Other Monster Languages

Let's say that you're determining languages known for a pregenerated PC, an NPC, or a magic sword. The table on AD&D DMG p. 102 is a good resource; it includes most of the well-known monster types for the game, with preference given for the most common types (e.g., 5% each for elves, dwarves, and orcs; combined 8% for giants and 10% for dragons; 4% for ogres, 3% for lizard men, etc.). One limitation: the largest category of all, the 86-100 roll, is devoted to "Human foreign or other (Select a foreign tongue, choose an unlisted creature language...)". What to do in that case?

Here's a supplemental tables of 100 other monster types that you can roll on in that case. These include only creatures from the Monster Manual; and Intelligence must be "Low" (as for ogres, trolls, hill giants) or better. I've deleted unique types, most undead, and some other subjective choices. I've left in a few types of exotic Men, assuming that they have their own dialects. (Here's an ODS spreadsheet if you want a closer look or to edit your own selections.)

Monte-Carlo Measures of Monster Levels, Pt. 7

Finally, some squirmy-wormy creatures at the end of our list who may have evidence of being possibly broken in our Arena monster combat simulator:

Monsters vs. Spells: The Arena OD&D simulator is purely a 1-on-1 man-vs-monster combat (as of this writing); monster of high Hit Dice value need to be cut down one d8+1 sword blow at a time. Of course, an associate wizard with proper spell selection could radically simplify the process, but this depends on the monster involved. For low-level mobs, then area-effect spells could clear the room, as with sleep, fireball, or cloudkill. But for single high-powered monsters, then a targeted save-or-submit spell like charm or hold monster or disintegrate could end the fight immediately. While I'm happy to use the fighting EHD as a baseline for lesser monsters, at the upper end things get a lot more hazy about whether spell options should really be the major consideration.

Hydras: Hydras with 6-8 heads are listed in OD&D monster table Level 5; and Hydras with 9-12 heads are on the Level 6 table. As usual, in each case I picked one representative type for my Arena input. The 6-headed Hydra is reasonably given EHD 11, about double the HD 6. But the 10-headed Hydra came out at EHD 44, unprecedentedly more than 4 times the HD of 10, and at least twice the EHD of the next-lower monster on the list.

So: Hydras are dangerous, really dangerous. The fact that it can make so many attacks, possibly up to 10 dice of damage per turn, and those attacks are at a high hit-level of 10 HD or more (even after losing some heads), really makes it a whirlwind of death to a lone fighter. A high-level fighter with higher abilities, with magic plate, shield, and sword of multiple bonuses, will have a much better time against it (both in avoiding more of the bite attacks, and getting average damage above 6 points means you can probably reduce the head count by at least one each round). The AD&D Monster Manual made a major rule adjustment: no more than 4 heads can attack any one creature; but that limitation does not appear in OD&D. Perhaps that restriction is both reasonably balanced and also intuitively realistic (in that some limitation should prevent innumerable heads from all getting tangled up in one space, just like any other monster is limited in number of attacking bodies they can throw against a PC).

If we think about including spell-casters in our game, then subjectively this could be altered further downward, but the exact level depends keenly on adjudications regarding Hydras, not explicated in the rules text for any edition. For example: I've seen many D&D games get quagmired when the DM drags out a Hydra, a PC hits it with a spell, and then no one has any idea how rule on it. For example: Say a fireball is rolled for 20 points of damage; does this apply one time to the whole Hydra (killing at most 3 heads), or area-effecting all the heads separately (killing them all)? Assume that a charm monster spell is cast at a Hydra: Does it affect a single head (causing it to attack other heads), or does the entire Hydra become subdued with a single saving throw? What about disintegration? Would a cloudkill or death spell consider each head as separate 1-HD creature (if "yes", then the hydra is defeated; if "no", then the hydra is immune).

