Nonplayer characters are people and creatures that live in the world alongside the PCs. They are just as much a part of the world as the PCs and should be portrayed just as realistically. NPCs are the main way to breathe life into the world, tell the stories the world has to tell, and portray the kind of game you want to run. Memorable NPCs can make or break a campaign.
NPCs shouldn’t be “cannon fodder” because no one thinks of themselves that way. Real people value their lives. They shouldn’t be idiots, easily fooled into doing things or acting in ways that no person ever would, simply because a die roll suggests it (unless they’re not very bright or something more powerful—like mind control—is at work).
Think about real people that you know or characters from books, television, and movies. Base your NPCs’ personalities on them. Make them as widely varying, as interesting, and as deep as those people.
Remember, too, that there are minor characters and major ones, just like in a book. The bandits who waylay the PCs are in the spotlight for only a few minutes at most and don’t need a lot of development, but a major adversary or ally might get a lot of attention from the players and therefore deserves a lot from you. As with so many things related to being a good GM, consistency and believability are the keys to developing a good NPC.
NPCs are easy to create. Most can simply be pegged at a level from 1 to 10 and you’re done. Working on how to describe or portray them will take longer than working up their game stats.
Sometimes, though, you’ll want to elaborate on the NPC’s capabilities and tailor them to the concept. A level 4 NPC who is a computer genius might be level 5 or 6 in computer-related tasks. But don’t simply make the NPC level 5 or 6 overall because then they’d also be better at combat, interactions, climbing, jumping, and everything else, and that doesn’t fit your concept.
Use the NPCs in chapter 12 as good starting points or examples for what you can do. But you’re not limited by them. In fact, you’re not limited in any way. The most important thing to remember about NPCs in Cypher is that they do not follow the same rules as PCs. They don’t have descriptors, types, or foci. They don’t have tiers or any of the same stats. They don’t even roll dice.
NPCs work precisely as you (and the setting and story) need them to. If an NPC is the greatest swordsman in the land, you can give him obvious advantages with a sword in attack and defense, but you can go outside the box as well, allowing him to attack more than once per turn, attempt to disarm foes with a flick of his blade, and so on.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for creating an NPC who can be matched perfectly against the PCs in combat—it’s not that kind of game, and that’s not the purpose of NPCs. Instead, use the game’s simple mechanics to portray the NPCs in the world and in your narrative so that they make sense and can do what you want them to do (and cannot do what you don’t want them to do).
Like the player characters, NPCs often carry and use cyphers. Thus, any NPC could have virtually any capability at their disposal as a one-shot power. In theory, NPCs can heal themselves, create force fields, teleport, turn back time, hurt a foe with a sonic blast, or do anything else. An NPC might also use spells, possess mutant powers, or have biomechanical implants. You can lay out these cyphers and abilities when preparing for the game, or you can just go with the idea that certain NPCs can produce amazing and surprising effects and make them up as you go along—with some caveats.
If all NPCs can do whatever they want, whenever they want, that won’t instill much belief in the players or give you much credibility as a GM. So keep the following things in mind.
Keep to the Level: NPCs should generally keep to their level parameters. Sure, you can give a tough NPC more health than their level might indicate, and the aforementioned great swordsman might attack and defend with his blade at higher than his normal level, but these are minor exceptions.
Explain Things However You Want: If you keep to the level parameters generally, you can express them in all sorts of interesting ways. For example, a level 5 NPC usually inflicts a moderate wound. But that damage might come from waves of magnetic force that they can produce thanks to a nanotech virus that has taken over their body.
Wild Cards: You might give some NPCs—sorcerers, gadgeteers with many strange devices, and the like—a wild card ability that allows them to do interesting things like levitate, use telekinesis, construct objects of pure force, and so forth. You don’t have to nail down these powers ahead of time. These rare NPCs can just do weird things. As long as you keep them reasonable most of the time, no one will bat an eye. (If every important foe has a force field, that will seem repetitious, dull, and unfair to the PCs.)
