Threat Assessement: The Strill

There’s a bewildering number of dangerous creatures out there, and any one of them could pose a threat to your hero when they least expect it.  For this installment of Threat Assessment, we’ll be taking a look at a creature that is tiny yet has the same level of ferocity as the Mandalorians it’s often associated with.

Strill (Henchman)
Game: Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta

Characteristics
Brawn 3
Agility 3
Intellect 1
Cunning 2
Presence 1
Willpower 2

Skills
Athletics 1, Perception 1, Survival 1, Vigilance 1, Brawl 2

Abilities
Carrying Capacity (Brawn is doubled when determining Encumbrance), Feral Strength, Gliding (Move one zone as an incidental action on a successful Athletics check at Average Difficulty)

Soak/Defense: 4/1
Wound Threshold: 16
Silhouette: 0
Equipment: Sharp Teeth (Damage 5, Crit 4, Range [Engaged], Pierce 1)

Background: A meter long, six-legged hunting beast favored by the Mandalorians for its ferocity and resilience, strills are surprisingly intelligent carnivores, able to understand verbal commands with only a minimum of training.  Though covered in a thick pelt of fur, they are often considered to be ugly creatures by most sentient species, particularly given their penchant for constantly drooling, the pungent stench they give off, and the large flaps of excess skin.  The skin flaps however serve a surprising purpose, enabling the strill to glide short distances.  That they can also ferry an extraordinary amount of weight given their compact size is another point in their favor.

Design Notes: Admittedly, it was fun to do the official write-up of strills for the Star Wars Saga Edition, which can be found on page 65 of the Unknown Regions sourcebook.  So, I thought I’d try and convert these slobbering little beasts over to Edge of the Empire.  Bear in mind that this isn’t a straight conversion, but rather a re-imagining.  It was also a thought exercise to see how difficult it might be to brew up new adversaries for EotE, and compared to building a character, creating the stat block for a strill was amazingly easy.

As befits their description in the Republic Commando series of books, strills are nasty little pieces of work.  Like the old D&D 3^rd Edition joke about commoners versus house-cats, a single strill will probably prove a vicious surprise for a low-level hero, particularly if they have a low Soak value or Wound Threshold.  It’s pretty tough on its own right, and the point of Defense will mean players are going to have some difficulty pelting the little monster

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