Now, personally I would rule that in the spirit of the thing, heads are never treated as separate creatures for the purpose of spell effects, and I hope that most of us would agree (so: average fireball gets maybe 3 heads; sleep, cloudkill, and death spell have no effect; but charm, hold, and disintegrate stop the whole monster). On the other hand, I have seen some DM's go the other way with that; and more worrisome, it's a little unpredictable because it seems that many of us haven't thought it through in advance. The exact risk level, and hence XP value, of Hydras depends a lot on this off-book decision-making. But clearly they are dangerous top-of-the-food-chain monsters.

Purple Worms: I set my simulator to do a binary search of fighters between levels 0 and 50 to find the best match for any given monster (with 10,000 fights between random monsters and fighters at each level). Initially it had a maximum level of 20, but I found a number of monsters bumping up against that ceiling. We can find one monster that will bump up against any ceiling we specify, that is, it has undefinable (effectively infinite) EHD in this model; the Purple Worm (HD 15).

The save-or-die poison tail sting is bad enough, but as Vol-2 rightly asserts, "its mouth is the more fearsome weapon". With a roll of more than 4 points over the to-hit number, the purple worm swallows its prey into its gullet, where it dies automatically 6 rounds later (and is irrecoverably disintegrated 6 rounds after that). Note that for our baseline fighter in chain & shield, AC 4, the worm effectively always hits (20 − 15 − 4 = 1 to hit!), and thus swallows on any roll of 6 or more -- 75% chance on any attack to instantly take the fighter out of the fight, of any level (for a total probability of 99.99% to win such a fight). Or let's compare to the case of a fighter fully equipped with magic +5 plate, +5 shield, and +5 sword (assume average Dexterity), AC −8; so the worm still hits almost half the time (20 − 15 − (−8) = 13), and still swallows on an 18+ roll -- 15% chance to end the fight on any attack, regardless of opponent level (overall, the worm is favored at 57% to win a fight against any fighter of any arbitrarily high level in this model).

As an aside, we see that the Vol-2 rule clause of "or 100% [natural 20] in any case" is effectively redundant, as any character of any possible AC value is swallowed on some roll of less than 20 anyway.

In OD&D, there is simply no mechanism mentioned such that a swallowed character can escape on their own (excluding friends presumably killing the beast and cutting them out in time), so we know that the solo fighters in the Arena will definitely be destroyed as soon as a Purple Worm swallows them. The later AD&D Monster Manual added a remedy to this situation, by stating, "Note, however, that a creature swallowed can try to cut its way out of the purple worm's stomach. The inner armor class of the 'worm is 9, but each round the creature is in the worm it subtracts 1 from the damage each of its  attacks does." Now, at first glance this rule might seem reasonable to us (a nod to Jonah), but personally it always gives me indigestion. Notice that the character swallowed is under no threat of attack or damage while inside, and the inner AC of 9 is the easiest possible target in the game (a high-level fighter should automatically hit it, much like the Purple Worm automatically hit him in the first place). So in practice it turns out that, under this rule, the safest place to fight a Purple Worm is inside it. I've seen fights degenerate into a comical sequence of: fighter gets swallowed; fighter cuts way out; fighter gets swallowed again; rinse and repeat, etc. With this rule, the Swallow attack is not so much a feared ability, it's actually the best defense against the Purple Worm itself. For this reason, I am very much opposed to the AD&D rule, and keep the special ability as a Doom-That-Came-To-Swallow kind of menace. Bring lots of friends to cast missiles and cut you out, or don't face off against a Purple Worm in the first place.

The Arena simulator reflects this pure-OD&D adjudication, and so the Purple Worms are favored to eat up any single fighter regardless of level; and thus the EHD is effectively undefined for this type. Perhaps we should use other monsters as a guidepost and say that it likely tops out at about triple HD/XP?

Conclusions: Taken as printed in our Arena output chart, we could take the listed EHD's as the exact number to use in place of HD when we look up awards in the XP table; or more simply using Vol-1 rules, compute EHD × 100 in each case. But granted that even this is a rough model, and that some subjectivity exists for consideration of multiple party members and spell-casting, perhaps the simplest and most honest thing to say that at best we may have the right magnitude of multiplier by which to adjust XP. That is: either double or triple XP, as shown under the "Multiplier" column in the table, and not pretend to more precision than that.