Use GM Intrusions: Since a PC can produce all kinds of interesting, useful, and surprising effects thanks to cyphers, you can occasionally replicate this for an NPC by using GM intrusion to give them precisely the ability needed in the current situation. If the NPC has been poisoned, they pull out a vial of antivenom. If a villain is cornered by the PCs, they activate a device on their belt that lets them phase down through the floor. If the foe is at the extreme edge of low health, they inject themselves with a temporary adrenaline boost that restores 15 points of health immediately.
NPCs have a health score that takes the place of tracking wounds or stat Pools. When an NPC reaches 0 health, they are down. Whether that means dead, unconscious, or incapacitated depends on the circumstances as dictated by you and the players. Much of this can be based on logic. If the NPC is cut in half with a giant axe, they’re probably dead. If they’re mentally assaulted with a telepathic attack, they might be insane instead. If they’re hit over the head with a club, well, that’s your call.
It also depends on the intentions of those who are fighting the NPC. PCs who want to knock out a foe rather than kill them can simply state that as their intention and describe their actions differently—using the flat of the blade, so to speak.
Whenever possible, creatures should be handled like other NPCs. They don’t follow the same rules as the player characters. If anything, they should have greater latitude in doing things that don’t fit the normal mold. A many-armed beast should be able to attack multiple foes. A charging rhino-like animal ought to be able to move a considerable distance and attack as part of a single action.
Consider creature size very carefully. For those that are quick and hard to hit, hinder attacks against them. Large, strong creatures should be easier to hit, so ease attacks against them. However, you should freely give the stagger ability to anything twice as large as a human. This means that if the creature strikes a foe, the target must make an immediate Might defense roll or lose their next turn.
Stagger: If the creature strikes a foe, the target must make an immediate Might defense roll or lose their next turn.
A creature’s level is a general indicator of its toughness, combining aspects of power, defense, intelligence, speed, and more into one rating. In theory, a small creature with amazing powers or extremely deadly venom could be high level, and a huge beast that isn’t very bright and isn’t much of a fighter could be low level. But these examples go against type. Generally, smaller creatures have less health and are less terrifying in combat than larger ones.
Cypher has no system for building creatures. There is no rule that says a creature with a certain ability should be a given level, and there is no rule dictating how many abilities a creature of a given level should have. But keep the spirit of the system in mind. Lower-level creatures are less dangerous. A level 1 creature could be poisonous, but its venom should inflict a minor wound or a few points of damage to a stat at most. The venom of a level 6 creature, however, might inflict a major wound or put the target into a coma if they fail a Might defense roll. A low-level creature might be able to fly, phase through objects, or teleport because these abilities make it more interesting but not necessarily more dangerous. The value of such abilities depends on the creature that uses them. In other words, a phasing rodent is not overly dangerous, but a phasing battle juggernaut is terrifying. Basic elements such as health, damage, and offensive or defensive powers (such as poison, paralysis, disintegration, immunity to attacks, and so on) should be tied directly to level—higher-level creatures get better abilities and more of them.
When designing new creatures and NPCs, one quick (and powerful) method is to take a creature that already exists and reskin it with a new description and flavor for its abilities that make sense in the new creature. For example, say you plan on taking your PCs into an underwater location and you want some annoying but consistently dangerous creatures to harass and distract them. You could take goblins and reskin them as “merbolds” with webbed hands and the ability to breathe underwater, but otherwise use them as presented.
The other method is to begin with a blank page and design your creature or NPC from the ground up. The remainder of this section covers that process; however, keep in mind that ideas and suggestions in this second part also apply to the creature reskinning method just described. For example, do you want to give your “merbolds” completely new abilities that goblins don’t have? Well, read on.
Designing creatures for Cypher is, at the most basic level, as easy as giving it a level. Add a description, and you’re done. That’s the magic of Cypher. You can describe a terrible slavering beast with three clawed limbs, a mouth like a sphincter, and some kind of blue jelly covering its flesh, but behind the screen the only mechanical bit you’re working from is that it’s level 5.
But if you want to go deeper, you can design exciting exceptions. Anytime you decide anything about a creature or NPC that isn’t information encoded in the level, you’re doing exceptions-based design.
