Creating Creatures, NPCs, Items, Traps

A previous post on Magical Creatures was very popular, so I  wanted to talk about how I did it. I focused on creating monsters according to their threat to a team of adventurers. I kept the Jackelope and Barbegazi as non-threatening level 1s while making the powerful Sphinx and Ent higher level. The one example of a boss I built is the Marshmallow Guy.
The process for creating quick NPCs in Open Legend is so simple that I would generally focus on knowing the level of my player team and encounter difficulty. With these things in mind I would decide on the number of creatures I wanted them to encounter and stat accordingly. This means that I'm rarely focused on what creatures I need to build or intent on stat blocks.
Some great things about monsters, NPCs or any other opposition in Open Legend:

1. They don't give XP, so you don't have to worry about giving a certain number to hit session goals.
2. Their definitions are loose. No skills, easy attributes and defenses.
3. You can describe anything. Your quick NPC build can also be used to give you the statistical description of a powerful artifact or item if you need it to.

Focus on the stats that are significant. For most monsters or NPCs you can describe them by what you want them to do. A ghost should be spooky. A medusa should be horrufying. Both of these could be high Presence monsters but a ghost might use Entropy powers where a medusa would use Alteration.

Add an effect. My particular favorite for NPCs is Bane Focus, because there is something that I want the NPC to do. For the ghost, it would be Fear. For the Medusa, Immobilize. Those things become easier to do and more likely to occur in combat. Status effects are a great way to make sure players feel challenged without just hitting characters. It's a lot easier to control if you worry about a Total Party Kill (TPK) that could end a game. It's also frustrating but not irreversible, so a player turned to stone might sit out a round or 3 rolling resists but doesn't feel removed from the game entirely.

A item is no different than an NPC in the quick process. If it is going to get hit, give it HP and Defenses. Give it a primary attribute based on what it will do. For example, a Malfunctioning Boiler uses Energy and has a rating of 5. It has 5 HP because it is easily destroyed, but has a good Guard and Toughness because it is made of metal. It has no resolve but is unlikely to be affected by most statuses.

Malfunctioning Boiler (Level 3)
HP 5
Guard: 15
Toughness: 15
Resolve: 6
Energy 5
Bane Focus (Knockdown)
The item has an Area effect. It makes an Energy attack against Toughness over a 10' radius.

Open Legend's rules include a section on Ad Hoc damage that could be used for traps. If you wanted something more complex, this could be a way to create them.The severity level of the damage can be a good way to track how it compares to an NPC and what effect it will have on encounter difficulty. Because this Ad Hoc damage is not compared to a Defense but applied directly to a character, I would suggest treating it as level-equivalent to an NPC for encounter building (Trap with Severity 3 is equivalent to NPC level 3). Either is a significant hinderance to a team as they attempt to overcome an encounter.