2019-04-06

Stats Saturday: AD&D Wandering Monster Rankings

Commentator G. B. Veras has generously shared with us this delightful piece of work; a complete analysis of the relative chances of encountering any AD&D monster in the dungeon, based on the encounter tables in the 1E DMG. Stunning! It's best if you download the spreadsheet locally and poke around at the chart (which in Libre Office lets me select certain bars and easily see which of the 165 monsters they represent). Thanks to G.B. for making this available!


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9 comments:

  1. Scott AndersonApril 6, 2019 at 5:14 AM

    Just as an aside, the tables go down 16 levels. 16 levels! I don’t think I’ve ever had players go any more than four floors underground by choice (some linear modules put the Macguffin arbitrarily far away.)

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    1. DeltaApril 8, 2019 at 9:22 AM

      Right, from what I hear, Castle Greyhawk had exactly 16 levels, I think? Sometimes I wonder if megadungeons really make sense anymore.

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    2. Gerald GroyApril 25, 2019 at 10:15 PM

      Megadungeons exist mainly for bloggers to write about.

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    3. Scott AndersonApril 25, 2019 at 11:58 PM

      LOL awesome

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    4. DeltaMay 19, 2019 at 4:39 PM

      Yeah, that's a hot burn.

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  2. G. B. VerasApril 6, 2019 at 3:22 PM

    Nice! Thanks, Delta! My insight: In the starting levels giant rats are the staple food, then subterranean lizards at mid levels then purple worms deep underground. I would say that zombies and skeletons are beings stumbled in dungeon and died there because they are only prevalent in the starting areas. Also, Characters are the most abundant wandering monster. All other humanoids doesn't venture too far underground. Finally, the abundance of yellow mold surprised me.

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    1. DeltaApril 8, 2019 at 9:21 AM

      Those are some cool conclusions, thanks for those!

      (P.S., I think both of the last two published adventures I ran had a "this looks like yellow mold but isn't" gags.)

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  3. Jeremy "frothsof" SmithApril 10, 2019 at 2:36 PM

    Great stuff. Very interesting. I linked others over here to read this. Thank you.

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