All-Out Apocalypse Bestiary
A few weeks ago, I ran a game for my brother Nick Hendriks and his daughter, using his rules-light All-Out Apocalypse system. For that game I wanted to make a creature unfamiliar to him, not just drawing from his own bestiary, so he'd have something he had to figure out in combat. I started with a mechanical gimmick, intersecting with one of the systems that stood out to me the most, and built a robot around it; that's the holobot, below. Since then I've tried my hand at further creature design for All-Out Apocalypse, often (but not always – see the hydreel) starting with an interesting ability or combat interaction and then developing flavour around it. Usually I'm a story-first GM but I think interesting creature abilities or weaknesses are important for keeping players engaged in combat.
Photo by Fabian Kleiser on Unsplash
Advantage on Arcana's All-Out Apocalypse Bestiary, Vol. I
Breaker-Tank
7 hp
Enormous stature
Bulwark OOOO
Ear-shattering klaxon (targets all creatures attacking it with melee; on any number of successes, targets must succeed on a test or automatically fail the initiative test next round) OOO
Electrified hull (targets all creatures attacking it with melee; on any number of successes, hits all targets for 1 damage) OO
Gamma cannon (a number of targets equal to successes take 1 rad damage) OOO
Flare (divide successes among up to 3 targets; illuminates area) O
Militaries, paramilitaries, and law enforcement agencies experimented long ago with automated crowd dispersal machines. Initially they tried to use non-lethal methods but that stopped being a priority long before the breaker-tank was invented. This robot walks slowly on its crab-like legs. It still follows lingering programming to break up crowds (any group of three or more humanoids), using all of its crowd control methods before it starts trampling "protesters."
Sometimes you need an enemy that can challenge oversized parties without killing any character in one shot. That's what the breaker-tank is designed for: spreading the damage (and the debuff) around. If it is mobbed by melee attackers, use the ear-shattering klaxon and follow up with the electrified hull; if more of its attackers are ranged, use the gamma cannon and the flare. (When declaring for the gamma cannon, rank the targets in order so players have a sense of how many successes it would need before they were hit.) Of course, it still could target one enemy at a time with an unmodified melee attack, perhaps stomping on them. It would be better to save that until it has used up its other weapons.
Holobot
3 hp
Remote bypass (if a holobot is being operated remotely, it can use the full set of actions; if it is not being operated remotely, it can only move, defend, or dodge missiles)
Double holograms (if any player wins the initiative test, the holobot decides on an action as usual but declares two actions, one true and one false)
Fibreglass chassis O
Laser pistol OOO
Holobots are slender robots, built in roughly humanoid postures. They are purposely made to be overridden by remote operators at appropriate moments, and can project a hologram around themselves to represent the operator (or how the operator wants to appear). In combat, they project a doubled hologram, one version reflecting its actual movements and one disguising them.
The holobot requires honesty from the War Master: you really should pick an action and commit to it when using Double holograms. If your players correctly game out which of the two actions the holobot is likely to use, good for them. Let them have that win.
Hydreel
6 hp
Amphibious
Multiheaded (the hydreel has a number of heads equal to its hp divided by 2, rounded up; it can make as many attacks in a turn as it has heads, including against multiple opponents, but it must divide its dice pool among those attacks)
Regrowth (if the hydreel survives combat and at least eight hours elapse before it is encountered again, it regains all of its hit points plus half of the hit points it lost, rounded up)
Massive mutated freshwater eels whose fins have evolved into a tiny pair of legs, hydreels are often seen with three heads, give or take. One might expect the hydreel's heads to focus on one target, but they usually don't, each preferring to attack different prey if at all possible. Each head has a separate brain, so canny hunters will try to lure the heads in opposite directions and needle it with ranged attacks while it struggles with itself. A single-headed hydreel will usually flee combat, returning for vengeance when it has grown more heads.