A creature’s level is a measure of their power, defense, intelligence, speed, and ability to interact with the world around them. Generally, level is an indicator of toughness in combat, although it’s possible for a lower-level creature be a tougher opponent than a slightly higher-level one, in certain circumstances. Level isn’t an abstract tool to match creatures to PCs for “appropriate” encounters. Instead, it’s an overall rating of the creature to show how they fit into the context of the world.
No overriding rule restricts the abilities that can be given to a creature of a certain level, and no rule dictates how many abilities a creature of a given level should have. But keep the spirit of the system in mind: lower-level creatures are less dangerous. (That said, general guidance for creature effects by level, as well as other advice, is provided under Combat.)
A creature’s level is their most important feature. For some creatures, it is the only feature. If you know only the level, you have everything you need. Level determines how hard the creature or NPC is to hit; how hard they are to dodge, block, or resist; how much damage they do (typically a minor wound for creatures of levels 1 to 3, a moderate wound for levels 4 to 7, or a major wound for levels 8+); and even their health (typically a creature’s level x 3). A creature’s level tells you how hard they are to interact with, fool, or intimidate, and how well they can run, climb, and so on. It even tells you how fast they act in terms of initiative.
Of course, you’re free to modify any of this as fits the creature, either for what you want them to do in an encounter or—even better—to try to ensure that they make sense in terms of their place in the story and in the world. A really big creature should have more health but be easier to hit in combat, for example.
But in general, level is the default stat for the creature, with pretty much everything else being an exception. So when determining a level, figure out an appropriate rating (on a scale of 1 to 10) for the creature for most things. Don’t base their level on the one thing they do best because you can capture that as a modification.
Level is a creature’s baseline.
Since creatures don’t have stat Pools, you have to determine how much damage they can take, and that’s health. Unless you decide otherwise, health is the creature’s level x 3. But health should make sense. Really big creatures should have lots of health (probably more than what their level would indicate), and tiny ones should have very little (which often happens naturally if the creature is low level). Health is also a place where you can “cheat” a bit and give a creature that is exceptional in combat more health than their physicality might suggest, representing the fact that they are no pushover and not easily defeated.
Although there are many, many variables, it’s safe to think—as a baseline—that a group of four low-tier PCs is likely to dish out about 10 damage in a round. This figure assumes three characters with medium weapons or similar attacks, and one character with a heavy weapon or similar attack. The first two characters deal 4 damage, the third character has an ability that improves their medium weapon damage, so they deal 5 damage, and the last character with a heavy weapon gains the benefit of the same extra damage ability in addition to their heavy weapon, so they deal 7 damage. That’s a total of 20 damage. We can assume that they hit their target with a bit better than 50 percent accuracy if they are fighting a level 3 or 4 foe and using Effort. This very rough estimate tells you that a creature with a health of 11 or less will be wiped out in a single round (Armor figures hugely into this, however, so see below). A creature with a health of 12 to 23 will last for two rounds. A creature with a health of 24 to 33 will last for three. And so on.
For PCs who are third or fourth tier, add about 6 to the average damage they deal, on account that they’re likely using Effort to increase their damage. At fifth and sixth tiers, you can figure that the PCs will inflict about 20 to 25 damage each round.
Again, these are rough estimates based on averages. These averages don’t figure in high dice rolls, using lots of Effort, cyphers, artifacts, or GM intrusions. The estimates are useful as a rule of thumb to determine how hard or easy you want the fight to be. A single-round fight is kind of a pushover. Two to four rounds is interesting. Going five or six rounds is a tough fight. Combat encounters that go on longer than that can start to drag unless the creature is really interesting or the encounter offers something unique (for example, it occurs on a precipice over a river of toxic sludge, and the PCs have to protect a sickly NPC while dealing with their foes).
In other words, creature health is the knob to adjust when determining how long you want a combat encounter to last.
As a baseline, creatures of levels 1 to 3 inflict minor wounds, creatures of levels 4 to 7 deal moderate wounds, and creatures of level 8 or higher deal major wounds.
