Foes & Folks

The Skysea is full of diverse people and fantastical creatures. This section presents a variety of foes and folks meant to be controlled by the Guide—NPCs (non-playable characters) for short—to populate your adventures. 

The pages in this section hold everything you need to control these NPCs. Along with a description, each NPC has a statblock that lists all the numbers and information you'll need to control them.  

For combat, you'll also need a way to track each NPC's life and defenses. This Google Sheet has the basic stats for all the NPCs here. It also links to each NPC's entry on this site, so it also works as an index.  

༄ Foes & Folks Tracker (make a copy!)

NPCs broadly follow the same rules as heroes. They have the same types of stats, and generally can use the same basic actions. However, NPCs are intended to be more streamlined than heroes to play, and a few mechanics work differently for them. 

Special Abilities

Many NPCs have special abilities and unique actions, which are detailed in their statblocks. Some abilities work just like hero abilities of the same name, while others are slightly different. In particular, magical abilities are intentionally simpler for NPCs and don't make use of wind, focus, or soulsight.

Like heroes, some NPCs have defenses higher than what you'd expect from adding up their attributes. Traits or abilities granting defense bonuses are only noted in statblocks if they provide other relevant information about the NPC.

Arms and Armor

Human-shaped NPCs can wield arms and wear armor. Unless otherwise noted, statblocks include the bonuses and penalties from such equipment. 

The statblocks don't include the durability ratings for this equipment. If heroes try to break their foes' armaments, assume the arms have the same durability as the entries in Items. Exceptions to this are armaments noted as "shoddy," which have a durability of 1. If an NPC loses an armament, make sure to adjust their Guard (and remove their Maneuver penalty, for shields) accordingly.

Ideals

People and creatures with sufficient self-awareness have ideals, which they can invoke just as heroes do—with one important difference. When an NPC invokes an ideal, instead of playing out their invocation and awarding yourself an ideal die, just re-roll the same die you rolled for the action. Avoid the temptation to have NPCs invoke ideals that have little to do with the situation.

Lore

NPC descriptions say what lore they know and under what conditions they'll teach it to a hero. Just because an NPC knows a type of lore doesn't mean they know any abilities associated with the lore. 

Life and Death

NPCs aren't meant to be as survivable as heroes. If a typical NPC loses all its life, it dies (or, depending on the tone of your game, poofs into smoke, or is otherwise dispatched). You don't have to make Survive and Return rolls for the NPC. 

There are exceptions to this guidance, including:

• When heroes deliberately try to knock foes unconscious rather than killing them. Have the heroes explain how they intend to do this as they fight. If their explanation seems dicey, roll a die and have the NPC die on an odd result. 

• When an NPC is important to the story—a recurring villain, or someone the heroes care about. Feel free to roll Survive and Return for such NPCs. 

A character's ☠ danger represents roughly how much of a threat they are versus a single starting hero:

☠ ½ — Easy. The hero might expend some guard or awareness in combat, but can easily prevail.

☠ 1 — Medium. The hero might need to expend stamina or spirit to prevail—and may even take an injury.

☠ 2 — Deadly. The hero must fight for their life—and has a good chance of losing it.

These danger thresholds compare the foe to a hero with 0 XP. For more experienced heroes, use the thresholds in the table as a rough guide.

Group Danger Thresholds

Rarely will a single hero face a single foe. For battles with more than two opponents, calculate the average danger per hero:

1. Add up the foes' danger ratings. 

2. Divide the sum by the total number of heroes. 

This average serves as the danger rating for the whole encounter. For example, if three starting heroes face four kulus (each with a danger rating of ½), the whole encounter's danger rating is 4 × ½ ÷ 3 = ⅔: somewhere between easy and medium. 

If your heroes have more XP, compare the average danger to the XP-adjusted thresholds in the table above. Use the group's average XP. For example, if the three heroes above had an average XP of around 20, the ⅔-danger encounter would be even easier than "easy."

How to Think About Danger

The primary purpose of danger ratings and thresholds is to signal if a fight might be too easy or too hard. If a battle's danger is less than the "easy" threshold, it will probably feel trivial and boring for the other players. If the danger exceeds the "deadly" threshold, there's a good chance the heroes will be wiped out. 

Danger is a rough heuristic, not a mathematically rigorous equation for balanced combat. Heroes can vary a great deal when it comes to combat prowess and survivability. Some foes may have abilities, like flight or high defenses, that make them difficult for certain heroes to even damage, which a single danger number can't easily account for. On top of that, dice rolls in WSSWNN are "swingy," so combat is inherently unpredictable. 

All of which is to say, don't design combat encounters by danger ratings alone. The Guide for Guides has advice for when battles don't go as expected.