Encounter: Lagiacrus

Something Like this.

I'm playing a lot of Monster Hunter World, and I dunno what to write this week, so as a thought exercise, let's stat up a Lagiacrus. Using data from one of the Monster Hunter Wikis, Gulliver Mini from T-Bone's Diner, the 3e stats of a Liopleurodon from GURPS Dinosaurs, and the 3e to 4e conversion guide, let's see what happens.

Sizing Up And Converting

Stats in 3e are a little different than stats in 4e, and the Lagiacrus is about 1.29x times longer than a Liopleurodon, on average. I wrote up a spreadsheet to take all the 3e attributes of a slightly smaller dinosaur and size them up a bit for a slightly bigger "dragon." Without any modification, these are the stats:

ST: 34	HP: 71	Speed: 8
DX: 9	Will: 10	Move: 15
IQ: 3	Per: 12
HT: 15	FP: 15	SM: +7
Dodge: 11	Parry: 7	DR: 3

It's nominal melee attacks have a reach of 10, and it is about 29 yards long. The 10 is meant to start from the middle of the footprint, but it doesn't extend far enough to give bites more than the minimum reach c. I think that the "sleek" profile almost matches, but I'll say that the body is about 3 yards wide towards the middle. Swipes to the side or swings of the tail can have a reach of about 2 yards out.

Extrapolating Further

Lagiacrus has a large crystal "dynamo" on its back which it uses to store electricity for electrical attacks. Extrapolating from game mechanical data, the DR of this Dynamo is about double the average DR of the entire body or 6. While this exists unharmed, it can do electrical attacks that are about commensurate with its melee attacks, which 34 ST, with +1/die per tolerable brawling, gives us around 4d damage. Interestingly, if we take the square-cube law seriously, this creature is about 5 and a half tons, but can barely lift anywhere near that. Oh well, it's amphibious, it doesn't need to bear it's entire weight all the time.Using some funny math involving the low tech armor table, the figure that the skin is about 16% of the weight (of the average human body) and yadda yadda, who cares, I estimate the crystals to weigh about 300 lbs, and using the formula for the homogeneous HP, this 6 DR armor that only protects the back has 54 HP. I rounded that to make it a nice even factor of 3. If this is reduced to 18 HP, the power of this ability is cut in half, and hurts Lagiacrus as well. Limbs or extremities are disabled at normal GURPS cutoff points, but damage goes from cutting to crushing at half of that. For example, a claw that is dealt more than 1/6 of the max HP (12), is blunted and loses 1.5x damage. The Tail, for "breakage" purposes, I will consider an appendage that may be severed, that is, if it loses more than 71 HP. For damage and parrying purposes, it is a striker. Let's put all of this together now.
Note that at SM+7, against the typical SM+0 hunter, a melee attack can be made at an area, so this gives a net +4 with no penalty to attack for SM differences for most melee attacks. These are also mostly wide area injury.
Due to an interesting look at some comment, I have also adjusted ST up to match HP. I'm not why, but it seems like the ST is unusually low. Perhaps the 3e to 4e conversion formula was weird, or maybe I goofed my math.

Final Stat Block

ST: 71	HP: 71	Speed: 8
DX: 9	Will: 10	Move: 8L/15A
IQ: 3	Per: 12
HT: 15	FP: 15	SM: +7
Dodge: 11	Parry: 7	DR: 3

Attack With Claws or Teeth(15): C front and back; C-2 on the sides, 10d+2 cutting. If the face or extremity is dealt 12 HP or more total, or the appendage is dealt 18 HP or more, damage becomes crushing.
Tail(15): C-10 for the back half starting at the mid point of the figure's base. Minimum of C no matter what. 13d crushing. The tail can be removed if it is dealt at least 71 HP.
Lightning Breath(15): Range 50/100, Acc 3. 10d burning surging explosion damage. Metal Armor DR is reduced to 1. This is often an attack on an area, giving a net skill of 19.
Lightning Emanation: Everywhere within 2 yards the body. 10d burning surging damage, to defend, someone must retreat, or dodge and drop entirely out of range. Metal Armor DR is reduced to 1.
Note: Lightning attacks can be used once per minute. If the dynamo on Lagiacrus's back is broken, this attack does half damage. This requires doing 36 HP of damage to the DR 6 "Armor" on its back.
Traits: Amphibious, Berserk(12), Claws, Damage Resistance, 3 Tough Skin everywhere except the back which is 6. No Fine Manipulators, Quadruped, Sharp Teeth, Wild Animal.
Skills: Brawling-11, Innate Attack (Breath)-15, Survival (Beach)-14, Survival (Ocean)-14
Notes: Prefers to quickly maim targets and run away if they give any considerable resistance (rule of thumb, losing 10 hit points, or being injured enough that a body part is disabled, and certainly if its HP is below 24) It will not typically fight to the last hit point, and if fighting on land, will almost certainly be close to a body of water for a quick escape, and likely will not return to fight until it has spent some days recuperating. To put one down will take some manner of dedicated pursuit, trapping, or poisons.
At this SM, subtract 1x from all of the multipliers for Impaling and piercing attacks to a minimum of 0.5x. E.g. Pi++ and Imp do 1x damage, Pi+ and lesser do 0.5x.

Other Thoughts

I feel like I forgot to mention something, but oh well. I'm trying to think, with these "realistic" type figures, what kind of characters this would be a challenge for, and what kind of characters it would overwhelm. I have some thoughts on a "loot system" that might approximate some of what I like about Monster Hunter without getting too deep in the weeds of converting game mechanics instead of taking inspiration for them, but I'm tired of typing, and don't know how interesting those would be to other people.

Monsters like to slam and trample a lot in Monster Hunter, but slamming is a kind of complicated calculation to put on a character sheet. Trampling is simply the thrust damage if someone is underneath it when it moves.