Making a Specialist

Specialists are Monster Care Squad’s heroes. They’re trained experts in the new field of Monster Medicine and the frontline warriors against the False Gold. Everybody creates a Specialist, even the Guide. Every Specialist has a number of important details, but it’s important as you go through this step that you remember those are just the mechanical extensions of your character’s self. They’re a special person in a special world doing special work, so try to keep their story in mind as you fill out your character sheet. It’s okay to not know who your character is right now; lots of their identity, history, and destiny will become clear through play.

Trainings And Background

Every specialist has four Trainings and one Background that their player will invent, reflecting the conditioning, prior life experience, cultural knowledge, and passions of that specialist. The space on your sheet for these Trainings and Backgrounds has one of five stats written in the box. These stats are Force, Fine, Grit, Acuity, and Allure.

Stat	Description
Force	Physical Strength and grand action
Fine	Motor control and delicate actions
Grit	Stamina and fighting spirit
Acuity	Thinking and observtaion
Allure	Leadership and charm

Trainings can be thought of as classes that your specialist took when they attended a Monster care academy or special fields of study that their mentor passed on to them. These can be anything, but try to keep in mind the sorts of skills that might be useful when identifying a sickness, creating a cure, and applying it. Specificity is also a good idea; it may seem like a good idea to be as general as possible, but you’re playing as a Specialist in a team of other Specialists. Specialize! You also need to think about what training goes with which stat. There’s no mechanical limit here, but a character who performs surgery with Force is very different from one that performs it with Fine.

You also have one Background. This represents the kind of person your Specialist is outside of their Monster Care Squad life. This can be an interesting skill, a valuable perspective, or even just a hobby your character has. Are they a good baker? A hiker? Born somewhere far, far away from here? An astronomer? These are all great backgrounds. Backgrounds also go into one of the five stats.

Once you’ve got your four Trainings and one Background assigned to unique Stats, we have to assign some numbers to them. Assign the following to whichever Training or Background you like, again keeping in mind what kind of a Specialist you want to build:

• +1
• +1
• +0
• +0
• -1

Bigger numbers imply further mastery or focus of the training or background in question:

Modifier	Description
+3	a world-renown master
+2	an expert with few equals
+1	a highly trained professional
+0	a recent graduate
-1	a capable amateur

Here’s some examples for Trainings and Backgrounds and which stats they might fit in.

• Force
  • Bone-Setting
  • Weight Training
  • Grappling
  • Massage Specialist
• Fine
  • Surgery
  • Acupuncture
  • Suturing
  • Apothecarology
• Grit
  • Resuscitation
  • Methodical Investigation
  • Dentistry
  • Musician
• Acuity
  • Library Science
  • Analytical Thinking
  • Monster Biology
  • Engineering
• Allure
  • Public Speaking
  • Small Squad Leadership
  • Haggling
  • Interdisciplinary Communication

Signature Equipment

Every Monster Care Specialist carries the tools of their trade and you’re assumed to have essentials with you whenever you have your backpack, satchel, or bag. In addition to these common tools, your character has a piece of Signature Equipment—a special piece of kit that only you have that is unique in some way, either in its purpose or it’s construction. You might have a wheelchair specifically designed for Monster Grappling, or a long range medical injection spear made with the guiding feathers of the Roa Bird. This piece of equipment counts as a Character Ace that you can spend for a bonus to your rolls once per session. We explain Aces on page [pg.29].

Specialties

Under your character’s name is a space to write their Specialities. It’s a sentence that lists two things your character can do that no one else can. These are abilities and special skills that your character will always succeed at. You can write anything here, but it should have a very specific utility. They can be mundane or magical, but try to keep it at least a little grounded. It’s no fun for the rest of the table if your Speciality can trivialize every single situation or it breaks from the general tone of the game. It’s also nice to include a little restriction in your Speciality; that tends to make it more interesting.

A good rule of thumb is to ask if you can imagine a friend you know having this ability if you lived in the world of Ald-Amurra.

Good Examples

• Salazar can jump higher than anyone else and identify any plant by smell
• Kai can create a magical lantern and bake incredible pies
• Iman can brew a night-eye potion and navigate by starlight
• Pike can run faster than anyone he’s ever met and knows more about Monster leavings than anyone else
• Dru-u can levitate for a short while and craft beautiful bracelets

Bad Examples

• Calagan can kill anything he sees and run as fast as sound
• Saz can live without food and knows everything about all forms of medicine
• Kuff-Ka can survive underwater indefinitely and turn into an enormous bird
• Samson can lift one hundred tons and fire lightning from their eyes
• Rusha can read every language in the world and teleport at will
• Kiska can control minds and cause incredible agony at will

Specialites are a good way to make your character really stand out and be cool, so make it count. Importantly, don’t try to step on any of your other friends toes—if someone says their character is an expert Smeller, and can identify Monsters by scent alone, and you want to be an expert Sniffer, who can identify poison by smell alone, maybe have a word and come to an understanding. The game is more fun if everyone is lifting each other up.

This isn’t to say people can’t share similar Specialities, just make sure everyone is in on the bit.

One restriction to keep in mind with Specialties is they shouldn’t provide an immediate, accurate diagnosis of the Monster’s conditions, or be sufficient on their own to cure a Monster’s Wounds—though they can help you do those things. Generally you want to make your Specialities the sort of thing that helps, but doesn’t quite solve a problem all on its own.

A lot of this advice is tone related. If you want to play Monster Care Superheroes, your Specialities will be different than usual play, but you should feel free to disregard as needed.

