I am currently running a Dungeon World campaign where one of the characters has awoken a basalt colossus. The colossus is about the height of a 4 story building and super evil. In our upcoming session the players will likely meet this beast and will have to fight it.
In preparation for the inevitable combat I've been trying to mock up such a monster. I started with the monsters section on the GM sheet. While normally this sheet is pretty good the monster I ended up with was not very interesting.
The Basalt Golem
Solitary, Huge, Construct
20 HP, 1d10 + 3, 3 Armor, reachA towering statue made from basalt, the Basalt Golem was built to level cities and destroy armies. It is pure in its evil, seeking only to destroy everything in its path. It was defeated 500 years ago by the elves in the mountains, but now it has been awoken, and it is growing restless.
Instinct: to crush all it can see
Moves:
- Shake the earth.
- Crush something under its heel.
My first concern is that the health is really high. It has +12 from being solitary and +8 from its height but only 13 monsters in the SRD have 20+ health which kind of concerns me. The second is it being larger doesn't actually make much of a difference to how the players have to fight it.
Sure it gets more HP and more damage, but as it stands it seems like the players are going to just hit it in the shins while trying to avoid getting stomped.
How can I make a monster who's size influences the way that the PCs have to fight and kill it, other than just padding its stats?
I'd love to see the players having to climb the monster to get to a weak spot (a la shadow of the colossus), tie its feet together causing it to trip or some other creative way of bringing it down, but I don't feel like the standard monster creation is fostering that kind of narrative.