SAVE OR DIE!

Play Report: A Siege, the NPC Railroad, and Problems With Resilient Sphere

2011-11-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

Miracle of miracles, I have managed to play some D&D. This has been a long time coming, with a good three or four still-born attempts to organise a session since the last game, but we finally made it. It looks as though the next game might be fair way off for a completely different reason: the PCs will probably move on to new pastures, which necessitates me designing a whole new adventuring space. That's a different post, though.

The game went a lot more smoothly this time, as is to be expected when the time between games shrinks from three years to four months. I didn't burn out this time, as I had made sure to get plenty of sleep the night before, and there were no non-gamers wandering about to dissuade me from general DM acting silliness. I felt a lot more comfortable running things, and that's an encouraging sign.

The game resumed with the PCs still in a castle under siege by an army of orcs. They had recently resurrected some serious heavy-hitting NPCs, the sort of guys that I could not justify taking a back seat, and I was sure that this was going to be a problem. The PCs had been in charge in all but name before this, and I was concerned about leading them by the nose and having NPCs giving them orders and suggestions. On the other hand, it was their own choice to bring these guys into the game. If you resurrect a legendary hero, you have to expect that you're going to take a back seat. Resurrect three, and you're lucky to have a walk-on role.

I opened the game with a warm-up battle against nearly forty elite orc warriors, dropped on the fortress roof by dragons.  This was a little more time-consuming than I would have liked. That's what happens when you generate the numbers with a random roll, then roll high. It was a good hour of grinding through orcs, but I have always found that a battle eases me into the game very nicely. We got through a decent amount of other stuff this time around, so I wasn't too bothered.

At this point, after the characters had rested and healed up, they actually got to the business of figuring out which of their powerful items could break the siege. They have an arcane warsuit, a sort of mech loaded with magic wands, but that wasn't powerful enough to tackle a whole army; a sphere of annihilation, also impractical against so many foes; the Skull of Vecna, which could be used to create and control vast numbers of undead (and with the Eternal Battlefield, where skeletal armies of the past fight endlessly, just miles away); a barrel of distilled dwarven fire oil, the closest thing to a WMD this society can muster; the Hand and Body of the Light, actual fragments of this world's dead sun god; and lots of other goodies. In the end they opted for the use of the Ram's Horn Staff, which had the power to animate the trees of the forest to do the wielder's bidding. It was a good choice; even though the trees were eventually beaten back by a barrage of giant-thrown boulders and dragon breath, they destroyed a third of the army, and netted the PCs a lot of Victory Points. (I was operating on a Victory Point system here, whereby various actions taken by the PCs or NPCs would gain or lose points. The target for reaching the endgame was 100 points, and this single action got them to 50 all by itself. It was perhaps too many points awarded for the risk to the PCs, but I felt justified in it given how deadly the adventure where they gained that staff was. Blink dogs with levels of rogue and evil elves who can use true strike once per day are serious business.)

Following that, the leader of the army showed up, an orc called the Reaver who was thousands of years old and wielded two axes of sharpness. He wasn't in my original plans for the siege, but I had noted him down as the most powerful figure around in my campaign world some time ago. So when his ancient enemy King Peramis I comes back from the dead and shouting his name from the top of the battlements while waving severed orc heads around, I figure that I'm justified in having him appear. He challenged the king to a one-on-one duel, which was accepted. As a way to get the PCs involved, I had another NPC suggest to them that they try to find a way to break the rules and kill the Reaver before the duel can be finished. This worked pretty well. They had a vial of poison, made up of a few drop's of heart's blood from the god of evil, and given that the Reaver wore no armour they had a good shot at killing him outright. If only the elf had not stopped to cast true strike, King Peramis may have survived instead of losing an arm and then a head.

(As a side note, it was only during the game that I noticed there is no equivalent to the sword of sharpness in 3rd edition. Yes, there are vorpal weapons, but I didn't quite want to go that far. I fudged it by having the axes of sharpness sever an appendage on a successful critical, which worked well enough.)

(As a second side note, the PCs are seriously lucky that they killed the Reaver here. I had no qualms about throwing a divinely powered 20th level fighter at them at this stage of the campaign, and had he made it inside the fortress there would most probably have been a bloodbath. I was looking forward to it, but alas.)

The killing of the Reaver pushed the PCs over 100 Victory Points, at which point the orc army went bananas, the Reaver's lieutenant lead a flight of dragons to attack the fortress, and a smaller dragon force tried to retrieve the Reaver's body. There was fighting on two fronts, with some PCs defending the fortress while others tried to retrieve the body of King Peramis (not for altruistic reasons, but to loot his corpse).  At this point I would like to point out (to the surprise of nobody) that dragons are tough. These weren't even true dragons; they were big and they had breath weapons, but they had little more intelligence than animals. That two claw/two wing/bite attack routine is murder, though. There were 4th level NPCs that were getting chewed up at the rate of two a round. The Dwarf barbarian went from 80-odd hit points to under zero almost instantly. Again, the PCs were saved because I have been super-gonzo with the magic items recently.

During all of this, the main NPC antagonist (named Elmyr) tried to make his escape. He was an ally of the people who lived in the fortress, but he had been needling the PCs for a long, long time.  I was working up to a final confrontation, but it got lost in the siege and the arrival of the super high-level NPCs. It couldn't have worked out much better though. He summoned his erinyes ally, and together they tried to fly away. One PC tried to capture them with Otiluke's resilient sphere, and here I had to make a few judgment calls. Can this spell enclose a creature in mid-air? I ruled that it can, which I usually do when presented with something that isn't in the rules. Then the question arose: does the sphere stay suspended in mid-air? And if it falls, are those inside hurt by the impact? I ruled that the sphere stays in the air, as I didn't want to create a precedent that could cripple airborne foes in the future. So the PCs had five minutes to figure out how to deal with those trapped within, which they did by preparing another poisoned arrow. One shot and the erinyes was dead, while Elmyr fell 200 feet to the ground.

At which point everyone declared him dead, but just out of curiosity I rolled damage by the book. He survived with three hit points left, which gave him a chance to surrender, and me a chance to have him explain his motivations a bit. Best of all, the PC that he landed next to was the one that he'd had the most friction with, and he got to deliver the killing stroke. I couldn't have planned it more perfectly.

It was a fun game, with I feel just enough chaos to offset the NPC railroad that had come about through no planning of my own. I have problems for the future, though. Besides having to design a whole load of new adventuring material, I have a party averaging about 7th level with an absolute shit-ton of powerful magic items. It was a great thing to have when running an epic finale for the first stage of the campaign, but I know it's going to cause me headaches in the future. I'm thinking I'll just leave it as is for a while and see how things go. I would have frowned on this kind of magic-heavy party a few years ago, but my attitudes are a lot looser about this sort of thing now. As long as all parties are enjoying themselves, and the game is still a challenge, things will progress apace.

AD&D Monster Manual part 36

2011-11-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

Ochre Jelly: Ochre Jellies first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. Their Hit Dice has increased from 5 to 6, and they now appear in groups of 1-3 instead of always being solitary. The damage they do has changed very slightly, from 2-12 to 3-12. The ochre jelly is an unusual case, in that it seems to have been simplified from OD&D to AD&D. The basic monster is still the same, a giant amoeba that seeps through dungeons. They are still split into two smaller jellies by lightning attacks, but in OD&D attacks from weapons did the same thing. There’s no mention of that here. (As a side note, these smaller jellies are now said to do half normal damage.) There’s also nothing mentioned in AD&D about them being unable to eat through metal or stone, nor that they can dissolve wood (although they do eat cellulose, which I suppose could be stretched to include wood eating). The only new ability it gets is that it can travel on the walls and ceiling.

Octopus, Giant: Originally included as a rumoured monster in OD&D Vol. 3, giant octopi first got stats in Supplement II: Blackmoor. Their Number Appearing has decreased from 1-4 to 1-3. Their swim speed has increased from 9 to 12. And their Hit Dice has doubled, from 4 to 8: obviously the average octopus now encountered is much bigger than before. Even so, their tentacles do less damage, from 1-6 down to 1-4, but their bite has gone from 1-6 to 2-12. It has gained the ability to constrict foes, which it couldn’t do before, and there are a whole host of rules about arms being pinned and how strong you need to be to stop from getting crushed. Another big change is that they now have an alignment of Neutral (Evil), which makes them just that little bit more sinister.

Ogre: Ogres debuted in OD&D Vol. 2. Their Number Appearing has changed slightly, from 3-18 to 2-20. Otherwise their stats are the same, but their description has been substantially filled out. They now have leaders like the other humanoid races. They get bonuses to hit and damage if using weapons. They have females and young in their lairs, and they also keep slaves. (But they like to eat the demi-humans, so there’s not much chance you’ll find any dwarves, elves or halflings as ogre slaves.) They have their own language, and can also speak Troll and Stone Giant. They mingle with trolls and giants a fair bit, and are sometimes enslaved by demons. They get a physical description (big, ugly and mostly yellow-skinned) and their lifespan is at least 90 years. The biggest change is that they no longer carry as much treasure as they once did. A wandering ogre in OD&D could be counted on to be carrying from 100 to 600 gold pieces, but now the average one only has 20 to 80 gp. It makes sense with the law of diminishing returns, I guess.

Ogre Mage: This monster first appeared in Supplement I: Greyhawk. Statistically, it hasn’t changed at all. Surprisingly, they’re still extensively referred to here as Japanese Ogres. I thought that would have been gotten rid of by now, but I do think it’s inclusion is an important pointer towards the mythological source of the creature. They still have the same boatload of special abilities: invisibility, fly, cause darkness, polymorph into a human form (now with a limit on allowable height), charm person, sleep, cone of cold (which now does 8d8 damage instead of 8d6), and regeneration of 1 hit point per round. The regeneration has also been altered to allow the creature to reattach severed limbs. They also get the new ability to assume gaseous form, as if they weren’t slippery enough. The only other additions to their entry are that they have 9 Hit Dice leaders, and that they get a physical description.

Orcs: Orcs (of course) first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. The only statistical change made to them is that their basic damage has increased from 1-6 to 1-8. Orcs of different tribes are still hostile to each other, but slightly less so: there is a 75% chance of leaderless tribes attacking each other, rather than it being automatic. There’s a list here of known orc tribes, with names like Vile Rune and Leprous Hand, and those will definitely be going into my campaign. In OD&D orcs always had high-level NPC fighters or magic-users as leaders, but now there are tougher orc leaders to do the job. The only other monster you might now encounter in an orc lair are ogres, which is a big step down from the possibility of trolls or dragons in OD&D. Orcs encountered outside their lair still have a chance to be escorting a wagon train loaded with treasure, but the treasures therein will be much less generous. To balance that out, they will now have slaves. Like the other D&D humanoids, orcs now explicitly have females and young. Their weapons are outlined (a varied selection), they can carry a standard that makes them fight better, and they get a physical description.

Probably the biggest addition here is the half-orc. Half-orcs were first mentioned in an article on Birth Tables in #3, but only in passing. It’s here that they are detailed for the first time. Surprisingly, the entry doesn’t just talk about orc-human hybrids, but also orc-goblins and orc-hobgoblins. The idea is that orcs will breed with anything, so I wouldn’t restrict it to those three. The only combination specifically ruled out is elves and orcs.

Giant Otter: Giant Otters first appeared in Supplement II: Blackmoor. They’ve been given a complete overhaul. Number Appearing has decreased from 10-40 to 2-5. Armor Class has improved from 6 to 5. They’ve gained a swim speed of 18”. Hit Dice has increased from 3 to 5. Their bite damage is still a whopping 3-18, but they no longer get claw attacks. Gary has a tendency to demystify the monsters that are basically Earth animals, and he does it again here. In Supplement II giant otters had a “vast native intelligence” that prevents them from falling into traps, but it’s not mentioned here. Nor is the possibility of domesticating them. But in true Gygax form, he does give an exact value for their pelts.

Otyugh: The otyugh makes its debut here. It’s a large monster with ridged tentacles and a huge mouth that lives underground and eats dung and offal. Their primary ability is that their bite will transmit disease 90% of the time. It’s not said if there is a saving throw to avoid this, but I would say not. The disease is specified as typhus, though no further details are given. Typhus was detailed in Supplement II, where it gave a 25% chance of death, and a chance that any survivor will have a relapse every 5 years. I expect that this will be further expanded on in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Probably the most interesting thing about the otyugh is that it often lives in symbiosis with another monster, scavenging droppings and carrion. I just think it’s a shame that they’re so often solitary; having one mid-level monster following something more powerful around seems like a waste, but a whole horde of these suckers living in the bowels of a dragon cave would be cool.

Giant Owl: As far as I can tell, giant owls have only appeared in the wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. They get stats here for the first time, and with 4 hit dice they’re pretty butch. Their main ability is that they have a 5-in-6 chance to gain surprise. They’re also very intelligent and can speak their own language. They are said to sometimes befriend other creatures, but nothing is said about the circumstances this might happen in. And as usual, their young and their eggs get the patented Gygax monetary value.

Owlbear: Owlbears first appeared in Supplement I: Greyhawk. The only statistical change is that they have 5+2 hit dice instead of 5, and there are no other changes in the description either. They still get a bear hug attack if they roll an 18 or better on a claw, and the rest of the description is just a fleshing out of what was already in OD&D. It is postulated that they are “probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard”. And of course their young and their eggs are given a market value. (Does anyone else find it weird that owlbears lay eggs?)

AD&D Monster Manual part 35

2011-10-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Naga, Guardian: The guardian naga (and the other two types detailed below) debuted in The Strategic Review #3. It’s a human-headed snake generally used to guard the treasures of lawful good types. Their Armor Class has improved from 5 to 3, and their bite attack damage has improved from 1-3 to 1-6. In OD&D they only had one attack per round, but now they can both bite and constrict. They still have a lethal poisoned bite, as well as a spit attack, and they can cast spells as a 6th level cleric (all as before). The only new thing we learn is that they have green-gold scales, silver triangles on their backs, and golden eyes.

Naga, Spirit: Spirit naga are the obligatory evil variety. Their Armor Class has improved from 5 to 4 since their debut, but their Movement Rate has lessened from 15 to 12. Their abilities from OD&D are mostly unchanged: they still have a gaze that can permanently charm their victims, and they can still cast spells. Their spellcasting has been majorly nerfed, though: before they cast as 7th-level magic-users and 6th-level clerics; now they cast as 5th-level magic-users and 4th-level clerics. We learn for the first time that they like to live in ruins and dungeons, and their scales are black and crimson (duh, they’re evil).

Naga, Water: Water naga are neutral, and usually don’t attack unless provoked. Their Movement Rate, previously listed as 15, is now 9 on land and 18 in the water. They still have a poisonous bite as before, and their magic-user spellcasting remains at 5th level. But in OD&D, they were forbidden from using fire and lightning spells. Now the restriction is only to fire spells, so look out for those underwater lightning bolts.

The only new thing we learn is that they have emerald scales (with a whole bunch of other colours) and green or amber eyes.

There’s one big difference from their original presentation that makes them much less interesting: in OD&D they were said to live in palaces beneath the water. Now they are said to live in places. The former was much more magical and fun, but somewhat impractical. And was probably a typo.

One thing that I never noticed about the naga is that only spirit naga have human heads. The other two types just look like snakes. I did not know that!

Neo-Otyugh: The neo-otyugh are appearing here for the first time. The entry here references the otyugh, as these guys are a bigger and tougher version of that monster. From what I can see here, they’re solitary and physically very powerful, with high hit points, low Armor Class, and the ability to do a lot of damage. They’re also telepathic, which probably accounts for their ability to never be surprised. They also carry diseases, which is not surprising from a monster that looks like a trash heap with tentacles and a mouth. More on them when I get to the actual otyugh entry.

Night Hag: Night hags also make their first appearance here. They rule the plane of Hades, and only ever appear on the Prime Material on solo missions to harvest the souls of very evil people. Their primary method of capturing such a soul is to cast a powerful sleep spell (one that can affect up to 12 Hit Dice creatures) and then strangle the victim. If that doesn’t work, the hag visits the victim in an ethereal state, invades his dreams, and then – ahem – “rides the victim until dawn”. Each such ride drains the victim’s constitution, until he is eventually dead.

Night Hags get a whole bunch of other good abilities. They can cast a powerful magic missile, as well as ray of enfeeblement. They can become ethereal at will, know alignment, polymorph, and gate in other demons or devils. They’re immune to sleep, charm, fear, fire, cold, and any weapons other than silver, iron, or magic weapons of +3 or better. There’s a nice bit with the gate ability, in that any demon or devil summoned will demand a larval soul from the hag. I’m picturing these Night Hags as running a sort of trading post between Hell and the Abyss, with souls as the product on offer.

Every Night Hag forges their own periapt in Hades, which they can use for astral projection. Anyone who steals one of these will be immune to disease and get a bonus to all saving throws, but it will decay in the hands of a good character. A hag whose periapt is stolen can “leave the plane she is in at the time of the loss”. I’m not sure what this means. Is it just a way of ensuring that she isn’t trapped in the Astral Plane at the time of theft, or does it mean she can leave Hades for the Prime Material to hunt for the thief?

Nightmare: Nightmares make their first appearance here, and it’s surprising to me that Gary resisted the pun for this long. Also known as Hell Horses and Demon Horses, they are black with flaming hooves and nostrils, and glowing red eyes. They come from the lower planes, and are often used as steeds by demons, devils, night hags, and less commonly by undead such as spectres, vampires and liches.

They’re a decent mid-level opponent, having 6+6 Hit Dice, but what strikes me is their Armor Class of -4. It’s better than all the dragons, and just about all the demons and devils. Add the blinding smoke that comes from their mouths during combat, giving all opponents -2 to hit, and you have a monster that is terribly difficult to damage in melee. It's Armor Class is effectively -6, and from what I can see only the Demon Princes and Arch-Devils have better defenses.

Nightmares can also fly, become ethereal, and roam the Astral Plane. And they attack all material life, which is what I want from a D&D monster.

Nixie: Nixies first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. Their Number Appearing has been reduced from 10-100 to 20-80. In OD&D they only had a Movement Rate of 12", but now they move at 6” on land and 12” when swimming. They previously had 1 Hit Dice, but now they only roll a 1d4 for hit points. In essence they are the same monster, being water sprites that like to charm humans to serve them for a year, but they’ve had a number of changes and additions. The biggest is probably their ability to cast water breathing once per day, which nicely clarifies whether their charm victims survive underwater or not. Their charm is also a little bit more powerful, with its target suffering a -2 penalty to the saving throw. To balance that, a dispel magic now has a chance to work after the victim has gone underwater, which it didn’t before.

Nixies still have fish servants such as pike and gar, but the absurd number given in OD&D (10-100) is used for their ability to summon small non-combatant fish. The larger types that will fight people are limited to just a few.

Nixies have gained a Magic Resistance of 25%. But they’ve also picked up an aversion to fire and light, which seems to be a garbled reading of the rule from OD&D. In the old rules a flaming sword could be used to keep their fish at bay, but now it can be used that way on the Nixies themselves. A light spell affects them the same way, but they can summon fish to block it (a lovely touch).

Other than that, we get a physical description and learn that they inhabit lakes and live in houses made of seaweed.

Nymph: Nymphs were first mentioned in Supplement II: Blackmoor, but only as a type of underwater dryad. Here, they really are a completely new creature. They appear as beautiful young women, and are found only in the loveliest wilderness areas. They don’t like intruders, though. They can dimension door once a day to escape, but they may not need to. Not only can they cast druid spells as a 7th level caster, just looking at one may make you blind. And that’s if the nymph has its clothes on; if it’s naked there’s a chance you’ll die instantly. The nymph is only favourable towards good-aligned human males of 18 Charisma, and very occasionally to other good-aligned creatures. Needless to say, nymphs were the subject of several ill-advised D&D adventures when I was a teenager.

As a final note, I would just like to call foul on Gary and TSR for not providing a picture of the Nymph. For shame.

AD&D Monster Manual part 34

2011-10-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

Minotaur: Minotaurs, the bull-headed men of classical mythology, debuted in OD&D Vol. 2. Their Hit Dice has been raised slightly, from 6 to 6+3. It seems as though they get fewer attacks than they did before. In Supplement I: Greyhawk, it looked to me as though they could attack with a headbutt, a bite, and a weapon, all in the same round. In the Monster Manual they get two attacks, once with a weapon and once with either the headbutt or the bite, depending on how big the target is. They usually use a huge axe or a flail, and get a damage bonus due to strength that they didn’t get before.

Minotaurs are now harder to surprise than they were before. They’ve also gained the ability to track by scent, which should prove a great aid in their tendency to pursue prey. I figure that these abilities are linked; the scent not only allows the tracking ability but alerts them to attackers as well.

Minotaurs are now Chaotic Evil (formerly they were either Neutral or Chaotic). They have their own language as well, and it is said for the first time that they live in labyrinthine places. These can be underground or in the wilderness, and I kind of like the idea of a maze-like forest of shifting trees that is crawling with minotaurs.

The only real change to incorporate here is the scent ability of the minotaur, and I’m chalking that up to their growing familiarity with adventurers. They’ve always had the ability, but now they’re better at figuring out what adventurers smell like.

Mold, Brown: As far as I can tell, the brown mold is making its first appearance here. Brown mold grows underground, and feeds on heat energy. Any creature that gets too close will suffer 1-8 points of damage for every 10 degrees of body heat over 55 degrees that the creature has. This is a rule I’ve never spotted before, and I’m really not sure how to adjudicate it. A human has a core body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, so if I’m reading this correctly, brown mold deals 4d8 points of damage. And that’s just to a person, it’s going to be more for red dragons and fire elementals and the like.

The mold grows if open flame is brought near it, so it’s not unlikely that a small patch could expand if a torch-wielding party stumbles by, or happens to cast a fireball near it. Pretty much the only thing that can kill it is magical cold, specifically a cold wand or white dragon breath. Ice storms and walls of ice only cause it to go dormant. So there is literally one by-the-book option available to a party if they want to destroy this stuff. Harsh.

Any creature that uses cold as an attack (specifically called out here are white dragons, ice toads and winter wolves) is immune to brown mold. I’m instantly picturing a white dragon lair covered in the stuff.

Mold, Yellow: Yellow mold first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. The changes here are negligible. It still causes damage to flesh on contact (which has been raised from 1-6 to 1-8) and releases lethal spores if broken. In OD&D, if a character failed the save he was dead. In AD&D, a character killed by yellow mold spores can be saved within 24 hours with a cure disease and a resurrection spell. Why this is different from just using resurrection to return them to life, I have no idea. Unless the cure disease is necessary to remove the spores from the lungs before the character can be revived? Maybe the spores can’t be killed that way after 24 hours, and your character will just die again instantly if he is raised. Something to think on.

I’m pleased to see that large colonies of yellow mold retain the chance to be psionic, and can attack with a powerful id insinuation. The wording here is exactly the same as it was in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry.

Morkoth: Morkoths made their debut in Supplement II: Blackmoor. They probably need a bit of explanation, because I’ve never quite sorted them out in my head. They’re shadowy monsters that live at the bottom of the ocean in a series of spiralling tunnels. The tunnels have a hypnotic pattern, and anyone passing over an entrance to one will be drawn inside, where the morkoth uses its powers to control its mind and eat it. Got that? Because I think that’s the first time that I have.

Morkoths didn’t have a movement rate in OD&D, but now they get a quite fast swim speed of 18. Their Hit Dice has dropped from 8 to 7. Their only attack in OD&D was listed as “Special”, but now they get a bite attack that does 1-10 points of damage. Basically, they were useless unless their charm power worked, and Gary has fixed them.

The creature gets a vague physical description for the first time, as “possibly humanoid”. It’s nice and mysterious. The only other additions and changes are a lot of things that clarify exactly how their abilities work. The only thing that has been really messed with is their ability to reflect spells back at the caster. It’s still there, but a might negate it if cast at the exact same time as another spell. Also, a reflected spell only affects the caster, unless it has an area of effect. In OD&D, the caster and everyone within 10 feet were affected, regardless of whether the spell had an area effect or not. (I’m wondering if anyone has ever used this rule to their advantage? I’m picturing a cure light wounds being cast at a Morkoth, then reflected back to the caster and the rest of the party. It’s a loophole that’s now been closed off, anyway.)

Mule: Mules were briefly touched on in the Horse entry in OD&D Vol. 2, but this is the first time they get an entry of their own. The first thing that leaps out at me is that their Hit Dice has increased from 2+1 to 3. The old value was nothing to scoff at, but now the average mule could conceivably do in a small party of novice adventurers. They also get damage ranges for their attacks for the first time ever. They’re still agile enough to be taken into dungeons, and strange smells can still spook them. But in direct contradiction to OD&D, they are now not panicked by fire. The maximum amount of weight they can carry has also increased from 3500 coins to 6000 coins. It looks like average mules are now being bred much stronger and more well-trained than before.

Mummy: Mummies appeared for the first time in OD&D Vol. 2. Their range for Number Appearing has decreased, from 1-12 to 2-8. Their Hit Dice has increased from 5+1 to 6+3. I usually don’t note down any changes to the % in Lair chance, because almost every monster has a small variation between OD&D and AD&D, but mummies had a whopping increase, from 30% to 80%. This means that any encounter with mummies is much more likely to yield some treasure.

I’m interested to see that mummies are said to exist in both the Prime Material Plane and the Positive Material Plane. Pretty much all of the other undead creatures are connected to the Negative Material Plane. This may very well be a typo, but I think these sorts of anomalies are more interesting than any uniformity. I’ll need to return to this once I have a better idea of what the Positive and Negative Planes actually are.

The mummy’s rotting touch is nowhere near as crippling as it was in OD&D. It still causes you to heal at a rate ten times slower than normal, but now it can be cured completely with a cure disease spell; before, that spell stopped you from dying, but still left you with a rate of healing twice as slow as normal. In OD&D, there was a very slim chance you might recover without magic, but here you will die in 1-6 months, and you now lose 2 Charisma points a month on top of that. Oh, and the rotting also now negates all cure wounds spells completely. If someone is killed by a mummy, you will now need to cast a cure disease spell in addition to a raise dead to bring them back, and it has to be done within 6 turns. I’m guessing here that the mummy rot destroys dead tissue pretty quickly, and past a certain point there’s nothing to bring back to life.

Mummies have gained a new ability, an aura of fear that can paralyse people if they fail a saving throw. If you’re in a larger party you get a saving throw bonus, and for some reason humans are more resistant to this fear than other races. Mummies are specifically said to be undead humans, so there’s probably something in that.

Mummies are still hit only by magical weapons, and even those deal half damage (rounded down!). And they’re still vulnerable to fire. Some specific attacks, such as torches and flaming oil, are given damage ranges, and magical fire now deals an extra point of damage per die. On top of that they gain a whole load of immunities that they didn’t specifically have before: sleep, charm, hold person, cold, poison and paralysis.

There’s a nice touch, in that a raise dead spell can be used to bring a mummy back to life. I don’t recall that being something that can be done to any other undead. It has to tie into the Positive Material Plane thing somehow.

AD&D Monster Manual part 33

2011-09-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

Merman: Mermen first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, and were expanded upon in Supplement II: Blackmoor. Their Number Appearing has lessened from 30-300 to 20-200. Their speed on land has decreased from 3” to 1”, but their swimming speed has increased from 15” to 18”. Their Hit Dice has gone back to 1+1; in OD&D they had similar characteristics to berserkers (including the HD above), but in Supplement II they had been reduced to 1 Hit Dice. Supplement II had also given them a bite attack and two hand attacks; now they simply use their weapons.

Of course mermen are aquatic, but we learn that they favour the warm and tropical areas. It’s said that they sometimes leave the water to sun themselves, and this is interesting, because in Supplement II they take damage while out of water. The damage is higher in daylight, as well. Obviously this is no longer the case. Mermen dwellings are described for the first time, with most of them being a reef or cliff riddled with tunnels, and the rest being villages of shells and coral. We also learn that they have women and young, but that’s generally true for most of Gary’s monsters. Also, they speak their own language, and some speak locathah, implying either a friendship or an enmity with that race (almost certainly the latter).

Barracuda are introduced as common pets and guards for mermen, but something that has been taken away from them are seahorses. Supplement II describes them as riding seahorses, but I think it’s pretty clear in the Monster Manual that we’re dealing with the standard fish-tailed mermen that wouldn’t be able to mount anything.

In OD&D mermen used tridents, darts, slings and crossbows. Here they can have tridents, daggers, crossbows, javelins and nets. The slings are gone, because they make no damn sense as an aquatic weapon. Many are also armed with hooks for grappling ships, just as they were in Supplement II. The rules for that are pretty much the same.

With the great number of differences between the mermen of AD&D and those from Supplement II, I think that I’m going to have to declare that there are two different species. The ones from Supplement II live in and around the Blackmoor area, and have legs. The others from OD&D and AD&D live further south, and have fish-tails. Sorted.

Mimic: The mimic is making its first appearance here. It’s not really certain what a mimic’s true form is, but they can disguise themselves as anything made out of stone or wood. As soon as someone touches one, it secretes a glue to hold him fast then slams him with a pseudopod.

I was interested to discover that there are two varieties of mimic. Regular mimics have less Hit Dice, but are smarter, and will probably be friendly if offered food. Then there are the “killer mimics”, which are bigger, meaner, and only semi-intelligent. I’ve only ever seen mimics portrayed in the latter fashion, but the more potentially whimsical nature of the former strikes my fancy. They even have their own language. I’m wondering about the distinction between the two. Are they different types of the same race, or is it perhaps a natural part of the mimic aging process to go insane?

Mind Flayer: Mind flayers made their debut in Supplement I: Greyhawk, and were greatly expanded with the addition of psionics in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. Gary must have been super-happy with the stats for these guys, because all he’s changed is the addition of a single hit point. About the only other thing that has been changed is that their mind blast is now a cone instead of having a blast radius. The DM doesn’t get to pick their psionic abilities now: they all get levitation, domination, ESP, body equilibrium, astral projection and probability travel. Otherwise you’re looking at basically the same monster, with the small addition that there are now rumours going around of a mind flayer city beneath the earth.

AD&D Monster Manual part 32

2011-09-13T01:52:00.000-07:00

MEN:

It’s probably no coincidence that this project went on hiatus when I got to this entry, because it’s probably going to be a little more complicated than usual. It begins with a general overview of men. We learn that normal men have 1-6 hit points, something that was pretty well implied in OD&D but not outright stated. Groups of men encountered always have high level characters leading them, which says to me that high-level types aren’t particularly rare. There’s a section on randomly determining magical equipment for them, which is an expanded version of the chart used for bandits in OD&D. Each item category has a 5% chance per character level to be present, and they even get a re-roll for cursed items, so it’s not like magic items are a rare thing either when you’re going by the book.

Bandits: In general these are the same as in OD&D, but with some of the numbers jigged around. Their number appearing has lessened from 30-300 to 20-200, but the numbers they need to have high-level fighters in their ranks is about the same. It is, however, far more likely now that a bandit group will have a cleric or magic-user. The number required for this in OD&D was 200 bandits, but now it is down to 50.

Bandit lairs get a brief mention. Most live in informal camps, but some have caves with a secret entrance, and others live in castles. They also have important prisoners and camp followers. The 2-20 prisoners usually found in bandit lairs is much the same is in OD&D; there are still one prisoner per ten bandits, but the number of bandits has decreased.

Bandit weaponry is detailed, with mostly the same results as in OD&D. Most are light foot with leather armour and swords, and then there are a scattering of light bowmen and crossbowmen, light horse, and medium horse. The numbers were screwed up in OD&D, as the various categories added up to 110%, but that’s been fixed here. There also a category added for bandits with pole arms, because Gary is obsessed with pole arms.