Even this has some interesting discoveries, I think, like: Wights, wraiths, mummies, lycanthropes, and even giant constrictor snakes probably don't deserve any XP bonuses. Basilisks and Medusae are probably reversed in the tables in terms of danger level. Most monsters likely don't deserve more than a single doubling of XP, with only the rarest of exceptions (even Vampires with their half-dozen abilities may only deserve one doubling, according to this).

Now, while OD&D Vol-1 didn't make any mention or awareness of the need to adjust monster XP for special abilities (actually, the Troll example explicitly avoids making any such adjustment), the need must have been rather quickly noticed, because a D&D FAQ article in Strategic Review #2 (Summer 1975) did bring up the topic:

Experience: ... For purposes of experience determination the level of the monster is equivalent to its hit dice, and additional abilities add to the level in this case. A gorgon is certainly worth about 10 level factors, a balrog not less than 12, the largest red dragon not less than 16 or 17, and so on. The referee's judgement must be used to determine such matters, but with the foregoing examples it should prove to be no difficulty.

In broad strokes, this is the same method we recommend here (add some integer number to the Hit Dice to adjust for special abilities, before computing XP, without any extra table or more complicated calculations being made). How much do we agree with those suggestions? The Strategic Review article probably undervalues those top-level monsters by quite a bit. For Gorgons it suggests "about 10 level factors", but here we think 15 is better. For a Balrog it says "no less than 12", and strictly speaking we agree with the inequality statement, a value of 22 being reasonable. For the largest Red Dragon it says "not less than 16 or 17", and the Arena simulator would suggest that a value of even 45 would not be out of the question for eldest type.

Hopefully this gives some additional perspective and confidence when assigning XP under the Original D&D (Vol-1) system. Perhaps equally important, it was a great motivation to crawl into the guts of the OD&D monster special abilities, and be forced to think about the specifics of adjudicating each, given the level of complete discipline and specificity that our computer programming framework forces upon us.


Eaten any thoughts? Devoured any intellects?

Jon Peterson Interviews Len Patt

Jon Peterson interviews Len Patt, who was recently discovered to have initiated many of the rules underlying Chainmail Fantasy, and hence D&D (and hence all of fantasy adventure gaming). Somewhat amusing that while we now have documentation of that fact, since Patt left gaming entirely to pursue chemistry in college, he himself has only the faintest recollection of that time. Jon draws a moving lesson from this at the end.

A Conversation with Len Patt

Monte-Carlo Measures of Monster Levels, Pt. 6

Six levels of monster tables in OD&D, and six posts discussing the details of monster special abilities (so far). Let's see what happens at the top end of the tables (data here):

High Level Fighters: One possible wobble in our simulator is that Fighters stop getting full Hit Dice after level 9, so the baseline of pure Hit Dice comparisons (Equivalent Hit Dice, EHD) might be a bit biased after this point. But the effect should be fairly minor; fighter Hit Dice here are d8's by Sup-I rules (expectation 4.5), abilities are straight 3d6 (so no Constitution bonus on average), and I award 3 hit points per level after 9th (end result: only a 1.5 pip difference between lower levels and higher levels). Plus, fighters continue to get normal improvements to attack chances at higher levels. Perhaps if we were completely precise we should reduce EHD by 1/3 for each level after 9th (so: Medusae would by EHD 11, Balrogs would be EHD 18, a slight modification from our table).

Chimeras and Gorgons: Both of these have a deadly breath weapon that places them solidly in the Level 6 table (the former, 3d6 fire damage; the latter, petrification). Each is an area attack, of course, so subjectively we could boost their EHD even higher for having the capacity to take out multiple opponents at once. Note that in OD&D, no specification was given for how often they can use these attack forms, or at what frequency. It seemed elegant to me when coding them to use the exact same method as for Dragons; up to three times per day, with a roll of 2d6 ≥ 7 (58%) indicating breath instead of standard attacks. The range of the breath is stated, 5" or 6", that is, about half to two-thirds that of a Red Dragon.