It’s important to remember that damage is based on the creature’s level, not other factors, such as if the creature is described as wielding a weapon that would, in a PC’s hands, be a light, medium, or heavy weapon. A level 3 creature with a medium weapon inflicts a minor wound with each attack (not a moderate wound, or 4 damage). Similarly, even if a creature is described as using a dagger (a light weapon when wielded by a PC), the creature’s attack isn’t eased beyond any modification noted in their full stats.
You can adjust the damage to fit the creature’s attack, but the level should always be used as the standard. A massive, strong creature could potentially deal a wound of greater severity than their level might suggest, and a creature with particularly large claws or a powerful bite might do so as well. A particularly skillful combatant might deal more damage too. In other cases, a creature might deal less damage than expected. For instance, a creature that makes precise attacks (which are eased) or that deals extra secondary damage to a PC’s Speed or Intellect could potentially deal only minor wounds even if they are level 4+ for their main attack.
Because a PC’s choice about whether they wear armor or not should be meaningful, resist the temptation to upgrade creature damage for creatures whose level suggests they should be dealing minor wounds (creatures of levels 1 to 3). Armor doesn’t guarantee a character will succeed on their block roll, but if they do, being rewarded by downgrading the severity of a minor wound to no wound at all feels good to the player.
You can use the determinations you made about a creature’s health as a useful gauge to figure out how many wounds and of what severity the creature will deal to the PCs in an encounter. Again, if you figure 50 percent accuracy, the creature will deal its wound severity every other round. So if a creature has enough health to last three rounds, on average, it will deal its wound severity twice.
Creatures that make multiple attacks on their turn potentially deal their damage with each attack, which can greatly affect damage output.
And as suggested above, sometimes a creature's attack deals non-standard damage that doesn't inflict a physical wound. Such attacks, like poison gas or a psychic blast, can deal damage directly to a character’s Pool. For instance, a psychic blast could inflict 3 damage to a PC's Intellect Pool, while poison gas breath might inflict 3 damage to Speed. The damage value to a PC’s Pool should (generally speaking) equal the creature's level, though consider halving that value if the damage is in addition to a standard wound inflicted as part of the same attack. For example, if a giant, stinging level 6 insect deals a moderate wound plus Speed damage, maybe the Speed damage is only 3 instead of 6—unless you want the poison to be especially effective.
A creature’s Armor doesn’t depend on level. The default is no Armor.
Armor (with a capital “A”) represents an NPC’s suit of physical armor, a creature’s thick skin, metal plating, scales, a carapace, mental wards, or any other type of similar protection.
Armor does not represent other things that might make a creature hard to damage, such as intangibility; these are represented in other ways.
Armor greatly influences how long a creature can last in a combat encounter. The Armor rating reduces the damage the creature suffers each round per character. So take our four characters mentioned above under Health, who inflict 4, 4, 5, and 7 damage, respectively. Against a foe with 3 Armor, the PCs inflict 1, 1, 2, and 4 damage. On an average round, they’ll inflict a total of 4 damage, and a creature with 11 health will last three rounds, not one. (Of course, against such a foe, smart PCs will use Effort to increase their damage.)
Again, don’t give every creature Armor. If everything has Armor 2, then all attacks just deal 2 fewer damage, and that’s not terribly interesting or satisfying to a player. Sometimes a creature with lots of health and no Armor can be an engaging encounter too. Other times, it’s interesting for PCs to quickly defeat a creature, or several creatures if they’re part of a throng of foes.
Although figuring out a creature’s Armor involves game mechanics, it should also reflect the nature of the creature. Thus, a beast with a somewhat thick hide might have Armor 1 or perhaps Armor 2. A mechanical creature, made mostly of metal, could have Armor 3 or more; however, if its skin is a thin sheet of metallic material, it might have just Armor 1 (or none—some ductile metals are as “soft” as human skin). Other creatures might have a natural carapace granting Armor 4 or more.