Brigands in OD&D were just Chaotic bandits with better morale, and the same is true here; you just need to swap Chaotic alignment for Chaotic Evil. As in OD&D, they only keep half as many prisoners as bandits.

So it seems that in my campaign the bandit gangs will be getting smaller for some reason, whether that be a concerted effort from the PCs or the local law enforcement. On the other hand, they’re getting more organised in terms of connections to evil wizards and the Church of Chaos.

Berserkers: Like bandits above, the numbers of berserkers encountered has drastically dropped (from 30-300 to 10-100). Here it is said that they scorn armour, whereas in OD&D they wore leather. They still have an Armour Class consistent with wearing leather, so I guess they only scorn metal armour. Their battle lust was previously modelled in OD&D as a +2 bonus to attack against Normal Men only. Here they instead get either two attacks per round, or a single attack at +2. As far as NPC fighters go, they have a lot more with them than they did in OD&D, and they also get a very high level war chief. In OD&D berserkers could only have fighters with them, but now they have a chance for a “berserk cleric”. The numbers here are ridiculous – for every ten berserkers, there’s a 50% chance of there being a 7th level cleric present. That could be a lot of high level clerics, far more than I always thought would be the norm.

The biggest change here is that the berserkers have found religion, and this added zealotry can account for the change in there berserking bonuses. Their newfound religious nature could also be a result of their dwindling numbers.

Buccaneers: In OD&D these guys were pretty much exactly like bandits, but here they get slightly more individuality. The first thing I’m struck by is their 80% chance to be found in their lair, but that makes sense when you consider that a buccaneer is most likely to found on a ship. They don’t get as many high-level fighters as bandits or berserkers. The number of prisoners they will have has dropped by a lot. Their NPC clerics can now reach the lofty heights of 15th level, another example of the ridiculous frequency of what I always assumed to be legendary figures. They can have magic-users as well, but the levels there are a bit more sane. Their troop types are also broken down a little more precisely than they were in OD&D, though it’s still infantry and crossbowmen.

I can’t think of any likely explanation for why those 15th level clerics are hanging around with buccaneers. Unless there’s some sort of holy relic rumoured to be buried on an island in the high seas, and all of those clerics are racing each other to find it… Yes, there’s a definite plot hook there.

Pirates: In OD&D pirates were just Chaotic buccaneers. Now they’re Chaotic Evil.

Cavemen: Compared to OD&D, the number appearing has dropped from 30-300 to 10-100. Cavemen wear no armour, just as they did in OD&D. Their exact AC was never stated in OD&D, but I assumed it to be 9, the standard number for an unarmoured man. In the Monster Manual it’s listed as 8. Whether that’s a function of high Dexterity or just a tough hide isn’t said, but I favour the latter. Otherwise Cavemen are greatly expanded upon. They get some high-level NPC fighters and clerics, which they never did before. Their treasures are more precisely detailed, as they are said to carry gold nuggets, uncut gems and ivory tusks. They’re still cowardly, and as in OD&D they get a -1 to morale.

It looks as though while caveman numbers are dwindling, their greatest warriors are growing stronger. I can’t say why that may be, but it’s something to think about.

Tribesmen: Tribesmen are a new category of Men that debuts here. They are said to live in tropical jungles and islands. They are similar to cavemen, but their cleric NPCs (or witch doctors) can reach higher level, and are actually druids. It’s also implied that they’re all cannibals, which isn’t exactly the most PC thing that Gary has ever written, but it does make for better adventuring.

Dervishes: Dervishes are almost exactly as described in OD&D: highly religious Lawful Good nomads that fight with a fanatical fury that gives them +1 to hit and damage, and means they never need to check morale. In OD&D they only got the +1 to hit and not to damage, but otherwise they’re the same. They do get more NPC fighters now, and their cleric leaders are higher level. We also get a description of their usual lair (a walled fortress) and a breakdown of their arms and armour (they’re pretty much all mounted).

Nomads: Statistically nomads are much as they were in OD&D, although they’re now much better at gaining surprise than they were (I assume that this only applies in their native habitat). Like most of the types of Men detailed here, their NPC leaders are stronger and more numerous than they were in OD&D, although the nomads don’t get anything too outrageous. We learn that they are 90% likely to lair in tents near an oasis, with the other 10% living in small walled cities. The composition of their troops have been slightly re-jigged, but it’s still mostly lancers and mounted archers.

Merchants: This is the first time that merchants have been detailed with statistics in D&D. It’s not the statistics of the merchants themselves that are important, however, but the merchants' caravans. The entry goes into detail about what guards you can expect to find in a merchant caravan, as well as the treasure available. Raiding merchant caravans would be a profitable business, as you’re never going to find one worth less than 12,000 gold pieces going by the book.

There must be some explanation for the sudden proliferation of very wealthy merchants encountered on the road. I could always chalk it up to the influx of treasure coming out of Castle Greyhawk, or maybe tie it in to the growing slave trade and the Slavers modules.

Pilgrims: Pilgrims, detailed here for the first time, are simply groups of people on their way to visit a holy place. As usual they’re accompanied by high-level NPCs, with a much greater variety than the other types of Men. Depending in the alignment of the pilgrims, there could be paladins, rangers, druids, or even assassins. The alignment chart given here only has five possibilities (lawful good, chaotic good, neutral, lawful evil, chaotic evil), evidence that the Monster Manual is still operating within the parameters of OD&D.

There’s a 5% chance that a high-level pilgrim will be carrying a religious artifact. I wonder how literally I’m supposed to take that. Are they carrying an actual "capital A" Artifact from the Dungeon Master’s Guide? Or just a random holy object that may or may not have powers or value? I lean towards the latter without discounting the possibility of the former.

Again, an explanation for the growth in pilgrim numbers must be explained in my campaign. I can probably tie this into how I plan to treat religion in the game world, by starting out with churches to Law and Chaos, then shifting into the rise of churches to specific gods. Once the worship of specific gods comes into fashion there will be a lot more pilgrims wandering around.

On Conan the Barbarian

2011-09-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was scheduled to run some D&D on Saturday, but that fell through. It's annoying, because I just have to get through this one game before I can restructure things into a sandbox style where the absence of a player doesn't matter. But that's life as an adult, I'm afraid, and we made the best of it by going to the movies to see Conan.

I've been a Conan fan for a long time, starting with the movies from the early 80s. I still love the first one despite its less than accurate portrayal of the lead character. That Conan may not be much like the one in the stories, but Schwarzenegger is undeniably charismatic in the role and I feel like the atmosphere of movie Hyboria is very cool. I'm not so keen on Conan the Destroyer, but it's still a fun movie despite lacking the thoughtfulness of the original.

From there I moved into the comics, around the time that Roy Thomas returned and pretty much disavowed everything that had happened since he left. (I think he declared that the last decade's worth of comics was a year in Conan's life, and then got back to adapting Robert E. Howard stories.) I'm a big fan of Conan in comics, particularly the 70s stuff and the current Dark Horse run. If you haven't read any, the first volume of Savage Sword of Conan is out there, and is fairly cheap. That's about as good as Conan comics get.

The comics, and most especially the essays Roy Thomas would include in them, got me to read the Howard stories, and those I love. Red Nails and Black Colossus are probably my two favourites, but I've got time for just about all of them. Howard's a great writer.

As for the new movie, on the whole I enjoyed it, and this is entirely based on the performance by Jason Momoa. When he's not on the screen, it's terrible, in the way that all modern swords-and-sorcery movies are. But Momoa has real presence, and is very much recognisable to me as Howard's Conan. And the dude knows how to glower. He's got that look down, where you just know some guy is going to get killed hard.

Of the Conan movies we've had, the modern one has a great Conan, and the old ones has a great Hyboria. It would be nice to mesh the two together at some point. And, of course, I'd love to see an actual Howard story get the treatment. Hour of the Dragon is the one that I think would make the best movie, but Momoa's not old enough to play that Conan. It doesn't even have to be a Howard story, just a good script would do, because I really want to see Momoa have another crack at the role.

Save or Dying! And an Announcement

2011-08-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, first for the announcement. I was looking over my posts just now and I saw that I started blogging my way through the Monster Manual in September last year. That's unacceptable to me, so I'm forcing myself to start up the Ultimate Sandbox again. Expect the posts to start rolling in soon enough.

And now for the game mechanic stuff. Now a lot of the design decisions in later iterations of D&D have come about as a way to make the game less deadly. Or less unfair, depending upon your perspective. Chief amongst the changes the game has undergone is the nerfing of save or die effects. I'm personally ambivalent about the subject; in principle I like that the save or die stuff is there to keep the players on their toes, but I've also seen some characters killed in pretty crappy and unsatisfying circumstances.

There's a simple way to alleviate save or die effects. It only works if you're using the optional death's door rule of death at -10 hit points, but to be honest I never see games being run with out it. Anyway, this is how it goes: if your character is hit with a save or die effect, roll 1d10 and subtract the result from 0. Voila, that's how many hit points your character has left. You might die outright, but it's less likely. I don't think I'd use it in a regular game of D&D, but in something more story-based like the Dragonlance campaign I might put it into practice. It seems like a good rule to me for preserving story flow, for DMs who like that sort of thing (which I do on occasion).

Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works - Initial Thoughts

2011-08-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

Castle Zagyg finally arrived on Monday. I haven't had a lot of time to read it (I have too many comics to read, as well as Grant Morrison's Supergods) but I'm quite impressed with what I've seen on a casual browse.

For those that don't know, Castle Zagyg was released a few years ago by Troll Lord Games, and it was to be the first in a proposed series detailing Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk, the original D&D campaign. Alas, Gary wasn't able to complete the project before he died, and now it's somewhere in publishing limbo, almost certainly never to see the light of day.

For anyone who has been following my presumptuously named Ultimate Sandbox series (on hiatus, not dead!), Castle Zagyg is a vital piece in that campaign. I want to centre the campaign around Castle Greyhawk, and I want to make said castle as authentically Gygaxian/Kuntzian as possible. To that end, Castle Zagyg is the only possible starting point. So when I saw it available as a Buy It Now on EBay I didn't have to think very hard about snapping it up.

A few thoughts. The dungeon map is much sparser than I was expecting. I've studied the various maps of Castle Greyhawk that have appeared on the Internet, and they use every available space on the page. The Castle Zagyg maps (part of which are visible above) are much more spread out. I'm not sure if it betokens a change in the way Gary's game developed, or a desire on his part to make a more commercially appealing product to modern sensibilities, or something else entirely. They're still cool maps, though.

I'm also pleased to see that the book doesn't stray too far from the monsters in OD&D and Supplement I. My initial desire for the campaign is to use only the things that appear in the original D&D booklets, and Castle Zagyg is set up in a way that will let me do that.

I can't wait to really dig into this product, which means that the Ultimate Sandbox posts will probably remain on hiatus for a while longer. (Currently they're being delayed by the fact that I have to prepare for actual gaming, something I haven't had to do in years.) I'm sure I'll post more about The Upper Works in the next month or so, when I find the time to read it.

Castle Zagyg is mine!

2011-08-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, I just bought Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works!

I'm stoked. More when it arrives in my hands in a week or so.

A system for determining starting character level

2011-07-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

In my last post I talked about some ideas I had to solve the problem of what level I should introduce new PCs at. I’ve been getting annoyed at the way these guys just show up a out of the blue with no history, not having earned the levels they have. So here’s an example to illustrate the system I’m tinkering with.

Okay, so Jim-Bob’s character was just eaten by a ghast, and it’s time for him to introduce his new character. He decides to play as a fighter named Brorg, a wild hillman from the north. Normally I would have had him start at 4th level (two levels below the lowest level character in the party), but instead I decide to use the system below.

First we determine the maximum level that this character can be. This is easily done, as it’s the same level as the highest level character in the party. In this case, Brorg could potentially begin the game at 6th level.

Next we need to work out the pivotal encounters of Brorg’s adventuring life thus far. There will be one such encounter per level to be gained. Brorg will have five encounters that could possibly raise him to 6th level (he gets level 1 for free).

It’s chart time!

Roll - Encounter Type
1-3 - Combat (CR -1)
4-10 - Combat (Equal CR)
11-13 - Combat (CR +1)
14-15 - Skill Challenge (Easy)
16-18 - Skill Challenge (Medium)
19-20 - Skill Challenge (Difficult)

Brorg rolls on this chart five times and gets the following results: two combats with an opponent one level lower than himself, one combat with an opponent equal to his level, a difficult skill challenge, and a medium skill challenge.

Easy combat:

Brorg has an encounter with an opponent whose Challenge Rating is one lower than his own level. Since he begins at level 1 this isn’t possible, so he’ll have to fight something with a CR of ½. There are 24 such monsters in the 3rd edition Monster Manual, and a random roll gives me the result of a locathah. A weird result for a northern hillman, but such are the vagaries of random tables. Brorg must fight it out with this Locathah, and the table below determines how well he has done.

Result - Reward
PC loses battle - Nothing
PC wins, but has lost over half hit points - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC wins, but is wounded - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC wins without being harmed - level gain and treasure

Brorg wins this combat, and only loses a couple of hit points. He advances to second level, and also has a 50% chance to gain some treasure. The dice favour him, and Brorg gets to roll on Table 3-5: Treasure in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Alas, all he finds is a lowly 500 silver pieces, but it’s better than nothing.

Medium Combat:

Brorg now has an encounter with a creature of a level equal to his own. He’s at level 2 now, and there are 45 monsters of the same level in the Monster Manual. Oh no, it’s a monitor lizard! Hardly the stuff of legend. Brorg has a hard time of it fighting this guy, and gets hammered before taking it down. With only a couple of hit points left, he gets a 50% chance of gaining some benefit. If the roll goes against him, he gains neither treasure nor a level. If the roll goes in his favour, he can choose to either gain a level or roll for treasure. Luckily for Brorg he rolls well, and chooses to advance to third level.

Difficult Skill Challenge:

Brorg has to make a difficult skill challenge, which I am defining as three skill checks of Difficulty Class equal to 20 plus your level (which in this case would be DC 23). We need to randomly determine what skills will be tested. The three I got via random determination were Sleight of Hand, Survival and Craft. It’s up to the DM and player involved to come up with a rationale for the three skills required. The above three to me seem like Brorg went on an arduous quest into the wastelands to recover a treasure and fashion it into a gift for his chieftain. Anyway, Brorg fails the Sleight of Hand and Craft checks, but makes the Survival check. Let’s consult the table below.

Result - Reward
PC fails all three skill checks - Nothing
PC makes one skill check - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC makes two skill checks - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC makes all skill checks - Level gain and treasure

Again, Brorg has a 50% chance of gaining a reward. He makes a bad roll, and is stuck at 3rd level.

Medium Skill Challenge:

I’m defining a medium skill challenge as three skill checks of DC 15 plus your level (in this case 18). Random determination this time gives us these skills: Intimidate, Intimidate, and Concentration. Perhaps Brorg was sent to browbeat some lesser tribes into submission, and had to impress them by firing an arrow while his hair was set on fire. Brorg makes all three challenges, is raised to 4th level, and also gets to roll for some treasure. Given that this is a medium challenge, Brorg rolls on the level equal to his own on the treasure table (3rd level – always roll for treasure before levelling up!). He ends up with 100 gold pieces and a minor magic item: a potion of spider climb.

Easy combat:

Brorg gets another easy combat. Now that he is 4th level, he has to fight something of CR 3. A derro! Alas, the little bugger’s poison use and spell-like abilities do Brorg in, and he loses the battle. No level gain or treasure for him this time.

So that leaves Brorg at 4th level, pretty much where he would have been had I went with my usual method. He does have a little more treasure, and a minor magical item, which is more than I would normally give out; I don’t allow new characters to start with treasure beyond a normal first level character. What he does have now is some background. He’s a hill tribesman, but it might be worth making him from warmer climes given the encounters he had early on. He went on some raids with his fellow tribesmen on a number of locathah settlements. Once proven as a warrior he was sent across a lizard-infested wasteland to get back his clan’s stolen ruby, but he was unable to do so. Still later he was part of an expedition sent to intimidate some villages into servitude, and was forced to beat them in an archery contest while they set his hair on fire to impress them. Later he set out alone for a life of dungeon delving adventure, and deep in the underground he had a disastrous encounter with a derro. After his first setback as a solo adventurer he decides to seek out some companions, and that’s where he comes in to the campaign.

Obviously this system could become unwieldy at higher levels, but by that point the PCs have access to raise dead, so it’s pretty unlikely that it will get used beyond level 8 or 9.

Note that at no point can the character die during this process. The combats involved here are symbolic of the trials the character went through to gain those levels, rather than representing actual combats that he fought.

Starting Level for New Characters

2011-07-20T23:29:00.000-07:00

I was thinking last night about what level new characters to a campaign should start at. My knee-jerk old-school instinct tells me "Level 1", as my preference really is for characters to be built from the ground up. And while I get the feeling that can work in earlier editions of the game, particularly in sand-box play, I don't think it's a viable option for a 3rd Edition campaign that's mostly plot-driven. Either that first level character is going to die very quickly, or the campaign plot is going grind to a halt while that character is nursed to the higher levels.

My current method is to start a new character at two levels below the lowest level character in the party. This keeps new characters useful, while still a little bit less powerful than everyone else. But I've recently gotten annoyed with the necessity for these mid-level character to just pop up out of nowhere. And as I said above, I don't like starting characters at higher than first level. It's kind of like cheating if you don't play through it.

So I'm thinking of methods that I can use for players to sort of simulate the experience of playing through those low levels. In my younger days I might have contemplated just running the character solo, but time is at a premium now, and besides that there's always a chance that the character could die. Another much quicker method would be a simple chart that determines your character's starting level. Like this:

Roll :   Result:
1         Start at Level 1, loser!
2-5     Three levels below the lowest level PC in the party
6-10   Two levels below
11-14 One level below
15-17 Equal to lowest level PC
18-19 Equal to highest level PC
20       One level higher than highest level PC

That gives a greater spread of potential levels, but doesn't really solve the problem I have with these characters springing up out of nowhere with no background.

Here's another thought I had. Get together with the player and hash out the rough background of the character. I generally don't require a background for first level characters, but I always like one for characters of higher level. From this background, work out a number of pivotal moments in the character's life equal to the amount of levels he could start at (for me, this would be equal to the highest level character in the party). For each of these levels, design a simple encounter that represents that moment, possibly a combat or a skill check or even a bit of roleplaying. The result of that encounter determines whether the level was gained, and possibly if the character gets some other benefit like treasure or a magic item. If the encounter is botched the character won't die, but he won't get any benefits either. Play through every encounter, and eventually you'll have a history for that PC and some levels that feel like they've been earned.

This is all pure thought experiment on my part at the moment, as I haven't tried it out yet. And it does require some prep work. But I like the idea, and I might try and work up an example in the next few days to test out.

Post-Game Roundup

2011-07-11T00:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, after three long years, I have played D&D. It was a good session, though not a great one. It's to be expected after such a long hiatus.

The first thing to note is that I was incredibly rusty and self-conscious. In my old games I was guilty of some amateur dramatics when acting out my NPCs, and it took me a little while until I was comfortable doing that again. It probably didn't help that there were some non-gamers floating around. It took until the first combat for me to get back into the groove. The next session won't be at least for another month, but I suspect that I'll be better next time.

The game itself was supposed to focus on the siege of the PCs' home base by an army of orcs, but we didn't really get that far. (It's always the way; we never get through as much stuff as I'd like to.) While the siege was going on, the players spent most of their time exploring a dungeon full of wonders from a previous age, looking for things that can help them beat the orcs. The first thing they dealt with was a pit to the land of the dead that they had found last session, from which they could summon people back to life. (Read my last post for some of the issues surrounding this.) They submitted their freakishly long list of fifteen characters, and had to defeat a skeletal monster of my own devising to get them back. The catch was that this monster had an extra hit dice for every dead person requested, so I ended up with four characters of level 6-8 against a 20 hit dice monster. They would probably have died, except that I went a bit stupid with the magic items in the last session.

They have what I named an Arcane Warsuit, which is kind of like a small mech with wands mounted on the arms like a gatling gun. I think I got overexcited when designing this thing, because I'd forgotten that it has the capacity to fire meteor swarms, and to cast disintegrate. I don't know what I was thinking. Luckily it's an experimental model, and it's eventually going to explode and mess up whoever is inside it at the time. No such luck this time, but eventually the dice will fall that way if the PCs keep using it. In this game the meteor swarms may have saved them from a TPK, so I don't mind.

So the PCs destroyed the skeletal guardian and resurrected a bunch of guys, including three very high level fighters. Legendary guys like King Peramis I, the First King of Men, and Gwynian Purehand, founder of the order of paladins. I think I managed to succeed in having them not take over the game, but I was helped in that most of the action took place in the dungeon and not during the siege. What did happen was that a lot of my long-standing NPCs got lost in the shuffle, including one guy who I want to make the shift into major antagonist very shortly. I have to remember not to get too caught up in playing the high-level guys.

The majority of the rest of the game involved a lot of the players following clues and deliberating about how to follow them. And I do mean deliberating; I threw them a number of nuggets to help them get where they wanted to go. They did find the Skull of Vecna, a leftover from my 2e campaign, which they may be able to use to raise an undead army. They also found "The Body of the Light", part of my campaign's shattered sun god. This one involved a lot more difficulty, in that it was housed in a series of rooms full of random teleporters, each room with a monster inside it. The result was a lot of bouncing from room to room with characters getting into solo combat. It was fun at first, but eventually the random teleporting got a bit tiresome. It even resulted in the death of the thief, who was unlucky enough to be paralysed by a ghast and eaten alive.

The biggest problem with the game was that I crashed and burned at around midnight. Perhaps it had something to do with me getting up at 7:30 am and looking after three kids all morning. It could just be that I'm three years older than I was the last time I played. But it wasn't just that I got tired; my head was friggin' killing me. I seriously could not think any more. I frequently stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning without any ill-effects, but for some reason D&D just fries my brain. If anyone knows how to head that off, I'd appreciate the help.

The next game should wrap up this whole siege thing. The players have the means in their hands of repelling the invasion already; they could seriously wrap this baby up in about an hour. But I figure that with all of their deliberating and dithering around that will stretch out to a decent session.

Status Update

2011-06-27T23:56:00.000-07:00

First things first, this blog is not dead. It may be hovering at -9 hit points, but hopefully this post is the bandage needed to save its life. I do intend to continue with my 'Ultimate Sandbox' series, once I get some other pressing tasks out of the way.\

Second thing, if you are playing in my campaign, stop reading now. I mean it!

Now on the subject of D&D, the game I mentioned in the last post, scheduled for May, fell through. Unavoidable circumstances. The good news is that it's been rescheduled for this coming Saturday, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking after a three-year hiatus from the game.

My so-called current campaign is 3rd edition, and the upcoming game is a sort of grand finale for the mini-setting I developed. The world is a post-apocalypse in which the sun has been extinguished, and the PCs are living in a sky-castle that's about to be besieged by an army of orcs riding dragons. So yeah, this is going to be a complicated one, especially when you factor in the dilemma I'm having.

In the last game, the PCs discovered a well from which they can summon the dead back to life. I intended it as a way for them to bring back some extra firepower in the form of some deceased characters and a couple of minor heroes from the recent past. The problem came when the players finally twigged on to the fact that this is world is a continuation of my 2nd edition campaign; armed with that knowledge they had a list of three ancient heroes who by all rights ought to be very high level.

At this point I could very well have refused the request to resurrect these guys. It's not knowledge their PCs should have at all. But I decided to reward them for finally figuring it out, and remembering those ancient heroes that I only ever mentioned in passing. I considered the possibility that at least one of these guys might have died of old age, and would be decrepit and useless when brought back, but looking over my notes I saw that I'd already chronicled the manner of their deaths, so that was a no go.

(For any of you out there wondering why I didn't just change that history to suit my needs, that's something that I don't like to do. Like fudging die rolls, or altering things behind the scenes during a game. As far as I'm concerned the things I have already written are sacrosanct, and I won't knowingly change them for any purpose. Just as I expect my players to be held to the scores on their character sheets, I myself must be held to the notes I have written down as the DM. That's the game part of role-playing game.)

So that leaves me with an adventure designed for 6th level PCs that suddenly has three 16th-18th level NPCs in play, which is not a good situation for me. Luckily I have another ace-in-the-hole in my old notes, in that I have established already that the supreme commander of the orcs is a guy called the Reaver, an immortal orc who was around at the same time as the aforementioned NPCs. I had kept him out of the adventure by saying that he's away besieging the dwarf strongholds, but I can bring him in once his messengers bring him word of what's going on. After all, he's bound to want to come and do battle with his old enemies.

But that presents another problem, and potentially an even bigger one: these high-level character could very well overshadow events. I'm hoping that the fact that I'm aware of the problem will mean that I can head it off. It may even set up an interesting obstacle, having the First King of Men around to muck up the chain of command. But I still plan to have the PCs make the decisions, and they do have a number of very powerful items in play.

The feeling I get as I ponder this game is that it's either going to be the best damn session I've ever run, or a complete and utter train wreck. I'll let you all know next week how it goes.

You want the good news or the bad news?

2011-04-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, first the bad news. It's very probable that I won't be posting here as much in the next few weeks. That is a direct result of my good news, and that is that I'm actually going to be gaming again. I've been on a hiatus now for close to three years, which started because of the birth of my son and continued because I could never be bothered to get my group together again. But we've finally managed to organize ourselves, and it looks like I'll have a regular monthly game starting in May. Huzzah!

AD&D Monster Manual part 31

2011-04-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Mammoth: Mammoths first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, but they get stats here for the first time. They’re pretty much exactly the same as elephants, only with more Hit Dice, and the ability to dish out a lot more damage. Their tusks are worth 1½ times as much as an elephant’s, as well. There are two types of mammoth, woolly and imperial, and I’m shocked that Gary didn’t separate them and give each its own set of stats.

Manticore: Manticores first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. Gary must have really, really liked the way he designed this monster, because the only change he’s made is to give it two extra hit points. (Although now that I think of it, those two extra hit points, taking it from 6+1 to 6+3 Hit Dice, mean that it attacks as a 7 Hit Dice creature, doesn’t it?)

Masher: This monster first appeared in Supplement II. It’s still a gigantic worm-like fish, but statistically it might as well be an entirely new monster. The old version was pretty much exactly like a purple worm, with a poisonous tail and the ability to swallow prey whole. The new masher has neither of these abilities, but it does have poisonous spines that can impale anyone who tries to attack it.

Mastodon: Mastodons first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, but they get stats here for the first time. It’s kind of ironic that I was surprised earlier about Gary not making stats for both kinds of mammoth, because the mammoth and the mastodon are almost EXACTLY THE DAMN SAME. I give Gary points for thoroughness, but there's a lot of needless redundancy in the first Monster Manual.

Medusa: This monster first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. It’s been beefed up a little since then. Its Armor Class has improved from 8 to 5, and it has 6 Hit Dice instead of 4. I suppose Gary thought that it was a pretty weak monster with such a bad AC, and I’m inclined to agree with him; even with their eyes shut, PCs aren’t going to have much trouble hitting one. Their petrification gaze attack has now been given a range, but the biggest change here is cosmetic. In OD&D, medusas had the lower body of a snake. Now they are fully humanoid, with legs and all. They're now much more in line with their portrayal in pop culture, but it presents me with a problem. We have weaker mudusas with snake bodies in OD&D, regular medusas with legs in AD&D, and the Greater Medusa in AD&D 2e that has a snake body. Two separate species, perhaps? The two types of snake-bodied medusas could just be younger and older varieties of the same thing. The humanoid variety have to be different somehow. Maybe they're the result of a snake-bodied medusa mating with a human? (Just forget the logistics of the union and roll with it...)

AD&D Monster Manual part 30

2011-03-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

Lurker Above: This monster, sort of like a manta ray that clings to the roof of a dungeon and drops on the heads of adventurers, first appeared in The Strategic Review #3. Gary must have been very happy with this one, because the only change to it is that it is now better at gaining surprise.

Lycanthropes: Lycanthropes first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, and were expanded on in Supplement II. Most of that expansion has been discarded in favour of some new guidelines on how lycanthropy is passed on. The disease, previously able to be passed on to any warm-blooded creature, is now restricted to humanoids. There’s no longer a rule about the disease being more potent during the spring. Supplement II had some complex rules to determine when a lycanthrope’s animal persona takes over, but that’s been simplified to a 90% chance during the full moon. The rules for family packs have pretty much disappeared, only being present in the entry for werewolves. Belladonna now has a purpose, as characters can use it to try and cure themselves, with the risk of dying from the poison. Any infected character could previously be cured by a cure disease spell, but now the caster must be 12th level, and instead of having a window of 2-24 days to be cured, you now have a mere 3 days.

Werebear: Werebears have had a drastic drop in their Number Appearing (from 2-20 down to 1-4) and a slight increase in Hit Dice (from 6 to 7+3). They now have a number of new special abilities in addition to their previous bearhug attack. They can summon brown bears, which is actually drawn from the Chainmail rules. They heal three times faster than normal, are immune to disease, and can cure any other creature of disease over the course of 1-4 weeks.

Wereboar: Wereboars have had a similar change in Number Appearing (from 2-20 to 2-8) and a Hit Dice increase (from 4+1 to 5+2). Otherwise, they’re the same as ever.

Wererat: These guys first appeared in Supplement I. Their Number Appearing has been reduced from 8-32 to 4-24. Their Armor Class has changed from 7 to 6, and their Hit Dice from 3 to 3+1. They’ve now lost their bite attack, and rely solely on weapons in combat. In OD&D they had two forms, human and big rat, but now they have three: human, ratman, and giant rat. They gain surprise more easily now. They’re also said to live in tunnels under cities for the first time. Wererats in the sewers is a very common trope for this monster, but this is the first time it's spelled out. Is it from the Fritz Lieber stories? I have to get off my arse and read those.

Weretiger: Their Number Appearing has changed from 2-20 to 1-6. Their Hit Dice has increased from 5 to 6+3. Their bite attack is better, now doing 1-12 instead of 1-10. They now have the ability to converse with all types of cats (although they prefer not to mingle with them), and they can rake with their rear claws to get some extra damage. It’s also said that they’re most often female.

Werewolf: Their Number Appearing is almost the same, changing from 2-20 to 3-18. They also gain three extra hit points. They’re the only type of lycanthrope that is said to travel in a pack, and they use rules similar to the family pack rules from OD&D; if the female is attacked, the male gets bonuses to attack, and the female gets bonuses if its young are attacked. They’re not the same rules as before, but the intent is the same.

Giant Lynx: The giant lynx first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III. This is the first time it gets stats. They live in cold regions, are very good at hiding, gain surprise often, and can detect traps. Their most important feature is their intelligence: they are listed as being Very Intelligent, which is better than the average human. This makes them much more interesting than the average animal encounter; certainly there’s nothing about them that’s statistically interesting.

AD&D Monster Manual part 29

2011-03-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Lizard: There are four types of lizards detailed here: Fire, Giant, Minotaur and Subterranean.

Fire lizards first appeared in Supplement II. Their Armor Class has worsened from 2 to 3, and their Hit Dice has been lowered from 12 to 10. Their breath weapon has now been given a specific range and area of effect, and the damage has changed from 1-10 to 2-12. Somewhat uncharacteristically, Gary seems to have dropped a lot of the detail that this monster previously had, such as lifespan and the length of their periodic hibernations. He’s replaced it with a market value for their eggs, though, which is very characteristic.

