After the earlier post about a Jurassic Park RPG I was inspired to try and create a dinosaur adversary for the Genesys RPG.

There could only be one dinosaur to create first for such a setting and that is the poster boy for the movies, and arguably the most iconic, the T-Rex.

Creating a stat block from scratch is unusual for me. In D&D I usually cheat and reskin an existing creature/npc for my use. It cuts down on the work involved prepping considerably. It also helps that D&D has a pretty large menagerie to choose from also.

Sadly being a generic system, with at the time of writing two settings books (a third in the works), the available pool of creatures to use as a basis is a lot lot smaller.

I’ll be generating this adversary using the quick build guide from the Expanded Players Guide (EPL) Chapter 2 Adversary Creation.

I’ll issue a disclaimer at this point. This will be my first ever adversary for Genesys (a system I have yet to play). So there are going to be mistakes. At no point do I claim to be an expert on the rules or in creating custom content for Genesys. And to take whatever I say with a vary large unhealthy pinch of salt. We may differ on decisions made, and I look forward to discussing those in the comments in a respectful and polite manor.

Adversary Type: When creating an adversary we have three options available for its type. Those being minion, rival and nemesis. For me the T-Rex can only be a nemesis.

Characteristics: From Table II.2– 1: Characteristic Arrays I’ve gone with the Huge Creature array. This is for an Elephant, or dinosaur.

Soak, Defense,and Wound and Strain Thresholds: This uses Table II.2–2: Soak, Defense, and Wound and Strain Thresholds, and the advice is to choose two options from the table. I went with Armored Hide and Giant Body for the T-Rex. Armoured Hide for the T-Rex seemed a natural choice. I’m giving the T-Rex a silhouette of 3. This allows me to save 4 for the larger dinosaurs. The T-Rex is also going to get the adversary talent. Following the advice in the EPL side box about avoiding compounded defences this will be the only change made in making the T-Rex tougher in combat.

Skills: Using Table II.2–3: Skill Packages I went with choosing two skill packages. It should be noted I did have the option of picking a third. The two I chose were Ferocious Creature and Predatory Creature. I felt they fitted well with the T-Rex.

Talents and Special Abilities: For this I used the provided Table II.2–4: Adversary Talents and Table II.2–5: Adversary Special Abilities. I think the T-Rex could only have the Terrifying ability. It’s such a natural fit for it.

Equipment: I went with one of the pre-rolled equipment arrays. The large beast or creature array seemed a good fit. It’s designed for large creature like elephants and dinosaurs! I just removed tentacles or thundering hooves from the weapons because the T-Rex has neither.

Here is the final stat block for a T-Rex that I came up with.

I actually found the quick build guide easy to follow. Although it was unclear on how to generate the power levels. In the end I just added up all the adjustments provided throughout the chapter for the options I chose to get a final figure. With any final value that was a zero becoming a one instead as per the guide.