Generally, larger creatures (and/or higher-level creatures) have thicker hides or outer shells and thus will have higher Armor. Creatures with some type of protective energy field could have very high Armor, though in some cases, damage to such Armor is treated like damage to an object, and over time, the energy field’s level degrades.
No maximum amount of Armor is ever mandated, but keep in mind that Armor 6 is a very high rating and Armor 10 will make a creature almost invincible. On the off chance that a PC gives an NPC wearable armor, light armor provides Armor 1, medium armor provides Armor 2, and heavy armor provides Armor 3.
Other than Armor, the only thing that level doesn’t tell you is how fast a creature moves. However, unless there’s a really good reason to do otherwise, just assume that a creature’s movement is short, in that they move like a PC—they move a short distance as an action. Typically, flying creatures move a long distance in the air and a short distance (or immediate) on the ground.
Creatures with a long movement on the ground are usually large beings with a big stride or, in some cases, especially fast regular-sized creatures. Small creatures can be very quick, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily move more than a short distance in a single round.
Health, damage, and almost everything else in the creature’s entry provide a chance to mention exceptions to the default assumptions based on level. Modifications are a catch-all of other exceptions. Basically, these are all tasks that the creature performs at something other than their normal level.
A level 2 forest predator might be level 4 when it comes to stealth. A level 2 NPC who owns and operates a shop might be level 5 when it comes to tasks related to running it, including haggling, dealing with employees, and other business-related interactions. A level 3 creature with a heightened sense of smell and good hearing is probably level 4 or 5 when it comes to perception. Tiny creatures are usually a level or two higher when it comes to dodging attacks made against them.
Not all modifications are positive. If you design a huge creature, PCs attacks against them are probably as if against a creature a level or two (or more) lower. A dull or otherwise foolish creature that is hardly smarter than a beast might resist trickery a few levels lower than their actual level. A big, lumbering brute would likely be worse at stealth than their level would suggest. A stupid creature might be terrible at perception. Modifications that modify creatures down are just as interesting as those that modify up.
Don’t bother considering modifications in too much detail. Only think about things that will come up at the table. Figuring out how good a creature is at basket weaving or how much it knows about tidal pools probably isn’t worth the effort unless those elements play directly into your encounter.
Creatures that are quick and hard to hit are at least a level higher when it comes to dodging, effectively hindering a PC’s attack. Large, slow creatures should be easier to hit, so their dodge tasks are two or more levels lower, effectively easing a PC’s attack by the same amount.
There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to how a creature fights. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. “Combat” (the creature entry) is where you note how the creature makes their own rules. If you’re designing a creature for your own use, just make simple notes for how you want a combat encounter to play out so the creature fits the desired role in the grander scheme. They inflict wounds primarily by biting? Fine. They use poison? Good. Mental powers? Interesting. Use (or create) the mechanics to best replicate what you want the creature to do, not the other way around.
If your new creature is especially brave and likely to fight to the end, or if they are especially willing to avoid or run from a fight, also indicate that under Combat.
And, of course, decide if they have other special combat-related abilities. Here are further considerations to think about that don’t have their own headers in the standard creature entry format.
No matter how big and tough they are, it’s difficult for a single creature to hold their own against a group of foes like the PCs. Giving a creature multiple attacks as a single action—so that the creature can attack some or all of the characters at once—goes a long way toward making them a suitable foe for a group of opponents. Certainly PCs will pay more attention to, respect, and potentially fear a creature that makes two (or more!) attacks on their turn, which may be exactly the kind of tension you want to inject into an encounter.
However, creatures with multiple attacks that appear in groups can simply be annoying, as the combat encounter will take quite a while to resolve (with lots of defense rolls to be made). In that case, you could treat each creature’s multiple attacks as a single coordinated attack to save time.
Attacks that ignore a PC’s armor (or that are transmitted by touch, which means even a successful block chance may not prevent all or any of the effect) can scare players. Such attacks might drain life, entangle or grab PCs, be made by an intangible ghost, or be sharp enough to cut right through whatever the PC is wearing.
Use armor-ignoring attacks sparingly because if lots of attacks made by different creatures ignore PC armor, players who planned their defensive strategy around blocking will feel foolish, and their enjoyment of your game will suffer.