Giant lizards were first mentioned in the wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III. There was also an entry for plain old lizards in OD&D Vol. 3, which I assume to be the same monster (if not, that's one hell of an uneventful random encounter). This is the first time they get stats. I assumed they’d just be a generic low-level monster, and they are for the most part, but they do have the specific ability to do double damage when they roll a natural 20 to attack. It’s a pretty common house rule to apply this to everybody, but if you do that it deprives this monster of its only special ability. Unless you let them do triple or even quadruple damage, which could get a touch absurd.

Minotaur lizards first appeared in Supplement II. Their Armor Class has worsened from 3 to 5, their movement has slowed from 9” to 6”, and their damage ranges have been seriously nerfed. Whereas before they had a claw/claw/bite routine dealing a whopping 2-20/2-20/4-32, they now do a much more reasonable 2-12/2-12/3-18. In exchange for their weakened stats, they’ve gotten better at gaining surprise, and on an attack roll of natural 20 they can pick up their opponent and automatically bite again on the next round.

Subterranean lizards make their first appearance here. Like giant lizards they get the double damage on a natural 20, and they can run along walls and ceilings with ease. They're also a fair bit tougher than regular giant lizards, but they sort of have to be to survive underground in a D&D world.

Lizard Man: These guys first appeared in Supplement I. Their stats remain mostly the same, with only their claw damage reducing from 1-3 to 1-2. Even their description has barely changed. The only thing that is new is that a distinction has been made between primitive lizard men (those that use their natural weapons) and advanced ones (those that use weapons like darts, javelins and clubs).

Locathah: Locathah are a race of nomadic fish men that first appeared in Supplement II. Pretty much all of their stats have changed: Armor Class from 7 to 6; Movement Rate from 24 to 12; Hit Dice from 2+1 to 2; and Number Appearing from 30-300 to 20-200. The latter suggests that some sort of disaster has decimated the locathah population, which I might work in somewhere. There are numerous additions in their description as well. They’re still nomads that ride eels, which I think is rad. Their numbers have now also been bolstered with the possibility of some mid-level fighters. Their favoured weapons are now revealed as lances, tridents, crossbows and nets. Despite being nomadic, they are said to live in huge rocks that have been hollowed out with rooms and passages.

I was going to try and finish the letter L today, but I didn’t count on Lycanthropes and Lizards with their multiple entries. Next time!

AD&D Monster Manual part 28

2011-03-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

Leopard: Leopards first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in Supplement III, and they’re getting stats here for the first time. Their only remarkable feature is that they are more likely to gain surprise than other monsters, and they in turn are less likely to be surprised themselves.

Leprechaun: These figures of Irish folklore and breakfast cereal mascots were first introduced in The Strategic Review #3, but this is their first entry in an official rule book. They’ve changed surprisingly little since then, gaining a measly few extra hit points and an immunity to surprise due to their sharp hearing. They still have the same special abilities (invisibility, polymorphing non-living objects, creating illusions and ventriloquism), the same 80% magic resistance, and the same penchant for fucking with the PCs. One new tidbit is thrown out, that being the possibility that leprechauns are a mix of halflings and pixies. I can live with that explanation, provided nothing better comes along.

Leucrotta: This new monster is sort of a stag with the head of a badger, said to be so ugly that most creatures can’t bear to look at it. It has a rear attack that it can use when retreating, but of greater note is its ability to imitate human voices. Leucrottas are smart, chaotic evil, and they can speak the Common tongue, so this is an ability that can be used to its most damaging effect. Nothing is said about them being able to mimic specific voices, though; I would rule that out in most cases. There’s certainly the possibility that a leucrotta could learn to do so, but I wouldn’t use it as a standard feature.

Lich: These undead wizards first appeared in Supplement I. Their Armor Class has improved since then, from 3 to 0. There’s a slight trade-off, though, as their paralysing touch can now be avoided with a saving throw. In OD&D, the lowest level that a lich could be was 12th, but in AD&D that has been revised significantly upwards to 18th. They also specifically get the usual raft of undead immunities to things like sleep, charm, cold, electricity, etc., whereas before this was not stated outright.

In OD&D Supplement III liches were given psionic powers. Here there's a note saying 'see below' in regards to their psionics, but nothing is detailed in their description. I'm inclined to just treat them like regular magic-users in this regard.

Perhaps the most significant inclusion here is the first mention of a lich’s phylactery, a piece of jewellery that houses its soul. It is only mentioned very briefly here as one of the necessities for becoming a lich, but no detail is given on what it is or what it does. But in the future it becomes one of the core features of this monster.

Lion: Lions first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, with Mountain Lions and Spotted Lions appearing for the first time in Supplement III. All three get stats here for the first time, and there are no surprises to be had. It’s the usual great cat treatment – hard to surprise, can rake with back claws, etc. Mountain lions are smaller and weaker than regular lions, and spotted lions are the larger prehistoric variety.

AD&D Monster Manual part 27

2011-03-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Lamia: This is a new monster, a desert-dweller that has the torso of a woman and the lower body of some sort of beast. The illustration depicts the lower body as that of a lion, but it’s not specifically said in the text, so it could really be any animal. As is the way of things in D&D, the illustration shown here becomes the default depiction for the monster in the future.

Although they have quite a lot of Hit Dice, they seem to rely more on guile and trickery than brute force. They can cast charm person, mirror image, suggestion and create illusions, all spells that lend themselves to hoodwinking the PCs. They also have a touch that permanently drains wisdom, and that’s major in a game where ability score increases are hard to come by. If your wisdom is drained below 3, you become the lamia’s willing slave. Which is bad, because they like to drink the blood of their victims and then eat them.

Introducing lamias to the campaign shouldn’t be difficult, as their preferred desert climate is a fairly remote one.

Lammasu: These sphinx-like creatures first appeared in Supplement I. Their Hit Dice has increased from 6+2 to 7+7. Their alignment was Lawful, and is now Lawful Good, and they are still very helpful to characters that share their alignment. They also get a 30% magic resistance that they did not have before. They can still become invisible and cast dimension door. Their aura of protection from evil is now twice as potent as it was before. They also still cast spells as a 6th level cleric, and it’s spelled out here exactly how many spells they get a day; they now get 2 extra spells of first level, and 1 extra second and third level spell. Any cure wounds spell they cast is now twice as effective as before. There’s also now a 10% chance that any lammasu can cast holy word. In OD&D they were said to be able to speak any Lawful or Neutral tongue. Now they just get their native language and their alignment language, as well as some limited telepathy.

Lamprey: Lampreys first appeared in Supplement II, and they get a fairly extensive rewrite. The original lamprey was a 3 Hit Dice creature whose blood drain ability was poorly worded; they drained “one level per hit point” which could be interpreted in all sorts of absurd ways.

In AD&D, there are normal lampreys and giant lampreys. Both are much the same, only the giant variety has more hit points. Their blood drain is much more reasonable, being 2 hit points per round for each of its Hit Dice (meaning a normal lamprey drains 2 hit points a round, and the giant kind drains 10 per round). Simple, and no way to interpret it as level drain. Everyone’s happy, except for super-sadistic DMs.

Larva: Larva are a new monster. They are the souls of the most selfish and evil beings, that dwell in Hades in the form of human-headed worms. Night hags use them to bargain with demons and devils, as they are useful in creating imps and quasits. They’re also used by liches to maintain their undead status.

For outer planar creatures, these are surprisingly weak. They would make a decent encounter for low-level PCs, but it’s extremely unlikely you’d ever find one outside of the planes. They seem to be included more for flavour than anything, although any creature used for bargaining can be quite easily turned into a plot hook. Imagine the PCs in a race against some demons to find a “great treasure”, only to find at the end a big pit full of these things. I don’t see them as a monster you could use very often, though.

Giant Leech: These things first appeared in OD&D Vol. 3, and were expanded on in Supplement II. They’ve changed a lot. Number Appearing has increased from 2-12 to 4-16. Armor Class has worsened from 8 to 9. They’re slower, their speed having dropped from 6” to 3”. They used to have 2 Hit Dice, but now they range from 1 to 4. Their bite damage has been majorly nerfed from 2-12 to 1-4. The only other major change is with their blood drain ability. In OD&D they drained levels at the rate of one per turn. Now they drain hit points at the rate of 1 per round for each of the leech’s Hit Dice. It doesn’t sound much, but while the victim is still in water it’s very unlikely they’ll notice until half of their hit points are gone. They still cause disease, but they aren’t quite as deadly. In OD&D, the disease was automatic, and killed you in a month. Now there’s a 50/50 chance that the leech is diseased, and it is fatal after 2-5 weeks.

AD&D Monster Manual part 26

2011-03-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

God bless the letter K, and the paltry number of monsters whose name begins with that letter. It's a short entry!

Ki-Rin: The ki-rin, a horse-like aerial spirit with vast magical powers, first appeared in Supplement III. Statistically the only major change to them is the addition of an extra attack per round, a horn that deals 3-18 damage as a +3 weapon.

In OD&D they were said to be able to cast spells as an 18th level magic-user. That’s still the case in AD&D, but the number of low level spells they can cast in a day has been greatly increased. They still have psionic powers, and average more psionic points than before. It’s hard to tell whether they’re more or less powerful than before, though; in OD&D they could use every psychic power available to magic-users, and in AD&D they get 4 major and 6 minor abilities. AD&D’s psionic system is very different than that found in OD&D, so I can’t really gauge this until I get to the Player’s Handbook.

In OD&D they were said to have the powers of a djinni at double strength, and that’s still true, as is their ability to cast all air-based spells at double strength. One area in which they’ve been powered down is their Magic Resistance. It’s still sitting at a healthy 90%, but in OD&D they were completely immune to spells cast below 12th level, and that’s no longer the case. But with an MR that high, it will probably not make a great difference.

We also get confirmation that the ki-rin’s ability to converse with anyone is telepathic. And their skin is worth 25,000 gp, which is just a great way to try and lure your PCs into skinning a majorly powerful being of Lawful Good alignment.

Kobolds: Kobolds first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, and their stats haven’t changed here. What has changed is the amount of detail given to them. Their society is described as tribal, like most of the D&D humanoids, and they have the usual selection of leaders and bodyguards. They are also said to keep wild boars and giant weasels in their lairs. Most kobolds use short swords, axes and clubs, with javelins and spears as missile weapons. They hate gnomes and other woodland fey like brownies and sprites. Nothing is mentioned about them being expert trap-makers, a thing that becomes standard later on. Nor are they described as dog-like or scaly in the text, although the illustration does depict them in that way. It's not the first time they've been drawn in that manner, though; I distinctly remember some dog-men kobolds in Swords & Spells.

AD&D Monster Manual part 25

2011-03-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

Jackal: Jackals had first appeared in Supplement I, as one of the animals that can be summoned using a bag of tricks. Of the few stats that had been previously established, only Armor Class is changed (from 8 to 7). They’re quite weak, and said to be cowardly and not particularly fierce. The text outright states that they’re only here because of the bag of tricks. Gary actually sounds a little bit apologetic.

Jackalwere: This is a new monster. The jackalwere is a sort of reverse lycanthrope – rather than being a man that can take the shape of a jackal, it is a jackal that can take the shape of a man. Their main attack is a gaze that causes sleep, and they can only be struck by iron or magical weapons. Described as malign foes of humankind, they pretty much exist to kill people, eat them, and steal their treasure (not unlike most adventurers).

I feel like I should be able to make something of the reverse-lycanthropic nature of these creatures. Certainly they must tie to the other lycanthropes somehow. I’m leaning towards jackalweres being the more ancient of the two – it just feels right. I’d like to connect them to the origins of lycanthropy, if at all possible, but that’s some thinking I’ll leave to a later date.

Jaguar: Jaguars first appeared on the wilderness encounter tables in Supplement III, but they get stats here for the first time. They’re hard to surprise, and if both of their claw attacks hit, they can make extra attacks with their rear claws. Any monster with five attacks a round isn’t to be trifled with. I’m a little dubious about their ability to leap 30 feet into combat, but admittedly I know very little about these animals, and I gather that Gary used to enjoy watching wildlife documentaries. So I guess he knows what he’s on about.

AD&D Monster Manual part 24

2011-03-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

Imp: Imps are a new monster, a type of minor devil that often serves as the familiar to a lawful evil wizard or cleric. And as far as familiars go, these guys are just about the best. Their own abilities are formidable, including a poisonous tail, regeneration, invisibility and suggestion. They’re immune to normal weapons, can’t be harmed by fire, cold or electricity, and have a pretty high magic resistance in general. They can also polymorph into the form of a spider, raven, giant rat or a goat.

The real benefit of having one as a familiar comes from the powers they bestow on their master. If the imp is close enough, it confers its own regeneration and magic resistance. The master also operates at one experience level higher. Admittedly, if it’s out of range he’s one level lower, and if the imp gets killed he loses four levels, so there’s always an element of risk. The imp can also contact the lower planes like a Commune spell, and presumably has no chance of going insane from the experience. That really is a great familiar, so long as you take good care of it.

Intellect Devourer: Intellect Devourers first showed up in Supplement III. They have been altered only very little (the only change being a shift to 6+6 Hit Dice instead of 6), which probably has to do with how late into the game's development they were created. I would think that Gary had a really firm grip on how to create a good monster by 1976. See here for my original write-up.

Invisible Stalker: Invisible Stalkers debuted in OD&D Vol. I and II, as creatures summoned by the Invisible Stalker spell. They haven’t changed in concept here, and their stats are the same. We learn that they are from the Elemental Plane of Air (which I believe had been implied before, but never explicitly stated) and that they roam the Astral and Ethereal Planes (as had already been established). Nothing before was said about their invisibility making them harder to hit, but now anyone attacking one suffers a -2 penalty. Likewise, they now gain surprise on a 1d6 roll of 1-5, which was never stated before. They also get a 30% magic resistance they didn’t have previously. Invisible Stalkers still resent long, ongoing tasks, and now their tendency to pervert their master’s wishes has been given some game mechanics to go with it (a 1% cumulative chance of turning on their master per day of service).

Irish Deer: Irish Deer are the prehistoric variety, very large and with fierce antlers. They’re only aggressive during ‘rutting season’. The only problem I see with this creature is the name, there being no Ireland in the official World of Greyhawk. As is usual in such cases, given that the World of Greyhawk is explicitly an alternate Earth, I will say that these creatures originated from the area of the world that is in roughly the same place as Ireland.

Ixitxachitl: These monsters first appeared in Supplement II, and like most monsters from that book they’ve received an extensive overhaul. Their Armor Class has changed from 6 to 5, movement from 9 to 12, and Hit Dice from 2-1 to 1+1. Their single attack once did 3-18 damage, but has been reduced to 3-12. Conceptually they remain the same, being intelligent manta rays with a whole lot of cleric leaders, but their nature as philosophers has been lost (much to my disappointment). There are still vampiric ixitxachitl, but they are only encountered half as often, and they are no longer turned by holy symbols. Their claim to vampirism is that they can regenerate, and their touch drains levels (neither of which the monster could do before). So they just got a very big boost, because looking back at the vampiric ixitxachitl in Supplement III, all the vampirism did was allow it to be turned. It was more of a weakness than a strength.

AD&D Monster Manual part 23

2011-02-22T21:23:00.000-08:00

I said Wednesday, okay, I just didn't say which Wednesday.

Hippopotamus: The only previous mention of Hippos in D&D was in the Conjure Animals spell. With 8 Hit Dice and a damage range of 3-18, they’re a pretty tough monster, and they are said to be aggressive despite being herbivores. And in real life, they are responsible for a lot of human deaths. Any animal that can tear a low-level party to shreds like this one can isn't to be sneezed at.

Hobgoblin: Hobgoblins, which first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, have not changed at all statistically. But they have been greatly expanded on, because the only description that OD&D gave for them was that they were bigger goblins with a bonus to morale. The Monster Manual gives them a tribal lifestyle (with such names as Leg Breakers, Marrow Suckers and Slow Killers), stats for leaders and chieftains, details of their lairs (including the use of carnivorous apes), what weapons they use, their physical description, and a hatred of elves. The militaristic bent that they will have in later editions isn’t really evident here, although they are illustrated in their traditional samurai-helmet look. They are said to always keep their weapons polished, which I guess is more military discipline than most humanoids show. But like most of the humanoid monsters (kobolds, goblins, orcs), at this point they’re basically the same monster with a different amount of Hit Dice.

Homonculous: This monster first appeared in Supplement I. Statistically there is a major change, as its Hit Dice drop from 6 to 2. That’s a big shift, but it makes sense to me given how small these guys are. Their Armor Class has imprived from 7 to 6, but that’s hardly enough to offset the hit point drop. Their bite attack now has a duration for the sleep that it causes. They now use the same saving throw values as their master ( and given what happens to the magic-user when their homonculous dies, a lot of PCs will be breathing a sigh if relief). They can also be controlled at a greater range than before – 48” as opposed to 36”. The process of creating a Homonculous hasn’t changed much. It still requires an alchemist, who needs 1-4 weeks and a pint of the magic-user’s blood. But the cost is now variable, so it could be more or less than the 1,000 gp it required before. And the M-U must now cast mending, mirror image and wizard eye, whereas before he didn’t need to cast any spells.

Horse: Horses first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, and they’re a pretty important part of the game. The types detailed here are Draft, Heavy, Light, Medium, Pony, and Wild. The first four of those were in OD&D. Ponies have only been briefly mentioned in Swords & Spells, of all places. Wild Horses were in the wilderness encounter tables in Supplement III. Draft Horses gain an extra hit dice, and a damage range (which they didn’t have before). Heavy Horses have gotten slightly faster and gained a few hit points. Light Horses are unchanged, and Mediums have gained a solitary extra hit point. Ponies and Wild Horses get stats for the first time. It is mentioned that ponies can be trained for war, so 3rd Edition's war ponies do have some precedent. Figures are given for how much horses can carry, with one figure showing how much they can carry before being encumbered, and another being their maximum load. The first figure given matches closely to the maximum load figures for horses in OD&D, which means that a horse can now carry almost double what it was able to before.

Hydra: Hydras were one of the toughest monsters that first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. The only statistical change they have here is that they are slightly slower. They are much the same as before, with the notable difference that each of their heads now has 8 hit points instead of 6 (an effect of using 1d8 for monster hit dice now). Otherwise it’s much the same.

The Lernaean Hydra appears for the first time. This is the version from the story of Hercules, the one that grows two heads every time you cut one off.

Pyrohydras also make their debut, being hydras with a fiery breath weapon.

Hyena: Hyenas first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III. They have more Hit Dice than I was expecting, but are unremarkable otherwise, having no special abilities to mark them out. Hyaenodons make their D&D debut here, but they are just extra big hyenas.

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors

2011-02-13T21:36:00.000-08:00

If you'll indulge me for a short while, I'd like to do a spot of self-promotion. In addition to my love of D&D, I have an even deeper and more abiding love of super-hero comics. What that means is that while I have one D&D-related blog, I have two comics-related blogs.

The first is here at http://marvelindexes.blogspot.com/. This is my Marvel Comics site, in which I do detailed issue descriptions and chronologies and other incredibly nerdy stuff. At the moment I'm running through the Ant-Man issues of Tales to Astonish, which shows you how obscure I'm willing to go with this.

The other is at http://comicsodyssey.blogspot.com/. This one os much more general, and sort of similar to what I'm doing here at Save or Die, actually. I've started with the beginnings of DC Comics in 1935, and I'm reading everything I can get my hands on from that point forward, encompassing DC, Marvel and everything else that I find of interest. I've just started on the year 1938, and am closing in one the first appearance of Superman.

So that's it, shameless plug over. I'll be back on Wednesday with my next installment from the Monster Manual.

AD&D Monster Manual part 22

2011-02-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Halfling: Yes, I think at this point we can safely declare the use of the term ‘hobbit’ in D&D to be dead and buried. Halflings first appeared in OD&D Vol. 1, but they did not appear in Vol. 2, making this the first time that they get their own monster entry (they didn’t even get one in the Holmes Basic Set). They get the usual treatment for humanoids, with descriptions of their arms and armour, as well as the capabilities of their leaders. Their special abilities remain much the same, although their accuracy with slings now also applies to bows as well.

Of most significance is the introduction of the Halfling sub-races, Hairfoots, Tallfellows and Stouts. Hairfoots are the standard variety of halfling. Tallfellows, as their names would suggest, are taller and slimmer than regular hobbits, and sometimes pal around with elves. If they are strong enough, they can attain 5th or 6th level as Fighters (remembering that regular Halflings can only reach 4th). Stouts are the opposite, being smaller and friendlier with dwarves. A Stout with 18 Strength can reach 5th level as a fighter, and they all get infravision.

Harpies: Harpies first appeared in Supplement I. Whereas before they were said to have the lower bodies of eagles, now they have the lower bodies of vultures (which I guess is more evil-sounding). Their special abilities are the same, being a song that draws in any victim that fails a save, and a touch that charms them. They torture and eat their charmed victims, but get this: ‘What they do not want, they foul with excrement’. That is hardcore Chaotic Evil behaviour.

Hell Hound: Hell Hounds are fire-breathing dogs that first appeared in Supplement I. They have a couple of statistical changes. Their Hit Dice used to range from 3 to 7, but now it is 4 to 7. Their damage range has also been increased, from 1-6 to 1-10. We learn that they are not native to the Prime Material Plane, though it’s not specified where they do come from. (I think Hell is a pretty safe bet.) Their breath weapon now gets a range of 1”, but it still does a measly 1 point of damage per Hit Dice. But now that I think of it, they have no limit to how often they can use it, and it seems to me that they can do so even in the same round they use their bite attack, so that is actually pretty good. Their stealth and heightened senses are also better defined now, with actual numbers to back them up.

Herd Animal: Herd Animals first showed up as a result on the Wilderness Encounter Tables in Supplement III. It’s a wide-ranging category that includes such things as reindeer, oxen, giraffes, and antelopes. They’re not usually aggressive, but if they stampede your character you will be killed instantly, so don’t go pissing them off. Still it’s hard to take that picture of the dudes fleeing a lone rampaging giraffe at all seriously.

Hippocampus: It’s a new monster, but don’t get too excited, because this is pretty much just a bigger, smarter seahorse. Tritons ride them, and that’s about the only thing here of interest.

Hippogriff: Hippogriffs (just like griffons, but with horse parts instead of lion parts) first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. They have a very minor statistical change, with their Hit Dice increasing from 3+1 to 3+3. They also can have treasure in a lair, which they didn’t have before. They don’t get much more detail than they already had, except for the ubiquitous open market prices for their eggs.

AD&D Monster Manual part 21

2011-02-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

Gorgons: Gorgons, which first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2, are still metal-skinned bulls with a petrifying breath weapon, and that makes them among my all-time favourite monsters. They haven’t changed at all statistically, although their breath weapon now has a more well-defined area of effect, and a limit on the number of times it can be used in a day. The entry here is actually quite sparse, as though Gary realised that a metal-skinned bull was already rad enough. We don’t need any ecology nonsense detracting from it’s majestic awesomeness.

Gray Ooze: Gray Ooze also made its first appearance in OD&D Vol. 2. They now have a value for Number Appearing, whereas before this was blank. Thier Hit Dice has increased slightly from 3 to 3+3. Their immunities haven’t changed much, except that they are now specifically immune to all spells except those that use lightning. They are still subject to damage from normal weapons, but those weapons are now said to possibly corrode or break. They are also said to strike like snakes when attacking, which was not detailed before. I’m also really happy to see that they’ve retained their latent psychic abilities from Supplement III, and can hit anyone who uses psionics near them with a psychic crush. There’s something about psionically-powered slimes that really resonates with me.

Green Slime: There are no changes to the basics of green slime, although their relative deadliness to OD&D can depend on your interpretation of the rules. In AD&D, it takes a slime 1-4 melee rounds to turn any creature it contacts into green slime (no resurrection possible!). In OD&D, it took one turn, but the use of word turn was ambiguous in those rules. It could mean ten combat rounds, or it could mean a single round, and there’s a world of difference between the two. As usual, I will probably interpret the rules to be the most fair to the players, but it's a moot point once we get to AD&D anyway. Oh, and green slimes are specifically said to be able to sense vibrations and drop on people passing underneath, so thay are at least a little more of a threat now.

Griffon: The only change to griffons is that their Number Appearing has decreased from 2-16 to 2-12. There are also some extra details about whether their young will be present in a nest, because Gary has thrown in the option of taking them and selling them for thousands of gold pieces.

Groaning Spirit: The only mention of a Groaning Spirit in previous D&D books was in Supplement III, under the description for the Iron Flask of Tuerny the Merciless. But that reference to a demon or devil of small power has no connection to this new monster, more commonly known as the Banshee. As far as undead go they have an unusually specific origin, being the spirits of evil female elves, something we’re assured is very rare. (Although, come to think of it, that describes pretty much the entirety of dark elf civilisation. Does every female drow become a banshee after death?) They have the usual raft of undead immunities, and can’t be harmed by non-magical weapons. Their main attack is a wail that kills everything within 30 feet that doesn’t make its saving throw. An exorcise spell will kill one outright, but just for fun I’m going to check the range on that – and as I suspected, it is 10 feet, so your cleric will have to get well within that banshee’s wail to get this spell off.

AD&D Monster Manual Part 20

2011-02-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

Golem: There are four types of golems detailed here: flesh, stone, iron and clay. The first three were introduced in Supplement I, and the clay golem was first seen in The Strategic Review #4. Golems are still immune to non-magical weapons, but now any magical creature with hit dice equal to or greater than the golem can successfully attack it.

Clay Golem: Clay Golems begin with a significant change, as their AC worsens from 2 to 7. This makes perfect sense to me, because clay isn’t exactly renowned for its protective properties, and they really shouldn't have an AC equivalent to the Iron Golem. Their damage range has changed slightly; it was 4-32, and now it is 3-30. A 17th level lawful good cleric is now required to create one, whereas before the level was 15th and the alignment was lawful. Even so, now it is stated that a lower-level cleric can do so with the right magical item. More spells are needed for the process as well; before it was raise dead, animate object and commune, and now it is resurrection, animate objects, commune, prayer and bless. To me the lower level spells that have been added feel a bit redundant, because any cleric that is casting resurrection will have no trouble with the weaker spells. The ritual now requires a massive outlay of at least 50,000 gp, whereas before you could get away with under 20,000 gp if you were lucky (part of the costs were randomly determined).

There’s still a chance for the clay golem to be “imbued with a chaotic evil spirit” – a much more evocative description than the event had before – but instead of a flat 1% each round, it is now a cumulative chance. So your clay golem is absolutely guaranteed to go berserk eventually.

And now we come to the most controversial sentence in the entry: “Damage inflicted upon living matter by a clay golem is only repairable by means of a healing spell from a cleric of 17th or greater level.” Yes, that means what it says. If you get damaged by a clay golem, that damage is permanent until you can find a 17th level cleric to heal it. It seems incredibly unfair, and I know of a lot of people who insist that the rule must be some kind of mistake. To them I say shenanigans. Suck up that hit point damage or find a high-level cleric, because some monsters are just plain dangerous.

The golem now attacks with 11 hit dice instead of 12, but it can still cast haste upon itself (and will now automatically do so if it goes berserk). They are still immune to all weapons except those that are blunt and magical. A move earth spell will still drive them back, and now it also deals a load of damage. Whereas before a disintegrate spell just paralysed them for a round, now it slows their movement by 50% and deals damage also. In addition, the earthquake spell now affects them, paralysing them and dealing massive damage.

I think most of the changes to the Clay Golem’s stats can be attributed to someone trying to strengthen the creature’s connection to that chaotic evil spirit. They were trying to create a more powerful creature, and they did so, but the cost is a greater chance for it to be possessed. Them’s the breaks!

Flesh Golem: Flesh Golems haven’t changed at all statistically. They are given a lot more detail, though, most notably that the means of creating one is described for the first time (it’s the first time that Iron and Stone Golems get this description as well). It requires a 14th level magic-user to cast wish, polymorph any object, geas, protection from normal missiles and strength, as well as the expenditure of 40,000 gp and one month of game time. They also now have the same chance as a clay golem to go berserk, which was not present before. At least with Flesh Golems there’s a decent chance that the creator can regain control of it, which cannot be done with a Clay Golem. Otherwise they have the same immunity to normal weapons, are still slowed by fire and cold, and are healed by lightning.

Iron Golem: Iron Golems’ AC has worsened from 2 to 3, but on the plus side they are slightly faster than before, and their damage range has increased from 4-32 to 4-40. Their creation requirements are detailed, needing an 18th level magic-user to cast wish, polymorph any object, geas and cloud kill, and to spend 80,000 gp and 3 months game time. And these guys are a good investment, because they won’t go nuts like the previous two types. They are still immune to weapons of less than +3 enchantment, are slowed by lightning and healed by fire. The only change is that it is explicitly stated that they are affected by rust monsters, although there's no indication of exactly how long it takes a rust monster to destroy one.

Stone Golem: Stone Golems haven’t changed a bit statistically. To create one you need a 16th level magic-user to cast wish, polymorph any object, geas and slow, and to spend 60,000 gp and 2 months of game time. The golem can still cast a slow spell on an opponent, but only every second round instead of every round. You’ll still need a +2 weapon or better to hurt one. They are no longer slowed by fire spells, but a rock to mud spell now has the same effect. Mud to rock still heals all damage the golem has taken. More interestingly, stone to flesh makes it temporarily vulnerable to normal attacks.

And, I’m done for today. You might have noticed a lack of updates lately. That’s been partly due to the holidays, but mostly due to a general lack of interest in D&D. Without actually being able to play the game (and I haven’t for a couple of years now) it’s hard to maintain my enthusiasm. The good news is that I’m in the initial stages of getting my regular game going again, so hopefully there’s some game-play in my future.

AD&D Monster Manual part 19

2011-01-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

Gnoll: Although these guys haven’t changed very much at all statistically, just about everything else in their entry is new. We learn that they live in loosely organised bands that occasionally form together to fight a common foe. They have leaders and chieftains with extra hit points, and also travel with their females and young (meaning that they procreate in the usual fashion). There’s no mention of them being a cross between gnomes and trolls here, as there was in OD&D. Gnolls are said to use trolls and hyenadons as guards. As weapons they favour battle axes, morning stars and two-handed swords. Although strong, they’re lazy. They only live for about 35 years. And most importantly, we get the first physical description of them as hyena-headed humanoids.

I’m still going with the gnome/troll hybrid idea in my game, as nothing given here contradicts it. I suppose that was the ancient origin of the race, and they were able to breed true despite their artificial beginnings.

Gnome: Again, while gnomes are unchanged statistically they receive a whole lot more detail than they had in OD&D. There’s a long breakdown of the NPC types that will accompany large bands, and it should be noted here that gnomes can become Fighters or Clerics. Gnomes typically use short swords, clubs and spears, and the description of their armour as leather covered in rings or studs is the first mention in the game of studded leather, or possibly ring mail. Their lairs are now often guarded by badgers, giant badgers, or wolverines. They still get pretty much the same special abilities as dwarves. There are also rumours of gnome magic-users, which I guess foreshadows their ability to become illusionists. They have brown skin, white hair, and live to about 600.

That gnomes are described here as having PC classes is pretty significant. They haven't yet been presented as a PC race in D&D to this point, and this is the first inkling that they'll get the full treatment in the AD&D Player's Handbook.

Giant Goat: So far, Giant Goats have only appeared in the wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III. They get stats here for the first time, and their main thing is that they deal a lot of damage, even more so when they charge. They can be tamed in rare cases and used as steeds, which is pretty cool. I kind of like the idea of having bugbears ride around on these things, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for any races that are said to hang out with giant goats. When I get to the inevitable goat-headed humanoids, I'll probably have them mounted on the giant goats.

