Monsters/Adding new monsters
Adding New Monsters
Statistically, monsters tend to stay pretty close to what a character of the same point cost could have, maybe 1 more Strongman here, and 1 less AD there, but not much beyond that. Lower-tier monsters don't tend to have both good carrying capacities and a fly speed.
The color descriptors of monsters are not particularly important. They don't need gems, and most monsters don't have any; the only reason monsters have color descriptors at all is to make it so a setting without a color of gem also automatically excludes monsters with powers similar to spells from that color.
Advancements are mostly provided as such for convenience and brevity. While making new advancements is fine, so is designing a totally new monster that's almost identical to an existing one.
Many games and shows like to do this thing sometimes called "Monster of the Week", where a previously unmentioned monster shows up and the heroes have to discover the monster's weakness in order to kill it. Because Gempunks allows the players to have monsters on their side, there are serious dangers with designing monsters that need to be beaten by exploiting overly specific weaknesses. Say you make a strange beast that can only be harmed by silver weapons and fire: once a player starts to play one, they're likely to be able to use it to stomp all over encounters with people who don't have silver weapons or fire; even if later opponents all come prepared, that seriously cuts down on the number of battles with lightning mages and non-[ Orange ] wild animals that the players will have to think to defeat.
