The Daggerheart Colossus Builder

The Colossus Builder is for the fight where the monster is the battlefield — the thing the party climbs, not the thing they stand in front of.

It’s a builder rather than a browser, and that’s not a design preference. SRD 2.0 describes colossal adversaries in full and then publishes no colossus at all; it points at the Colossus of the Drylands campaign frame for examples, which isn’t part of the SRD. So there’s nothing to look up. The creature is yours, and this is the workshop.

The split that’s easiest to get backwards

A colossus is two kinds of stat block, and mixing them up builds a far tougher monster than the rules describe.

On the framework	On each segment
Tier, Size, Motives, Experiences	Difficulty
Damage Thresholds	Hit Points
Stress	Its own standard attack
Features that apply to every segment	Its own features, and which segments are adjacent

Caution

One Stress track and one set of thresholds for the whole creature. Hit Points are marked per body part. Giving every segment its own Stress is the single most common way to accidentally build something three times harder than intended — so the builder puts Stress in the framework panel and nowhere else.

Building one

1. Add a segment. It arrives as a card on the table, already selected.

2. Name it. Type one, or press Name it for a suggestion — Barnacled Head, Cratered Paw, Salt-Bleached Belly. Press it again for another.

   Naming is doing more than it looks. The builder reads the body part out of the name, so a segment called Left Wing starts suggesting wing mechanics immediately. If your name doesn’t contain a body part — The Groaning Deep — set the Type dropdown instead. Its default option shows you what the builder worked out, so you only override it when it’s wrong.

3. Give it numbers. Difficulty and Max HP sit at the top of the write-up panel. Thresholds and Stress belong on the framework above.

4. Give it something to do — see below.

5. Link it. Press Link on one segment, then tap another. Adjacency is what a PC can leap between, and it’s always symmetric: link the Neck to the Head and the Head is linked back.

6. Drag the cards into the shape of the creature. The arrangement is how your table reads its anatomy, so it’s saved with everything else.

The builder checks the body as you go. It’ll tell you if a segment lists an adjacency the other side doesn’t return, or if a segment can’t be reached from the ground at all — which is nearly always a slip rather than a design, and one that otherwise only surfaces mid-fight when a player asks how to get up there.

Giving a segment something to do

Every segment has one standard attack and as many features as you like. They’re different things: a Broken segment can’t take actions or reactions, a Destroyed one can’t use any features at all, and a PC standing on a segment can’t be hit by that segment’s standard attack specifically.

A new segment says so plainly — “This segment doesn’t do anything yet” — and offers a few moves that suit it straight away. For more, press Find inspiration.

Suggested

Opens on mechanics chosen for this segment. A jaw gets Breath Weapon, Roar, Bite and Gore; a foreleg gets Stomp, Leap and Trample; a boiler core gets Power Conduit and Exposed Core.

Surprise me picks from the same shortlist rather than from everything, so it’s a shuffle of things that already fit.

Colossal moves

56 moves written for the colossus format specifically — the things a normal adversary never has to do. Shake a climber off. Protect the segment next to it. Transfer damage. Enrage when a limb comes off. Be armoured until something else breaks.

They’re grouped by what they’re for: strikes, movement, anti-climber, grabs, area effects, terrain, between-segments, reactions and weak points.

Note

These are ours, not the SRD’s — there’s no official set to draw from. They’re written in Daggerheart’s own vocabulary (Fear, Stress, spotlight, Broken, Destroyed, the five range bands, the three conditions) so they sit alongside published material without contradicting it.

From Daggerheart

Every standard attack and every feature from all 263 SRD adversaries — 1,170 mechanics — as raw material. Search them, or filter by tier, role, attack vs feature, damage type and range.

This is deliberately not an adversary importer. You’re borrowing a mechanic, not grafting on someone else’s monster: the Cave Ogre’s Haymaker arrives as an attack called Haymaker that you can rename to anything, with the Cave Ogre kept only as a note underneath.

Numbers, adapted honestly

A Tier 1 mechanic dropped onto a Tier 4 colossus would be limp. So anything with damage arrives adapted, with the original one click away.

The rule comes from the SRD’s own Adversary Stat Block Benchmarks table: the dice count is the tier. Adapting 2d6+3 to Tier 4 gives 4d6+10 — the count moves to 4, the die size you chose is kept, and the flat modifier is pulled into the band the table prints for that tier.

You always see what changed (2d6+3 → 4d6+10) before you add it, and Original puts the source’s numbers back.

