"B" is for "Blastsquatch"

Blastsquatch

No. Enc.:  1d8
Alignment:  Chaotic
Movement:  150' (50')
Armor Class:  6
Hit Dice:  15
Attacks:  3 (2 claws, 1 bite)
Damage:  2d6 / 2d6 / 1d10
Save:  L8
Morale:  10
Hoard Class:  XX
XP:  6,000

Blastsquatches are horrible, hirsute hominids found in swamps and forests thick with vegetation warped by toxins and radiation.  Their 10' tall frames bulge with muscles, and their musky fur glows with a sickly incandescence.  Jagged teeth protrude from slavering lips.

Unable to feel pain, the creatures are exceptionally savage, and gain +2 To Hit with all attacks.  And if a blastsquatch successfully strikes the same target with both claws in the same round, it inflicts an additional 1d8 crushing damage.  This squeeze only works on 'squatch-sized targets, or smaller.

Blastsquatches have a particular...fondness...for Pure Humans (especially attractive members of the opposite sex), and those that aren't outright devoured are captured and "adopted" into the tribe....

Mutations:  Optic Emissions (Bright Eyes, Gamma Eyes), Pain Insensitivity [D], Reflective Epidermis (Radiation)

Holo-Vid Footage Of Blastsquatch In Fungal Environs

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For the Savage Worlds version, visit our affiliate, The Haunted Spookshow Of Channel X!!!

"G" is for "Grunch"

Grunch

No. Enc.:  1 (1)
Alignment:  Chaotic
Movement:  120' (40')
Armor Class:  5
Hit Dice:  12
Attacks:  2 or 1 (2 claws, or 1 hatchet, or 1 gore)
Damage:  1d10 / 1d10, or 1d8+6, or 2d8
Save:  L6
Morale:  11
Hoard Class:  XV
XP:  3,600

Grunches are nocturnal, 11' tall hircinoids with shaggy, green pelts and long, curling horns. They dwell in twisted thickets and forlorn woods.  Vicious and powerful, grunches relish combat, and have a particular fondness for dismantling Ancient vehicles with bare fists and/or primitive handaxes.

Grunches are highly sensitive to olfactory and psychic stimuli...and the pheromones and lusts of amorous couples drive them particularly berserk, so the beasts stalk "lovers' ruins" and "makeout junkyards" to better brutalize the libidinous.  Grunches usually let victims flee after their savage beatings, though, and pursue the wounded for only 1d3+1 rounds.

Mutations:  Enhanced Vision (Night Vision), Increased Sense (Smell), Increased Willpower

Mutants In The News — "Make Way For The Way-Out Wacky Races" Edition

We here at A Field Guide To Doomsday favor the traditional nukes-'n-pollutants-'n-mutants apocalypses over the supernatural ones, but we truly loves 'em all.  Anything that gets your players scavenging in wrecked-out, freak-infested ruins armed with nothing but bent golf clubs and stopsign shields is great with us, no matter the hows and whys behind Earth's obliteration.

And that's why we're mentioning the awesome Monster 500 toy line, an aberrant onslaught of Armageddon-ish automobile action!

They've got motorcars, mutants, monsters, and mayhem.  What more do you need?  And just in time for Christmas!

See more in-depth coverage at our (hideous, deformed) sister (that we keep chained up in the cellar) blog, The Haunted Spookshow Of Channel X!

Radioactive Review — 'Wisdom From The Wastelands #21: High-Tech Melee Weapons'

I'll come right out and say it:  I'm a stingy Game Master Mutant Lord.

Don't get me wrong—the players in my Don't Mess With Wrexus campaign are trundling around with warp-field maces and x-laser rifles and more energy cells to power 'em than you can count, but they came by them "honestly".  And by that, I mean I roll up every NPC's loot, every monster hoard, and every secret bunker stockpile randomly, using official treasure charts and Grand Unified Junk Tables and the like.

Part of the reason I've gone full-on random is because I like the surprises.  Another is I'm a big believer in The Gamma World Aesthetic, where players whomp on big-ass robots with nothing but broken plumbing and fenceposts and screwdrivers.

After The Bomb, Susan Storm fell in with a weird crowd.

But the Real, Honest, True Reason?

I can't be trusted.

See, I love giving presents.  Unique presents.  Weird presents.  I'm the guy who hands out adorable plush venereal diseases at Christmases and toddlers' birthdays.  Or gets beloved authors to inscribe antagonistic personal notes ("Dear Chris, You're wrong, and your opinion is terrible. Love, Jim Butcher") to the recipient.

I'm awesome, I tells ya.

Flesh-Eating Streptococcus agrees...I rule!!!

And when a snazzy supplement like Wisdom From The Wastelands #21:  High-Tech Melee Weapons comes along, I get giddy and loopy and I really, really want to give the treasures within.

I truly have to fight going all Mutanty Haul at the table...and this supplement doesn't make it easy.

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WFTW #21:  H-T MW offers five sections over as many pages (ignoring the 6th with the OGL).

