Malice¶
Just as every hero has a Heroic Resource determined by their class, so too do the heroes' foes need their own juice to fuel their strongest threats. Malice is a resource gained and used by the Director. You use Malice to let enemies in the game activate their most powerful abilities and throw surprises at the heroes during combat.
Earning Malice¶
At the start of combat, you gain Malice equal to the average number of Victories per hero. Then at the start of each combat round, you gain Malice equal to the number of heroes in the battle, plus the combat round number. For instance, if five heroes with three Victories each are just starting their first combat round, you begin that combat with 9 Malice-3 for the average number of Victories, 5 for the number of heroes, and 1 for the first round of combat. At the start of the next round, provided all the heroes are still alive, you gain 7 Malice-5 for the number of heroes plus 2 for the second round. As long as none of the heroes is taken out of the fight, you gain 8 Malice in the third round, 9 Malice in the fourth round, and so on.
If a hero dies, they stop generating Malice for you. At the end of an encounter, any unused Malice is lost.
It's up to you whether you want to show the players how much Malice you have. Some Directors feel that the tension of watching Malice creep up can create great drama, while others like to keep the players guessing about what Malice-fueled mayhem might come next. Do whatever is the most fun for your group, and if you're not sure, ask your players what they would prefer!
Spending Malice¶
Monsters can spend Malice the way heroes spend their Heroic Resource, activating and enhancing their abilities. Abilities that make use of Malice have their Malice cost noted in a creature's stat block.
Specific types of monsters sometimes have other ways they can spend Malice once per turn, typically on features that affect an entire group of enemies, additional main actions or maneuvers they can take during their turn, or events that affect the encounter environment. Such features appear in a special [Creature] Malice stat block entry that precedes individual stat blocks in a creature's overall section.
You won't be able to spend Malice on every single option a given encounter has to offer. It's totally up to you how you deploy Malice. You can spend it on smaller but still impactful features each combat round. You can save it up and use it on a small number of extremely dramatic abilities. You can spend it on the same feature that uses all available Malice each combat round and then forget about it until the next round. Do whatever creates the most fun for you and makes the most narrative sense in a given encounter.
Basic Malice Features¶
All monsters have access to the following Malice features, in addition to any "[Creature] Malice" features they might have.
Basic Malice¶
At the start of any monster's turn, you can spend Malice to activate one of the following features:
Brutal Effectiveness (3 Malice)
The monster digs into the enemy's weak spot. The next ability the monster uses with a potency has that potency increased by 1.
Malicious Strike (5+ Malice)
The monster pours all their animosity into their attack. Their next strike deals extra damage to one target equal to the monster's highest characteristic score. The extra damage increases by 1 for each additional Malice spent on this feature (to a maximum of three times the monster's highest characteristic). This feature can't be used two rounds in a row, even by different monsters.
That's So Much Malice!
You often need to prepare only three Malice features for any given encounter, or four if you're running an encounter making use of multiple monster types or bands (for example, orcs and goblins). Just pick a feature costing 2 to 3 Malice, a feature costing 5 Malice, and a feature costing 7 to 10 Malice and you should be covered.