Hey y’all!
So I’m currently dming a Monster of the Week Campaign for some friends. For those of you who don’t know what that is, MoTW is a table-top role playing game where the players are monsters hunters investigating supernatural occurrences and fighting monsters (inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, X-files etc.). Essentially all monsters/mysteries are fair game, the game is highly improvisational, and it’s not like dnd where there are premade stat blocks to use, I have to devise all the monsters myself. My campaign takes place at a highschool, so all the characters are high school aged and dealing with high school in addition to fighting monsters that are sort of themed around high school things.
So, with the background out of the way, on to my question. One of my players is playing the character archetype of the “chosen one” so basically she’s named in this whole prophecy about how she’s gonna kill this guy (though she’s not clear on why or how yet). Currently said nemesis has hired a supernatural assassin to kill her instead, and then… I don’t know. This is probably going to be the plot next week so I was hoping to get some suggestions on what kind of assassin could be after Lindsey, and how they might go about trying to kill her.
Also any other suggestions for fun monsters to fight are more than welcome as well.
Chaos demons are always good for this–they cause chaos around the target which increases the chances that they’ll die from a freak accident. I don’t know if that’s the sort of suggestion you’re looking for.
I only read the first 4 HP books; I stopped after breaking up with the GF who was making me (for unrelated reasons) and even then that was going on 20 years ago but you had me thinking, “Blimey, how did I miss that” for moment there!
It’s not a franchise that I enjoyed that much, even before all of the commotion with regards to discrimination. You haven’t missed much. It all went downhill after book 4…
There was a tv series where there was a demon of the week, and these all had different elemental powers. The demon hunter had to work out what sort of demon it was, based on how its powers manifested themselves (or on the state of the bodies), and then find the demons’ weaknesses.
So a demon that used electricity had to be earthed in some manner, and so on.
Probably a good idea to stay away from Native American evil spirits. Firstly, most of them are closed beliefs, meaning the tribe wants to keep them private. The fact that they’ve gotten out is usually due to people getting close to the tribe, mining them for folklore once they’re trusted, and then betraying that trust by spreading the story far and wide.
Also, the spirits can hear you when you speak - or even write - their names. Do you want to cue the beginning of a horror movie?
Anyway, some high school troubles that could perhaps be expanded: Evil Acne, spirits lurking in lockers or bathrooms, people pretending to be romantic interests for exploitive purposes, people’s love lives taking over their lives, talent shows, students snapping under academic pressure and becoming vulnerable to demons, feeling unequipped to be an adult/the future is coming too fast, feeling eager to become an adult, Evil Homework (or corrupted homework), stetchy substitute teachers (or perhaps the real teacher is evil and the substitute merely shows the contrast?), bullying, those annoying dolls that are supposed to make you regret parenthood by showing you how terrible it is to raise a child.
Stuff that may not be very powerful, but that is meant to attack the Chosen One from an unexpected angle - or, perhaps, to make her doubt that anywhere is safe.
For a more gimecky for, abyss worms. They usually just shoot a bit of lightning at people, but if hurt will cause earthquakes. Accidentally AoE them and it’s goodbye HP.
You could also have some kind of mobile phone monster that lures people to their doom by sending fake texts or messing with call history or stuff.
For the assassin, if they’re here for the long game maybe they could start by posing as one of the other students that needs saving and be a recurring NPC until the chosen one trusts them enough to go somewhere alone with them.