Moves

Monster Care Squad uses Moves. Moves are like micro rules that you follow when your character does certain actions. Moves have four major parts—a context, a trigger, the rule, and the result. The context is what phase of play it is typically used in. The trigger is a small sentence that tells you when the rules of the Move apply. The rule tells you exactly what steps to take when the Move triggers. The result shows you what happens afterwards. There is a diagram below that should help.

Moves and how they trigger can be a little confusing for people new to the format. Moves trigger whenever the trigger says they do—if a Move your character has says “When you grapple with the Monster and try to pin it down,” then whenever you attempt to do that (or something approximate), then you should follow the rules for that Move. Sometimes you will want to do something that isn’t covered by a Move. That’s fine! Just tell the Guide or the table how you attempt to do this and see what they say happens, or use the Check The Wind Move on page 48.

Some Moves will ask you to roll+ something. When you trigger a Move with this text, roll two six-sided dice and add the number you have in the relevant stat. You may also add +1 to the roll if your Training or Background in that stat is relevant to the roll. Generally, a 10+ means you get what you want, and we tend to refer to this as a success. A result of 7-9 generally means you succeed but it costs you, you succeed partially, or you need to make some kind of difficult choice. On a 6 or below, something will go wrong—this is often when the Guide will step in and make things more “interesting” for you. We sometimes refer to a result of 6 or below as a failure, or a miss.

Many Moves will ask you to pick questions from a list to ask the Guide. There will be times when these questions don’t quite fit what you’re trying to figure out. Feel free to tweak the questions on the list to better suit the info you’re getting at, in that case.

Occasionally a Move will only trigger if you have a relevant training or background. In those cases, check your training and backgrounds and see if you have any that seem like they’d count for the situation. If you do, roll and add the stat associated with that training or background without any +1 for the relevant Training/Background. If there’s any disagreement about if a training counts or not, you can always ask the other players. When these Moves ask you to roll, they ask you to roll+STAT.

Zaz and Kaine are exploring the hidden forests to the south east of the world, and they’ve come across tracks. They’re in the Diagnosis phase of play, and Kaine has “Tracker (ACUITY)” +2.

Kaine: Which way do the tracks go?Zaz: They’re headed south, away from the village and toward the old grove of ancient buildings you were exploring earlier

Kaine: Okay, I think that means the Monster is probably looking for something in the area, maybe some way to relieve the pain of infection, or something. I’m gonna poke around here a little more and see if I can confirm that, then head over to the ruins.

This triggers the “Here’s What I Got” Move. Potentially, it could have triggered the In Harm’s Way Move instead if there was a real danger of harm coming to Kaine, but our players go with the first one. At your table, feel free to discuss which Moves get triggered when.

Kaine rolls 2D6+ACUITY, which is at +2, and her Tracker training is relevant, so she’s rolling at +3. She gets a 10! She can pick two options from Here’s What I Got’s list, and picks “Mark a Clock segment” and “Know where the Monster is Headed next.” Zaz marks one Clock segment as Successful.

Zaz: Your hunch is correct, confirmed when you arrive at the ruins and find one of the buildings has been torn from the ground and damaged, huge claw marks have torn the stone to bits, and a dark, empty ruin beckons you closer…

Hold and Forward

Two terms that trip people up a lot in games that use this format are Hold and Forward. Hold is a currency some Moves give you that you can spend triggering various options. You don’t have to spend your Hold right away, but it will go away once the Move stops being relevant. You may only spend Hold on options provided by the Move you triggered to gain that Hold. Forward is similar, but simpler. Forward is usually a small bonus that applies to your next roll. The Move will tell you exactly what that bonus is and what kind of rolls it can apply to, but generally it gives you +1 the next time you roll for a suitable action then goes away.

Monster Gifts

The Monsters of Ald-Amura are generous, kind, and grateful beings. They are known to grant boons and magic to people they’re close to or to those in need. It’s considered a great honor to receive these gifts, though Monsters are by no means stingy and many of the people you run into in Ald-Amura will have a Monster Gift of some kind. There’s no special name or title for people with Monster Gifts; it’s just expected that if you live around the same Monster for long enough, and you’re generally a good person, sooner or later they will grant you some of their power.

When you level up after healing a Monster, you may choose to upgrade an existing Move to its Monster Gift form. When you do this, color in the dot beside the new Move text and give the Move a Tell. A Tell is an aspect of the creature you healed that carries over to you when you were granted the Monster Gift. This could be anything from a particular smell that wafts as you trigger your upgraded Move to a new physical appearance to a song that plays in your head as you invoke the power the Monster has entrusted you with.

Your Tell might only manifest when you trigger the relevant Move, or it may be a permanent change in your character’s appearance. It’s up to you. Maybe your character leaves a faint smell of cherry blossoms and woodsmoke wherever they go, or maybe their tail and strange eyes only manifest when they brew their potions. It’s totally your choice.

Upgraded Moves usually use the same triggers as their unupgraded versions and you may opt to use their additional abilities or not at your discretion. Some Monster Gifts will have an entirely different trigger than their base form. In these cases, you only use the Move you trigger.

One quick note: a lot of these Moves rely on you knowing how the various phases of play work in Monster Care Squad. Jump on over to page 31 to read about that.

Monster Gifts, What are they?

The exact nature of a Monster Gift varies from Monster to Monster. Some will give you a physical object or piece of small jewelry to keep with you as a symbol of your connection, others will touch your spirit and imbue it with power. Some will remake your clothes, or mark you with a tattoo. When you opt to take a Monster Gift, feel free to be bold and creative with how it’s given to you.

Check out the Move List and pick two that you think fit your character well. You will get more during play and you have unrestricted access to a common pool of Moves that every player can use. You can read about the common Moves in the Diagnosis, Synthesis, and Symbiosis phase sections.