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Monster Attack Keywords

Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.4 Draft

This is the first content in the bestiary folder. It is foundational vocabulary for building any monster or enemy leader, not a bestiary of specific creatures yet. See core-rules, Part Fourteen, for the full Enemies stat block (Tier, Hit Points, Speed, Range) these keywords attach to.

The Three Keywords

Inspired by reviewing Bicolline's LARP combat rules and its "any contact with a monster's weapon is fatal" convention. Meant to make a monster's weapon feel genuinely different from a Retainer's, not just numerically bigger.

  • Rend X. A single, indivisible hit dealing X damage to one target. Cannot be split across targets, and does not overflow onto a second target even if it exceeds what the first target needed to Fall; any excess is lost as overkill. This is deliberately the mirror image of the player-side overflow rule (core-rules, Part Eight): players get efficient, spreadable damage; monsters get concentrated, wasteful damage.
  • Piercing. This attack ignores Guard. A banked Guard token is not consumed by a Piercing attack; it simply doesn't apply this once, and remains banked for a future, ordinary hit.
  • Inevitable. The attacker assigns this Hit, not the defender. It lands on the target the attacker names and cannot be reassigned to another member of the group (core-rules, Part Ten) or Intercepted by an ally. Under free assignment a defender would otherwise feed any dangerous Hit to a levy; Inevitable is what lets a specific enemy reach past the wall and strike who it means to.

All three are meant to combine on a single attack line, for example: Dragon's Bite — Rend 4, Piercing, Inevitable.

Using the Keywords

A basic Retainer-tier enemy typically needs none of these; ordinary Hits and ordinary overflow are the baseline. Reach for a keyword when a specific monster's threat should read as categorically different from a soldier's blade, not just bigger numbers on the same stat block:

  • A brute that should feel dangerous even to a well-shielded Character: Piercing.
  • A monster whose single strike should matter more than the number of dice in the Pool that produced it: Rend X. Note that a bare Rend Hit can be assigned to a levy and wasted; when the big hit must land on a specific target, pair it with Inevitable.
  • A threat too big or too fast for a Character to physically step in front of, or one that must reach past the Retainer wall to strike who it means to: Inevitable.

Size Categories

Not ported into the game now. Flagged for future bestiary development only, not a core-rules item; see open-questions.

Area of Effect Shapes

Cone, Line, and Radius (core-rules, Part Sixteen) are usable as monster attack shapes as soon as the map-scale question resolves. Exact distances remain a placeholder until then.

Changelog
  • 2026-08-03: Revised for the current v0.3 draft.