Tip

Where the SRD prints no guidance, the builder doesn’t invent any. It scales no HP or Stress, because there’s no benchmark for either. If a feature’s rules text carries a second dice formula, a fixed Reaction Roll difficulty or a countdown length, those are left exactly as written and the ability is flagged worth a look — a wrong number that looks authoritative is worse than one you were told to check.

Steering the suggestions

The Lean towards chips on a segment — crushing, flight, fire, grabbing, anti-climber, and fifteen more — push matching mechanics up both lists. Useful when a segment is mechanically unlike its name: a head that should mostly be doing area damage, say.

Editing what lands

Everything is editable after it arrives. Name, rules text, activation, range, damage and its type, Fear and Stress costs. Features reorder with the arrows, duplicate with Copy, and delete with ×.

A feature can also be marked applies to the whole colossus rather than just its segment — the SRD’s distinction between a feature that names a body part and one that names the creature. The framework has its own feature list for the same reason, and a framework feature set to Action is the framework action the rules describe: spotlight the colossus as a whole to use it.

Running the fight

Press Run this fight. There’s nothing to send — the GM screen reads the same browser storage, so the colossus is already there, beside the Fear pool, the countdowns and the dice. Marks made on either page appear on the other, including in a second tab.

On the GM screen you can:

• Hand it a damage total and it marks Hit Points against the framework’s thresholds.
• Roll a segment’s standard attack or any feature’s damage — it lands in the dice tray, stays loaded for the next swing, and is written to the session log.
• Roll against a segment’s Difficulty with one press.
• Spend a Fear to spotlight a second segment.
• Track who’s standing where, which matters in both directions: a PC on a segment has advantage attacking it, and that segment’s standard attack can’t be used on them.
• Take it off the screen for a session that doesn’t need it. That doesn’t delete it: it stays here, and the GM screen’s Add puts it back. Build a new colossus or edit this one, and it comes back on its own.

Broken, Destroyed, and defeated

Broken stops a segment taking actions and reactions until it’s cleared. Destroyed happens when a segment marks its last Hit Point, and stops it using any of its features.

A Destroyed segment isn’t gone or detached — it’s simply non-working. PCs can still stand on it, and it still counts toward the colossus’s overall Difficulty, which is the highest among all its segments. Destroying the toughest one doesn’t make the creature easier to affect as a whole.

A colossus is defeated when every segment is Destroyed — though a stat block often gives another way, which is exactly what the weak-point moves are for.

Caution

Push and pull effects can’t move a colossus. The rules reverse them: a feature that would drag an adversary toward the attacker drags the attacker instead.

The final colossus

The track at the bottom runs for a whole campaign, not a fight.

Keep a d10 Siphoning Die starting at 1 and a d100 Power Die starting at 0. Short rests tick the Power Die up by one, long rests by two. When the party defeats a colossus, roll a number of d12s equal to the Siphon Die and tick the Power Die up by the highest result — not the total — then reset the Siphon Die to 1.

Rolling several dice for the highest makes the Siphon Die a measure of volatility rather than a multiplier: a Siphon of 5 gives five chances at a big number, not five dice worth of power.

Once nine colossi are down or the Power Die reaches 100, the final colossus reveals itself — built with a Severe threshold equal to the Power Die and a Major threshold of half that, rounded up.

Note

The SRD names the Siphoning Die twice — it starts at 1, and resets to 1 — and never says what raises it in between. Those features are almost certainly in the campaign frame the SRD left out. So the builder gives you a button and says why, rather than presenting a house rule as printed text.

What’s saved, and where

Your colossus and its campaign track live in this browser only, with no account needed. That’s enough for one person on one machine, and it’s why the builder and the GM screen can share a creature with no sync at all.

It’s also the limit: a d100 Power Die filled one point at a time across months of play is worth more than a browser’s local storage. A free account carries it between devices.

Frequently asked

Does each segment get its own Stress? No. Stress and Damage Thresholds are on the framework, shared by the whole creature. Hit Points and Difficulty are per segment.

How do PCs move around it? A PC can climb onto a segment unless its stat block says otherwise, and move within it freely. Moving to an adjacent segment takes an action roll — usually Agility or Strength — to leap across.

Are there colossi in the SRD to fight? No. The rules are there; the creatures aren’t. The worked example the builder ships — the Tidewrack — is ours, written to show the shape of one, and it’s labelled as ours everywhere it appears.

Can I use a Colossal move on the “wrong” body part? Yes. Suggestions are ranked, never restricted. If you want Stomp on a wing because your colossus kicks in mid-air, nothing stops you.