Multi-Part Enemies

The concept of multi-part enemies is built according to an idea common to both JRPGs and beat ‘em up games: a boss that appears as a single body, but with a variety of minor parts that can be targeted and damaged individually, to destroy, stun, or immobilize them for a certain amount of time.

This method offers a number of advantages:

It safeguards the value of multi-target abilities; those same abilities would otherwise be wasted against a solitary champion-rank enemy.
It prevents the battle from becoming too long, since the number of enemies goes down bit by bit when the various parts are reduced to 0 Hit Points.
It provides a lot more personality to enemies with a monstrous anatomy, making each section of their bodies a mini-enemy that supports or synergizes with the others, and these interactions show the nature, instincts, and habits of said creature.
It allows the Game Master to add regeneration rules that set the pace of the conflict and push the Players to make significant tactical decisions: do they want to eliminate the more aggressive secondary parts first, knowing that they might come back later? Or do they focus on the main body?

Enemy Composition Rules

As a rule of thumb, an enemy built according to this logic includes:

Main Body. An elite or champion rank NPC that, usually, has support abilities and an action or special rule that allows it to bring the other parts back into the scene (usually when the main body enters Crisis for the first time or at a set point each round). Sometimes (but not always!), defeating the main body causes the remaining parts to immediately leave the conflict. Parts. Each section of the creature that plays a pivotal role in their tactics has a separate profile, usually of soldier rank. Some parts are built for offense (such as the head of a dragon, a robot’s ventral turret, or a manticore’s spiked tail) and others for defense (such as an energy barrier generator, a claw shielding the body, or a floating ring).

In most instances, the ideal composition is a champion rank main body which replaces a number of soldiers equal to the PCs on the scene minus 1, accompanied by two soldier rank parts. However, as usual, you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. The following page presents some ideas to play with!