Vampires: The blood-drinking master undead have a veritable Fibber McGee's closet of special abilities, more than twice as many as any other monster type -- flying, magic-to-hit, energy drain, regeneration, charm person, summoning, and polymorph (as well as the well-known special vulnerabilities to keep in mind). The Arena simulator makes use of the energy drain, regeneration, and even charm person (the vampire gets an initial entry gaze attack with −2 save modifier, but I assume that if saved that the fighter is then immune and doesn't have to avert gaze thereafter). The magic-to-hit defense is a non-issue, since our fighters (surely of this level) are all assumed to have a +1 sword. The flying is not simulated (nor is any specific movement). Neither is the polymorph or summoning; the former is mostly just a retreat mechanism, while the latter (10-100 rats or 3-18 wolves) would break the current program architecture in expecting just 1-on-1 fights in the Arena. This could have been a notable factor, but of course these are very low-powered helper monsters in any event. (What's your guess? We'll see in Arena v.108.)

All told, Vampires are assessed at EHD 15, just about double their actual HD 8, so doubling the XP for their special abilities (at least) is definitely justified.

Dragons: As with Lycanthropes and Giants, I tried to pick the one most representative type for my data input; in this case, a smaller Red Dragon of 9 HD, which puts it at about the median of available Hit Dice points for Dragons. Hit points are rolled as per the book: a single d6 indicates age level and hence uniform hit points for each HD (so either 9 hp or 54 hp are as likely as anything in between); note that this makes the variance in hit points tremendously greater than for other monsters (who otherwise have bell-shaped distribution with the most likely hit points around the median). The functioning of the fire breath is explicit in terms of frequency and maximum usage (see Chimeras/Gorgons above).

I interpret the damage from that breath in the harshest terms, that is, always equal to Dragon's maximum hit points no matter how much damage it has taken (as opposed to Moldvay Basic D&D where the current hit points is the damage output, so much less dangerous after a few rounds of hacking it down). I don't give their claw/bite routine the many dice of damage suggested in Sup-I, but I do give 2 attacks for 2 dice each here (or in practice, 1 bite for 2d6 and 2 claws for 1d6 each, mathematically the same). Of course, it was always a bit wonky that the youngest 9 hp Dragon, and the oldest 54 hp dragon, both have the same attacks, damage, saves, and to-hit under these rules (the AD&D Monster Manual slightly adjusted this for the saves, not the other factors), but this is maintained as-written in the Arena simulator.

So, for the case of Dragons it makes sense to do a run for each of the separate Age categories and see how our model measures them (again, mid-level 9 HD dragon in each case):

So, we see that even a Very Young dragon with 9 hit points is an even match for a 6th level fighter; if it gets initiative it can tear into a man and do several dice of damage (4d6 in this interpretation; and it also has the best armor in the game to this point, as plate & shield, AC 2). A Very Old dragon with 54 hit points is assessed the same as a 45th level fighter (!), although with pro-rated-hit-dice adjustment, we might call that only around 33rd level to be nice. And recall that our baseline fighters still only have straight-3d6 stats, chain & shield, and a single +1 sword, no matter their level; more well-equipped fighters will be better off against this challenge. But still, getting hit by 54-damage fire breath a few times in a row will pretty much ruin your day no matter who you are.

And keep in mind again that the breath weapon is also an area attack that can probably torch a whole party if the lone fighter brought any friends, so feel free to discuss how many more EHD's should be added to account for that. Clearly the XP could be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, or more over the base HD, depending on age category.