Goblin: Like all the humanoids, goblins get a lot more detail than they did in OD&D. There’s the usual description of leaders and chieftains, but the assertion in OD&D that every goblin tribe has a king is unfortunately not present. They are said to ride huge wolves, though, which is always something I’ve loved about goblins. They have females and young, which distances them from their fairy tale origins significantly, I feel. We learn that they are decent miners, and can note unusual construction 25% of the time, like dwarves. Their skin ranges from yellow to red, and they only live for about 50 years.

So in the early stages of my campaign, every goblin tribe’s leader will be claiming to be king of the goblin race. By this point, it seems that won’t be the case, so I guess one of them won out. An article in an issue of The Dragon had an off-hand mention of the Goblin Wars, so I’m going to tie these together. The Goblin Wars, fought between many different tribes of goblins, started decades before the beginning of the campaign, and will end with a single goblin king at around the point I incorporate the Monster Manual.

Merry Christmas, all

2010-12-22T18:36:00.000-08:00

This one is for commentor Dwight Divine, who was looking for the Christmas message on the back cover of The Dragon #11. Here it is! A hearty 'merry Christmas' from the crew at TSR circa 1978, and a hearty BAH HUMBUG from me.

AD&D Monster Manual part 18

2010-12-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

Giants: There are six types of giants detailed in the Monster Manual: Cloud Giants, Fire Giants, Frost Giants, Hill Giants, Stone Giants and Storm Giants. The first five debuted in OD&D, while Storm Giants were first seen in Supplement I.

The first thing that leaps to my attention is that giants are said to have Strength scores ranging from 19 to 25. This is the first time we have seen mention of ability scores greater than 18. I don’t think these scores get detailed until the Player’s Handbook, but they're factored into the giants' stats in a vague sort of fashion.

There’s a method given here for determining the stats of young giants. You simply roll percentile dice, and the percentage rolled is how close to fully grown the giant is. Their hit points and damage are adjusted by the percentage rolled. This seems like a good enough solution to work for just about any monster, and I’m going to use it for monsters where this stuff is not already detailed (i.e. dragons have the whole age category thing going on, so I wouldn’t do it for them).

Giants have gotten poorer on average, it seems. In OD&D, a giant always carried with it a sack containing 1000 to 6000 gold pieces. Now they carry 1000 to 6000 coins, which could be anything from copper to silver to gold to platinum.

Cloud Giant: Cloud Giants are now encountered in smaller groups than they were in OD&D, have a better Armor Class, move faster, and have just a few more hit points on average. In OD&D they were either Neutral or Chaotic, but now they are Neutral with either good or evil tendencies.

Giants were pretty sparsely detailed in OD&D, so we get a lot of new info here. Firstly, we learn that some Cloud Giants actually live on clouds, which cements them as being inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk. In OD&D all giants had a chance to have pets, those being hydras, bears and wolves. These pets have now been individualised for each type of giant, and Cloud Giants get spotted lions. A specific range and damage are provided for the giant’s stone throwing ability, and they can now catch any large stones hurled at them (this applies to all the other giants as well). While previously Cloud Giants had been said to have a keen sense of smell, that has now been translated into a mechanical bonus, as they are very hard to surprise. And logically, given that 10% of Cloud Giants live in the sky, they can now levitate themselves. We also get a physical description for Cloud Giants; they have blue skin and silver hair.

Fire Giant: Fire Giants have a slightly better Armor Class, but are otherwise statistically similar. Neutral or Chaotic in OD&D, they are now Lawful Evil. They are still immune to fire (and this includes red dragon breath, so I’d extend it to pretty much any fire there is). Their pets of choice are hell hounds. They have black skin and red beards.

Frost Giant: Frost Giants have a very small amount of extra hit points, and their alignment has changed from Neutral or Chaotic to Chaotic Evil. They are also a little shorter on average (15’ instead of 18’). They keep winter wolves as pets. They’re immune to all cold attacks, including dragon breath, just like they were in OD&D. They have dead white skin and blue or yellow beards.

Hill Giant: Hill Giants now appear in greater numbers, and get a couple of extra hit points. They’re also a little shorter on average than they were (10½ feet instead of 12). As guards they keep dire wolves, giant lizards, or ogres. These guys are coloured pretty much like humans, and that’s basically what they are – very big dumb humans with clubs.

Stone Giant: Stone Giants have gotten a major boost to Armor Class – from 4 to 0. It looks like the ‘Stone’ part is starting to apply literally. They could be Neutral or Chaotic in OD&D, but now their alignment is listed as Neutral. Like most of the other giants, they’ve shrunk on average, from 15 feet tom 12 feet tall. They keep cave bears as pets. In OD&D Stone Giants used the heavy catapult rules for stone throwing, as opposed to the regular catapult that all the other giants used. Here they’ve retained their rock-throwing proficiency, getting a better range and damage than everyone else. They’re also better at catching rocks than the others as well. And I like how they are described as playful, like they throw rocks at people just for kicks (it reminds me of the Stone Giant scene from The Hobbit, actually). They have gray-brown skin that helps them blend into rocky surroundings, but aren’t given a surprise bonus or anything for it.

Storm Giant: Storm Giants are now encountered in smaller groups, but they have a better Armor Class and a few more hit points. Their alignment has changed from Lawful to Chaotic Good. They’re shorter on average than they were, going from 24 feet to 21 feet. They keep rocs and griffons as pets, and may even use a roc as a mount. Some storm giants live underwater, and they may have sea lions. Surprisingly, storm giants couldn’t cast lightning bolts in OD&D – but here they can summon an 8d6 bolt once per day. They also get some other new abilities: levitate, predict weather, call lightning, control winds and weather summoning (some of these replace the giant’s old Control Weather ability, which I guess is a spell that doesn’t have that name or doesn't exist in AD&D). They’re now immune to electrical attacks. Physically, they have green or purple skin, with green, blue or purple hair.

AD&D Monster Manual part 17

2010-12-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Giant Gar: Gar were first mentioned in OD&D as companions for Nixies. And I tell you, the stats here make any encounter with Nixies a darn sight deadlier. Giant Gars can also swallow opponents whole on an attack roll of 20, with a 5% chance per round that the swallowed character will die.
Gargoyles: Gargoyles first appeared in OD&D. Statistically, there are a few minor changes, but nothing noteworthy. They're still super-aggressive, even more so than before - instead of a 75% chance, they now have a 90% chance to attack anything they meet. And now they like to torture their prey to death, so gargoyles aren't getting any more pleasant as the game progresses.

Kapaocinths get a mention. They were introduced in Supplement II, along with a whole host of other superfluous aquatic variations of already existing monsters. We learn that they dwell in caves in shallow waters.

Gas Spores: It's another 'gotcha' monster designed by Gary to trick his players. A gas spore is a mindless floating sphere that resembles a beholder. If struck, it explodes and deals 6d6 damage to anyone within 20 feet. That's the part I remember. What I never knew is that if one touches you, it injects you with tiny 'rhizomes' that grow throughout your body and kill you unless you get a cure disease within 24 hours. If you die, your body sprouts a lot of baby gas spores. Awesome - I love monsters that turn the PCs into more monsters.

Gas spores are very cool, but their effectiveness has waned over the years, because every player's first instict upon seeing a beholder now is to think that it's a gas spore. That's probably their best use now - to lull players into a false sense of security before you unleash the real beholders on them.

Gelatinous Cube: Gelatinous Cubes were first mentioned in OD&D, but they didn't get stats until Supplement I. They now get a greater chance to surprise opponents, and their 'anesthetizing' power now gets a duration. Cubes used to be immune to cold, but now if they fail a save vs. a cold attack they take 1d4 damage and are slowed. They also get explicit immunity to sleep and hold spells now. Oh, and the aquatic Gelatinous Cubes mentioned in Supplement II are not to be seen here.

Ghast: I'm kind of shocked that Ghasts are making their first appearance here. A ghast is like a ghoul, but tougher. It has more hit dice, and the same paralysing touch (that even works on elves). Their main ability is their stench, which causes anyone who fails a save vs. poison to attack at -2. They have the standard undead immunities, but cold iron weapons deal double damage to them. They are also said to be often used as slaves by demons, so I wonder if they have some sort of demonic pedigree. Demons are the only other monsters I can think of that are affected by cold iron.

Ghost: Ghosts first appeared in The Strategic Review #3. They are basically the same monster, with a few minor tweaks. Characters of over 9th level are no longer immune to their aging attack, though those of over 8th get a +2 to their saving throw. And whereas before 5th level clerics were immune, now it is 6th level clerics. They can also now be struck by silver weapons when semi-materialised, though they only deal half damage. And they can only be hit by spells from an ethereal caster.

Ghoul: Ghouls first appeared in OD&D, and they are so rad that all Gary had to change was their bite damage (from 1d4 to 1d6). The more I read, though, the more I become convinced that ghouls are not 'dead' in the way that other undead are. They feel more to me like humans warped and twisted by their corpse-feeding tendencies.

Lacedons, the aquatic ghouls mentioned in Supplement II, are also present.

AD&D Monster Manual part 16

2010-12-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

Flightless Bird: Honestly, I’m disappointed. Gary went to the trouble to differentiate Asian and African Elephants, but he’s lumped emus and ostriches together. Anyway, flightless birds first appeared in Supplement III on the wilderness encounter tables, but this is the first time they get stats. Actually, I was wrong about Gary above, because ostriches get 3 hit dice, emus get 2, and rheas get 1. They’re non-aggressive and will run away, but might peck you if cornered.

You know, I’m not so sure about that non-aggressive bit. I’ve been around emus that have become acclimatised to tourists, and they’re pushy bastards. Especially so if you’ve got a handful of chips.

Giant Frog: There are three types of giant frogs detailed here: the regular sort, killer frogs, and poisonous frogs. The regular sort first appeared in Supplement II. Statistically they have changed very little – just their bite damage, which has gone from a flat 1-10 to a different range based on how many hit dice it has. A lot of space is devoted to their average sizes and weights, because they’re used to determine whether the frog can drag its prey with its tongue and swallow it whole. The tongue works much the same as it did in OD&D, drawing its prey in for a bite attack. But now the bite deals maximum damage. And to top it off, they can swallow their prey whole on a roll of 20, and any victim so caught has 3 rounds to get out before dying. Their leap ability has been decreased in distance, but they now get a bonus to surprise. All in all, these guys have gotten a pretty serious upgrade in deadliness.

Killer frogs are smaller, but they have teeth and talons, and love to eat people. And each other apparently, as they’re cannibals. These guys are said to be specially bred mutants, which fits very well with the Temple of the Frog scenario from Supplement II. I guess the killer frogs there flourish even after the temple gets put out of business.

Poisonous frogs are exactly that – smaller frogs that secrete a weak poison from the skin. Not too weak, because the poison is fatal – you just get a bonus to the saving throw.

Violet Fungi: It’s another new monster. They’re purple mushrooms that hide in with shriekers (the mushrooms that make a loud noise when you approach). If you get too close they flail about with tentacles. If these tentacles hit they supposedly rot flesh in a single melee round, but nothing is said about what effect this has. Instant death? Or is it the same as mummy rot? I’d be inclined to support the latter, less deadly version.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of hiding them with shriekers is. Once players have figured out what shriekers are, they tend to stay away, and if they don't go near the big mushrooms the violet fungi can't do much of anything.

AD&D Monster Manual part 15

2010-11-30T18:18:00.000-08:00

Elephants: Elephants first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in Supplement III. These are the plain old Earth variety, though ever-thorough Gary provides different stats for Asian and African Elephants (which doesn’t amount to more than a hit dice of difference). These guys are brutal death machines, though. I don’t know what a real elephant does in a fight, but I doubt he’s goring people with his tusks, trampling them, and grabbing someone else with his trunk and squeezing them to death. But this is D&D, where every animal must double as a potential monster. And in true Gygaxian fashion (and not without real-world precedent) you can sell their tusks on the market.

Elves: Their Number Appearing stat has decreased, so it looks like the elven population is thinning out, but otherwise their stats are the same. The high-level NPCs that can be encountered with a group of elves have been greatly expanded on. It’s said that they use Giant Eagles as guards for their lairs, which is new. A breakdown of the typical weapons they carry is provided, and it’s mostly swords and bows. Some bands have female fighters mounted on unicorns, which is pretty cool. We also learn that elves live for about a dozen centuries.

Aquatic elves are detailed. They first appeared in Supplement II, and have barely changed at all from there.

Drow Elves. Yes, this is their first appearance. They are presented here as legendary dwellers beneath the earth, with black skin and evil disposition. They’re said to be weak fighters and strong magic-users. So yeah, it’s at about this point that I’ll start to seed clues about the drow in my campaign.

Grey Elves, also known as faerie, live in the meadows and are aloof bastards. And here we get the first ability score bonus in the game, as these guys get a +1 to Intelligence. They ride around on hippogriffs and griffons. Some have silver hair and amber eyes. Others have golden hair and violet eyes, and these are the ones called faeries. They’re just elves but better, basically.

Half-elves are treated in some detail. They can now become multi-classed as fighter/magic-user/clerics, which I don’t think was possible in OD&D, unless I’m misreading the rules. We also learn that they can live for 250 years.

Wood elves are also called sylvan elves. Like Grey Elves they get an ability score bonus – this time it’s a +1 to strength – but they can’t have an Intelligence higher than 17. They pal around with giant owls and lynxes.

Poor old high elves don’t get an entry. But given that they’re the default setting, they’ll be along soon enough in the Player’s Handbook.

Ettins: I’m shocked to find out that Ettins are appearing here for the first time ever. An ettin is a dirty big giant with two heads. That’s their only distinguishing feature, and it makes them hard to surprise, but this is probably more of a role-playing monster than an interesting combat encounter. Anything you can do in a combat with ettins can already be accomplished with ogres or hill giants. The real fun with ettins is in role-playing their multiple heads arguing and such. They are said to be closely related to orcs.

Floating Eye: These guys are much the same as they were in Supplement II – fish that hypnotise large prey, wait for a big fish to eat the helpless prey, then feed off the scraps. One of the many hazards of underwater exploration, I guess.

Eye of the Deep: Another new monster, the Eye of the Deep is an underwater beholder. It’s power is considerably less, though, as it only has a few effects to cast from its eyes. The central eye emits a dazzling cone, the eyestalks cast hold person and hold monster, and both stalks together can create illusions. They’re just like beholders in temperament, being aggressive and hateful. Like underwater Daleks.

AD&D Monster Manual part 14

2010-11-29T18:48:00.000-08:00

Giant Eagles: As far as I can tell, this is the first appearance of Giant Eagles in D&D. These are big buggers, with a 20’ wingspan. They live in the mountains, and get a whole lot of special abilities. They’re only surprised in their lairs or at night. They can make dive attacks with a bonus to hit and double claw damage. They even have their own language, and can speak telepathically (probably handy when the only thing you have to make sounds with is a beak, though it never seemed to stop my grandpa’s cockatoo). Even though they’re neutral, they tend to ignore good creatures and attack hostile evil creatures, and they get on well with certain elves and dwarves.

Ear Seekers: It’s another new monster, and the latest example of the D&D arms race in action. Quite a few classic D&D monsters were created by Gary to directly counter tactics employed by players in his game, and this is one of them. Ear seekers are small insectoids that live in wood, and they like to lay their eggs in warm places. Like your ear. Of course when the eggs hatch the larvae will eat the surrounding flesh, which kills the host 90% of the time (I’m surprised that survival chance is there, actually). The eggs can be destroyed with a cure disease spell, but there’s nothing to indicate whether a PC will notice the eggs being laid in his ear. I’d be inclined to err on the side of mercy here.

It’s not mentioned in the description here, but the primary purpose for ear seekers was to stop PCs listening at doors all the time. Who wants to press their ear up against a wooden door when there could be an ear seeker just ready to climb on in there?

Eel: There are three varieties of Eel described here: Electric, Giant and Weed. Giant Eels and Weed Eels made their debut in Supplement II. There’s been some obvious retooling here, though, because in Supplement II the Giant Eels had an electric shock attack. Now the Giant Eel doesn’t have that attack, but the Electric Eel does. So in a way all three types have already appeared, at least in spirit.

Electric eels are new as I mentioned above, and their sole interesting feature is their electric attack.

Honestly, the Giant Eel might as well be a totally new monster. It has gone from 1+4 hit dice to 5 hit dice, and none of the other stats match up at all. It’s just a big brute with a bite attack, basically.

Weed Eels are fairly similar to their original appearance. They’re still found in large numbers, living in a network of tunnels. In Supplement II they had an absurd bite that automatically killed the target struck. Gary has fixed that nonsense right up, giving them a poisonous bite, save or die of course. They’re still deadly, but now it’s within the parameters of the game rules.

Efreeti: These fire-based genies first appeared in OD&D, and they haven’t changed a great deal here. Their Armor Class has improved from 3 to 2. In OD&D their alignment tended towards Chaotic, but here they are Neutral, with Lawful Evil tendencies. They now specifically are said to come from the Elemental Plane of Fire, whereas OD&D said they live in the fabled City of Brass. That citadel is now located in the Plane of Fire, said to be ruled by a Sultan served by all sorts of nobles (pashas, deys, amirs, valis, maliks, etc.). I’ll have to look up those titles to get a suitably middle-eastern flavour into my Efreeti. They can also travel the Material, Elemental and Astral Planes, though I question if that means they can go through any of the Elemental Planes without hindrance. Surely the Plane of Water would cause an Efreet some trouble.

An Efreeti can still captured and forced to serve for 1,001 days, but the capturer can trade that in for three wishes instead (of course, the efreeti will try and twist the wish as far as possible). As well as the newfound ability to grant wishes, they now get a number of new spell-like abilities: detect magic, enlarge, polymorph self, produce flame and pyrotechnics. They are also specifically said to be immune to normal fire, and less affected by magical fire. Believe it or not, this wasn’t mentioned as part of their entry in OD&D. They can also communicate with any creature telepathically, which seems to be kind of a given so far for natives of the Planes. Oh, and they can’t carry as much as they could before.

Elemental: Elementals first appeared in OD&D, and the same four types appear here: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Now that the D&D cosmology has been worked out, they are dutifully located in their respective Elemental Planes. Their description here as ‘strong but relatively stupid’, and the presence of more intelligent elemental type monsters, makes me wonder about the actual nature of the basic elementals. I had always thought of them as the dominant force in their home planes, but perhaps they are more like wild animals or destructive forces, nuisances or slaves for the Djinni and Efreeti.

The first big difference is with the number of elementals someone can summon in a day. In OD&D, only one of each type can be summoned per day; and that’s overall, not per character. If your opponent summons a Fire Elemental, then stiff cheddar, because you won’t be able to do so until the next day. AD&D has made things much more lenient. Each character can summon one elemental of each type per day (regardless of what other characters have done). In addition, there are three different means by which to summon elementals (with a spell, a staff, or another summoning device). You can summon multiples of the same type of elemental, so long as you use different means. So if you’ve got a summon elemental spell, a staff of elemental summoning and a brazier of elemental summoning you can bring in three fire elementals if you want. (To be honest, I preferred the OD&D way. It was less complicated and has a lovely arcane air about it.)

Elementals now don’t attack automatically if their summoner loses concentration; it’s changed to a 75% chance. If the elemental doesn’t attack it just goes back to its home plane. Even if it does, it now only goes on the rampage for 3 turns before taking its bat and going home. There’s one awesome new touch, in that an opposing caster can try and wrest control of an elemental away with a dispel magic spell. It’s very risky, though, because if the attempt fails the elemental gets much stronger, and if it gets out of control it will come right for the guy who cast the dispel magic. Even so, it’s so cool I don’t think I could resist trying it.

Elementals are still only affected by weapons of +2 or greater, as introduced in Supplement I. And like in that Supplement, they can also be hit by creatures of 4 hit dice or more, or those with magical ability. That ‘magical ability’ is clarified here, to include monsters with paralysis, poison, acid, breath weapons, and those who are only hit by magic weapons.

Air Elemental: Their damage range has increased from 2-16 to 2-20. They still get combat bonuses when attacking from the air. In OD&D that bonus was a +1 to damage, but now they get a +1 to attack and a +2 to damage. The effect of their whirlwind attack has been greatly clarified. In OD&D it simply ‘swept away’ creatures of under 2 hit dice, with no explanation of what that meant. Now the ‘swept away’ effect works on creatures of up to 3 hit dice, and kills them outright. It deals damage to all other non-flying creatures, which was also not specified in OD&D. There’s also a new rule about the lessened effectiveness of whirlwinds that aren’t able to achieve their full height.

We also discover that there are more intelligent varieties of air elemental that possess special abilities beyond those given above. It’s possible that this is a reference to djinn, but I doubt it. They are also said to have a queen with great power and magical ability.

Earth Elemental: Earth Elementals are still restricted from passing through water, but at least now it is said that they can tunnel underneath. As before they score less damage to creatures who aren’t on the ground, though the penalty is expressed differently (before the number of dice rolled was cut, now there is a -2 penalty to each roll). Otherwise they’re the same. The only piece of new information is that they supposedly have an enormous ‘boss’ on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Yes, a boss.

Fire Elemental: These guys haven’t changed a bit. Apparently, their leader on the Elemental Plane of Fire is known as the Tyrant.

Water Elemental: First up, let it be known that you can now summon a Water Elemental from a barrel of ale. Little else has changed, and their leader is supposedly a god-like king. But man, Ale Elementals. I've found my favourite obscure bit of rules trivia for AD&D.

AD&D Monster Manual part 13

2010-11-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

Dragonne: Hey, a new monster! These guys are a cross between a brass dragon and a lion. Their origins aren’t explained here, but I suppose a wizard did it. It’s a shame the dragon involved here isn’t the Bronze variety, because we’ve already established that they transform into other animals for a lark. Perhaps brass dragons do the same sometimes, and mate with lions while doing so? It’s noted that Dragonnes can speak the languages of Brass Dragons and Sphinxes, so perhaps the crossbreed is with those two species, and not lions after all? I think that’s a much more interesting possibility

These guys are pretty tough critters (9 hit dice) and their major attack is a roar which can weaken or deafen itheir prey. They have an Armor Class listed as 6/2, which goes unexplained in the text. Perhaps they have an AC of 6 for their lion parts, and 2 for their dragon parts?

Finally, I find the pronunciation for these guys problematic at the table. I’ve always said it like Dragon, with a greater emphasis on the second syllable. Dra-GON instead of DRA-gon. It sounds a little silly to be honest, and could cause confusion at the table. But I've never actually used one, so it hasn't come up.

Dragon Turtle: Yay! I love Dragon Turtles. They first appeared in OD&D Vol. 3, in the section for underwater encounters. I don’t think they’ve appeared since then, but I could be wrong. Their Armor Class has now improved from 2 to 0. Their Hit Dice range has increased from 11-13 to 12-14. They still have the same cloud of steam breath weapon, but now it’s dimension are more like a cloud than the red dragon’s cone. Previously they could always capsize ships, but now they have a percentile chance based on the ship’s size. Other than that they are the same, and we also get some info on their colouration and learn that they have their own language.

Dryad: Dryads first appeared in OD&D, as beautiful tree sprites with a penchant for enchanting charismatic men. A few significant things have changed about them, beginning with a drop in their Armor Class from 5 to 9, which is very steep. They are still confined to the area around their specific tree, but that area has increased from 24” to 36” (remember that the “ symbol in D&D does not refer to inches, but tens of feet). They now get the ability to use dimension door to return to their tree, which they didn’t have before. Their 50% magic resistance is also new. They still have the same charm ability, but now will generally only use it on men with a high Charisma (16+), and there’s a chance that said victim could return after 1-4 years instead of being gone forever.

Perhaps the older Dryads were a different variety, with a more bark-like appearance to account for their higher AC? The new variety aren’t yet so attuned to their trees, and so they can move farther away and use other trees to travel.

Dwarf: Dwarves first appeared in OD&D, both as a monster and player character race. They haven’t changed much at all here. It’s interesting to note that they can become psionic – that was not possible under the psionics rules in Supplement III. They get a greater range of high level characters when encountered in large numbers, and their choice of weapons and armour is described in greater detail (it’s mostly axes and hammers, but there’s a surprisingly large percentage that wield swords). They now get a +1 to attacks against goblins, orcs and hobgoblins, which I believe is new. They still get a defensive bonus against Giants and Ogres and the like, but whereas before it was expressed as them taking half damage from blows, now their attackers suffer a -4 penalty to hit. Otherwise, things are much the same as they were in OD&D. (Note, though, that a lot of things have changed from the article on Dwarves in The Dragon #3. I had explained that with the discovery of a ritual by which the dwarves strengthened their ties to their ancient bloodlines, but I guess that either the ritual only affected a limited number of dwarves, or it wore off eventually.)

There is also some extra detail on Mountain Dwarves (with Hill Dwarves being the default type). Generally they are bigger, get an extra hit point, and use fewer crossbows and more spears.

AD&D Monster Manual part 12

2010-11-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

Bronze Dragon: Also known as Draco Gerus Bronzo. We know from their first appearance in Supplement I that they live near the sea and can polymorph into animals. This book adds that they are beneficent, and take animal form to observe humans. They still get the same breath weapons: a lightning bolt and a cloud of repulsion gas that forces the targets away from the dragon. Their alignment could previously be Lawful or Neutral (with a greater likelihood of the former) but now they are Lawful Good. Their damage has been tweaked from 1-4/1-4/3-24 to 1-6/1-6/4-24. There’s less chance you’ll find one in its lair than before, but they now have more treasure. It’s slightly more likely that they are able to talk, less chance you’ll find one sleeping, and more likely that they can cast spells.

Chromatic Dragon: Or Tiamat, for those of you more familiar with the D&D cartoon. The queen of dragons is a gigantic creature with five heads, one for each colour of evil dragon. She first appeared in Supplement I. She still has 16 hit dice, but also a fixed total of 128 hit points. She’s almost always in her lair, and she gets four different treasure types all at 100% of the possible totals – that is a hell of a lot of treasure. She gets five bite attacks, each one doing the damage listed under the appropriate dragon type. Disappointingly though, she can now be encountered while asleep, whereas before she never slept at all. In Supplement I her lair was said to be a stupendous cavern beneath the earth, but here she rules the first plane of the Nine Hells. She is also said to spawn all of evil dragonkind, which is an origin I’ve never seen before. I like it, though – it makes Tiamat that much more important. She can also now travel Astrally or Ethereally, which I suppose is necessary for her occasional forays into the Prime Material Plane. The rules for her breath weapons are clarified – she doesn’t do damage based on her own hit points, but on the maximum total for a huge ancient dragon of the appropriate type. She can also only use each breath weapon once per day. I understand not wanting to make Tiamat too powerful, but the monster lover in me sighs with disapproval. It’s frickin’ Tiamat, you know? That’s not the monster to be pulling your punches on. There are also now rules for disabling each head, with a mere 16 hit points required to put each one out of commission.

Copper Dragon (Draco Comes Stabuli): These guys first appeared in Supplement I. Their stats haven’t really changed, except that they now have a smaller chance of being able to speak, a greater chance of being able to cast spells, and a smaller chance to be found asleep. In OD&D they could be Lawful or Neutral, but now they are Chaotic Good. Their breath weapons remain unchanged: they can breathe a line of acid or a cloud of gas that slows the targets. In OD&D we learned that Copper Dragons live in arid rocky places, and that is still true. We now learn that they are rather selfish, and tend towards neutrality where personal gain is concerned.

Gold Dragon (Draco Orientalus Sino Dux): Gold Dragons first appeared in OD&D. Their damagr ange has increased, with claws going from 1-4 to 1-8, and bite going from 3-36 to 6-36. They have less chance of being able to speak, but their chances of spellcasting and being found asleep have not changed. They were Lawful in OD&D, and now they are Lawful Good. They still have breath weapons of fire and chlorine gas, and they can still polymorph themselves. The only other thing we learn about them is that they use jewels and pearls as nourishment. So they eat gems? That’s cool.

Green Dragon (Draco Chlorinus Nauseous Respiratorus): These Latin names are starting to get ridiculous. I’m imagining them as something that might pop up under the dragon when the action pauses, as in the Road Runner cartoons.

Their stats have changed very little. Their claw damage has gone up from 1-4 to 1-6. They were previously Neutral of Chaotic, but now they are Lawful Evil. They have less chance of being able to speak, and a greater chance to be able to cast spells. Otherwise they’ve changed very little, and still employ a breath weapon of chlorine gas. The note that they are evil and nasty tempered is all we learn about them.

Platinum Dragon: The Platinum Dragon is named as Bahamut for the first time. He now has a fixed hit point total of 168. He gets some stats that were not provided in Supplement I, such as his damage range. There’s a small chance now that you can find him asleep, whereas before the likelihood was 0%. He is still said to dwell in a palace behind the east wind, but now there is some speculation that this could be in the Elemental Plane of Air, or in another plane between it and the Seven Heavens or the Twin Paradises. He can now travel astrally or ethereally. His breath weapons (one that causes gaseous form and another that disintegrates) are now better clarified, and impose a penalty to the target’s saving throw. His spellcasting is slightly less powerful, as he is now limited to 7th level spells when before he could cast up to 8th. Although I just noticed that he can cast cleric and magic-user spells, which evens things out a bit. The entry finishes with an amusing story about Bahamut’s seven gold dragon advisors, and how he once disguised them as canaries while posing himself as an old man. Now there’s an encounter to spring on your players…

Red Dragon (Draco Conflagratio Horriblis): This dragon’s Armor Class has improved from 2 to -1. It’s claw damage has increased from 1-4 to 1-8. It was previously Chaotic, but is now Chaotic Evil. It has less chance of being able to talk, and a much greater chance of being able to cast spells. They can now cast up to 4th level spells, when before they were restricted to 3rd. Otherwise they haven’t been changed. No sense messing with the classics, is there?

Silver Dragon (Draco Nobilis Argentum): Their damage range has increased from 1-4/1-4/3-30 to 1-6/1-6/5-30. They could previously be Lawful or Neutral, bit now they are Lawful Good. They have slightly less chance to be able to speak. They are otherwise unchanged, except for the one thing no other dragon has: there’s a chance that they may have a spell book, which will grant them a greater range of spells to use.

White Dragon (Draco Rigidus Frigidus): Their Armor Class has worsened from 2 to 3. They were previously Neutral or Chaotic, but are now Chaotic Evil. Their chances of speaking are less, and they now have a slight chance to be able to cast spells (in OD&D, they had no spellcasting abilities). There are no other changes from OD&D.

Yeah, I got lazy with this near the end. I’m kind of sick of dragons at this point, you know?

AD&D Monster Manual part 11

2010-10-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

Dragons: I have to be honest here: I’ve been dreading this entry. It’s big. Part of what makes writing this blog so easy is that I can tackle it in fairly manageable chunks, but this entry is a daunting sucker. I’m going to try and get it out of the way in one go, but don’t be surprised if I bomb out halfway through.

There are still ten varieties of dragon: White, Black, Blue, Green, Red, Gold (all of which debuted in OD&D), Bronze, Brass, Copper and Silver (which first appeared in Supplement I). Tiamat and Bahamut are included as well.

A dragon’s Hit Dice is still linked to its size, which is determined randomly. In OD&D a dragon had a 20% chance of being small, and the same chance to be large. In AD&D the chance is 2-in-8 to be small, and 1-in-8 to be large.

Two new age categories have been introduced as a matter of necessity. In OD&D, the number of hit points a dragon had per hit dice was determined by its age category. Since OD&D used six-sided dice for hit points, there were six categories. Now that the default dice for hit points is eight-sided (and has been since Supplement I), there needs to be eight categories. They are: Very Young, Young, Sub-Adult, Young Adult, Adult, Old, Very Old, and Ancient. Young Adult and Ancient are the two new categories. Note that dragons also have longer life spans now, with the categories from Adult onwards each spanning a greater number of years than they did before.