The first covers Alternate Construction Materials, so your biker-raider's morningstar can be fabricated from crystalline obsidian or conductalloy instead of soldered fishhooks and rebar. Each material has a unique descriptor that really adds flavor, ups the damage, and increases resilience (if using breakage rules, natch).

The Edging section discusses fancy new blades, like carbon filament (atomic-realigning nanites!) and gamma xenon (it irradiates!) and vibrating (it, um, vibrates!).  These up the chances of Critical Hits, and also the damage output.

Section III details Enhancements that really trick out your baseball bat with the nails driven through it.  You can make it go all cryonic or energetic protonic or harmonized (slices through force fields!) or paralytic!  My favorite bits, though, involve the crystals which turn run-of-the-mill blasters into unique death-sprayers:  gammas turn lasers radioactive, thermals make lasers go all fiery, etc.  A sackful o' such crystals turns your PC into a one-man sentinel of the spectrum!

I do too, buddy.  I do, too.

New Melee Weapons come under Section IV.  While I'm not sure the Mutant Future Core Rules need an expanded weapon table that adds glaives, halberds, katanas, and/or bo staves, the idea of dura-aluminum, monomolecular, proton-nunchakus makes my inner 10-year-old deliriously happy.

The last section covers Optional Combat Rules, such as Throwing Melee Weapons, Wielding Two Weapons At Once, and Wielding A Two-Handed Weapon In One Hand.  These are elegant, simple, and to the point, and in no way broken.  I usually hate crunch in my fluff, but I'll actually use these rules at the table.

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Okay, okay.  I freely admit that most of the material in WFTW #21:  H-T MW could be written off as standard D&D gimcrackery.

You know:  This material makes your sword do +2 damage / +2 To Hit, but THIS one makes it do +2 damage / +2 To Hit...while on fire.

And Lord knows I'm a sucker for razzle-dazzle and ridiculous hype ("Oh, look...new Mountain Dew comes in purple!  IT MUST BE MINE!!!"), and I'm not exactly discriminating when it comes to bells, whistles, and gewgaws.

But there's some really, really neat flavor stuff enclosed in these pages.  The descriptors make all the difference, and each is novel and unique.  I know they'd totally jazz up some of the artifacts in my home game, and best of all, the players would have a hoot running amok with them.

I like sizzle just as much (if not more, embarrassing truth be told) than my steak, and author Chris Van Deelen and his Skirmisher cronies deliver.

And...seriously.  The crystals rock.

You can't stop at just one!

Still only 99¢!!!  Buy it here.

"F" is for "Forkfin"

Forkfin

No. Enc.:  0 (1d3)
Alignment:  Neutral
Movement:  0' (0')
      —Swim:  180' (60')
Armor Class:  3
Hit Dice:  4
Attacks:  1 (gore)
Damage:  3d6
Save:  L2
Morale:  8
Hoard Class:  None
XP:  245

Forkfins are 12' long, saltwater fish known for their speed, agility, and vigor.  Like cetaceans, forkfins navigate and communicate via echolocation; furthermore, they vibrate their sharpened snout-prongs to generate sonic blasts.

Forkfins go berserk when speared or hooked, and gain the Charge ability (used primarily against their captors' watercraft, natch).

Mutations:  Echolocation, Energy Ray (Sonic)

Let's Go To Gamma World. Meet... The Gatorr.

Gatorr  ("Green Hisser")

No. Enc.:  1d2
Alignment:  Neutral
Movement:  90' (30')
      —Swim:  120' (40')
Armor Class:  4
Hit Dice:  5
Attacks:  2 or 2 (1 bite, 1 tailslap, or 2 tentacles)
Damage:  1d8 / 1d10, or Paralysis (see below)
Save:  L3
Morale:  9
Hoard Class:  None
XP:  500

One of the most common swampland denizens in the Wasted State Of Wrexus, gatorrs are 3'-6' long, ornery crocodilians with pairs of 3' long tentacles jutting from their foreheads. These tentacles Paralyze [per p. 58 of the Mutant Future Core Rules] on contact (as if from a Mental Attack from a WIL score of 10+1d8), and they can strike 2 different targets per round.

Though solitary by nature, gatorrs congregate in groups of 10d6 in the springtime to spawn.

Mutations:  Aberrant Form ("Paralytic Tentacles"), Reflective Epidermis (Radiation)

Not-The-Designer's Notes:  The Gator (one R) first appeared in the 2nd edition of Gamma World from 1983, by James M. Ward, Gary Jaquet, and David James Ritchie.  Original illustration by Larry Elmore.

Not-The-Designer's Notes Addendum:  I had to stat these guys up, because my...shall we say, "ambitious"...13-year-old player decided to blow all his loot on "a really cool pet", and, well, he picked a mutant alligator sold by a sketchy meat vendor in a particularly scummy side of Gunspoint.

.
.
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This is NOT gonna end well.

GO HOME, YOU DEGENERATES.

Keep the glasses, though.  Who knows what filth you got on 'em.