As you probably noticed, Critters have been buffed a bit in SR5, to fit more into the higher-damage, higher-armor, higher-skills, double-dodgepools systems. With that in mind, I decided to convert the Ghost Gator statblock from Missions Season 4.
Unfortunately it was a bit tricky since there wasn't much to compare it to. Their Bite damage was in its own league in SR4, with only Dragons and a few Parazoology critters being at that level. Of the Paracritters in SR5, there wasn't anything to compare their damage to. Skills also were a bit weird. As such, I was wondering if people could take a look and offer some feedback.
Let's start with their original and converted statblocks:
B 10, A 5, R 6, S 8 | W 4, L 2, I 4, C 2 | Edge 2, Ess 6, Magic 6.
Movement 15/30, Initiative 10+2d6.
Intimidation 4, Perception 4, Swimming 0, Tracking 4, Unarmed Combat 5.
Powers: Concealment, Enhanced Senses (Thermographic Vision, Smell),
Hardened Armor (6), Natural Weapon (Bite, 8P/-2), Wall Walking.
B 10, A 5, R 6, S 8 | W 5, L 2, I 6, C 4 | Edge 3, Ess 6, Magic 6.
Movement x1/x5/+1 = 5/25 (x2/x8/+2 = 10/40 swimming), Initiative 12+3d6.
Intimidation 6, Perception 7, Swimming 5, Tracking 7, Unarmed Combat 9.
Powers: Concealment, Enhanced Senses (Thermographic Vision, Smell),
Hardened Armor (10), Natural Weapon (Bite, 13P/-4), Wall Walking.
First, the attributes. For the Physical Attributes I took a look at SR4 and SR5 Hell Hounds. Their Body and Strength was raised. The Barghest only gained 1 Body point though. I decided against raising the Strength of the Gators because they're real dangerous already, they already have really high Body too so it seems fine right now.
Now as for the mental attributes. If we look at Hellhounds, they simply gained a point of Willpower. Barghests, however, received a significant boost. They got +1 W, +2 C, +2 I, +1 L. This quite befits their high intimidation ability, since to allow a critter to actually intimidate people they definitely need a decent Charisma boost too. I mostly mirrored this for the Ghost Gators, while keeping their Logic at 2 (Barghest went from 1 to 2, 3 isn't that needed). The higher intuition makes them excellent hunters and also gives them a nice defense bonus.
Raising their Magic to 7 seemed a bit much, but giving them 1 more Edge seemed like a fair reason to make them a challenge even to skilled runners. They are meant to already be very dangerous in singles and pairs after all.
As for their Movement, luckily there is a perfect example there. The Basilisk is a goblinized komodo dragon who always hangs near water, so their Movement is a great example that I directly copied. It means they're a bit slower than before, especially walking-wise, which I think fits more with reptiles. In water they're extremely dangerous though.
Next up, skills. This mostly followed simple conversion increases, where with Unarmed Combat I went from Expert (below Elite) to Exceptional (above Expert, below Elite). The Barghest went from 3 to 8, going from 5 to 10 would have been an option too. Intimidation went up 1 less than with the Barghest (4->6 instead of 4->7), Perception got a +3, and instead of Running like the Barghest, they have Swimming since hey, they're Gators.
The big problem is the lack of Sneaking. Sure, Concealment costs 6 Perception dice, but even then 4 defaulting dice are far too easy to bust. However, since the Ork Underground caverns are filled with noises and players won't know to specifically listen for the sounds of sneaking Ghost Gators unless they got exactly the right knowledge skill, they will lose 2 dice and not get a bonus. But even then 4 dice vs Perception-8 means it's far too easy to bust them. If a player lacks the -2 from not paying attention, an Intuition-5 character has 5/9 chance of hearing through that Concealment.
On the other hand, requiring 5 Intuition, 6 Perception and the character paying attention to the environment rather than trying to find their way and chitchatting with the other characters, while their wireless bonuses can be eliminated with the massive noise present in parts of the OU (especially the Narrows), all for 5/9 chance to spot a Ghost Gator who can use Edge to roll 7 exploding dice instead of 4 non-exploding? Sounds fair enough a challenge.
As final change there's the Powers. I mostly kept those the same, but since the tougher Paracritters got an armor buff, it seemed fair to do the same. The dogs both got a bit of armor where they had none, while the 3/4 of the Basilisk went up to 7. Doubling the Hardened Armor was an option, and would be not unlike Spirits with their Forcex2, but since Hardened Armor was buffed itself as well this seemed a bit overkill. As such I stuck to 10, not 12, which means 1.67 damage more taken usually.
As for the SR4-sniper-rifle-damage Bite, since there was no proper comparison possible to the current SR5 paracritters, I had to improvise. I converted the 8P/-2 back to (S/2)+4P/-2, which is quite alike the Combat Axe at +4/-1. That puppy got turned into +5/-4, so I did the same with the Bite, resulting in 13P/-4 AP.