Dragons have now been explicitly given the ability to detect hidden and invisible creatures due to their keen senses. This was an ability they had from Chainmail that was not mentioned in the D&D rules.

Likewise, the dragon’s fear aura described here is something they had in Chainmail. Any dragon of Adult age or older will cause weaker creatures to flee or be otherwise shaken, with saving throws granted to those of 1 hit dice or above. Creatures over 6 hit dice are immune.

Sleeping dragons are briefly described. They’re always in their lair, will awaken if attacked or if there is a loud noise, and have a 1-in-6 chance to wake up besides that. It seems to me like a party has one round to get their licks in before the dragon wakes up and retaliates, so they’d better make it count.

The chart that lists the resistances of various dragons to certain attack methods is still present, and mostly unchanged. The only difference is that earth-based attacks now get a +1 bonus against Red Dragons instead of a -1 penalty. It’s possible the original was a typo, I guess (or a bad scan on my PDF). Air attacks have been expanded to include attacks from Aerial Servants and Invisible Stalker. Earth now includes Xorn and Umber Hulks. Fire now includes Salamanders. And Water now includes Tritons and Water Elementals.

Dragons still can only use their breath weapon three times a day, but the random chance they will do so has slightly decreased. In OD&D dragons breathed on a roll of 7 or better on 2d6, but now it’s flat 50/50 chance.

Subduing dragons is still a viable tactic. Gary gets on my wrong side almost instantly, though, by saying that silver and gold dragons can’t be subdued. Curse your bias towards good! You also can’t subdue if your intelligence is less than average. I wonder if this applies to PCs as well? I guess it’s rare that a party will be made up completely of characters of Int 8 or less, but you never know.

In OD&D, not more than eight people could attack a dragon at any time, but now that number is based on the dragon’s size, so it could be less or (more probably) greater. It looks as though the average value of a subdued dragon has gone down. In OD&D they were fetching from 500 to 1,000 gold pieces per hit point, but now they go for 100 to 800 per hit point.

Dragons encountered in multiples are now handled differently based on whether they’re in their lair or not. The make-up is still usually a mated pair of Adults with some Very Young dragons, or eggs if in the lair. The biggest change here is that dragons get a ferocity bonus to hit and damage if defending their mate. In OD&D, they attacked at double value. If the Aerial Servant entry I talked about earlier is anything to go by, this meant that they fought with double hit dice and damage, which is just nasty. The new rule is much more lenient for those fighting multiple dragons, for sure.

In OD&D, there were some vague guidelines about altering the amount of treasure a dragon has based on its age (with younger dragons having less and older ones having more). Those guidelines have now been given concrete values.

There’s a brief bit about dragon weaknesses. They’re generally cowardly (as shown by the subdual rules), egotistical, and greedy. Except for 40% of silver dragons and 80% of gold, who aren’t at all greedy despite the shit-tons of treasure they’re likely to be sleeping on.

Dragon saving throws are weird. Or more accurately, Gary’s wording is a little hard to decipher. If I’m interpreting this correctly, Adult dragons and older (those with 5 or more hit points per hit die) have better than usual saving throws. They divide their total hit points by 4, and that gives the level they save at. So an Adult Black Dragon with 8 hit dice, and thus 40 hit points, would save as if he had 10 hit dice. Sounds reasonable. An Ancient Red Dragon with 11 hit dice, and thus 88 hit points, would save as if he had 22 hit dice. That’s powerful, but not inappropriate for something of that level. Good rule, Gary!

Black Dragon: They’re still swamp-dwellers with an acidic breath weapon. Their Armour Class has lessened from 2 to 3, but their movement rate on land has increased from 9 to 12. There’s only half the chance now that you’ll find one in its lair. Their alignment has changed from Chaotic to Chaotic Evil, but there’s an intriguing note that says they tend towards the mid-point between Chaos and Law – an early indication of the Neutral Evil alignment that will appear when Gary creates the nine-point alignment system. They now have a slightly smaller chance to be able to speak, but a slightly higher chance of being able to cast spells. Spell casting for dragons is clarified, in that it is said to only require the spoken components. Black Dragons can still only cast first level spells, but they now get one for each stage of maturity, rolled randomly, and they can only cast a given spell once per day.

The only other bit of info we get about them is the name Draco Causticus Sputem. The Red Dragon was the only one who got a latin-style name in OD&D, but now all the dragon types get one.

Blue Dragon: They still live in deserts and breathe lightning, and are now identified as Draco Electricus. They’re slightly less likely to be caught in their lair, but they now get more treasure. Their melee damage output has slightly increased, from 1-4/1-4/2-24 to 1-6/1-6/3-24. Neutral or Chaotic in OD&D, they are now Lawful Evil. They have a slightly smaller chance to be able to speak, but a greater chance to be able to cast spells. Previously limited to 1st or 2nd level spells, they can now cast 3rd level spells at the highest age categories.

Brass Dragon: All we know about Brass Dragons from OD&D is that they live in the desert. Here they are described as being quite forward and officious, with a love of conversation. They are selfish, though, which explains their alignment a little bit. Their land speed has increased from 9 to 12. In OD&D they were either Lawful or Neutral, but now they are Chaotic Good with Neutral tendencies. There’s less chance you’re going to find one asleep. Their chances of being able to speak have slightly decreased, but they have more chance to be able to cast spells. They still have two breath weapons: a cone of sleep gas and a cloud of fear gas. It’s now easier to save against the breath weapons of small brass dragons, and harder against the large kinds.

Aaaaand I’m out. I should be able to tackle the rest in my next post, then it’s one more and I’m done with the letter D. It’s all smooth sailing from there!

AD&D Monster Manual part 10

2010-10-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

Displacer Beast: Displacer Beasts (which first appeared in Supplement I) look like pumas with dirty big spiked tentacles on their shoulders, and they also appear 3 feet away from their actual locations due to their ‘molecular vibrations’. They haven’t changed at all from Supplement I, although the description no longer notes that they have six legs (though the illustrations shows them this way). It’s interesting that a pack is always made up of adults. Do they not breed naturally? And they’re also noted as hating all life, which is an odd outlook for a Neutral creature. But I guess hating ALL life regardless of its alignment could be considered Neutral. Ah, alignment. It's a thorny topic for sure.

Djinni: Djinn appeared first in OD&D. They are your classic mythological genie, although the regular types can't grant wishes. Their Armor Class has changed from 5 to 4, and their Hit Dice has had a minor correction from 8+1 to 8+3. They also get an alignment now, of Chaotic Good. Their powers remain basically the same, except that now they are more rigidly defined in terms of duration and effect. Noble Djinn are introduced for the first time. There is a 1% chance that any djinn will be a noble, and these are the guys that can grant you three wishes. We also learn that Djinn come from the Plane of Air, and that their social structure is based on rule by a Caliph, with various noble types like viziers, beys, emirs, sheiks, sherrifs and maliks.

Dog: Wild Dogs were included in the revised Wilderness Encounter Tables from Supplement III. Gary shows some rare restraint with this entry, providing stats for just War Dogs and Wild Dogs. I was kind of expecting a breakdown on about thirty different breeds, but I guess the man does know when to delve and when to gloss. War Dogs are large dogs trained in combat. Wild Dogs roam the wilderness, and generally won’t attack anyone if they’re well fed. They can be tamed if you get one away from its pack.

War dogs are a fairly regular purchase for low-level PCs trying to get some extra combat power, I’ve found. My take on the whole thing is that these dogs are trained for warfare, not for dungeon exploration. They don’t know how to be sneaky, and they don’t deal well with supernatural phenomena, particularly the undead. There's nothing like a pack of ghouls to send your dogs into a frenzy.

Dolphin: Dolphins first appeared in Supplement II, but a lot of tweaks have been made to them since then. Their Armor Class has changed from 6 to 5, and they move faster. They now pal around with swordfish and narwhales, and Gary has been kind enough to reel off some quick stats for them. They still hate sharks, and will help humans. But they no longer get telepathy with other dolphins, nor can they detect magic within 50 miles. And alas, there is no longer any mention of fitting dolphins with a war harness. It’s a sad loss to the game, and a rare case of Gary making something less cool.

Doppleganger: First introduced in Supplement I, dopplegangers are shape-changers that often impersonate humanoid creatures. They have changed very little from their original appearance. They do gain the ability of ESP, which is a great aid in their impersonations, I’m sure. And they get a better chance to gain surprise.

If I ever do the classic Doppleganger ambush where it's taken the form of a PC, I'll run it as follows. Firstly, the PC so impersonated must write his actions for the round on a sheet of paper and hand them to me. I describe what his character is doing as described in the note, and I do the same for the doppleganger, and that way the other players should have a harder time figuring out which is which. The player will roll all the dice for himself and for the doppleganger, because I like to keep a player's fate in his own hands so far as the dice go.

I’m going to cut things short here, because the next entry is Dragon. And that one is going to take some doing.

AD&D Monster Manual part 9

2010-10-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

Dinosaurs: This is probably not unusual in these parts, but as a kid I was obsessed with dinosaurs. Funnily enough that obsession was superseded by super-hero comics and D&D, but it was there. And for me, dinosaurs are an integral part of any D&D monster collection. Lost worlds filled with prehistoric creatures are a staple of the pulps that the game was founded on, and the game feels incomplete without them.

The entry begins with some information that applies to all the dinosaurs herein. It explains that because the D&D world is magical, all sorts of creatures that never existed together historically can do so here, on a strange plane, alternate world, or lost continent. All dinosaurs are stupid, motivated mostly by hunger. The carnivorous types will attack aggressively, while most herbivores ignore things they can’t eat unless threatened.

Dinosaurs first appeared in the wilderness encounter charts in OD&D. There are a lot covered here statistically, but not much space is given to describing them. With that in mind, I’m only doing a brief run-down myself. Keep in mind that they’re all really tough, with loads of hit dice, and that’s about all you need to know about their stats.

Anatosaurus: Duck-billed plant-eaters that run from attack.

Ankylosaurus: These are the rad dinosaurs with the spiked shell and heavy clubbed tail. They’re aggressive if threatened.

Antrodemus (Allosaurus): Apparently they’re fast, but no other physical description is forthcoming.

Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus): Big dinosaur, long neck, has to live in water to support its weight. Frequently eaten by Fred Flintstone.

Archelon Ischyras: Big marine turtles.

Brachiosaurus: A bigger brontosaurus.

Camarasaurus: A smaller brontosaurus.

Ceratosaurus: A bipedal carnivore with a horn on its nose.

Cetiosaurus: Another type of brontosaurus, with a slightly bigger head. Now I love dinos, but Gary’s getting a little redundant here.

Dinichtys: A very big fish that can swallow a man whole with a natural 20.

Diplodocus: A semi-aquatic type sort of similar to brontosaurus, and at least I remember this guy. They can submerge to a depth of 30 feet.

Elasmosaurus: Long-necked fish-like reptiles. They are carnivorous and aggressive.

Gorgosaurus: A sort of smaller T-Rex.

Iguanadon: A bipedal herbivore with incongruous thumb spikes. If memory serves, I don’t think dinosaur experts give this guy thumb spikes any more. But D&D is firmly rooted in the scientific theories of the 1970s, so science be damned! My Iguanadons have awesome thumb spikes with which they can jank other dinosaurs in the neck.

EDIT: Nope, I had it backwards. Scientists used to place the spikes on its head, until they figured out they were thumb spikes.

Lambeosaurus: A crested herbivore with very sharp senses.

Megalosaurus: Can walk on all fours or bipedally, and have very large jaws.

Monoclonius: Like a reptilian rhinoceros, with a shield of bone that covers their head and neck. They’ll trample smaller creature that irritate them.

Mosasaurus: Marine dinosaurs that can move very slowly on land with their flippers.

Paleoscincus: This guy is covered in armor plate and spines, with a spiked tail. Any predator that tries to eat one will take damage itself.

Pentaceratops: An aggressive plant-eater with a shield covering its head like the triceratops.

Plateosaurus: Another plant eater. They can walk on two legs to watch for predators, or run quickly on all fours.

Plesiosaurus: Aggressive marine dinosaur with a really long neck.

Pteranodon: The classic aerial dinosaur. They’ll swoop and try to carry prey away in their beaks, or just spear them. And don’t forget Marvel villain Sauron, who was transformed after being bitten by a pterodactyl. It would be pretty awesome to inflict one of my PCs with dinosaur lycanthropy. (Needless to say, that’s not mentioned in the book here.)

Stegosaurus: Ah, now we’re into the classics. An aggressive herbivore with plates along its back and a spiked tail.

Styracosaurus: Another aggressive herbivore with a plate protecting its head. Apparently this one has sharp frills that can cut anyone trying to bite it from behind.

Teratosaurus: A carnivore that runs really fast after anything that looks edible.

Triceratops: The classic shield-covering-the-head guy, with three spikes sticking out the front. They’re super aggressive, and likely to trample smaller creatures.

Tyrannosaurus Rex: Ah, classic. It even has an illustration depicting T-Rex standing completely upright, which is pretty old-school in dinosaur theories. Mostly these days they’re depicted with their heads lower to the ground. And I love the anecdote that these guys are so fierce, they’re likely to swallow the head of a triceratops and then slowly die as the horns pierce its stomach. They can swallow men on a roll of 18 or better.

The only popularly known dinosaur that's missing from here is the velociraptor. But you know, I don't remember seeing anything about those until the mid-90s and Jurassic Park. And the raptors in that movie were much larger than the historical version. I guess they just didn't have an impact on popular culture by the 1970s.

AD&D Monster Manual part 8

2010-10-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Devils: With Demons out of the way, we go straight into their Lawful Evil counterparts, the Devils. Surprisingly, this is the first time that any devils have gotten stats. They’ve been mentioned in a couple of articles as inhabitants of Hell, but that’s it.

The main difference between demons and devils is that devils adhere to a strict hierarchy that they don’t want to break in case they piss off an Archfiend. There’s a lot of rivalry and in-fighting that goes on, but it’s probably more political than what goes on in the Abyss.

Devils can roam Hell, Gehenna, Hades and Acheron at will (though somewhat amusingly, it is said that they dare not do so with out the proper permission). They can also enter the Astral Plane.

As with demons, the most powerful sorts can only be killed in their home plane. They can never be subdued, but can be commanded if the proper precautions are taken (magic circles, contracts, that sort of thing). There’s a very nice bit that says that any greater devil that has its material form destroyed becomes a lemure and is tormented for 90 years before resuming its former station. (More on lemures below.) An Arch-Devil so destroyed is bound to its home plane for 10 years.

Devils have talismans that function similarly to the Demons’ amulets, allowing the bearer to demand service from an Arch-Devil. An evil character using one must make human sacrifices, and even looking at one without the proper protection could summon the devil it is attuned to.

Of all the devils, only Erinyes, Barbed Devils and Bone Devils can be hit by normal weapons. The rest need a silver or magical weapon to be damaged.

All devils have the following spell-like abilities: charm person, suggestion, illusion, infravision, teleport without error, know alignment, cause fear, and animate dead. The inclusion of the charm and suggestion abilities are good flavour for the classic devilish tempters, and the rest are suitable as well. They can also gate in their buddies and speak telepathically, just like demons.

Devils get a number of immunities: half damage from cold and poison gas, and immunity to fire. Unlike demons, iron weapons have no special effect on them (but silver weapons can hit them, as noted above).

Asmodeus: The archetypal ‘handsome devil’, Asmodeus is the absolute ruler of Hell. He lives in a palace at the floor of the lowest rift in Hell’s ninth plane, served by pit-fiends. Apparently he can command all of the arch-devils to come and pay homage to him once per year, which could make for a very tough high level adventure – infiltrate the palace of Asmodeus while all the arch-devils are in attendance!

Asmodeus has a shit-ton of special abilities: pyrotechnics, produce flame, wall of fire, ice storm, wall of ice, continual light, read languages, read magic, detect invisible, locate object, invisibility, dispel magic, hold person, hold monster, mass charm, geas, restoration, raise dead fully (note the OD&D terminology) and shape change. He also has the following abilities derived from magic items: beguile and rulership, and he can fulfil the wish of another being. Presumably he can’t do so for another devil, or the guy would be in charge of every damn thing in the universe already. On top of all that he can use a bunch of symbols and unholy word once a day, and he can summon 2 lesser or one greater devils. His gaze causes fear and weakness, slows you by half and imposes a -5 penalty to all dice rolls. In other words, you’re in trouble.

Not only that, but they guy has a ruby rod that acts as a rod of absorption (lets him absorb and redirect spells), causes serious wounds, and can shoot cold, acid or lightning that acts like a dragon’s breath. And just so you know, the guy has 199 hit points, so good luck surviving that even if you make your saving throw. This thing is worth 1,000,000 gold pieces just based on the gems alone, so god knows what it would be worth if you factor its magic powers in.

Baalzebul (Lord of the Flies): This guy, with his awesome fly-eyes, is the ruler of the sixth and seventh planes of Hell (called Malbolge and Maladomini respectively). Malbolge is said to be ‘a black stone plane, filled with stinking vapors, smokes, fire pits, and huge caves and caverns’. Maladomini is pretty much the same, but it also has moated castles that are home to the Malebranche Devils, and Baalzebul’s own fortress. It’s nice to be getting some details on Hell.

Baalzebul gets basically the same set of special abilities that Asmodeus has, and he can summon 1-4 horned devils. His glance causes fear and weakness, but it doesn’t sock you with that -5 penalty that Asmodeus does.

Barbed Devils: These guys are covered in barbs and spikes, as their name implies. They live in the third and fourth planes of Hell, and are excellent guards due to their inability to be surprised. (The only detail we get about these planes is that there are apparently many cells there.) They cause fear with a blow, and can cast the following spells: pyrotechnics, produce flame and hold person. They can also gate in another barbed devil.

Bone Devil: These skeletal devils live mostly on the fifth plane of Hell (which is presumably icy given the preferences noted in the description below). Their defining trait seems to be cruelty, as they enjoy the suffering of less powerful creatures. In battle they pin opponents with a gigantic hook then sting them with their tail, which drains 1-4 Strength points. We also get the first mention of ultravision, which means they see light in the ultraviolet spectrum. Is this like the Predator? I’m not exactly certain. They can generate fear, create illusion, fly, turn invisible, detect invisible, summon another bone devil, and create a wall of ice.

Dispater: Another Archdevil, Dispater rules the second level of Hell. The level is named Dis, as is the iron city that he rules from. His palace is described as ‘infernally grand’, which is pretty cool. The city of Dis is mostly filled with zombies, erinyes, barbed devils and malebranche. His powers are much like those of Asmodeus above. His rod is much weaker than Asmodeus’, though – it works like a rod of rulership, as well as a staff of striking that deals 4-24 damage.

Erinyes: These female demons are mostly found in Dis, though they are commonly sent forth to gather souls. In combat they use poisoned daggers, and each of them carries a rope of entanglement to capture their prey. They’re very strong and have a number of spell-like abilities – cause fear, detect invisible, locate object, invisibility, polymorph self, produce flame – and they can summon another of their kind.

Geryon: This is yet another Archdevil, who has a humanoid torso on a snake’s body, and he is also called the Wild Beast. He rules the fifth plane of Hell from a huge castle that he rarely ventures out of. He’s very strong, and also has a poisonous tail. He also has a ton of spell-like abilities, most of them the same as Asmodeus. He also has a horn with which he can summon minotaurs. That’s an odd one, but it does make me reconsider just where minotaurs came from.

Malebranche (Horned Devil): These guys kind of look like gargoyles. They live in Hell’s sixth and seventh plane, and seem to occupy an unenviable position – too powerful to escape notice, but not powerful enough to match the stronger devils. They have sort of derogatory names like “Dogretch”, though I doubt these are their true names.

In combat they used pitchforks and whips, which is very classic devil imagery. Their spell-like abilities are pyrotechnics, produce flame, ESP, detect magic, illusion, wall of fire, and they can summon another of their kind.

Ice Devil: These insectoid devils live on the frigid eighth plane of Hell. They get the following spell-like abilities: fly, wall of ice, detect magic, detect invisible, polymorph self, and they can gate in ice devils or bone devils. I’m kind of struggling to see where these guys fit, actually. Given that devil society is supposed to be very structured, I was expecting a bit more detail on how the various types relate to each other. Most of the others are pretty well defined, but Ice Devils are sort of nebulous at the moment.

Lemure: These vaguely humanoid blobs are actually the spirits of the dead who inhabit Hell. They generally exist just to be tortured by the other devils, and they can only be killed permanently by blessed or holy weapons. Some of them get turned into wraiths or spectres after a long time in Hell, which doesn’t sound like a great improvement. It’s not a position with a lot of upward mobility, I’m afraid.

Pit Fiend: Aside from the Archdevils, these guys are the most powerful of the devils. They live in the lowest plane, and are the personal servants of Asmodeus. In combat they wield spiked clubs and ‘an ancus-like weapon’. This is an ancus.

They also have a tail that can constrict, and their strength is equivalent to an ogre.

Spell-like abilities are: pyrotechnics, produce flame, wall of fire, detect magic, detect invisible, polymorph self, hold person, symbol of pain, and they can gate in barbed devils or another pit fiend.

AD&D Monster Manual part 7

2010-10-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Demons: We kick off the letter D with a bang, rolling right into the section on Demons. I’ve always been a big fan of these guys, much more so than the Devils. I can’t exactly say why, because Devils are pretty awesome in their own right. But come on, Orcus and Demogorgon? Those guys are the best. Demons first appeared in Supplement III. All the ones that appeared there are here as well, with the addition of two Demon Lords, and the lowly Manes.

The section kicks off with some general information that is common to all demons. Much of it is reproduced from Supplement III. The first new bit of information we get is how far they can travel from their home plane of the Abyss. They can freely travel into Tarterus, Hades or Pandemonium, and they can also roam the Astral Plane. They can’t get into the Prime Material Plane without some sort of magical aid.

There’s a line stating that demons can never be subdued, which raises the question of what exactly can be. The rules for subdual are only ever used in reference to dragons, so it wouldn’t be out of line to limit it to them. But if demons are specifically called out as not being subduable, then I suppose the rule does apply to everyone not explicitly excluded.

Also, it is said that demons are able to divide their attacks amongst two or even three opponents at a time. This is how I’ve always played monsters with multiple attacks. Should I be making them use all their attacks on a single target? I’ll need to look out for this once I reach the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Controlling demons is still a difficult affair, but we now get the information that a thaumaturgic circle will keep the lesser demons at bay, while a special pentacle is required for the more powerful types. Nothing further is described, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this shows up in the DMG.

Demon amulets are the same as they were in Supplement III, granting anyone who gets hold of one temporary power over one particular demon. The only addition is that the amulets now allow the demon use of the magic jar ability.

Demons here are given the ability to converse telepathically with any type of creature. I’m pretty sure that is new.

There’s also a list of attack types, and how much effect they have on demons. Cold, lightning, fire, and poison gas all do half damage to demons. Iron weapons are also listed as doing full damage, which I assume means they can affect those demons only hit by magical weapons. Again, I think that all of this is new.

Demogorgon: Demogorgon is a demon prince, with tentacles for arms and two baboon heads on long necks. He mostly has the same stats he did in Supplement III, but a few tweaks have been made. For starters, Demogorgon used to have 12 hit dice. Now he just gets a flat total of 200 hit points, which is much more impressive. However, despite retaining an impressive suite of spell-like abilities, he can no longer use time stop or shape change, which lowers his power significantly.

Juiblex (The Faceless Lord): Juiblex, described as a festering mass of slime and ooze, is brand spanking new. As a Demon Lord he’s very powerful, but just a step below Demogorgon and Orcus. Juiblex surrounds himself with all kinds of monstrous oozes, and many of his abilities relate to disease and decay. One of his major attacks is to spew forth a slime that combines the effects of ochre jelly and green slime, both of which can be fairly deadly to unprepared characters. He has a gate ability like all other demons, and I like that he uses it to summon the frog-like Type II demons – it seems thematically appropriate. Poor old Juiblex is shunned by other demons, though, being too disgusting even for them.

Manes: Manes are also new to the Monster Manual. They are the spirits of those dead who go to the Abyss. It is said that the most evil are confined in Gehenna, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me based on what we’ve learned already in previous products. Gehenna is much closer to Hell than it is to the Abyss, and it’s not listed above in the planes that demons can roam freely. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Manes are fairly weak, actually, with just 1 hit dice and low damage. Demon Lords and Princes can feed on them, turn them into shadows or ghasts, or send them forth to exist on the material plane for a day. I suppose they’re a handy monster to have if you want to send low level PCs up against demon worshippers.

Orcus: Much like Demogorgon, Orcus now has a flat total of 120 hit points instead of 12 hit dice. A bunch of Orcus’s physical attacks are given damage ranges now, whereas before he was expected to use a weapon. And even with a weapon he now deals more damage. Funnily enough, while Demogorgon lost the abilities of time stop and shape change, Orcus has kept both. But his ability to summon the undead has been spectacularly nerfed – whereas before he was summoning wights, wraiths, spectres and vampires, now it’s weaksauce like skeletons, zombies, and shadows (but he gets to keep vampires). Otherwise, he hasn’t changed from Supplement III.

Succubus: These female demons have only changed in one aspect from Supplement III – their Armor Class has improved from AC 9 to AC 0. AC 9 was a ridiculous number for a monster of their level, and perhaps AC 0 is an overcompensation, but I like it much better.

Type I: These vulture-like demons haven’t changed at all from Supplement III, but they do get named as Vrocks for the first time.

Type II: These frog-demons are named as Hezrou for the first time, and it is said that they will fight with Type I demons for absolutely any reason at all.

Type III: There are just a few minor statistical tweaks to these monsters: their movement has improved from 6” to 9”, and they can no longer gate in demons of Type IV. They are also named as Glabrezu for the first time.

Type IV: The AC of these demons has improved from 4 to -1. They can no longer gate in demons of Types V or VI. The name they are given is shown as (Nalfeshnee, etc.), which implies more than one name. In fact, there is a new bit about using the demon’s name to get it to perform a service. I wonder if Nalfeshnee is intended as the name for this type of demon, or if it is an example of the true name of a specific Type IV demon. I suspect the latter, but I believe it becomes the former once we get into AD&D 2e.

Type V: Obviously the AC numbers were screwed up in Supplement III (or my PDF was screwed up), because Type V demons in that book had an AC of 7. Here they are listed as -7/-5. Which of those applies to the human torso and which applies to the snake tail is anyone’s guess. Otherwise they are statistically the same as they were in Supplement III. They are given the name of Marilith for the first time, but as above it’s got an etc. after it, so it may just be an example name for a specific demon). We also learn that other lesser demons fear Type V demons for their cruelty, and that they desire the sacrifice of strong warriors.

Type VI: Their AC improves from 2 to -2. Otherwise there’s no statistical change. We do learn that there are only six of these guys known to exist, and that one of them is called Balor. We also learn that they’re more organised than the other types of demons, which makes them unpopular with the Demon Lords and Princes.

Yeenoghu: The Demon Lord of Gnolls! I love this guy. He’s the major reason that I play gnolls as bloodthirsty demon cultists. He’s usually surrounded by gnolls, and if not he can summon them anyway. He’s also worshipped by the King of Ghouls, and there’s an evocative image that’s slipped past me until this point. There’s a King of Ghouls? I’ve generally played ghouls like the ‘fast zombies’ of modern film, but if they have a king I need to rethink them completely. And now I wonder if they have a connection to gnolls, or if their mutual worship of Yeenoghu is a coincidence.

Yeenoghu has a ‘dreaded flail’, with three balls, each of which has a different power (damage, paralysation, or confusion). Among his many spell-like abilities is the magic missile spell, noted as being +2 to hit – it looks like magic missiles still need to roll to hit at this point.

15 Games in 15 Minutes

2010-10-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for a good meme. I picked this one up from Sickly Purple Death Ray, which is rad not least because of the Russ Nicholson banner. So here, in no particular order, are fifteen games that influenced the hell out of me.

Dungeons & Dragons (pretty much every version, but mostly AD&D 2e)
Marvel Super-Heroes (the TSR game)
Shadowrun
Bard's Tale (all three games)
Ultima IV (I could put in the rest of the series up to number 6 as well)
Ultima Underworld (both games)
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks
Lone Wolf gamebooks
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (and Ocarina of Time to a lesser extent)
Talisman
Pool of Radiance (the old SSI game. The rest of the Gold Box games also qualify)
Heroquest (the board game)
The Last Ninja
War of the Lance
Necromunda

AD&D Monster Manual part 6

2010-10-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

Chimera: The Chimera, which first appeared in OD&D, is still of the standard mythological variety – hind legs of a goat, forelegs of a lion, bat wings, goat’s head, lion’s head, and dragon’s head. It’s such a cool visual, though I imagine the poor old goat suffering from adequacy issues in this combination. I’m not sure what’s going on with the Chimera’s Armor Class here. Whereas before it had an AC of 4, now it is listed as 6/5/2. There’s no explanation in the text of what this means, but I suppose that each AC value corresponds to a certain head. I would give the goat head AC 6, the lion head AC 5, and the dragon head AC 2. The creature’s movement rate on land has also been reduced, from 12” to 9”. And there’s also the ubiquitous reduction to the % in Lair chance. The Chimera still does three dice of damage with its breath weapon, but now it is 3d8 instead of 3d6. In OD&D Chimeras could be Neutral or Chaotic, but now they are Chaotic Evil. Some other small details revealed include the creature’s colouration, and that they speak a limited form of red dragon language.

Cockatrice: It’s a chicken. Its beak can turn you to stone. There is no radder monster than that. It first appeared in OD&D, and has had some minor tweaks to the stats since then. The cockatrice now only deals 1-3 damage instead of 1-6. Their Number Appearing range has been reduced from 1-8 to 1-6, which I’m sure is an effort on Gary’s part to stop these buggers doing TPKs every time they come up as a random encounter. They are also slower, with their land speed going from 9” to 6”. Their physical description also gets a little fleshing out.

Couatl: This monster, based on the feathered serpent of Aztec mythology, first appeared in Supplement III. Their alignment was previously Lawful with Neutral tendencies, but now they are Lawful Good. Their psionic abilities have been tweaked to match up with Gary’s upcoming plans for the Player’s Handbook, leaving behind the power determination based on class. Otherwise, this monster is just as it was presented before (another case of Gary not really tweaking the monster’s created later in OD&D’s history).

Giant Crab: The giant crab first appeared with the aquatic monsters in OD&D. There are a load of minor tweaks here. Their Armor Class has worsened from 2 to 3. Movement rate has dropped from 9” to 6”. Their damage, previously 2-12 per pincer, is now at 2-8. I would say they’ve been nerfed, but they do get a better chance to gain surprise than they had before. A lot of the info presented in Supplement II, mostly dealing with how mermen relate to them, and how they lay their eggs, has also been omitted.

Giant Crayfish: Because no RPG is complete without a few superfluous crustaceans. I’m pretty sure they first appeared in the updated wilderness encounter tables from Supplement III, but they get stats here for the first time. They’re a little tougher than the Giant Crab; more hit dice, higher damage, although with a slightly worse AC and a not-quite-as-good surprise chance.

Crocodile: Crocodiles, and their giant brethren, first appeared in OD&D section on aquatic monsters. Their stats were fleshed out in Supplement II, but like a lot of monsters from that booklet they have been heavily modified here. Pretty much all of the stats have changed, the most significant being that Giant Crocodiles no longer appear in ginormous packs of 12-60 (and thank Christ for that, because I really don’t know how to randomly generate that range). They are also now slower in cold weather, and get a better chance at gaining surprise. Alas, rules for ships ramming Giant Crocodiles aren’t included here.

