8.0 Monsters, Negotiation, and Bribery

General Rule

During play, the party will often come face to face with the maze's monstrous inhabitants. When this happens, it has three kinds of response to choose from: negotiation, an attempt at bribery, or combat.

Successful negotiation lets the party continue exploring the maze without having to fight the monster it just ran into. If negotiation fails, the party may still try to bribe its way past. If that fails too, only combat remains. Its only possible outcome is the death of one side or the other. If the party wins, its characters may divide up whatever treasure the defeated monster held.

Procedure

When the party enters a new segment, it must check whether that segment contains any monsters. This check is made with a roll of 1K6.

If the new segment is a room the party hasn't visited before, rolling a 1, 2, or 3 means a resident monster lairs in that room. Check its kind in table 8.3 "Resident Monsters" (rolling 1K6 twice).

If the new segment is a room the party has already visited, or any corridor, rolling a 1 means the party has run into a wandering monster. Check its kind in table 8.3 "Wandering Monsters".

Detailed Rules

[8.1] If the die roll indicates a monster encounter, check its kind in the appropriate table for that monster type (resident or wandering).

One player rolls 1K6 twice, and at the intersection of the row matching the first roll and the column matching the second roll, reads off the kind and number of monsters encountered. Remember to account for the maze level (see 6.8).

[8.2] Table "Monster Stats": see the table board.

[8.3] Tables: "Resident Monsters", "Wandering Monsters": see the table board.

[8.4] Players may attempt to negotiate with any monster except The Nameless One and Demons.

The negotiation mechanism is as follows:

• a. Look up the "reluctance to negotiate" stat for the encountered monster or group of monsters of the same species in table 8.2.
• b. One player rolls 2K6 and subtracts the stat found in step a. from the total rolled, then adds the "negotiation" ability of any party member (e.g. a "negotiation" ability of +2 means 2 should be added to the total rolled on 2K6). Certain spells may also affect the negotiation result (see 10.7).
• c. The final result from step b. is looked up in table 8.5 "Negotiation", and the corresponding negotiation result is read off.

[8.5] Table "Negotiation": see the table board.

[8.6] Table 8.5 lists three possible negotiation results:

• failure: the attempt failed, and the party may try to bribe its way past, or engage the monster in combat,
• agreement: as long as the party doesn't attack the monster, the monster won't attack the party either. The party may examine any finds present in that segment, or move on.
• intimidation: the party manages to convince the monster it stands no chance in a direct confrontation, so the monster not only leaves the party alone but also hands over a quarter of its treasure as tribute. Having taken that quarter, the party may of course still attack the monster (e.g. to get the rest of the treasure).

[8.7] If negotiation fails, the party may attempt to buy its freedom by offering the monster (this does not apply to The Nameless One or Demons) a set amount of gold pieces.

Checking whether the bribe is accepted proceeds as follows:

• a. add together the strength and reluctance-to-negotiate stats of the strongest monster in the group,
• b. set aside a certain amount of gold as the bribe,
• c. in table 8.9 "Bribery", at the intersection of the column matching the sum from step a. and the row matching the amount of gold offered, find a digit from 0 to 6,
• d. one player rolls 1K6 and compares the number rolled to the digit found in step c. If the number rolled is less than or equal to that digit, the bribe is accepted.

A monster accepting a bribe puts the party in a situation equivalent to reaching an "agreement" result in negotiation (see 8.6). If the monster does not accept the bribe, it attacks the party first (the party's attack phase is skipped).

Regardless of whether the monster accepts the bribe or not, the party loses the gold offered. Of course, if the monster is later killed, that gold can be taken back, along with its own treasure.

[8.8] Only one bribery attempt may be made against any given monster or group of monsters, regardless of its size.

[8.9] Table "Bribery": see the table board.