks are collapsed into a single attack and damage roll. A wolf may attack with its teeth and claws, but these are counted as a single attack, directed at a single target.

Some creatures may have several options open to them. An eagle could bite someone annoying it. It could also swoop down and rake with its claws. However, it cannot do both at the same time.

For some things though, this breaks down, especially where fantasy beasts are concerned. A large dragon could bite someone in front of them, knock others down with its tail, and maybe stun those around it with its wings. Subsuming all of these into a single attack wouldn't work, and yet all should be possible each round.

To this end, some creatures are capable of attacking multiple creatures simultaneously. There are two methods this can be done - area attacks, and independent attacks. Independent attacks simply allow the beast to attack two or more times with different types of attack (a bite and a tail bash for instance). Area attacks are a single attack which threatens everyone in an area - a single tail swipe may knock over several people if the beast is huge.

Area attacks

An area attack is directed at a single area, and any targets within that area are affected. Tail swipes, tramples and pounce attacks are all examples of possible area attacks from a large creature. Generally, only huge creatures or bigger can make an area attack.

When a beast makes an area attack, all people in the area are potential targets. The beast makes a single attack roll, which everyone gets to defend against. Those that succeed fend off, or dodge, the attack. Anyone who is hit takes damage - in each case a seperate damage roll is made.

Advantages

Beasts have a number of advantages available to them.

Blessed:

A blessed creature has been touched by the supernatural, and draws strength from some other realm. As such, it is able to heal damage dealt to it very quickly, making it almost immune to damage from normal sources. A blessed creature is either blessed by the light, or blessed by darkness. Both types of blessings behave the same, but creatures of the light are affected by weapons of darkness and vice versa.

A blessed creature, on receiving either wounds or stuns, will immediately heal one level of both. This occurs after effects of the wound are accounted for. So a single blow which fatally wounds a creature could still kill it. If the creature survives however, it would then become critically wounded (regardless of how wound levels beyond fatal the creature was taken).

At the end of the round, and each round thereafter, the creature will heal one wound and stun level, until it is fully healed.

Some weapons may be blessed (either by light or darkness), and damage caused by these cannot be healed with this advantage. A light blessed creature cannot heal wounds from a darkness weapon, and vice versa.

Incorporeal:

An incorporeal creature has no physical body, and hence no direct way to affect the physical world. They have no wound or stun levels, and no soak, since they cannot be harmed physically. An incorporeal may attack by draining the energy from people, causing fatigue levels. When attacking, it only requires to touch the individual - a parry is useless. Damage uses its will instead of strength, and the target uses their for soaking.

Mind Speech:

The creature is able to communicate with people within a given range via telepathy. It cannot read anything other than their surface thoughts. Communication requires a shared language to be used.

Undead:

An undead creature is a walking corpse, animated through supernatural means. Undead do not need to eat, drink or breath. They are difficult to kill, since they do no have vital organs. An undead has twice the normal number of wound and stun levels. They often have abnormal health (nine), above average strength, and low will.