And with my next post, I begin with the letter D. Dragons. Devils. Demons. Dinosaurs. Yeah, I'm going to be stuck on that letter for a good long while.

AD&D Monster Manual part 5

2010-10-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

Wild Camel: Like a lot of the normal animals featured in the Monster Manual, wild camels were first seen in the updated Wilderness Encounter Tables from Supplement III. Gary being Gary, he makes sure to distinguish between bactrians and dromedaries, with a special focus on how much treasure you can load them up with. My favourite bit is their spitting attack, that can blind the target. There are no rules provided for knocking one out like Arnold, though.

Carrion Crawler: This monster, one of my absolute favourites, first appeared in Supplement I. As before, it’s a giant centipede with paralysing tentacles in its mouth. Statistically it is unchanged, except for the now-familiar lowering of the % in Lair chance. (I’m noticing that this has been done with a lot of monsters, presumably to lower the chances of the PCs getting their greasy mitts on the monster’s treasure.) Some small bits of info revealed: carrion crawlers are green, and they lay eggs in corpses. There’s also an important detail in this excerpt: “each 2’ long tentacle exudes a gummy secretion which when fresh, will paralyze opponents”. “When fresh” is the important bit, as it specifies that this stuff isn’t something the PCs can bottle and use on their enemies.

Catoblepas: This total bastard monster first appeared in Strategic Review #7. Honestly, this guy. Basically it’s a long-necked buffalo that lives in the swamp and can kill you with its gaze. And just to top that off, the gaze has no saving throw. The only thing that will save your character is that the neck of the catoblepas is so weak that it can only raise its head about a quarter of the time. Statistically they haven’t changed since their first appearance, except that there’s now a chance they can have treasure, which there wasn’t before. And too right, because nobody wants to encounter one of these things with no chance for a reward.

Wild Cattle: It’s another wondrous inclusion from the Supplement III encounter tables. This is a catch-all category for the various types of cattle, obviously. They’re not usually hostile, but they might trample your character if you get too close.

Centaur: Centaurs first appeared in OD&D. You know the drill, half-man half-horse. In OD&D they could be Neutral or Lawful, but here they can be Neutral or Chaotic Good. Their Number Appearing range has slightly increased. They are now provided with leaders, and the stats of their women and young are a bit more detailed. It’s also noted that they dislike humans and dwarves, tolerate gnomes and halflings, and like elves, especially wood elves. And for the record, there's nothing about them being tree-huggers here, so I feel free to play them as wine-guzzling, over-amorous marauders.

Giant Centipede: Centipedes were mentioned as possible monsters in OD&D, and they also showed up in the Wandering Monster tables. But this is where they get stats for the first time. Now I’m creeped out by centipedes at the best of times, but when they’re over a foot long? Forget it. They actually aren’t that tough, but they do have a poisonous bite. I love how their ‘weak’ venom is still fatal if you fail your save. Sure, you get a +4 bonus to the roll, but it’s still a save or die effect on a monster of less than 1 hit dice. Which I’m fine with, by the way. The game is always better when the players aren't complacent.

Cerebral Parasite: These guys haven’t changed a bit since they debuted in Supplement III. Basically, they’re invisible to the eye, about the size of a flea, and they infect psionic characters and drain their psionic points every time they use a power. Not only that, but they multiply pretty rapidly. At first they seem like a bit of a nuisance monster, but I can imagine how much trouble you’d be in if you got caught in psychic battle with such a drain on your resources.

AD&D Monster Manual part 4

2010-10-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

Beholder: Now we’re getting into some classics. The Beholder first appeared in Supplement I. It’s still the same ill-tempered beastie here, a floating orb with ten eyestalks and one central eye, each with a special power. There are a few minor tweaks in the stats, with Treasure Type changed from I and F to I, S and T. % in Lair is also lessened from 90% to 80%, and their bite’s damage has been raised from 2-5 to 2-8. The major change for this monster comes with its hit points. In OD&D, a beholder’s hit points were fixed, bit here they can range from 45 to 75. The hit point range is not expressed in terms of Hit Dice, and this poses a problem – at what level does the beholder make attacks? How good are its saving throws?

The other changes are minor. Some ranges for the eye rays are included, and it’s clarified just how many eyestalks the creature can fire in a given round depending on the position of its enemies. The method by which PCs can disable the central eye or the eyestalks is also detailed much more comprehensively. The eyestalks can grow back in a week now, though, so don’t expect to whittle one down over time.

Beholders were Neutral with Chaotic tendencies in OD&D, but here they are Lawful Evil. There’s that major paradigm shift in what alignment represents yet again.

Black Pudding: Statistically this monster is exactly the same as it was in OD&D, but some small bits of info are still revealed. Apparently a black pudding is composed of groups of single cells, which means nothing to me, but perhaps the more scientifically-minded out there could enlighten me. The exact rate at which they can dissolve wood and metal is clarified, and their size is now determined based on how many hit points they have. And while OD&D had included the suggestion of a Gray Pudding, in AD&D there is also the possibility of a White Pudding or a Brown Pudding.

Blink Dog: This monster has only the most minor changes from OD&D. Its % in Lair is slightly lower, and the random determination of their blinking ability is explained better. The only addition is that you can now sell their pups at market for a grand or two. Sweet, innocent Lawful Good puppies, might I add…

Boar: There are three varieties of boar here – Wild Boar, Giant Boar, and the dreaded Warthog. Giant Hogs were present in the original OD&D Wandering Monster tables, and believe me, I’m quite mystified as to what they’re doing roaming around on level 3 of the average dungeon. This is the first time the game gives stats to any kind of hostile pig, though. Wild Boars are reasonably tough, with a few hit dice, good damage, and the ability to keep fighting with less than zero hit points. Giant Boars are the prehistoric version, basically the same monster with all of its stats amped up. The Warthog is very similar to the Wild Boar, albeit slightly weaker, but it does get two attacks instead of one. Otherwise its only distinguishing characteristic is that it lives in tropical climes.

Brain Mole: Yay, it’s our first psionic monster. The Brain Mole is brand new for the Monster Manual. And yes, it’s a tiny psychic mole. The creature’s M.O. is to detect the use of psionic powers, then psionically burrow into the user’s mind with a Mind Thrust attack. This can leave the victim insane. Non-psionics who are just using a spell or an item to duplicate psychic ability can just stop using the power to escape, but an actual psionic will either need to run like hell or find the Brain Mole and kill it. Which would be easy, because they have a single hit point, except that they’re probably really hard to find due to their small size.

Brownie: It’s another new monster, this time an addition to the list of fairy-like creatures. I’m not really sure what niche these guys fill that wasn’t already covered, but perhaps it will be clearer to me as I continue. Brownies are said to be a cross between Halflings and Pixies. They’re friendly to humans and demi-humans, and will sometimes help lawful good characters with their magical abilities – protection from evil, ventriloquism, mirror image, that sort of thing. They are also fast, dextrous, they can hide well and they can’t be surprised. It’s all standard fairy stuff. Sorry Brownies, I’m not really feeling it. (I’m not really a fey monster guy, if you haven’t noticed yet.)

Buffalo: Buffalo had previously appeared in the revised Wilderness Encounter Tables from Supplement III, but they get stats here for the first time. And they are surprisingly tough, with 5 hit dice, the ability to deal large damage, and the potential to show up in large numbers. Sure, you most probably aren’t going to provoke a herd of them, but look out if you get too close…

Bugbear: This is my favourite illustration in the book, you guys – the one with the hapless adventurer getting clubbed by a bugbear on the noggin. These monsters haven’t changed statistically, but a lot of details are added nonetheless. They get a detailed physical description with skin and eye colour, and no mention of pumpkin heads as they had been depicted in illustration in Supplement I. They get leaders and chiefs with better stats now, just like the other humanoid races, and the weapons they like to use are listed. But you know, it’s really all about clubbing guys on the skull.

Bulette: This monster originally appeared in The Dragon #1. It’s pretty much exactly the same as it was there, which is probably due to it being designed later than a lot of the other monsters in the game. You gotta love this line: “It was the result of a mad wizard’s experimental cross breeding of a snapping turtle and armadillo with infusions of demons’ ichor.” Ye gods man, what were you thinking?

Bull: A bull was one of the options that could be pulled forth from a magical bag of tricks, so it dutifully gets some stats here that match up closely to those listed under that magic item. They’re aggressive, with a decent amount of hit points, but nothing remarkable. What did you expect, it’s just a bull. Their intelligence is listed as Semi, though, which means that there is the occasional very rare PC that could be dumber than a bull.

This also gets me thinking about the spell Animal Friendship. There’s a school of thought out there that says it applies to all creatures of Animal intelligence and Neutral alignment. But a lot of real-world animals are listed here with an intelligence of Semi, and some, such as Apes, even trend up to Low. I was leaning towards this interpretation for the spell, but this puts a major dent in it. I like the idea of having a concrete way to adjudicate it, but I think I’ll probably just go with my gut whenever this spell gets trotted out.

AD&D Monster Manual part 3

2010-09-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Baboons: Believe it or not, baboons originally showed up in the updated Wilderness Encounter tables from Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. Their stats are given here for the first time, but they are more likely to flee than fight.

Despite a general lack of use in most games, I am completely in favour of regular animals getting stats in the Monster Manual. Fantastic monsters are all well and good, but real world animals give us something to compare them to, and also provide a baseline of normalcy for the campaign world that I think is really important. If everything is fantastic and extraordinary, then nothing is fantastic and extraordinary. Not to mention that the pulp fantasy and mythology that D&D draws on is full of instances of heroes battling regular animals. Hercules wrestled a lion. Conan bit off a vulture’s head. The game needs this stuff, and I was massively disappointed that it was taken out in 3e. Luckily for me there’s a ton of it in the AD&D Monster Manual. Much of it, like the baboon, won’t come up in play very often. But it’s important nonetheless.

Badgers: Speaking of which, badgers are actually pretty hard, with a low AC and multiple attacks. You do not want to engage one with a 1st level PC. I’m not sure if they have appeared in a previous OD&D book, but it doesn’t look like it. There’s also a giant variety that has 3 hit dice and deals more damage. A D&D staple rears its head, as you can sell their pelts for 10-30 gp.

Baluchitherium: It’s another new monster drawn from prehistory. These guys are prehistoric rhinos, with a tendency to trample anything nearby. They also have a metric shit-ton of hit points and deal a lot of damage. And they carry no treasure, so I’d advise just getting out of their way.

The name presents a problem, in that it really doesn’t ring true for the flavour of D&D. A lot of the Latin-based names just don’t sound right. In previous posts I have posited the existence of an ancient language in my campaign world that was used to classify various types of monsters – it’s where the term Draco Conflagratio for the red dragon comes from. So I guess they did the same for the dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts that still exist in various remote pockets. The Latin is not their literal tongue, but simply a representation of it. Even with this explanation, I feel like I should come up with a more authentic-sounding name for these guys. Nothing springs to mind just now, though.

Barracuda: Wow, I never realised how much of this book is real-world animals. This looks like another new monster to me. They’re aggressive saltwater fish that attack the injured, the helpless, and the very small (i.e. hobbits). And look out, because that bite is as effective as a longsword.

Basilisk: This monster, which first appeared in OD&D, is basically the same: a lizard with a gaze that turns its victim to stone. A lot of cosmetic details are filled out here – it has eight legs, moves slowly due to a slow metabolism, have dull brown skin with yellowish underbellies, and glowing green eyes. There is one major change, in that it no longer turns people to stone with its touch. But it does still have the awesome ability to see into the astral and ethereal planes, and turn people in the latter plane into ethereal stone. So rad. Oh, and the number encountered has dropped from 1-6 to 1-4.

Bear: Cave bears first appeared in the OD&D Wilderness Encounter tables, and regular bears were in the updated charts from Supplement II. There are three types of bears given stats here: black, brown and cave bears. Black bears are non-aggressive herbivores, while the other two types are highly aggressive. All three types can hug for extra damage if their attack roll is high enough. Brown and cave bears keep fighting for a few rounds even after their hit points go below 0.

Beaver, Giant: This monster comes to you courtesy of Supplement II. The Preface has already stated that Gary edited the hell out of the monsters from that book, so I’m interested to see how different this one is. To start with, their AC has worsened from 5 to 6. A swimming speed of 12” has been added. % in Lair has dropped from 85% to 80%. Treasure Type has changed from D to C. They now attack with 1 bite, instead of 2 claws and 1 bite. That bite damage has lessened from 4-24 to 4-16.

The intelligence of the giant beaver is listed as Low to Average, which makes them about as smart as a person. This jibes well with their previously established tendency to build dams in exchange for gold and exotic bark.

We’d been told previously that beaver fur was valuable, and that their young could be sold at market. Ever the entrepreneur, Gary provides price ranges.

Beetle, Giant: Six varieties are detailed here: bombardier, boring, fire, rhinoceros, stag, and water. The first five had been detailed in Supplement II, while the Water Beetle seems to be new. The Number Appearing for the Boring Beetle has changed from 2-12 to 3-18. The Fire Beetle now moves at 12” instead of 9”. The Bombardier Beetle has 2+2 hit dice instead of 1. The Fire Beetle has 1+2 hit dice instead of 1-1. The Stag Beetle has 7 hit dice instead of 6. The Boring Beetle now has a % in Lair of 40% instead of 50%, and its Treasure Type has changed from A to C, R, S, and T. All of the beetles have had their damage range tweaked slightly. The only major change comes from the Fire Beetle, who has dropped from a massive 3-24 down to a reasonable 2-8.

Bombardier Beetles now have a concrete range and area of effect for their vapour cloud. It causes damage now, which it didn’t before, and it has a better chance to stun opponents, but it can’t be used as often as it could previously.

Boring Beetles still cultivate molds, slimes and fungi as food, but it seems now that these are just the regular varieties. In Supplement II they were specifically said to do so with things like Yellow Mold and the various monstrous slimes and jellies. It made for a more interesting monster in my opinion, and it’s not exactly ruled out here. So I’m going to leave it in, because it’s cool.

It is now specifically stated that the glowing spots on Fire Beetles can be cut out, and will continue to glow for 1-6 days with a 10’ radius. Previously there had been no mention of this, and presumably adventurers were expected to herd these things like mobile light sources. That seemed like more trouble than it’s worth, so I approve of this clarification.

Water beetles are voracious, and attack just about anything nearby. There’s not much else to them, besides the aquatic aspect.

AD&D Monster Manual part 2

2010-09-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Aerial Servant: This monster first appeared as part of the Aerial Servant cleric spell in Supplement I: Greyhawk. This is simply a restatement of the stats given in that spell as a monster entry – it’s an invisible monster that can carry a lot, has a grip that’s very hard to break, has a surprise bonus, and that will go bonkers and attack the cleric that summoned it if it can’t complete its mission. The only mechanical change is with its speed. Before it travelled at twice the speed of an air elemental, but now it does so at twice the speed of an invisible stalker – a drop from 72” to 24”!

We learn that Aerial Servants are actually semi-intelligent air elementals that roam the astral and ethereal planes. Could this be the result of air elementals being trapped in those planes, away from their native habitat? Maybe this can happen to any air elemental summoned to the prime material plane? It would certainly explain their tendency to flip out on their summoner.

There’s a little rules nugget tucked away in this entry that explains something I had wondered about in OD&D. Often in OD&D it would be noted that a monster fights at double, triple, or even quadruple strength under certain conditions. The Aerial Servant is said to fight as a double-strength Invisible Stalker. Comparing the two entries, I find that the Aerial Servant has 16 hit dice to the Invisible Stalker’s 8, and that it also delivers twice as much damage on a successful hit. It’s how I suspected the rule worked, but it’s nice to see some hard confirmation.

Anhkheg: The Anhkheg remains mostly the same here as it was in The Dragon #5, with some cosmetic changes. Originally its % in Lair was 25%, but now it is 15%. Its Treasure Type was first listed as B2, which made no sense, so that has been changed to C. Its bonus acid damage on a bite attack has been significantly lowered, from 1-10 down to 1-4. That’s fair enough, as that bite already does 3-18 to start with. It’s plenty deadly without an extra 1-10 on top. Finally, its acid squirt now has a damage rating listed, which it did not before. It’s a nice revision that slightly lessens the Anhkheg's deadliness and brings some weird rules bits into line.

Ant, Giant: Giant ants were listed in the OD&D wilderness encounter tables, and also given as an example under the entry for Large Insects. Here they get stats for the first time. The worker ants are pretty standard low-level monsters, while the warriors have a poison sting that deals extra damage. The queen has a ton of hit points, but can’t move or attack. Quite remarkably for AD&D, their eggs have no market value. Usually Gygax can’t wait to tell you how you’ll earn for selling that sort of stuff, but I guess there’s not much call for giant ants as pets or delicacies, is there?

Oh, and as the rad illustration of them swarming a hapless paladin shows, they’re only about 2 feet long. I have a habit of envisioning them as larger than man-sized, so I’ll have to try hard to remember that they are smaller. Still large enough to be scary in large numbers, but not towering over the PCs.

Ape, Gorilla: Again, Apes appeared in the OD&D wilderness encounter tables. This is the first time they are given stats. They’re pretty tough, with 4 hit dice and multiple attacks, and extra rending damage if both of their punch attacks land. They’d wreck the average 1st-level party, I think.

Ape, Carnivorous: These guys first appeared in the Supplement I revision to the Wandering Monster tables, replacing OD&D’s White Apes. They’re pretty much the same as gorillas but a little bit tougher and smarter, with a better chance to avoid being surprised due to keen senses

Axe Beak: This seems to be a new monster, stemming from Gary’s seeming fascination for prehistoric animals. It’s just an ostrich with a big beak and claws, and I’d be very surprised if anyone pipes up in the comments to say they’ve used one in a game.

AD&D Monster Manual part 1 of many

2010-09-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

Man, the Monster Manual is awesome. The first ever product for AD&D, it was a compilation of all the monsters developed for OD&D, with some new stuff added in for good measure. In terms of the physical product it was light years ahead of anything TSR has produced to this point. My 4th edition copy is still a very sturdy hardcover, and I’ve honestly never seen a Monster Manual that isn’t in really good nick. So kudos to TSR for the production values, because it’s a great book. The writing’s good, the art’s good, the monsters are good. You’d be hard pressed to find a D&D book that’s as high quality as this one. I may be biased due to my love of monster books in general, but this is a real doozy, and a genuine watershed moment for the RPG industry as a whole.

The book kicks off with an editorial by Mike Carr, who was an editor at TSR at the time. He mentions right off that the Monster Manual is the ‘second part’ of the new D&D releases. Presumably the first part he’s referring to is the Basic Set edited by Holmes. The rest of the piece is devoted to reiterating TSR’s success and drive for excellence, while putting down their derivative competitors. It seems to me as though the company was doing a fair bit of that in products around this time.

An alphabetical table of contents follows, which is nice and legible and very useful.

Then there’s a preface by Gary, in which he explains who created most of the monsters herein. Gary himself is responsible for most of them, but he credits Steve Marsh for the undersea creatures taken from Supplement II, Erol Otus for the original illustrations of the Anhkheg and Remorhaz, Ernie Gygax for the Water Weird, and Terry Kuntz for the prototypical Beholder.

Explanatory Notes: Wow. We’re definitely in different territory to OD&D here. In the products released before this book, lots of things went unexplained and unexpanded. You had to figure out what certain tables meant and how certain rules were supposed to work on your own. But the Monster Manual leaves nothing to chance. Everything is explained, and nothing is left ambiguous (at least on purpose). It’s a completely different mindset to OD&D. No doubt it's a side-effect of the growing success and appeal of D&D, as people not accustomed to wargaming have to make sense of the rules.

This section begins by explaining the use of the term monster, as it refers to any creature encountered in the game by the PCs, as well as being used in the more traditional sense of a horrible or wicked creature. See what I mean? Not even the basic terminology goes unexplained. There’s a note at the end that humans and demi-humans, despite being under the catch-all term of monsters, still use the attack matrix for humans.

From there it goes on to explain all of the common statistics in the monster entries. It has all the usual standbys that have already been in OD&D: number appearing, armor class, move, hit dice, % in lair, treasure type, number of attacks, damage per attack, magic resistance, and alignment. All of them of course, get a far more detailed explanation of their use than they did in OD&D, but the basics remain the same. Frequency is a new one, showing how rare the monster is and what percentage it should have to show up on the appropriate Wandering Monster chart. Special Attacks and Special Defenses give a brief description of the monster’s unusual abilities, which can be dead handy for the DM in the middle of a game. Intelligence was something that had been touched on in some of the OD&D monsters, particularly those that showed up in The Strategic Review, but now it’s been much more codified, and applied to every monster. Size introduces the categories of Small, Medium, Large, etc., which begin to have some mechanical effect in AD&D. Psionic Ability shows the monsters psionic attacks and defenses and their other powers as well. I’ll be interested to if it matches the Player’s Handbook, or if it’s closer to the system from Supplement III. The section on Magic Resistance has a rule whereby casters higher than 11th level have a better chance to penetrate it, while those lower have a worse chance. At first I thought this was a new rule, and I had a hard time finding it, but it’s tucked away in the Balrog entry in earlier printings of D&D Vol. 2.

And that's the introductory stuff out of the way. I did want to get into some monsters today, but I ran out of time. And yes, that means I'm going to running through all of the monsters in this book, which could get frightfully boring after a while. Deal with it!

The Dragon #11

2010-09-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Dragon Rumbles editorial this month sees Tim Kask getting excited about the inclusion of stories from Fritz Lieber, Gardner Fox, and L. Sprague de Camp, as well as talking up the popularity of the Snit Smashing game included last issue. View from the Telescope Wondering Which End is Which sees Gary in fine form, taking pot-shots at anyone and everyone who wants to profit from D&D without the permission of TSR. It contains some praise for Judges Guild, which is now officially licensed to produce D&D material, and also for GDW, but mostly it’s Gary just letting loose, which I always enjoy. How Do You Stop That Thing? is an article discussing tactics for the game Ogre, in which one player with a heap of smaller vehicles and weapons defends against the other player who has one gigantic monstrous tank. From the Chronicles of Emaj the Rotund is a play report for Snit Smashing. Sea Magic is a short story by Fritz Leiber that features Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. In the comics, Wormy stumps his dwarven foes with a riddle, while Finieous Fingers falls for crying hobbits. There’s also an unimpressed review of the animated film of The Hobbit, which had just been released at the time. And finally there is Snit’s Revenge, an add-on to Snit Smashing.

Oh, and there is some interesting stuff in the ads, as well. At the front of the issue is a Minifigs Ad that shows some demon miniatures, including Orcus and Demogorgon. Minifigs at the time was the official D&D miniature creator, and these look pretty rad. At the back of the issue is an ad for the AD&D Monster Manual, which is one of the strangest pieces of advertisement I’ve ever seen. It’s basically just a big block of text explaining what the book’s about, followed by the complete entry for the Carrion Crawler. I think it’s a great ad, as it shows you exactly what you’re getting from the book. It’s like TSR know they’ve got a good product, and they’re willing to let it speak for itself.

Brawling: The Easy Way “Out” in D&D by Rob Kuntz: Look kids, it’s an unarmed combat system! I’m seriously perplexed that it has taken this long for one to show up. There were rudimentary (and very good) rules for grappling in an early issue of The Strategic Review, but these ones are much more involved.

There are rules here for Grappling and Punching. The person with the highest Dexterity usually goes first. When grappling, each combatant averages his Strength and Dexterity scores. The attacker compares his result to the defender’s, dice are rolled, and a chart is consulted to determine how many Constitution points the defender loses.

When punching, someone with a much higher Dexterity than his opponent will get multiple attacks. A hit is scored on a 2d6 roll of 2-7. The attacker’s Strength is compared to the defender’s Constitution, and again a chart is consulted to determine damage to Constitution. There’s an optional rule that gives you a chance for a knockout blow if you roll snake-eyes.

It’s not really a difficult system, although it does use more dice rolls than I feel are necessary. But my real problem with it is the way it completely bypasses D&D’s level system. It doesn’t matter what level you are as a fighter, a 20th level Lord with average stats could get trounced by a farmer with an 18 Strength. Certainly there’s some fun to be had with that kind of result, but it flies in the face of the basic building blocks of the game. Not only that, it completely ignores hit points as well. It’s not that it’s a bad system for unarmed combat, it’s just a bad fit for D&D.

The Play’s the Thing by Thomas Filmore: It’s an article about giving your PCs personality and flavour. There’s not a lot here that modern players haven’t seen before: the usual stuff about fleshing out your background, your likes and dislikes, that sort of thing. The one useful tid-bit I can take from the article is an NPC: Saltair the Dwarf, blamed for a friend’s death, a drunk and a gambler who hates everyone. Oh yeah, I can really needle my players with this guy.

Seal of the Imperium by M.A.R. Barker: Professor Barker is back, answering more questions about Empire of the Petal Throne. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I would like to include Tekumel as a possible destination in my campaign, as I like the idea of thrusting D&D characters into such an alien world. The information given in this article will be incorporated. Barker talks about the Shen and its club-like tail, whether non-humans get more hit points than humans, why it’s so hard to advance to high level, the nature of Demons, the organization of the Ssu, the use of women in the armies of Yan Kor, and where magical scrolls come from. It's always interesting to hear this guy's perspective on the game, because he's coming to it from a much different place than Gygax and the rest of the D&D crowd.

From the Sorcerer’s Scroll by Rob Kuntz: This is the first in what Rob intends to be a series. Here he spends his time talking about what’s coming up for D&D: the Monster Manual, Monster & Treasure Assortments for levels 7-9, AD&D, and an outdoor map designed by Brian Blume. Did that map ever get created or published? It seems not, but I’d like to know anything about it. There’s a plug for Judge’s Guild (although the comment about them saturating the market doesn’t sound too complimentary). It ends with a survey, as Rob wants to know what people want the feature to be.

Quarterstaff Fighting Rules by Jim Ward: It’s yet another fighting style that bypasses D&D’s level system in favour of ability scores. Yay! To resolve a combat round, each person writes down his actions. He can attack twice, defend twice, or attack and defend. High Strength makes it easier for you to hit, high Constitution lets you absorb damage, and high Dex does both. There are also different levels of proficiency that make it easier to hit. It’s not that difficult to figure out, but it still has that potential problem of low-level characters with high ability scores being better than high-level characters. The best thing about the article is that it provides some ability scores for Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Implausible scores, I might add, as most of them have a 17 or 18 in everything. But I guess legendary figures get some special dispensation.

NEXT: Hold on to your hats, folks – it’s the Monster Manual!

The Dragon #10 part 2

2010-09-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

Let There be a Method to Your Madness by Richard Gilbert: This article gives advice to DMs on how to design a dungeon, and I have to say that this is great stuff. The central idea that the author puts forward is that you should work out what the dungeon was before it became a dungeon. Figure out a short history of the place and a basic personality for the person who built it, and you ought to have enough hooks from that to plan out a goodly number of levels. Obviously this sort of thing can go too far, but this article keeps things just on the right side of sane so far as planning goes.

An example dungeon is created for the article. It was built 400 years ago by a magic-user called Nappo with the aid of a few hundred orcs. From that, plus the fact that Nappo loved to experiment on monsters, a whole lot of ideas for levels are created. There is the requisite laboratory level, another for the animal experimentation, living space for the orcs, cells and torture chambers, a number of levels with tricks and traps to stop intruders reaching the lower depths, where are Nappo’s own quarters. Not bad for an article of this size. I’m going to tentatively place this dungeon in my campaign world, should I ever get around to designing the thing. (I think this project has about five mega-dungeons planned so far, which is really stretching things. But hey, I like to plan big.)

Weights & Measures, Physical Appearance and Why Males are Stronger than Females in D&D by P.M. Crabaugh: What we have here is a set of charts to randomly determine your character’s appearance, as well as size and build. That’s fine and handy so far as it goes, and I do appreciate that there are some pretty odd and fantastic combinations possible here. But this is yet another author who feels the need to differentiate between male and female characters. Thankfully, things aren’t too egregious here. There’s actually a rare tendency here to err in favour of women, giving them a +2 to Constitution and a +1 to Dexterity. They don’t suffer any actual Strength penalty, but they do have a diminished carrying capacity. The author has devised a new encumbrance system that computes a character’s maximum carrying capacity based on size and build. Since on average females are smaller than males, they can’t carry as much under this system. But you know what? I’d swap that for the Dex and Con bonuses any day.

Gaining a New Experience Level by Tom Holsinger: There has already been one article in this issue about level advancement. While that one proposed the idea of granting XP only for gold spent on orgies and charity and such, this one takes a different tack. The idea here is that characters can only advance in level by attracting the attention of the gods, and having that level divinely bestowed. I have to say, I like this a lot. It clears up a lot of problems that people have with D&D’s level system, most notably the amount of punishment that high level characters can withstand. Now there’s a reason Rothgar the Mighty can survive about twenty sword thrusts – he’s powered by the gods.

There are a lot of rules here for how different alignments can attract the attention of the gods. Good characters can engage in prayer and fasting, or alternately they can ritually sacrifice Evil or Neutral creatures. Evil characters can also do sacrifices, and sacrilege against gods of another alignment also works. The author is getting a little cheeky when it comes to Neutrals. They can attract their god’s attention by playing practical jokes on religious figures of Good or Evil, or they can do so by getting laid in a mistletoe tree. It seems a little incongruous, until I remembered that mistletoe is sacred to druids.

This is all well and good, but the downside is that you don’t always attract the attention of the right gods. There’s a chance for gods of the opposite alignment to show up, which is never going to be pretty for your character. Apparently the presence of clerics can be used to mitigate this chance, for a token sum of course.

The character then has to become physically exhausted once he’s got the attention of the gods. The author’s suggestion is to get drunk, but I figure there are a lot of different ways. I certainly don’t intend to use his suggestion of ‘Great Pink Elephants’ as emissaries of the gods. You do have to admire his explanation for demi-human level limits, though: it’s because they have a harder time getting drunk than humans! He also provides an explanation for why high level characters need to build castles. It’s because all of these antics involved in getting the attention of the gods have a tendency to piss people off, and are harder to get away with in a town or city. Once you've got your own place out in the wilderness, you can have all the wild parties and sacriligious tomfoolery you want.

I plan to use these guidelines in conjunction with the ‘XP for gold spent’ rule mentioned in the Orgies Inc. article. I’ll provide this as an alternative, generally requiring the expenditure of less gold or possibly none at all depending on how the player goes about things. So players can spend all of their gold and reliably level up, or they can take the risk of keeping their gold by using the gods, and hope they conmtact the right ones.

Next: The Dragon #11

The Dragon #10 part 1

2010-09-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot of stuff to get through with this issue of The Dragon, so I’ll be brief when it comes to the stuff that does not pertain to D&D. The Dragon Rumbles editorial is mostly concerned with the aftermath of Gencon X, as well as the reorganisation of the magazine and the clear marking of rules variants. Snit Smashing is the first board-game by Tom Wham, and it looks to me like rollicking good fun. The Tactics of Diplomacy in Stellar Conquest discusses how you can implicitly use diplomacy in a game where negotiations with other players are strictly forbidden. And over in the comic strips, Wormy is preparing for an encounter with some dwarves, while Finieous Fingers is still dealing with hobbits.

Orgies, Inc. by Jon Pickens: Now that’s an attention-getting title, make no mistake. It’s also slightly misleading. What the article is actually about is getting all of that surplus loot out of the hands of the PCs. The method put forward? “Instead of receiving experience for gaining treasure, players would receive experience only as the treasure is spent.” It’s a great idea that has been picked up and expanded by a number of old-school bloggers, and it seems to me that it would help greatly in capturing the feel of the pulp heroes of yore. The author even name-checks Fafhrd and the Mouser in the article, so he’s off to a good start.

