Wandering Monster, with more malicious monsters, part 1

One thing I kept hearing from my playtesters was, "more monsters!" They also tend to say "more chocolate," in which I am happy to oblige. The original four monsters (ogre, ooze, troll, and lepus) are still on the job. Now there are four more, with interesting combinations of attributes and their own special abilities. Here are the first two with prototype illustrations for playtesting.

An early favorite is the Owlbear. As in legend, and every tabletop roleplaying game worth its salt, Owlbear is all fight. He doesn't have much capacity for bonus cards so his player doesn't bother with lots of finesse. His special ability is Rage, so when you spend more than four Sauce on your attack, you gain even more attack. This fellow can take even rather formidable adventurers head on, in a game that's all about assessing your prey's strength and approaching from their blind spot.

Owlbear: what blind spot?

In fair warning to the 30% of you who experience some level of arachnophobia, the second monster on the agenda today was specifically designed to make professional spider wranglers shriek and wet themselves. You have been warned.

The Jumping Spider is unique in the starting lineup of monsters you can play. It has a terrific movement rate and low attack, which means you'll have to make excellent use of Sauce. On the other hand, you'll beat other monsters to the initial caches of sauce more often than not.

This monster's special ability is jumping, which helps you get past other monsters who otherwise would take advantage of your low attack value and insist on a lopsided throwdown. Instead, take a flying leap and keep pattering through the dungeon on those long, hairy legs.

Jumping Spider might make you jumpy

You might be asking why the spider doesn't have a special ability more like, say, webs. It's a fair question. Just hold your questions until all the supplements and expansions roll out, and you can pair off this Jumping Spider against Daddy Longlegs and the sticky web tokens he spreads across the map. That should make things interesting. Actually I think it will include two sets of web tokens and a bonus Powers card, so any monster can add its own Web Slinger power. How about a Web Weaving Wabbit to dominate the dungeon? Or a Hasty Ogre with Ceiling Crawler and his own set of clinging webs? I look forward to all these insane combinations in play.

And you can look forward to more new monsters in my next update.