A creature or NPC can have almost any kind of power or ability you want to dream up. Basically, it comes down to what kind of roll the player makes—an Intellect defense roll to ward off a weird mind attack, a dodge roll to avoid a barrage of spikes, a block roll to decrease that attack’s severity, a Might defense roll to resist cellular disintegration, or perhaps something else. The difficulty of the roll and the damage dealt by the attack are based primarily on the level of the creature, although this can be modified if it seems appropriate.
Maybe there’s no roll involved. The creature just walks through the wall, teleports, or melts the metal object they hold in their palm. Although some of these abilities can give a creature a tactical advantage in a combat encounter, they’re just as often there to make the creature or NPC more interesting.
This means that level is probably more important than any particular ability when it comes to determining a creature’s “toughness.” And it also means that you don’t have to save the cool abilities just for high-level creatures.
All that said, if you’re looking for benchmarks for what kind of abilities a creature might have access to, check out the $Creature Effects by Level table$. But remember—it’s not gospel that can never be violated; creatures are myriad, and any particular one might have an ability that is better or worse than what’s indicated on the table. That’s fine; there is probably a good reason for that, and regardless, there are always more creatures for your PCs to encounter, interact with, and possibly fight, fool, or flee from.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most NPCs and creatures are “on the stage” for a few minutes or less before the PCs move on to some other location or encounter. So giving a creature multiple different abilities may not pay off, as PCs may never experience more than one or two of those effects, however interesting. Concentrating on a core ability or a core set of related abilities can be an effective way to go when designing new creatures.
One way to make lower-level creatures more efficacious in combat is to give them a coordinated attack. If some number of them act together to make a single attack, the attack is made at a higher level and inflicts more damage. Often, at least three or four creatures are required, the attack is made at two levels higher than the level of one individual, and the wound dealt for a successful attack is one step more severe.
For example, say a glowing roach is a level 2 creature that inflicts a minor wound, but when a swarm of four of them act together, they make a single attack as a level 4 creature that inflicts a moderate wound.
Coordinated attacks are often made by small or tiny creatures, but they could also be made by creatures that are used to working together as a pack or team, by a military unit, or by those linked telepathically or through cyberspace, for instance.
PC attacks on creatures making coordinated attacks are resolved normally. And if the PCs take down more than the minimum number of creatures required to coordinate attacks, the remaining creatures can no longer rely on that tactic.
Affecting a PC usually requires a failed defense roll or task attempt of some sort by the PC.
Just because the table indicates an effect is available for a creature in the level band you’ve chosen doesn’t mean a particular creature has it. For instance, many creatures don’t have Armor or have less Armor than that presented as a benchmark. Others may have more Armor than indicated, but those should be the exception; if the PCs can’t effectively harm a creature with their weapons, there should be a good reason within the context of your game why that’s so.
| Level 1–3 |
|---|
| Inflict minor wounds |
| Armor 1 |
| One or two abilities from the Low-Tier Effects section of the Effects by Tier table |
| Level 4–7 |
| Inflicts moderate wounds |
| Armor 3 |
| One or two abilities from the Mid-Tier Effects section of the Effects by Tier table |
| Level 8–9 |
| Inflicts major wounds |
| Armor 5 |
| One or two abilities from the High-Tier Effects section of the Effects by Tier table |
| Level 10+ |
| Inflicts two or more major wounds |
| Armor 10 |
| One or two abilities from the High-Tier Effects section of the Effects by Tier table |
| One or two abilities inspired by an effect on the Ultra-Power Manifest Cyphers table |
Published Cypher bestiaries provide these entries for creatures, but for your home-brewed creature, they probably aren’t necessary. After all, you designed the creature, so you know how to use it and where it’s found, and you probably have a good idea of how the PCs can interact with it.
That said, it doesn’t hurt to have an idea of how a creature will interact when the PCs try to talk with it. See Fitting the Creature to Your Game.
The ideas behind a creature are just as important as its combat stats—or perhaps more important. How does it fit into your game? What role will it play in your story—is it once and done, or something the PCs will encounter examples of several times?