In the system described, the amount of GP spent is divided by the level of the character to determine the amount of XP earned. So already the 1 gp = 1 XP paradigm has been broken here; not only will the use of this system get rid of the players’ excess loot, it will also slow level advancement significantly.

There are a few set ways that this money can be spent. The first, open to any characters, is to sacrifice it to a god or a demon. Good idea, but I disagree with the optional note at the end that the recipient of the sacrifice will grant a wish or favour for a sacrifice of over 100 gp per level of the character. That’s far, far too low for such a thing.

Philanthropy is the second option, open only to Lawful characters, so your paladin can give his gold to the poor rather than having to resort to some of the seedier options presented later.

Magic-Users and Alchemists can spend the money on general research, including the research of new spells.

Dwarves can just give it all to their clans, as can anyone else of a clannish nature.

The last option is where the title of the article comes in: Orgies! Yes, your character can overindulge in drink, drugs and dames to his heart’s content, limited by his Constitution score. This one’s open to fighters, bards, thieves and any Chaotic characters, but paladins, rangers and monks are forbidden.

One potential problem with this system is the use of treasure that wasn’t earned in the dungeon, but the author demonstrates that the amount will be negligible as a result of the XP being divided by level. He then goes on to detail some alternatives to rid players of treasure, such as robbers and other devious means, but he also rightly points out that too much of this sort of thing can piss your players off.

The article ends with a short and fairly pointless bit about gambling, and an appendix detailing the effects of orgying on psionics (mostly that it drains your psionic points for a while).

I plan to use this option for a little while in my game, perhaps until the rules for training costs come in. With the restructuring of the Adventurers’ Guild, it’s possible that there just aren’t enough trainers there now, and the adventurers will have to find other means of increasing their prowess.

Designing for Unique Wilderness Encounters by Daniel Clifton: This article provides a series of charts to randomly determine wilderness terrain features. The battlefield is divided into four quadrants, with each one having a terrain feature rolled for on the chart. There’s a table for steepness of hills and slopes, and also the direction rivers flow in. It’s nice and simple, and doesn’t seem like it would take up too much time at the table. I’m definitely going to include this with the Holmes rules.

Random Monsters: It’s 1977, and already DMs are having trouble with players who have memorised all of the monsters in the game. The solution given here is a series of charts to randomly create a brand new monster. It’s pretty thorough, and covers all the bases so far as I can see. It’s a shame that the monster types are limited to Mammal, Reptile and Undead, but that does actually cover a large variety of stuff. There’s even a great special ability for undead that allows them to turn clerics – and I’m totally stealing that. My players can definitely expect me to roll up a few nasties on this table for inclusion in my game.

D&D Basic Set part 19

2010-09-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art: This section is a very short primer on what the DM needs to prepare to run the game. There’s not much to discuss here, but I thought I’d bring attention to it just because I love that sub-heading. I’m a firm believer in equality among all the arts, with no distinction between low and high, and there’s no reason that a well-crafted dungeon should be any less valued than a well-crafted sculpture. Like they say, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. Is every DM a fine artist? Hell no, but it's something to aspire to.

Oh, and there’s also a little dungeon cross-section you may have heard of. Shall I reproduce it? Who am I to resist such a thing?

Now that is an evocative dungeon layout right there. I’ve been itching to design something for it ever since I first saw it a few years ago, but given the breadth and scope of this current project I’m much more likely to have to steal someone else’s work. Such as this version here, soon to be on sale. Are there any other Skull Mountains out there?

Then Holmes goes on to discuss the distribution of monsters and treasure, and the deadliness of traps. He’s much more forgiving with pit traps than the other rulesets I’ve seen, allowing a 4-in-6 chance that a shallow pit deals no damage. It’s all good advice. There’s even a little bit about role-playing, and using appropriate voices for various NPCs. I’m a total ham, so I get into doing voices, but I can see that it’s not for everyone. Some people are comfortable with it, some aren’t. As far as my table goes, you play it however you want to. Holmes then describes the customary player roles of Caller and Mapper, but he also adds a third – a player to chronicle the monsters killed and treasure obtained. This is actually a very good idea, as it takes some onus off the DM so far as calculating experience points goes. So long as you have a trustworthy player, that is. Where I do disagree with Holmes is his assertion that the Mapper and Caller must be at the front rank of the party. I can’t think of a watertight rationale for either, so I won’t enforce it. A leader doesn’t always lead from the front, and the mapper can do his job just as well from the middle ranks.

An example of play follows, and besides some lines that I find inexplicably humorous it’s not that remarkable. It’s distinguishing feature is that it reduces the game to a conversation between the DM and the Caller, which doesn’t sound like the sort of game I’d want to play in. It’s possible that it’s all an abstraction to simplify the players discussing their decisions, but that’s hardly the best way to go about things in an introductory example. In the example, a Fighter, a Dwarf, an Elf and a Hobbit are exploring the dungeon. They explore a room, do the obligatory listening at doors and searching for secret doors, find some treasure and smash some orcs. The example ends just as they have encountered a gelatinous cube. I’ll most certainly take the dungeon as described and place it somewhere in Skull Mountain, and I’ll stat out that adventuring party as well. (The way the leader constantly refers to his buddies as ‘The Elf’, ‘The Dwarf’ and ‘The Hobbit’ gives me all sorts of ideas about him already. I’m going to play him as a somewhat prejudiced guy who really does call the rest of his party by those names. “Hey elf, check for secret doors! Hobbit! Gather up those coins. Dwarf, get over here and look in this pit!” Yeah, I can have some fun with him.)

And then Holmes ends with some more good advice. DMs should prepare, inspiration can be found in literary sources, make the game your own, yada yada. The usual stuff that’s been covered before.

Sample Dungeon: The sample dungeon given here is the Tower of Zenopus, and it’s pretty sweet. It’s not the most imaginative dungeon out there, but it hits the basics very well, and it has a good ratio of traps, tricks and monsters, as well as some nice atmospheric touches. I’ll be placing this dungeon and the nearby Portown somewhere in my World of Greyhawk, possibly around the Nyr Dyv. There are quite a few intriguing possibilities brought up by Holmes at the conclusion for expanding the dungeon. I’m wondering now if the on-line community has tackled this yet, but I can't find anything.

And that’s a wrap for the Basic D&D Boxed Set. Overall it’s a quality product, albeit with some shonky rules in the combat section. And I think it’s going to be a valuable deck-clearing tool when my campaign has acquired too much rules build-up from the OD&D supplements. I also think it’s interesting that Holmes D&D can legitimately lay claim to a connection to all three strains of TSR D&D. It’s a reorganisation of OD&D. It’s the obvious design predecessor to Moldvay’s Basic Set. And it has a number of pointers in the text to AD&D. Holmes Basic is a very important piece of D&D history and development, and we should never forget that.

NEXT: The Dragon #10

D&D Basic Set part 18

2010-09-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

Treasure: This section begins with a cursory explanation of the treasure tables, and also provides the exchange rates for the different types of coins. Electrum is given a concrete value for the first time here, being worth half a gold piece. Previously in OD&D it could be worth either half or double the value of gold, depending on the DM.

The section on determining the value of gems uses the same table as in OD&D, but it doesn’t provide for values above 1,000 gold pieces. Sorry folks, there’s no way to fluke a 500,000 gp gem any more.

The value of jewelry has also been greatly decreased, using only the least valuable entry from the OD&D chart. The rules for destroying jewelry and gems with fire and lightning have been retained, but they lack the precision of OD&D.

This is followed by an explanation of how to use the Treasure Tables, something that wasn’t given in OD&D. Holmes goes out of his way to stress that the treasures shown are very large, and should be guarded by a lot of monsters. Words to live by!

The actual treasure tables are much the same as those in OD&D, except that Holmes has added columns for electrum pieces and platinum pieces. There are also new Treasure Types from J to T, which provide much smaller treasure hoards intended for single creatures or small groups. The only other change is that there is a slightly smaller chance of finding magic items here than there was previously.

The table to determine what type of magic item you’ve found has been slightly altered, with the armour and miscellaneous weapons categories now combined.

Holmes has created his own tables for each category of item. Rather than a percentile dice roll as is required in OD&D, each table requires a single roll of 1d10. There are ten items on each table, meaning each has a 10% chance to come up. It’s a lot less fiddly than OD&D, but it also provides less granularity and choice of items. It makes sense for an intro game, though.

The Swords table is much the same as that in OD&D, with the following omitted: Sword +1 with 2-8 Wishes, Sword +2 with Charm Person, Life Draining Sword, and Sword +3 vs. Trolls. He has added a Cursed Sword -1, which is the first time a cursed sword with that particular penalty has entered the game. Supplement I had a Cursed Sword +1, which may have been a typo, but it also made the wielder seek out battle with as many monsters as possible, which is penalty enough without the negative modifier.

The Armor Table and the Weapons Table from OD&D have been combined here. You can no longer find armor of more than +1 bonus. Also omitted are the chance for 3-30 magic arrows, mace +2, war hammer +2 and +3, and the spear +2 and +3. Bad luck clerics, you only have one type of magic weapon to choose from. Holmes has brought in his own version of cursed armor, that adds +2 to the opponent’s chance to hit.

A ton of potions have been left out of Holmes, so instead I’ll list what is there: growth, diminution, giant strength, invisibility, gaseous form, speed, flying, delusion, poison and healing.

Holmes has done something interesting with scrolls. Along with the usual assortment of spell scrolls and protection scrolls, there are also options that allow a scroll to duplicate magic rings, potions or wands. I’m not sure there’s much there that isn’t already covered by spells, but then again Holmes only covers spell levels 1 and 2 – this is a neat way of getting some higher level spell scrolls into the game without having to give the actual spell descriptions.

There are also a lot of rings left out. Holmes has included rings of invisibility, animal control, plant control, weakness, protection +1, three wishes, regeneration, water walking, fire resistance, and contrariness.

Again, the selection of wands and staves is small, and many of the most powerful sorts such as the Staff of Wizardry didn’t make the cut. Included are: wand of magic detection, secret door and trap detection, fear, cold, paralysation, fire ball, staff of healing, snake staff, staff of striking and rod of cancellation.

Last of all is miscellaneous magic, a section that has been absolutely gutted by paring it down to ten items. Included are the crystal ball, medallion of ESP, bag of holding, elven cloak and boots, broom of flying, helm of telepathy, bag of devouring, helm of evil/good, rope of climbing and gauntlets of ogre power.

Magic Weapons and Armor: These work much the same as in OD&D, with most swords only getting a bonus to hit, while other weapons all get bonuses to hit and damage. Swords have been majorly nerfed here, as they no longer have intelligence and the raft of special abilities that come with it. A regular sword +1 is actually an inferior weapon to most of the miscellaneous types.

Potions: The potion of giant strength now specifically confers the strength of a stone giant, and thus is more powerful than the OD&D version. The potion of haste (called a potion of speed in the tables, as it was in OD&D) now allows the user twice as many attacks a round as well as the power to move at double speed. Otherwise, the potions listed work just as they did in OD&D.

Scrolls: A little more explanation is given regarding cursed scrolls, and the protection scrolls are simplified a little. But this is mostly just as it was in OD&D.

Rings: The ring of animal control (mammal control in OD&D) has been slightly altered in terms of how many animals can be controlled at a time. The ring of plant control is new, and it simply gives the wearer the ability to mentally control plants and fungi. The ring of weakness has been changed, as it now has a 5% chance to make its wearer stronger instead of weaker. The ring of protection has been majorly beefed up, now granting the same AC as plate mail +1. The original line in OD&D said that the ring ‘serves as +1 armor would, giving this bonus to defensive capabilities and saving throws’. I’ve always interpreted this as the ring granting a simple +1 bonus, but Holmes has definitely gone with the more powerful option. The ring of three wishes hasn’t been changed, but there is an added note that wishes can be curtailed with literal interpretations. The ring of contrariness has also not been changed, but this sentence is a doozy: “If, for example, the wearer is told to not kill himself, he will agree – and instead attempt to kill the person suggesting he not kill himself.” I’m not sure if it works logically, but it makes me laugh.

Wands and Staves: The same is those in OD&D.

Miscellaneous: There is now a 1-in-6 chance that someone in an Elven Cloak can be spotted. It is suggested that a Broom of Flying ought to have its command word engraved on the handle, or be otherwise easily accessible. Holmes gives a saving throw against the mind control ability of the Helm of Telepathy, which I approve of over OD&D’s more arcane percentile method. The Helm of Evil/Good was known as the Helm of Chaos/Law in OD&D. It still changes the wearer’s alignment to the opposite, but now this has been altered to suit the more complicated alignment system of Holmes. The Rope of Climbing is now said to be able to support 10,000 gp in weight. Gauntlets of Ogre Power are now given specific powers. They grant 2d4 extra points of damage per blow, and the ability to carry an extra 1,000 gp.

Holmes ends with a note on characters using their henchmen to test magic items, and how it can be a Very Bad Idea. Bad morale, henchmen demanding to keep beneficial items, revenge schemes for henchmen who get bad items… Good stuff. I’m almost certain this advice has appeared in the game before, but I’m mentioning it now just in case I’m wrong.

On Alignment Changes From OD&D to Holmes Basic

2010-09-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

Alignment undergoes a big shift from OD&D into the Holmes Basic Set and AD&D. Originally it was a simple three-way system of Law-Neutrality-Chaos, but by Holmes the concepts of Good and Evil have entered into the mix, creating a system with five alignments (Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Neutral, Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil). I've tracked these changes below:

Chaotic to Lawful Evil
Bandit
Gargoyle
Fire Giant
Goblin
Hell Hound
Hobgoblin
Kobold
Wererat
Werewolf
Manticore
Minotaur
Mummy
Shadow
Spectre
Vampire
Wight
Wraith

Chaotic to Chaotic Evil
Bandit
Bugbear
Chimera
Doppleganger
White Dragon
Black Dragon
Red Dragon
Ghoul
Hill Giant
Harpy
Weretiger
Ogre
Orc
Troll

Chaotic to Neutral Evil
Displacer Beast

Chaotic to Chaotic Good
Wereboar

Neutral to Chaotic Good
Pixie

Lawful to Lawful Good
Blink Dog
Dwarf
Pegasus
Unicorn

Lawful to Chaotic Good
Brass Dragon
Elf
Storm Giant
Gnome
Werebear

Note that the above list is probably not precise, with a few accidental omissions here and there. But it gives a pretty good indicator of how alignment changed between OD&D and Holmes (as well as AD&D, which more or less uses the same system for monsters as Holmes).

The alignments previously known as Law and Chaos seem to have mostly split down the lines of good and evil. There are a lot of once-Chaotic monsters that have become Lawful Evil, and quite a few once-Lawful monsters that are now Chaotic Good.

It makes me wonder about the nature of the grand cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos. Though it seems that on a conceptual level those are the two sides vying for dominance, on a practical level it comes down to a struggle between boring old Good and Evil. The good monsters sided with Law, and the evil monsters with Chaos.

What's evident from this is that alignment models a completely different thing in OD&D than it does in later AD&D versions of the game. The Law-Neutrality-Chaos system of OD&D is what I like to call Universal Alignment. These are the only conceptual forces that matter in the grand scheme of reality. Growth vs. entropy, live vs. death, law vs. chaos, order vs. disorder, however you want it to actually play out. The later system models what I call Personal Alignment, which is much more predicated on the internal nature of the individual.

So why the shift? Something happened to fracture the two sides, something that I'm probably going to connect to the rise of various new churches and deities. When the campaign begins, it will be full of churches to Odin and various real world mythologies from Supplement IV. These are powers that are either fading in potency, or not particularly interested in the dealings of mortals. By the time the AD&D era rolls around I will have introduced churches to St. Cuthbert and Pholtus, as those two were the first two such churches introduced in Gary's campaign. And there will also be Demon Lords and Arch-Devils, and the many other staple D&D gods, all more active on the Prime Material Plane than the 'elder gods'. So new gods rise to power and prominence, and the Law vs. Chaos war gets muddied by different ideologies, which makes Personal Alignment (at least on my Oerth) become more important than Universal Alignment.

As for some of the more anomalous results above:

The Displacer Beast above was said in Holmes to be Neutral with Evil tendencies. There's no actual Neutral Evil alignment in these rules, but I threw it in for completeness.

The wereboar is an interesting anomaly, as the only case where Chaos was not equated to Evil. They're Neutral in AD&D, so that's no help. I guess it's just a weird rules thing, but I like having those strange discrepancies. Why did they fight for Chaos, then become Good? Were they enslaved, and then broke free? Or were they utterly loyal to the tenets of Chaos, despite their goodness?

D&D Basic Set part 17

2010-09-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

Troll: In OD&D Trolls had an AC of 4, but now it has dropped to 6. They were Chaotic in OD&D, but now they are Chaotic Evil. As has become expected, the damage for the Troll’s claw/claw/bite attack routine has been changed, from 1-4/1-4/1-8 to all three attacks doing 1d6.

Unicorns: They were Lawful in OD&D, and now they are Lawful Good. The unicorn’s horn now only deals 1d8 damage instead of 1-16. Their saving throw of 8 against all magic is a simplification of the OD&D rule, in which they had the same saving throw as an 11th level magic-user. They have also lost their ability to sense enemies within 240 ft.

Vampire: Vampires were Chaotic in OD&D, but now they are Lawful Evil. The need for them to sleep in a coffin filled with soil from their native land has been taken out, which is a shame because it’s right out of Dracula.

Wight: Wights were Chaotic in OD&D, but now they are Lawful Evil. There’s also an odd note about them being nearly immaterial, which doesn’t really jibe with later D&D material. I’m going to play this as false information from a sage who got wights and wraiths mixed up.

Wraith: Wraiths were Chaotic, but now they are Lawful Evil.

Yellow Mold: Just as in OD&D.

Zombie: Zombies have received a boost, being twice as fast and having 2 Hit Dice instead of 1. I chalk this up to research, and the standard Animate Dead spell being replaced by a more effective version.

And that's it for the monster section. It's a nice eclectic selection that Holmes has used, even if he's filled it with stuff that 1st to 3rd level PCs are never going to be able to encounter without dying horribly. But now I want to talk about a couple of the differences and discrepancies that keep popping up in the Holmes ruleset.

The first is the damage for monsters with multiple attacks. Most of these have been simplified so that all of the attacks do the same amount of damage. I don't know what Holmes' reasoning here was, unless it was just a way of simplifying things at the table. And I'm not even sure that mathematically speaking it doesn't average out the same. It's certainly not something that Holmes grabbed from the upcoming AD&D Monster Manual. But in terms of my campaign, in which I am trying to rationalise all of these fiddly little rules changes, it's a bit annoying. Luckily I can explain it without too much fuss. I figure that there are always different combat techniques being developed, and for a while here certain attacks may be more or less effective.

I also want to do an analysis of alignment, and how it has changed from the Law-Chaos system to the five alignments of Holmes. I'm separating that out into its own post, so expect that later today.

Basic D&D part 16

2010-08-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Owl Bear: Like many other monsters in Holmes, the Owl Bear’s attack routine has been simplified. Instead of two claw attacks that deal 1d6 damage each and a bite that deals 1d12, it now has three attacks that deal 1d8 damage each. I was all set to castigate Holmes for not providing the rules for an Owl Bear’s bear-hug attack, but it seems he’s just following the lead of OD&D. Supplement I says that the Owl Bear hugs as a Werebear, but lo and behold the Werebear has no hug attack to speak of in the rules. Perhaps Gary was talking about a rule he was using at his own table, without realising that he’d never set it down in the books.

Owl Bear’s get an alignment for the first time here: Neutral.

This is also the first time that the Owl Bear’s physical appearance is specified in writing. Supplement I had an illustration that made it pretty clear, but nothing in the monster entry itself.

Pegasus: They were Lawful in OD&D, and now they are Lawful Good.

Pixie: Their Armour Class has improved significantly, from 6 to 3, and their Treasure Type has changed from C to R + S combined. What this means is that they have less copper and silver coinage, and a much higher chance for gems, jewelry and magic items. In OD&D their alignment was Neutral, but now they can be Neutral or Chaotic Good. They are otherwise the same as in OD&D, with their rules for flying fatigue brought in from Chainmail. There’s some new info provided as well, with Holmes stating that their royalty are powerful magic-users, and that they are friendly with Elves and Fairies.

Purple Worm: Holmes’ irritating tendency to simplify a monster’s attack routine strikes again. The worm’s bite damage has been lessened from 2d12 to 1d12, and its sting has been raised from 1d8 to 1d12. The only other difference from OD&D is that their swallow whole attack is no longer restricted to creatures of ogre-size or less.

Rust Monster: Their alignment is now given as Neutral, and their ability to turn metal to rust is no longer restricted to ferrous metals specifically.

Shadow: Shadows were Chaotic in OD&D, but now they are Lawful Evil.

Skeleton: Skeletons had an Armour Class of 7 in OD&D, but it is now listed as 8. Their alignment is now given as Neutral. Their immunity to sleep, charm and mind-reading spells is also specifically called out in the monster entry.

Spectre: Spectres were Chaotic in OD&D, but now they are Lawful Evil. And look, that reference to the Nazgul is still there!

Stirge: Their alignment is now given as Neutral. Holmes also gives them a +2 to attack rather than saying they attack as 4th level Fighters – a much more elegant way to model the rule. The less charts I need to look up the better.

D&D Basic Set part 15

2010-08-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

Lizard Man: The lizard man seems to have lost its two claw attacks, now having but a single attack at 1d8 damage. If this is a weapon attack as the description implies, then I guess that Lizard Men are adapting to more civilized warfare, rather than using their bites.

Lycanthropes: Holmes has included all five types from OD&D: wereboars, werebears, werewolves, weretigers and wererats. Werebears and weretigers have had their attack routines altered. Whereas before each of them had a few attacks of smaller damage, now each gets one attack with enormous damage. The werebear dishes out more damage than just about everything else in the game. The origin area of some lycanthropes is mentioned, with werewolves being from ‘Europe’, weretigers from ‘India’, and weresharks from ‘Polynesia’. Alas, there are no wereshark stats provided.

Lycanthropes are still only affected by silver or magical weapons, but now it is spelled out that they can be damaged by normal weapons while in human form. It’s also made explicit that they are repelled by wolfsbane. And of course there are the obligatory alignment changes: wereboars changed from Chaotic to Chaotic Good, wererats from Chaotic to Lawful Evil, werebears from Lawful to Chaotic Good, weretigers from Chaotic to Chaotic Evil, and werewolves from Chaotic to Lawful Evil.

Manticore: The manticore’s alignment has changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. Their attack routine has also been simplified, with each claw and bite dealing 1d6 instead of the claws doing 1d3 and the bite doing 1d8.

Medusa: As in OD&D, but with the amusing note that ‘this monster is usually female’.

Minotaur: Their alignment has changed from Chaotic or Neutral to Lawful Evil. Otherwise, they are just like OD&D.

Mummies: The Armor Class of mummies has dropped from 3 to 5. Their alignment has changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. The mummy has also developed a greater resistance to magic weapons; in OD&D it was the weapon's magic bonus that was halved, but in Holmes the entire damage rolled is halved. There's also a whole new rule about characters being paralysed by their first sight of a mummy.

I don't know if I realised this before, but the mummy's rotting touch is utterly hardcore. That it causes you to heal at 1/10th the normal rate is bad enough, but the best you can hope for in the way of aid from clerical magic is that your healing rate will be halved from now on. Once a mummy touches you, that's it buddy – that rotting disease has you forever. Throw in the new rule about mummy paralysis and you've got one very deadly creature.

Contradiction alert: mummies are said to be vulnerable to fire, yet burning oil only does half damage to them. What gives, Holmes?

Nixies: The same as in OD&D, except that the effect of Dispel Magic on their charm spell is not given, probably because that spell is out of the range of PCs using the Basic Set. The bit about flaming swords holding their fish flunkies at bay is also omitted, for reasons less easy to fathom. Also, they now have a movement rate of 60 on land.

Ochre Jelly: The same as OD&D, with the added ability to eat through leather and cloth.

Ogre: Their Armor Class has changed from 5 to 6. Their alignment has changed from Neutral or Chaotic to Chaotic Evil.

Orc: Their Armor Class has changed from 6 to 7. Their alignment has changed from Neutral or Chaotic to Chaotic Evil. There is no longer a roll to see if Orcs in the wilderness lair in caves or a village, and the powerful monsters that live with the Orcs have been drastically scaled back – there's no longer a chance for high-level Fighters or Magic-Users, or Dragons. Orcs no longer have a chance to be guarding wagon trains full of gold, either. I suppose this is because Holmes D&D doesn't really deal with wilderness adventuring, being more focussed on the dungeon. But taken as a whole it looks to me like the orcs are falling on hard times.

D&D Basic Set part 14

2010-08-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

Before I go on, I feel the need to point out that Holmes Basic is the first D&D rule set to have a monster’s stats grouped together with its description. God bless functional design!

Gnome: In OD&D, gnomes could be Lawful or Neutral. Here, they are either Neutral or Chaotic Good. There’s a note at the end that Gnomes favour crossbows, which is something that’s never been brought up before, and doesn’t stick around in the future so far as I recall. I'm going to play it up, though. It does fit well with the 'tinker gnome' theme that crept into the race in the late 80s.

Goblin: In OD&D goblins all carried 1-6 gold pieces each. Now they carry 2-12 electrum pieces, which is the exact same value expressed in different coinage. Their alignment has changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. In Supplement I their standard damage was set at 1-4, but here it’s been upped to 1-6. The only other difference noted is that the Goblin King and his bodyguards don’t suffer the -1 penalty in daylight, but OD&D’s assertion that they fight as hobgoblins may have been intended to cover that.

Gray Ooze: These are exactly the same as in OD&D. The only minor difference is that it isn’t noted that gray oozes can’t dissolve wood or stone. And the psionic powers from Supplement III don’t make it either, but then again psionics aren’t present in Holmes at all.

Green Slime: Just as in OD&D, with an additional note that green slime often drops from the ceiling onto unwary adventurer. A welcome addition!

Griffon: For some reason, their Armor Class has changed from 3 to 5. They also now get a physical description, though a rudimentary knowledge of mythology would have provided that already

Harpy: The harpy’s damage range has changed, as they now do 1-4 with each attack instead of 1-3 per claw and 1-6 with a weapon. Seems reasonable, as the image of weapon-wielding harpies doesn't really sit right. They have also changed from Chaotic to Chaotic Evil. Otherwise, they’re just as in OD&D.

Hell Hound: Their alignment has changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. Holmes has house-ruled the breath weapon, saying that it requires an attack roll on the regular combat chart for monsters. Their supposed great stealth isn’t mentioned, nor is their tendency to hang around with fire giants.

Hippogriff: They now have an alignment of Neutral.

Hobgoblin: Their Armor Class has changed from 5 to 6; I suppose they have downgraded from chainmail to leather and shield? Although their movement rate remains unchanged... Their alignment was previously Chaotic, but now they are Lawful Evil. Otherwise they’re just like in OD&D.

Horse: Just as in OD&D.

Hydra: Just as in OD&D.

Kobold: Individual treasures for kobolds have been lessened from 1-6 gold pieces each to 3-24 copper pieces. Looks like the kobolds of the world have fallen on hard times! Their alignment has changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. It’s weird that kobolds are generally said to be weaker than goblins, but a kobold chieftain (who fights as a gnoll) is stronger than a goblin king (who fights as a hobgoblin). They are also described as dwarf-like, very much unlike the canine appearance they had already been given in earlier products, as well as the upcoming Monster Manual. I'm going to chalk that up to a reference to their size, rather than their appearance. Finally, they get a +3 bonus to saving throws that is unique to Holmes so far as I know. It seems he was really embracing that whole ‘dwarf-like’ thing.

Solo D&D Playtesting

2010-08-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

Most of my D&D time of late has been taken up with designing and playtesting my abstract solo game. (Fear not, Ultimate Sandbox enthusiasts, that project keeps chugging along.) I've played through a few sessions that I want to write up here just to get a feel for how it might fit together.

My unnamed fighter had a very easy time of it on his initial dungeon foray. Early on he found a pile of copper coins in a locked chest, and the very next turn found an even larger pile of copper lying completely unguarded. Laden with copper, he left the dungeon and earned the princely sum of 17 experience points.

(The 'chest' noted above was an 'Obstacle and Treasure' result on the table. I haven't yet made up a chart for obstacles, so for this game I just had my character take a turn bypassing it, with the Wandering Monster check this entailed. Otherwise, he found a fair bit of easy treasure, but with very little reward to show for it. This seems about right so far, and will be even better when the obstacles get more difficult to get through.)

The second foray was a bit more interesting. Coming again to the same locked chest, he found it this time full of silver. Later he came to a stuck door. While battering it down he was attacked by a bandit and made short work of the fellow. Behind the door was a pit trap, but he managed to pass by without triggering it. Past that was a series of unguarded treasures, treasures behind obstacles, and one treasure guarded by a spear trap that was successfuly bypassed. Loaded with coins my fighter decided to leave the dungeon, and had to fight another Bandit and an Orc on the way out. Success, and a grand total of 168 XP.

(With yet another early 'Obstacle and Trap' result, I figure it was probably the very same one with noew treasure added. The stuck door was an Obstacle, with a wandering monster check coming up positive while trying to batter it down. A couple of traps popped up, but going with the 2-in-6 chance for triggering them meant they did not come into play at all; I might tweak this a bit. And yet again there's a lot of easy treasure lying about the place. It's still minor stuff, but I'll probably adjust those numbers down as well. The wandering monster checks as I was leaving the dungeon worked a treat, giving me a pretty desperate battle against that final Bandit.)

The third foray was really quick. I bumped into a Caveman almost instantly, cut off his head in the surprise round, and hauled out a couple thousand silver pieces. There was only 96 xp to be had, but it was a pretty good haul for a single turn.

The fourth foray was really short, and super profitable. After bypassing a few obstacles, I was surprised by a giant rat that took me down to 2 hit points. I killed it on the next round, and found a sparkling haul of 4 pieces of jewelry in its nest. Each of these was worth over 1,000 gold pieces! So after a couple of meagre outings, I finally got the big score and rocketed up to second level, just 1 xp shy of 3rd.

(This was a much bigger haul than I ever expected. I'm currently using the Mentzer treasure tables, and in those the value of all jewelry is 3d6 x 1000 gold pieces. This definitely bears some alteration!)

So the game seems to be working at the moment. The spine of it is solid, I think, and I spent a good fun hour plugging away at it. One rule I completely forgot about was fatigue. In the rules I was following the standard D&D rule in which characters must rest for one turn every hour, but during gameplay I kept forgetting to apply it. So you know what, it's gone. I don't need fiddly rules complicating this thing.

D&D Basic Set part 13

2010-08-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

Dwarves: This entry wisely directs the DM to the Dwarf PC class for special abilities. Otherwise things match with OD&D, but with several things omitted. There’s no chance given now for higher-level Dwarves to own magic items. The tendency of Dwarves to use wolves and bears to guard their strongholds didn’t make it in. The only change is that Dwarven leaders now range from level 2-7 instead of 1-6. Plus the standard alignment change, from Neutral or Lawful to Neutral or Lawful Good.

Oh, and despite being weapon-wielders in a game where all weapons deal 1d6 damage, dwarven damage is listed as 1d8. As I said for the berserker entry, shenanigans. I’ll keep it in, though; a back-to-basics approach at the Adventurers’ Guild isn’t likely to extend to monsters and NPCs, so it makes reasonable sense despite being an obvious discrepancy in the rules as written.