I took the hydreel from an imagined Fallout 5 I had planned out, which obviously cannot go anywhere because I am not employed by Bethesda. The initial concept didn't have anything like Regrowth, but I figured All-Out is just silly enough to accommodate it; besides, I like the idea of players retreating after wounding a hydreel, only to find it later, more multi-headed than before. If players want to try to lure its heads in opposite directions so it can't get in melee range of any of them, I'd say that over half of the hydreel's heads could force the whole creature somewhere; otherwise, the hydreel is stuck in place as its heads compete for control. So on a three-headed hydreel, two heads can overpower the one remaining head, but two would not be enough on a four-headed hydreel. You can change the threat the hydreel poses by adjusting its hit points; everything else it does is keyed to that number.
Junk Gunk
1 hp
Slip 'n slime
Full of bits (attempts to scavenge a destroyed junk gunk automatically succeed and yield 1 scrap, never more and never less)
Thousands of nanobots gather fluids and materials in lipid sacs, appearing to be crusty amoeba-like globs pulsating across the wasteland. These nanobots see adventurers as handy sources of fluids, fats, and scrap, and will attack a sleeping human with a caustic pseudopod. They are not clever enough to distinguish between a person who is actually asleep or one who is just lying still.
Love oozes? Love nano-bot swarms? The junk gunk is both!
Junk Gunk Collective
4 hp
Filled with goo (at the end of the round on which the Hydraulic exosuit is destroyed, the collective breaks apart into a number of junk gunks equal to its remaining hp)
Hydraulic exosuit (can be used as both a weapon and armour) OOOO
A single junk gunk is not very clever, but a number of them gathered together possess the rudimentary intelligence needed to construct an exosuit out of salvaged metals and petrochemicals, and to operate it. Maybe they were designed as soldiers in days of old?
One of the fun things about the classic ochre jelly is its ability to split apart when attacked. Instead of making fission a function of the kind or amount of damage, I decided to hook it up to armour loss, and the idea for the junk gunk collective grew from there. With the suit, it reminds me a bit of the Vashta Nerada or the Y-17 trauma override harness.
Sneak-thief
1 hp
Hand-to-hand
Scrounger
Grabby hands (when the sneak-thief gets a success with a melee attack, it can use any number of successes to steal scrap from the target instead of reducing the target's hp)
Junk armour OOOO
Sneak-thieves are squirrel-magpie-raccoon hybrids about the size of cats, that build nests out of metal, plastic, fabric, and bone. They are most often encountered carrying junk bound around their bodies, which doubles as armour. If a pack of sneak-thieves spots someone that looks likely to have scrap, they will try to distract them and pick their pockets, scampering off if they succeed or if things start to go south.
"Attack every part of the character sheet," says Arnold K of Goblin Punch. The sneak-thief attacks the player character's scrap reserves, which are nearly as important as their hit points.
Sneak-thief Shellbreaker
1 hp
Hand-to-hand
Scrounger
Junk armour OOOO
Shellbreaker (melee, it can choose to attack only the target's armour instead of hp and, if it destroys the armour this way, it automatically steals the resulting scrap) OOOO
Some sneak-thieves are just canny enough to make specialized piercing and cutting tools, useful for shattering ceramics or slicing straps.
And if we're attacking every part of the character sheet, let's go after the armour, too.
Thirster Pack Beast
5 hp
Dark vision
Pack armour (the beast can expend 1 usage point of an item it carries as armour each time it is attacked; if any usage points of these items are expended as armour, then 1 scrap is left behind afterwards, regardless of how many usage points are expended)
Water jugs OO
Grain sacks OO
String of lights O
Pack animals that have turned thirster are as dangerous as the goods they carry are valuable.
I didn't get the idea for the thirster pack beast from Horizon Zero Dawn, but it sure reminds me of hunting machines and trying not to destroy the valuable components. This enemy is supposed to encourage players to use the Create an Advantage or Aid actions, or use Stats to add extra successes to an already-successful attack; they can recover more useful items if they down the beast with fewer, harder hits. You could stick Pack Armour and various items onto an ogreman for a similar effect. Or you could make the whole thing a robot, calling it an Extractron and changing the cargo it carries to mineral goods.