GURPSよろず

DINOMAN

Dinomen (the plural of “dinoman”) resemble small, scaly humans with a short tail and a head like a miniature T. rex. They’re strong for their height, which rarely tops 5’. Both predators and scavengers, they regard anything slain – especially their foes and their own dead – as food.

Dinomen aren’t terribly smart, but they compensate with numbers, ferocious bravery, numbers, weapon use, and even more numbers. Every mob has at least one hero and one leader. The leader coordinates their attacks; the result generally isn’t much better than a head-on charge, but they sometimes surprise opponents with flashes of tactical ingenuity. Most dinomen fight with knobbed clubs or hatchets; leaders and heroes use shortswords claimed from previous victims. While dinomen prefer weapons, they’ll grapple and bite if disarmed. Against a large foe, they may pile on for a takedown, then bite and worry with their teeth!

ST: 11 HP: 11 Speed: 5.50
DX: 12 Will: 9 Move: 5
IQ: 7 Per: 10
HT: 10 FP: 10 SM: 0
Dodge: 8 Parry: 10 DR: 1

Bite (15): 1d cut. Reach C. Any hit counts as a grapple, even if it doesn’t penetrate DR. This allows the dinoman to worry – roll damage each turn as a free action!

Hatchet (14): 1d+1 cutting. Reach 1.

Knobbed Club (14): 1d+2 crushing. Reach 1.

Traits: Bloodlust (12); Discriminatory Smell; Discriminatory Taste; Gluttony (9); Odious Racial Habit (Eats other sentients); Reduced Consumption 2 (Cast-Iron Stomach); Resistant to Disease (+3).

Skills: Axe/Mace-14; Brawling-15; Stealth-12; Tracking-12; Wrestling-12.

Class: Mundane.

Notes: Dinomen teeth are filthy, with bits of previous victims’ rotting flesh stuck in them; anyone bitten must roll vs. HT to avoid infection with the shakes (-2 to DX and DX-based skills until treated with Cure Disease). Dinoman heroes have ST 12, Combat Reflexes, Axe/Mace-15, and Shortsword- 15, and wield a shortsword (1d+2 cutting). Leaders use the hero stats, but are also slightly smarter (IQ 8) and posses a modicum of tactical skill (Tactics-10). Dinomen will negotiate; generally, they want fresh (not preserved) food and newer weapons of the sorts they prefer.

Dinomeals

With Gluttony and Cast-Iron Stomach, dinomen eat more food – not less – but it’s usually low-quality. They can subsist on tainted water, rotten vegetables, days-old maggoty carrion, and worse. This reduces their food costs, not that they actually pay for food . . . Factoring in Resistant to Disease, they get +5 to HT rolls against disease from anything they consume (an effective HT 15 to resist).

Dinomob

Dinomen don’t come in piddling numbers – they come in dozens, scores, or even dozens of scores. This can be a problem for delvers and the GM.

Delvers need good tactics. Front-line fighters can exploit narrow hallways and bottlenecks to avoid being mobbed, while adventurers with ranged weapons take shelter and pick off leaders, or hurl nageteppos and flaming oil. Spellcasters should consider area-effect magic (preferably spells resisted by Will). These tactics consume resources, though – time, ammunition, magical energy, and the occasional lost HP. Indeed, some boss monsters (p. 38) keep dinomen around specifically to bleed off precious resources that might be used against them!

One way for the GM to handle dinohordes is “And Stay Down!” (Dungeons, p. 27). Their tendency to devour their own fallen is also useful if the numbers prove too difficult – the delvers can flee while the dinocannibals eat. The dinomen will try to track down the adventurers later, which can make for a series of encounters instead of a single knock-down, drag-out fight with a horde of gibbering dinomenaces. However, it’s no fun to play the high-damage barbarian or zombie-raising necromancer if all themonsters run away or eat each other. Even when following the above advice, the GM should ensure that the barbarian gets leaders and heroes to fight, and that fleeing dinomen hastily abandon a few corpses to be turned into dinozombies.