Monster Mash: Hydras

August is going to be Monster Mash Month. You’ll get a new monster for Resolute/Mythweaver gaming every day, and I’ll add all 30 beasts to an updated Appendix A at the end of the month (along with some other new monsters that will be introduced in Mythweaver Chronicles #1), meaning that within a few weeks, you’ll have over 100 monsters for your Mythweaver/Resolute games.

Let’s lead off with a double-shot.

Watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief today with my tenth graders, I was inspired to work up some game stats for the hydra. Rather than coming up with complex rules for disabling heads and such, I decided instead to make beheading a hydra a special option for Resolve that is usable only against the hydra... and against its cousin, the Lernean Hydra. Unfortunately for heroes, they won’t know which version they are facing until they start lopping off heads...

Hydra of Flames (100 CPs)
Bite x5 (hit +5/ dmg +7); Evade +2; Soak D12+4
Bite +5 (x5); Breath Weapon +4 (x5); Intuition +4; Invulnerability +4; Might +5; Prowess +2
A chaotic, massive 5-headed serpent, the hydra of flames bites or breathes fire with each head on each turn it takes.

Special Resolve Option: Behead. When fighting a hydra with a bladed weapon in melee combat, a hero may elect to use a Resolve point on any attack dealing more than 10 wounds to the hydra to sever one of its heads. This automatically succeeds. For each head it loses, the hydra also loses 1 attack each round. If all 5 heads a severed, regardless of how many wounds the creature has remaining, it dies.

Lernean Hydra (120 CPs)
This especially fearsome version of the common hydra of flames, in addition to all abilities of its relative, also has Regenerate +8. When a head is severed from this creature, 2 heads grow back in place of the lost one. When these two heads grow, the creature refreshes its breath weapon for both heads. At most, this creature can have up to 10 heads active at one time. Any time a head is severed for a second time, it only grows back a single head. Even though it has multiple heads, it remains at 120 CPs and 120 wounds.