Monster of the Week #31 - Dr John Starkweather

 

This week we go back to the fantastic Grindhouse collection Alex Guillotte and published via the Miskatonic Repository for the Call of Cthluhu 7E roleplaying game. I've ran The Hoodlums scenario a couple more times since Terrence Clancy featured here and I'd like to highlight a great NPC for players to encounter in this scenario (spoiler free of course).

Say hello to Dr. John Starkweather, at one time a respectable physician for the Massachusetts Medical Society, and was eventually kicked out for selling fake cures. 

Keeping details aside, John resides in an underground facility practising his science and supported by Terence Clancy, who he persuaded to work with him many years before. John and his family live in this facility, and he works tirelessly on his potions and poultices in the deep darkness of his lair.

Terence was enlisted to help him, and that's where our players come in for this adventure. But I'll say no more - the Grindhouse Collection is worth every penny, and our groups have had multiple nights of fun with this adventure alone.

Dr. John Starkweather is a pretty dangour apponent for our teenage protagonists, and his motivations (which I'll keep redacted) offer a lot of opporunity to create interesting RP encounters in your games. For example, I had him reasoning with the players instead of outright killing them - which actually worked to a great degree until the players figured out he was trying to knock them out.

In addition, he has access to various magic abilities (or at least, I used a few which made sense in the context of the game). These acted as great boons to make him much more mystical and effective in and outside of combat.

So what's the rub?

Dr. John Starkweather has average stats, but excels in INT (80) due to his profession and a high POW (75). He has no damage bonus and below average brawling and with a HP pool of 12 he may actually be downed relatively quickly with a full party of players.

However, this is where his abilites come in...

John has access to a slew of magical abilities, with notable favourites of mine being; Dominate, Cause Blindness, Cloud Memory and a whole list more (which you can see if you get the book!). The ones mentioned here were my favourite due to being able to trick and confuse players, but within combat a few of his spells can be a great help for John.

Lastly, his special ability (my favourite for scaring my players), is his ability to Regenerate. At the rate of 1 HP per minute John can recover from any wounds unless he has been burned by fire or had his head severed.

All of these abilities offer a great way to surprise and pace your encounter with both fearful or aggressive players alike. A group of aggressive players steam rolled him before discovering his body was gone which put them all in the back foot, Cautious players were stalked by him while Terence was confronting them. Both sessions ended wildly differently, but the abilities John had allowed him to be flexible for each different play style my players had.

Between the great build of John, and the detailed backstory for The Hoodlums game, Dr. John Starkweather deserves a rightful spot on the Monster of the Week this week!

So that's it for this week, thanks for stopping by and let us know your thoughts about this character. Remember, if you're interested, hop over to DriveThru RPG and consider picking this up!

Thanks again, and until next time, have some great games!

-KJ