Elves: Again, the section on character creation is cited for elven special abilities. In OD&D they could be Lawful or Neutral. In Holmes Basic, they are usually Chaotic Good or Neutral – there’s that pesky Law-Chaos switcheroo again! There’s an interesting change to the types of elves. In OD&D, there were woodland elves and meadow elves. Now, there are Wood Elves and High Elves. So are Meadow Elves and High Elves the same thing? If so, I heartily approve of the name change. Like Dwarves above, elven leaders are now of generally higher level. Their ability to move silently is now gone, as is the invisibility given to them by their grey-green cloaks. They can’t do split-move and fire any more, either, which I guess indicates that Holmes wasn’t approaching this from a war-gaming perspective. And lastly, they don’t get a +1 damage bonus when wielding magic swords any more. This represents the first and probably the last ever time that elves get slightly nerfed.

Gargoyles: In OD&D, gargoyles were Chaotic, but in Holmes they are Lawful Evil. Their damage entry has been simplified, as they now deal 1d4 with four attacks instead of having different ranges for their horn and bite. The only other difference is that in OD&D they were given a 75% chance to attack anything or anyone, whereas in Holmes there are no mechanics to simulate their natural hostility.

Gelatinous Cube: Just like those in Supplement I, but their spell immunities are less specific.

Ghouls: Ghouls were Chaotic in OD&D, and now they are Chaotic Evil. Their damage range has been simplified, with their bite doing the same 1-3 as their claws, instead of 1-4. They get a description now, as bestial humanoids that live on dead bodies. Their paralysing touch is clarified, as it specifically states that the ghoul needs to land a hit in melee for it to take effect, and that the target gets a saving throw. And in a crushing blow to me, those killed by ghouls no longer rise up as ghouls themselves. For shame, Holmes, for shame.

Giants: Giants are now limited to throwing rocks once every five rounds. Holmes provides a method for determining rock throwing based on the catapult rules from Chainmail. It works, but I can’t help feeling that it should just be simplified to a standard attack roll. All six types of giant are presented here. Hill giants have now gone from Chaotic to Chaotic Evil. Stone giants are slightly shorter than in OD&D, as are frost giants. Plus, frost giant damage is listed simultaneously as 4-24 and 2 dice +1. The latter is from OD&D and the former is from Supplement I; I think I’ll go with the more recent rule, the one from Supplement I. Fire giants and cloud giants have the same discrepancy. Unless this is supposed to be their damage for throwing rocks? Fire giants have changed from Chaotic to Lawful Evil. Cloud giants are two feet shorter. Also, their damage range has a probable typo – it reads 6-63, but in Supplement I their damage range was 6-36, so it looks like an error to me. Storm giants have gone from Lawful to Chaotic Good. Otherwise, same as before.

Giant Ticks: Ticks previously had an 80% chance of carrying disease, but now they all do. At least the disease doesn’t drive you insane any more…

D&D Basic Set part 12

2010-08-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

Chimera: In OD&D they could have an alignment of Neutral or Chaotic, but in Holmes Basic they are now Chaotic Evil. There’s also a small change to their damage dice. In Supplement I, the goat head is said to inflict 1-4 points of damage with a horn. Here it inflicts 2-8, which makes me wonder if in Supplement I you were supposed to roll the 1d4 damage for each horn. It’s clarified that the dragon head will breathe fire 50% of the time in any combat round, and that it is limited to 3 times per day. The damage dice is also upped from 3d6 to 3d8.

Cockatrice: Cockatrices were given no alignment in OD&D, but here they are listed as Neutral. They also get a physical description for the first time, as a chicken with a serpent’s tail.

Later supplements gave the cockatrice abilities relating to the Astral and Ethereal Plane, but they aren’t printed here, probably because it’s not a factor for the low levels that the Basic Set deals with.

Displacer Beast: Displacer beasts were listed as Chaotic in Supplement I, but in Holmes Basic they are said to be Neutral with Evil tendencies. Some other details are also dropped, such as their enmity with Blink Dogs (although it did get mentioned in the Blink Dog entry). The biggest change comes with saving throws. In Supplement I they saved as 12th level Fighters, which gave them some very good defences. In Holmes they are simply said to have a +2 to saving throws, further research of which has led me to discover that there’s no mechanism in this rule set to figure out saving throws for the toughest monsters. Unless I’m missing something...?

Djinni: It is clarified that djinni-created steel lasts for but 1 turn, and that their illusions can include sound. Their carrying ability is also different, with bigger loads tiring them more quickly. It’s clarified that creatures under 2 hit dice are killed outright if caught in their whirlwind form, and that stronger creatures still take 2-12 damage. They also now have an alignment of Neutral.

Doppleganger: Their alignment was listed as Neutral or Chaotic in Supplement I, and here they are either Chaotic Evil or Neutral; that seems much the same to me. Their ability to change shape is now limited to humanoids up to 7 feet tall.

Dragons: Only four types of dragon are given in Holmes: White, Black, Red and Brass. I suppose Holmes wanted to include the classic fire-breathing variety, then rounded things out by including the three weakest types. All dragons now deal 4-24 damage with a bite, instead of the variation by type presented in Supplement I. The alignment of Dragons from OD&D was either Neutral or Chaotic. White and Black dragons can still be Neutral or Chaotic Evil, while all Red Dragons are now Chaotic Evil. Brass Dragons in Supplement I were Lawful or Neutral, but here they can be Neutral or Chaotic Good – and if that switch from Law to Chaos isn’t an indicator that alignment is now serving a completely different function, then I don’t know what is. Their chance to use their breath weapon in any given round has slightly decreased. Cone breath weapons now have a smaller diameter at the dragon’s mouth. Dragon’s now have a larger chance to be small or large, and for the first time small dragons are specifically female, and large ones are specifically male. And there are now two extra age categories as well – young adult and ancient – which has also resulted in the age ranges for some categories increasing. It’s interesting to note that now only sleeping dragons can be subdued; in OD&D, characters could elect to subdue a dragon at any time. The method used for determining subdual is also much simpler, but also makes it harder for the PCs to accomplish; I can get behind both of these things. A maximum duration of one month is also now given for subdual, which wasn’t present before.

There’s a ton of information from OD&D that didn’t make it into Holmes Basic. There are no numbers given for the chance to find a dragon asleep, even though it’s mentioned in the rules for subduing. Likewise, there is no chance given for dragons to be able to speak. No info is given on the preferred habitats of each dragon. None of the resistances to various energy attacks are here. There’s also nothing about encountering dragon families. In short, there's a whole lot of simplifying going on.

Solo D&D Play

2010-08-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

I have a habit of flitting about from project to project. One week I'm obsessed with writing a novel, the next I'm programming a text adventure, and the week after that I'm trying to write a mega-gamebook that provides linking material between all of the Fighting Fantasy series. This week, I've started developing rules for D&D solo play that abstract dungeon exploration. So just for the heck of it, I'm going to post some of that work up here. I've been using Mentzer Basic as my guide for the rules here, with some AD&D thrown in for good measure. And it's definitely incomplete. I haven't included any of the random tables, which are the heart of the game, really. But the basic framework is provided below.

And no, my tables and charts didn't format properly.

D&D SOLO PLAY RULES

The Regular Game Turn:

For every turn in which you are exploring the dungeon, you must follow the procedure below.

Step 1: Wandering Monsters: At the beginning of every second turn, you must roll to see if you have encountered any wandering monsters. Roll 1d6. On a result of 1, you have encountered a wandering monster. Use the Random Monster tables in Appendix A to determine what type of monster you have encountered, then use the Encounter rules to resolve it. This will take up the entire turn. Remember that wandering monsters usually have no treasure. If you do not encounter a wandering monster, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Encounter Check: Roll on the following table to see what you have discovered in the dungeon this turn:

Encounter Check Table

Roll: Result:
1-4 No encounter
5-6 Monster
7-8 Monster and Treasure
9-10 Trap
11-12 Trap and Treasure
13-14 Treasure
15-16 Obstacle
17-18 Obstacle and Treasure
19 Stairs
20 Special

No encounter: You have found nothing of significant interest in the dungeon this turn.

Monster: You have encountered a monster. Use the Random Monster tables in Appendix A to determine what type of monster it is, then resolve the encounter using the Encounter rules. There is a chance that the monster will have some treasure, as noted under each individual monster entry.

Monster and Treasure: Determine the monster type as noted above. The monster is also guarding a treasure of some sort, determined by using the Random Treasure tables in Appendix D. Note that this is in addition to any personal treasure the monster may have as noted in their monster entry.

Trap: Roll on the Random Trap tables in Appendix B to see what kind of trap you have encountered.

Trap and Treasure: You have found some treasure, as determined on the Random Treasure table in Appendix D, but it is guarded by a trap. Check the Random Trap tables in Appendix B to see what sort of trap it is. You may ignore this and proceed to the next turn if you wish, or you may choose to try and take the treasure, in which case you must bypass or trigger the trap, as detailed later in the Trap section.

Treasure: You have found some unguarded treasure that you may take with ease. Roll on the Random Treasure table in Appendix D to see what it is.

Obstacle: Something is blocking your path. Roll on the Random Obstacle tables in Appendix C to see what it is and how to resolve it. You must get past the obstacle to proceed. Otherwise you may choose to take another path through the dungeon, in which case see the rules for Backtracking.

Obstacle and Treasure: The obstacle is not blocking your path, but is instead stopping you from claiming some treasure. Roll on the Random Obstacle tables in Appendix C and the Random Treasure tables in Appendix D to determine what is here. If you want to claim the treasure, you must get past the obstacle. Otherwise, you may choose to continue exploring and proceed to the next turn.

Stairs: You have found some stairs leading up or down to a different dungeon level. Roll on the Random Stairs table in Appendix E to see what type they are. You may choose to ignore the stairs and keep exploring the same level you are on, or you may take the stairs to the new level.

Special: You have found a special sort of room not covered by any of the previous categories. Roll on the Random Special table in Appendix F to see what you have discovered.

Time-Keeping:

It is important to keep an accurate record of your game turns as they progress. This will become necessary when you want to leave the dungeons, and will also be needed for various other situations, as well as helping track durations for spells and light sources. Your record should look something like this:

Turn Event
1 No encounter
2 Wandering monster: 1 orc
3 Found treasure: 100gp
4 Took stairs to Level 2
5 Pit trap: killed

Mapping:

You are assumed to be moving carefully and making an accurate map of the dungeon. Doing so prevents you from becoming lost. You may choose not to map, in which case your exploration will be quicker. If you do so, you need only check for wandering monsters half as often as normal. However, you have a 1-in-10 chance of becoming lost every turn. Dwarves are better at navigating the underground passages of the dungeon, and so they only have a 1-in-12 chance of becoming lost. See below for the consequences of being lost.

Becoming Lost:

There are a number of ways you may become lost, with teleportation and not mapping being the two most common. If you become lost, you will be unable to leave the dungeon until you find a familiar area again. Characters have a 1-in-10 chance per turn of finding a familiar area, except for Dwarves, who have a 1-in-8 chance. If you have become lost by somehow being transported to a new dungeon level, you will only be able to find familiar territory once you return to a dungeon level you had previously explored.

Leaving the Dungeon:

You may decide to leave the dungeon at the start of any turn. To do so, total up the number of turns you have played, and then divide them by two. This is the number of times you must check for Wandering Monsters before you reach the dungeon exit. Note that you may not leave the dungeon if you have become lost.

Backtracking:

If you come to an obstacle that you cannot pass, you may backtrack along your path until you find a new area to explore. On each turn you roll for Wandering Monsters as normal, but do not make the usual Encounter Check. Instead, you have a 2-in-6 chance of finding a new area to explore. Only then can you start making Encoutner Checks again.

Light:

Your character must have a light source to see in the dungeon, unless you are a Dwarf or an Elf. Some common light sources are listed below, along with the number of turns they last for.

Light: Duration:
Candle 3 turns
Torch 6 turns
Lantern 24 turns

Note that your character will need a tinderbox to light a torch or a candle, and flasks of oil to light a lantern. If you run out of light sources in the dungeon, you will be effectively blind. See below for the consequences of blindness.

Fatigue and Resting:

Your character must stop and rest every 6th turn, due to fatigue. During this turn you do not check for Encounters, but you must still roll to see if you have encountered a Wandering Monster. You may choose to go without rest, but you will suffer a -1 penalty to attack and damage. This penalty is cumulative, so if you ignore this rest period twice, you will have a -2 penalty. The penalty disappears as soon as you rest for a turn.

Encumbrance:

Your character’s movement may be slowed if he carries too much equipment and treasure. Normally your character is unencumbered, but if you become encumbered you must roll twice as many times for Wandering Monsters as normal. See the Equipment section for more rules on encumbrance.

Blindness:

Your character cannot see. You suffer a -4 penalty to saving throws, attack rolls, and armour class, and you have double the normal chance to be surprised by monsters. You are automatically lost, and do not have a chance to find a familiar area until the blindness wears off. Otherwise, your only real chance of survival is to find another light source, or to stumble across stairs heading to the surface.

D&D Basic Set part 11

2010-08-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

MONSTERS: The monster section opens with some broad advice on using monsters in the campaign. It goes through how the monster entries are laid out, how the DM should stock his dungeon, provides some advice on using powerful monsters against weak PCs, and even gives some guidelines on handing out treasure and experience. I do wonder about Holmes’ estimate that it will take from 6-12 adventures for a character to get from 1st to 2nd level – in my experience, beginning characters are usually up a level after 1 or 2 sessions. That’s with Mentzer Basic and AD&D 2e, though, so the Holmes rules could net different results. And you have to love the bit here about 10-20% of adventures being profitless.

BANDIT: In OD&D, if over 100 bandits were encountered, there would be an 8th or 9th level fighter present. That’s not the case in Holmes Basic, but otherwise the presence of high-level leaders is the same. They now carry 3-18 silver pieces instead of 2-20. In OD&D they had a 50/50 chance of being Neutral or Chaotic in Alignment. Now they can be Lawful Evil (25%), Chaotic Evil (25%) or Neutral.

BASILISK: The basilisk is now described as a small reptilian monster. It’s clarified that victims of the basilisk get a saving throw to avoid being turned to stone. Characters can also now safely view the creature’s reflection without turning to stone.

Later OD&D supplements gave the basilisk abilities relating to the astral and ethereal planes, but given the low levels of characters in Holmes Basic they don’t need to be printed here.

Basilisks were listed as Chaotic in Chainmail, and not given an alignment in OD&D. Here they’re said to be Neutral, probably because of their non-intelligence. I'll chalk the Chainmail alignment up to the Chaotic side capturing basilisks to use in warfare.

BERSERKER: Much the same as in OD&D. Their +2 to attack against ‘normal men’ has been clarified here to include kobolds, goblins, and orcs, the obvious intent being that the ability affects humanoids of 1 hit dice or less. I also call shenanigans on their damage range of 1-8. Remember that in Holmes all weapons deal 1d6 damage, and all types of men deal damage by weapon, so what’s going on here? I guess I can attribute it to their berserking.

BLACK PUDDING: The same as in OD&D, but there’s no mention of the Gray Pudding. It’s clarified that they can be killed by a flaming sword. Plus, it actually gets a physical description for the first time, as a black amorphous blob that can grow as big as 30 feet in diameter.

BLINK DOG: The same is in Supplement I, but the random determination of when they teleport has been taken out. Their alignment has been changed from Lawful to Lawful Good.

BUGBEAR: The same as in Supplement I, but their alignment has been changed from Chaotic to Chaotic Evil.

CARRION CRAWLER: Just as in Supplement I, but they are now given an alignment of Neutral.

D&D Basic Set part 10

2010-08-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

MAGIC WEAPONS: The brief treatment of magic weapons given here in the combat section matches fairly well with the OD&D rules. We'll see if that's still the case when Holmes gets into more depth in the magical items section.

As for magical armour, Holmes is going for the simpler system introduced in Supplement I. In OD&D, the shield's magical bonus only comes into play one-third of the time. In Supplement I, this is changed so that the bonuses always work together. Holmes has gone with the latter, and in the interests of simplicity I'm happy.

COMBAT ROUNDS, TIME AND MOVEMENT IN MELEE: The big change here is that a combat round is now 10 seconds instead of 1 minute. I'm not sure why Holmes bothered, to be honest, but it does head off the inevitable questions about why characters only get one attack per minute from those who can't wrap their heads around the abstraction. The biggest change this makes is that now characters and monsters can't move as far per round as they could before. Otherwise it has very little effect mechanically, unless you want to take spell durations and the like into account.

The next few sentences are the one bit where Holmes loses me completely. Dagger-wielders here are given the ability to attack twice per round, while those wielding heavy weapons like two-handed swords can only attack every other round. And yet, every weapon deals 1d6 damage. There's a wonky rule if ever I've seen one, and it's been duly noted by every other blogger that's ever analysed Holmes. It's probably an attempt to duplicate a similar rule from the Man-to-Man combat rules in Chainmail, but those rules factored in weapon type vs. armour. This one doesn't, and so it's majorly flawed. I'd be inclined to house-rule it, but given the strictures of my campaign I have to include this ridiculous design.

So here's what I'm thinking. As I've mentioned earlier, the transition in my campaign from OD&D with supplements to Holmes Basic is being handled by a change of leadership within the Adventurers' Guild, and the back-to-basics ethos that came with it. But looking at the above rule, there's a certain type of character class that benefits here. One that primarily uses small weapons in melee. That is, of course, the Thief. So I'm thinking that maybe the new guild leadership is under the thumb of the Thieves' Guild, who are changing the regular training to benefit themselves. About the time the players hit 3rd level this manipulation could be exposed, and that's when the leadership gets overthrown and the AD&D rules start to filter in.

WHO GETS THE FIRST BLOW?: Basically, in Holmes D&D the guy with the highest Dexterity goes first in melee. Again, it's a big advantage to Thieves, isn't it? The system from Chainmail that factored in weapon lengths and speeds was much better than this rule, which I guess was extrapolated from a line in OD&D about Dexterity influencing initiative. There's also a problem in that you need a Dexterity score for everybody for this rule to work, but there are none provided in the monster descriptions. It's easy enough to roll on the spot, or just to assume that most monsters have a Dexterity of 10, but it's still an oversight.

THE PARRY: There were rules for parrying in Chainmail, but Holmes hasn't gone with those. His rules are simpler, just granting the defender a bonus to AC in exchange for forgoing his next attack. And if the attacker rolls exactly the number needed to hit, he breaks the defender's weapon.

MELEE RESOLUTION - CONQUER, WITHDRAW, SURRENDER OR DIE!: That's the best sub-heading in the book, without a doubt. But the section doesn't live up to the hype, simply providing some cursory rules for retreat and surrender.

COMBAT EXAMPLE: The first combat example details a simple exchange of blows between a big goblin and "Bruno the Battler". All it shows is how to do regular attack rolls and damage, but it does provide me with an NPC to have hanging around the Adventurers' Guild. Bruno is presumably a fighter, and we learn that he has a Dexterity of 13, wields a sword, and wears chain mail and a shield. He also has 6 hit points, which probably makes him first level.

SECOND COMBAT EXAMPLE: The second example has a whole adventuring party having a random encounter with six giant spiders. The adventuring party is made up of the aforementioned Bruno, Malchor the Magic-User (who has previously appeared in the book), Mogo the Mighty (presumably another Fighter), and Clarissa the Cleric, among unnamed others. The adventurers take out the spiders, but poor old Bruno is killed by a poisonous bite. Alas, I must scratch him from my list of active NPCs. His surviving comrades will talk about him should they meet the PCs, though.

As for them, we learn the following. Malchor can cast the Sleep spell. It looks like Bruno and Mogo were both armed with bows. Mogo has a Dexterity of 9, wields a sword, wears chainmail, and has but 3 hit points. Clarissa has a Dexterity of 6 and wields a mace.

It's interesting to note that in this example Holmes does suggest rolling Dexterity for monsters on the spot, so at least that little discrepancy is dealt with. But I'm still wondering, why did Mogo and the spider have two attacks each after Bruno's death? Or was it simply a short way to describe the passage of two rounds?

The comments at the end state that readied spells go off first, followed by missile fire, then melee. And that's as much as we get on initiative, folks.

D&D Basic Set part 9

2010-08-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

Melee Combat: Combat in Holmes is much the same as all forms of old-school D&D; roll 1d20, look on a chart to see what Armor Class you hit, and roll damage if you landed a blow. All melee damage for weapons is rolled using 1d6, which is a throwback to OD&D. The variable damage by weapon type that was introduced in Supplement I is mentioned briefly as an option in advanced play. Monsters still get their variable damage, though. Sometimes it’s good to be the DM.

The charts used for combat are described by Holmes as ‘extremely complicated’, which is pretty laughable if you’ve ever taken a look at stuff like Rolemaster. The chart is otherwise the same for PCs here as it was in OD&D. The biggest change is for Normal Men. In OD&D they fought as 1st level fighters, but now they are slightly worse than that. The chart for monsters attacking is also much the same as in OD&D, except that the hit dice categories are very slightly tweaked.

Armor class is briefly discussed and expanded upon. Although each number from 9 to 2 is assigned a specific armor type, in general this only applies to humans and humanoids. The various non-human creatures are assigned a number based on the toughness of their hide, their size, and their speed, with armor type not really being a factor. Mechanically it doesn’t mean anything, but it’s the first time AC gets talked about in this way.

Poisoned Weapons: I’m not entirely certain what the rules here mean. Anyone hit by a poison attack must ‘make his saving throw against poison or paralysis and also take the number of damage points indicated by the die roll’. So what happens to a character who fails his save? I assume a failed save vs. poison means death, and the rule about taking damage just refers to the monster’s standard attack damage.

Fire: We gets some new rules for setting oil on fire, as well as the use of flaming oil as a weapon. The siege rules for Chainmail had previously discussed burning enemies with oil, and they were also updated for Swords & Spells. In OD&D, burning oil is briefly mentioned as a way to deter pursuers. But here it’s full-on Molotov cocktail time, with the oil dealing a massive 1d8 on the first round and 2d8 on the second. When you consider that every weapon deals only 1d6, that’s huge. Attacking with oil ignores Armor Class as well, using only Dexterity and size to determine how difficult the target is to hit. Honestly, flaming oil is easily the deadliest option available to characters in the Holmes rulebook.

Wraiths and spectres are immune to burning oil, as are all fire-wielding monsters. Wights and mummies take half damage, and I have to say that the last one surprises me. I’ve played a bunch of D&D inspired games in which mummies are extra-susceptible to fire, so it’s kind of weird to see the opposite in effect here.

Holy Water: This item could be purchased in OD&D, but there were no mechanical benefits described in those rules. Presumably it was up to the referee to house rule it based on general vampire lore. Here holy water is given the same effect on undead that burning oil has on other creatures.

Missile Fire: Ranges are given for the various missile weapons that mostly match up with those in Chainmail. The range of the javelin has been extended from 60 feet to 80 feet, and slings have been given a range whereas previously they had not been dealt with. The same bonuses and penalties still apply to firing at short and long ranges. The ranges are converted to yards when outdoors, as weapons may be fired further (this is straight out of Chainmail). Long range fire (as well as slings) is also pretty much unusable in dungeons, unless the roof is high enough.

Cover: Characters behind cover are harder to hit with missile fire. The rules also expressly forbid characters firing into melee. Way to dodge the question, Holmes!

D&D Basic Set part 8

2010-07-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

CLERICAL SPELLS: The brief run-down of how clerical magic works goes through the basics, such as the fact that OD&D clerics don’t cast spells at first level. It is said that they don’t have to study spells to master them, which just means that they don’t use the Chance to Know Spell table that magic-users do. No, clerics are lucky sods in that they have access to every single spell on their spell list. This was fine when clerics were mostly defensive, and had a small list of spells. But once the spell list expands, and clerics get a host of offensive options, it gets problematic. Thankfully, that time is well out of the purview of Holmes’s Basic Set.

1st LEVEL SPELLS:

The list of 1st level cleric spells is the same as that from OD&D, with the addition of two new spells: remove fear and resist cold.

Cure Light Wounds: This spell is identical to the OD&D version, with a couple of minor changes. OD&D is often vague about the distinction between rounds and turns, and there it says that the spell cures the target over the course of one turn. The Basic Set clarifies this as meaning one melee round. It also specifically says that hobbits can benefit from the spell (in OD&D they were alluded to with a dismissive etcetera), and mentions that the caster has to touch the target for the spell to take effect.

Detect Evil: Just like the OD&D version.

Detect Magic: Also the same as the OD&D version.

Remove Fear: This spell does what it says on the tin: it lessens fear in the target touched by the cleric. Against magical fear it grants another saving throw (with a bonus), but it doesn’t mention anything about non-magical fear, such as in an NPC who has failed a morale check. I’d be inclined to have it automatically dispel any non-magical kind of fear.

Resist Cold: This spell protects against regular cold, grants a save bonus against cold attacks, and lessens any damage taken from said cold attacks. It’s of a lower level than its counterpart resist fire, probably because the latter is a much more common form of attack.

Light: This is the same as the version cast by magic-users. See previous blog posts for the differences from OD&D.

Protection From Evil: Again, it's the same as the version of the spell cast by magic-users, with all the differences detailed there.

Purify Food and Water: This is just like the OD&D version, but now it has a range of 10 feet.

2nd LEVEL SPELLS:

This spell list is the same as that in Supplement I, with the addition of two spells: Know Alignment and Resist Fire.

Bless: Just like the version in OD&D.

Find Traps: Just like the spell in OD&D.

Hold Person: The major difference here is that the spell’s effect gets a proper explanation. In OD&D it is described as being similar to charm person, with nothing further said. Here it is clarified as the paralyzation spell that we all know and love. Also, in OD&D clerics cast this spell with a greater range and duration than magic-users. In the Basic Set, the cleric does not get these extra bonuses.

Know Alignment: This spell tells the caster the exact alignment of the target, even going so far as to indicate exactly how evil, good, chaotic or lawful he or she is. It’s a handy spell for players, that’s for certain, but a problematic one for DMs. I’m not entirely opposed to the existence of it, but I do think it should be higher level than it is.

Resist Fire: This spell grants a save bonus and damage reduction against fire. It doesn’t work against prolonged exposure though; if you’re stuck in a fire for longer than two rounds, the spell won’t protect you any more.

Silence: 15’ Radius: Just like the spell in Supplement I.

Snake Charm: The only difference from the spell as presented in Supplement I is that the duration is clarified, as hostile snakes are charmed for a shorter time than docile ones.

Speak With Animals: Just like the spell from OD&D.

EVIL CLERICS: They're no longer called Anti-Clerics, unfortunately. Their reversed spells now get actual names; cure light wounds becomes cause light wounds, detect evil becomes detect good, light becomes darkness, purify food and water becomes contaminate food and water, remove fear becomes cause fear and bless becomes curse.

D&D Basic Set part 7

2010-07-26T01:14:00.000-07:00

2nd LEVEL MAGIC-USER SPELLS

The spell list given here is the same as from Supplement I, with two new spells added: Audible Glamer and Ray of Enfeeblement.

Audible Glamer: Simply put this spell allows the caster to create illusory sounds, equal to 2-8 people conversing normally. A greater volume of sound can be created by higher level casters. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that this hadn't already been created for the Illusionist class.

Continual Light: This spell has been hugely depowered. Whereas in OD&D it cast light in a 240 foot diameter, now it does so in a measly 60 foot diameter.

Darkness: This spell was formerly known as Darkness 5' Radius. That 5' Radius mentioned is important. Holmes has interpreted that as a typo, taking it to mean 5" Radius – which in OD&D terms means 50 feet. A strict by-the-book reading of the original spell would have had it affecting an area about 10 feet in diameter, while this version affects a 100-foot diameter. Certainly the Holmes version is much more useful.

Detect Evil: Just like the spell in OD&D.

Detect Invisible: Just like the spell in OD&D.

ESP: Whereas before the spell was said to be used for detecting the thoughts of creatures lurking behind doors or in darkness, it is now clarified that the spell can affect any creature within range. Also, we now learn that the undead do not think, and are thus immune to the spell. What, even vampires and liches?

Invisibility: This spell is the same as in OD&D, but it does not refer back to Chainmail. Characters being unable to remain invisible while attacking is also made much clearer.

Knock: Just like the spell in OD&D.

Levitate: The spell description here leaves out the speed at which the target can move, which is strange. Holmes is usually very good at including all of the details. He’s added a range to the spell that shows how far away the caster can be to cast it upon others (as opposed to the range that determines how far away from the original point the target can move.)

Locate Object: A duration of 2 turns is provided for this spell.

Magic Mouth: Just like the spell in Supplement I (except that example character Flubbit the Wizard has been removed).

Mirror Image: Just like the spell in Supplement I.

Phantasmal Forces: Just like the spell in OD&D, except that it specifies that the illusion only has a visual component; it does not have sound or smell. The caster’s going to have to be mighty clever to create a convincing silent monster.

Pyrotechnics: Just like the spell in Supplement I.

Ray of Enfeeblement: This spell creates a ray that drains the target of 4 points of strength. This loss of strength also causes the target’s damage output to drop by 25%.

Strength: In Supplement I, this spell gave a Cleric 1d6 points of strength, and a Thief 1d4 points. In the Basic Set this has been reversed, with Clerics getting 1d4 and Thieves getting 1d6. It’s a strange reversal, and I wonder myself if it was a typo. But I like anything that boosts Thieves, so I’m in favour.

Web: The range of this spell has been cut from 30 feet to 10 feet. Otherwise it’s the same, with the addition of a line stating how long it takes a normal man to break through the web. And it’s also really helpful that the spell no longer refers you back to the Staff of Wizardry entry to learn how it works.

Wizard Lock: Just like the spell in OD&D, except that it now has a specific range.

3rd LEVEL MAGIC-USER SPELLS

The list of 3rd level spells is given, and is identical to the one from Supplement I. But no spell descriptions are given; Holmes has provided the list as an example of what the more powerful spells are, leaving the details either to the DM, or to other D&D products.

Lone Wolf

2010-07-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have blogged before about how the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks had a massive influence on me as a gamer. Of nearly equal importance is the Lone Wolf gamebook series by Joe Dever.

The major difference between Lone Wolf and Fighting Fantasy is the former's emphasis on the continuing story. Where every FF book was stand-alone, in Lone Wolf you carry your character forward through the books, keeping your stats and abilities, and any equipment you've gathered along the way. You can play each book as a stand-alone as well, but in general you'll be better off if you've completed the previous installments.

The story is fairly basic yet compelling. Lone Wolf is a low-ranked member of the Kai Lords, a group of warrior monks with mad skills and psychic abilities. They've all gathered together for the annual Feast of Fehmarn, and that's when the evil Darklords of Helgedad make their attack and wipe out the Kai. With the Kai out of they way, the Darklords are all set to conquer the world. Except - Lone Wolf survived. As the last of the Kai, he has to reach the King and then find a way to defeat the evil armies. From there it branches out into tracking down a war criminal, investigating a missing gold shipment, a diplomatic mission, and a bunch of other stuff that gets more and more epic as time goes on.

Besides the gameplay, which is about as good as gamebooks get, Joe Dever's Magnamund is an excellent example of a fantasy world created using very few of the standard elements. You won't find orcs or elves in Magnamund (though you will find shotgun-wielding dwarves in flying ships). It's a great setting that comes more and more alive with each book.

The best part? The majority of the series is available for free right here. Joe Dever has very graciously made the books free for download on the internet, and there's even a lovely interface so you can play them while on-line. If you've ever enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventure style books, or any other gamebooks, you should give it a go. They're pretty awesome.