Scope RPG

Monsters ​

Monsters are the curated adversaries you fight in dungeons and on the adventure board. Every monster in the game is hand-authored by the design team - there's no procedural generation, no random monster maker, no monster you can own or collect.

Monsters

What a Monster Is ​

A monster is a template - a name, a class, a portrait, a combat shape. When a monster appears in an encounter, the game instantiates a runtime combat unit from that template plus the level and position the encounter calls for.

There are roughly 57 distinct archetypes in the catalogue. They span three loose design tiers:

  • Foundational monsters - the recognisable archetypes that anchor the catalogue (Stone Golem, Skeleton Warrior, Dark Mage, Goblin Scout).
  • Regular monsters - the bulk of the roster, populating soldier-phase encounters.
  • Boss-tier monsters - archetypes designed specifically to be used as bosses (Goblin Warchief, Iron Colossus, Dragon Lord).

Bosses Are Monsters ​

A boss isn't a separate kind of creature. A boss is a monster that's been placed into an encounter with the "boss" flag set. The same catalogue produces both. See Bosses for what changes when that flag gets set.

How Monster Encounters Are Built ​

Monsters don't appear on their own - they're always placed into an encounter by a dungeon or adventure-quest design. A typical encounter is a squad of two to four monsters, each with:

  • A specific archetype.
  • A specific level (set by the dungeon or computed dynamically by the adventure board).
  • A formation position (front, middle, or back).
  • An optional power scalar that nudges the monster's difficulty up or down relative to its archetype baseline.

The shape of a squad is where design intent shows up. A squad of three Brawlers in the front row is a slow physical slugfest. A squad with a Brawler on point, a Magical Beast in the back, and a Shaman casting heals is a tactical positioning problem.

Monster Classes at a Glance ​

Four classes. Different from the soldier class taxonomy and different from avatar classes.

ClassRoleCombat Shape
BrawlerFrontline tank + physical damageHighest base HP among monsters, strong physical attack, built for the front row
Magical BeastRanged magical damageGlass cannon - high magic power, low HP, carries a magic damage multiplier
ShamanSupport / debufferHealing and debuffs, intentionally weak basic attack
FlyingEvasive strikerCan attack any row; highest dodge floor of any monster class

The asymmetry with soldier classes is intentional - monsters include roles soldiers can't mirror (Flying's back-row reach, Shaman's debuff focus). See Monster Classes for the detail.

Regular Monsters vs Bosses ​

Regular monsters and bosses share the template catalogue but behave very differently at runtime:

  • Regular monsters have their basic attack plus one special skill, a scoring AI that makes tactical decisions, and scale slightly lower than player units at the same level.
  • Bosses have no special skill, no AI (always basic-attack), and scale against the avatar with expected equipment - meaning a well-geared player at the right level should find a boss tense but fair.

Full detail on Bosses.

No Real-Life-Stat Multipliers ​

Monsters aren't scaled by real-life stats the way the avatar is. Their combat numbers come from class base stats + level + archetype weights, scaled against a reference unit. There's no "monster zone multiplier" - monsters are tuned against expected player power at each level, not against your recent real-life behavior.

Where Monsters Appear ​

Only two places:

  • Dungeons - the primary surface. Hand-authored encounter sequences that culminate in a boss.
  • Adventure board quests - dynamically composed encounters drawn from the same catalogue. See Encounter Scaling for how the adventure board picks and levels them.

Monsters don't appear in arena (PvP is avatar-vs-avatar) or from demons (demons never fight, and enemies are always authored monsters).