If a newly designed creature isn’t something the PCs will encounter more than once, it’s probably not important to spend time providing a detailed backstory. Even so, it’s possible that lore about the creature will evolve organically; some PC groups always try talking with a new NPC or creature, even if it seems obvious (to you) that the encounter will end in combat. But in those cases (and in many less fraught encounters), an interaction PCs have with a creature might spark a new idea that you can build into its backstory retroactively. For instance, maybe you introduce—merely for color on the spur of the moment—an NPC thief who tried to burgle the PCs along the road. The PCs catch and interrogate the thief, and in doing so they might learn any number of things you make up on the spot, such as her name, that she is on the run from weird monsters that destroyed her village, and that she only tried stealing because she is hungry and out of other options.
Other times, you’ll want to explore a creature’s backstory ahead of time, either because they’re important to your worldbuilding or simply because they include an interesting idea you want to develop. When you do, you’ll likely determine how creatures of this sort begin interactions with strangers.
For instance, if you’ve created a species of intelligent fungi from an ice moon, you might decide they always begin any encounter with a telepathic song or riddle, just to see how newcomers respond. Or to go back to the merbold creature design example, you might decide that newly encountered aquatic beings throw dead fish. Merbolds see this as a sign of respect and a gift exchange, though other creatures may miss the cultural cues and feel insulted. All creatures exist in the context of their world. In the fiction of an RPG game, we can trust that every creature is connected to at least one other element in the environment, whether predator or prey, even if you haven’t described that relationship.
Although it’s often best to come up with GM intrusions on the fly, based on the current needs of the story, it’s not a terrible idea to have one up your sleeve in case you want to use an intrusion but don’t have any great ideas at the moment.
When coming up with GM intrusions, it can be tempting to use ones that result in more damage or have other straightforward effects. Often, however, you’ll get more mileage out of them if they are story based—for example, the huge creature starts to swallow the PC whole, or the lumbering beast stumbles and falls on the character. This is stuff that really changes the encounter and leads to a good story that everyone will remember afterward.
The best kind of GM intrusion is one where you describe what happens and then ask the PCs, “Now what do you do?” In published Cypher bestiaries, each creature usually has at least one accompanying GM intrusion.
NPCs could gain a beneficial or harmful ongoing effect from an item, another NPC, a location, a creature, or a PC special ability. Without recoveries or mechanics for defense rolls, it may not be obvious how long a duration affects an NPC.
The first thing to ask yourself: Does it matter? When an encounter ends, PCs may never see the participating NPC again. In these circumstances, any lingering effects play out off-screen without you or your players devoting any mental energy to wondering.
But for those times when it’s important to know, maybe because the affected NPC is a recurring ally, enemy, or follower, you can use the following guide.
Durations for Followers: For a beneficial effect, the NPC gains the benefit until the PC they follow uses a recovery of the indicated length. For instance, if an NPC follower uses a darksight manifest cypher that lasts until a PC uses a ten-hour recovery, the NPC can see in the dark until whoever they follow uses a ten-hour recovery.
If a follower suffers from an ongoing harmful effect, the PC makes defense rolls, attempts escape tasks on the follower’s action, or must expend indicated non-rest recoveries on behalf of their follower to end the effect.
Durations for Other NPCs: Non-follower NPCs (including allies, foes, bystanders, and creatures) retain beneficial effects for about a minute if the effect normally ends when a PC would use a one-action recovery, and for about ten minutes if the effect normally ends with a ten-minute recovery. These NPCs retain beneficial effects for about one hour or one day if the duration normally ends when a PC uses a one-hour or ten-hour recovery, respectively.
For a quick harmful ongoing effect, an NPC suffers the effect for about one minute.
For a short-term harmful ongoing effect, an NPC suffers the effect for about one hour.
For a long-term harmful ongoing effect, an NPC suffers the effect for about one week.
For a sudden catastrophic effect, an NPC is permanently affected unless some other change in the situation frees them or the PCs make a special effort to free them from the effect.