Hate Bear

The Hate Bear is a monstrous white bear that grows to three metres in length. It is the only known species of bear-mutant to not have a typical head. The Hate Bear's fur thins out near the top of the chest, revealing a great muscular maw, surrounded by spiky tentacles that seek to grasp, ensnare and then swallow prey.

The tentacles of the Hate Bear move and seem to track prey without any visible eyes. They respond to sound and can elongate to the length of the Hate Bear. A deep bass growl echoes up from the pit of the stomach. Encountering humans and other sentient species, the Hate Bear tends to only attack if surprised, otherwise it will snarl, growl and posture to intimidate. If weakness is shown too quickly, the Hate Bear will attack. If a bear is encountered with a cub it will fight to the death to protect the little one.

The fur of Hate Bears is extremely flammable; the shoulder blade and chest bones of bears are quite valuable, as they can be fashioned (by a skilled armourer) into a flexible armour that is as tough as chainmail but as light as leather armour.

Hate Bear (originally designed for play in LotFP)

Found "Somewhere North"; icy, snowy conditions. Lives in caves.

AC16 (equivalent to chainmail)

5HD

Can swipe big paws twice (2 attacks) for d8 damage each but at -2 to hit. After a successful swipe and if close can try to grapple with tentacles at +2 to hit. No damage, but restrains successfully trapped prey; will not attack but will attempt to swallow on next turn. Very difficult to escape. Swallowed victims will take d4 crushing damage and d2 acid damage (damages armour first).

A Hate Bear cub has AC12 (no armour), 2HD and only one swiping attack that does d4 damage. It's too small to grasp and swallow, but has tentacles. All Hate Bears have 2d4 spiky tentacles.

TL;DR - a huge polar bear with the pre-Special-Edition-Sarlacc's maw instead of a head! 

Random and Biased

Following on from my post "Different Dice" a few days ago, I think there is another important distinction to be made between the ideas of random and biased.

For example, if we roll a fair d6 - i.e., one which is not weighted in favour of any particular result - then whatever it lands on we know that it the result is both random and unbiased, because the die is fair. If we roll 2d6, paying attention to the sum as the result of this event, then while the result itself is still random it is biased. Because of the different ways that you can make a total of 7 from rolling two d6 dice, a 7 is six times more likely than getting a result of 2 or of 12 (both of which have only one way of being achieved).

I'm interested in this kind of bias a lot at the moment; I was tinkering/hacking together a zombie game* based a little on Risus and a little on Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World works well with its main dice mechanic because it is so straight forward: for around 60% of the time on a general (unmodified) roll your action carries - or at least you get some success. For less than 20% of the time the dice give you exactly what you want. This seems like a neat way to do it: the outcome is random, and there is a slight overall bias towards success.

But in the messed up post-apocalypse, maybe those are the kind of odds you need.

*more on that setting/game another time!