Balrogs: Yes, Virginia, OD&D originally had Balrogs in the core rules (and in fact, they're probably referenced as an example throughout the little brown books more times than any other monster), before they were taken out from printings after the 1st. See the Balrog Reference Sheet generously provided by Zenopus Archives if you want to fill in that gap for your game. The Balrog has flight, top-level armor (AC 2), a magic sword and whip, among the most Hit Dice in the game (HD 10), a special immolation attack, and also the first instance of Magic Resistance in the game of D&D (though not simulated here, since it makes no difference against our non-spell-casting fighter opponents). They get two attacks, which here I assume get 2d6 damage each (Sup-I says 1-12 points for the sword); my ruling on the whip/immolation is that the whip can strike for 2d6 damage normally, and on a hit then we also check 2d6 ≥ 7 to see if the target is pulled into the Balrog's immolating body for an extra 3d6 fire damage (the average size), save for half. The Arena simulator says this combination is worth EHD 22, again about double the base HD of 10 (and somewhat more dangerous than the average mid-level Dragon). Note that by the book's Wilderness random encounter tables, you might run into 1d6 Balrogs just wandering around together on any given day; giants truly walked the earth then, and lifespans were indeed very much shorter.


Any interpretations here that burn your britches? Still worse things to come.

Area of Effect Images

When I was working on the 1st Edition of Book of War, at some point I drew out models of some of major area-of-effects (namely, fireballs and breath weapons) to see how many character figures would fit inside them (i.e., be normally subject to hits). I find that I keep wanting to refer back to them for many different types of work, but I always forget where I have them filed. So for personal reference here there are on the blog.

Now: Keep in mind, as usual, that I interpret the distances in inches literally on the tabletop, as given in Original D&D Vol-1 and Vol-2 (Men and Monsters); and assuming the same scale as the figures used, so about 1" = 5 feet. The prescription that appeared in Vol-3, that 1" = 10 feet, I ignore. (See the sidebar on house rules for more discussion.) The figures and counters that I used are at the standard 3/4" (or 20mm) square base for men; or 1×2" (25×50mm) for horses.

Also, my general assumption is that there is some spread between figures; that is, a few feet between ranks of soldiers, or some amount of scattering in the face of melee/ missiles/ magic fire. Here's what that "sparse" crowding looks like:

Areas of Effect: Sparse Crowding

As you can see, a fireball catches about 7 men; the red dragon breath cone catches about 14 men, the green dragon cloud a similar 15, but the blue dragon's line is smaller with only 7 men encompassed (further reduced for lesser types like black and white dragons). For cavalry, the numbers would technically be reduced (3, 5, or 8 figures hit by breath). But for simplicity in Book of War, I rounded off and said that all of these attack forms hit about 10 men, that is, 1 figure at mass scale.

However, perhaps you don't share my assumption about men being spread out a bit in most cases. If the figures are packed maximally "dense", then here's what you get instead:

Areas of Effect: Dense Crowding

In this case, a fireball hits about 13 men; and the breath from red dragon hits 26, green dragon 30, blue dragon 13. Here we find 5, 8, or 12 cavalry figures in a dragon's breath area. In principle, this might argue for the red and green dragon breath types to hit up to 3 figures of men at mass scale; but all of the others (like fireball) still round off to 10 men, so I think that gives extra evidence for the simplicity of the Book of War rule that only 1 mass figure can be affected.

More generally, I find that keeping this in mind helps to adjudicate at any time we're abstracting the action away from actual figures on a tabletop (for example, when using random/abstract opponent selection as in the AD&D DMG).

Monte-Carlo Measures of Monster Levels, Pt. 5

See Part 1 for the table of Monte-Carlo measured Equivalent Hit Dice (EHD) for most of the monsters from OD&D.

Higher Level Special Abilities: Special abilities for monsters at the upper end of the table become a little hazy in how well the Arena simulator can measure them, because they're even more dependent on DM adjudication, initiative and movement, player knowledge about how to counter them, area-effects against multiple characters, etc. (As of this writing, Arena is only 1-on-1; but the next version under development will have party-on-party action, so stay tuned for that.)

Note that the Arena simulator doesn't model any tactical movement; the combatants are presumed to come to melee range and start alternating blows. However, for monsters that are characterized particularly by some special ranged attack, an "Entry Attack" phase was introduced, where we assume the monster in question gets exactly one (1) opportunity to engage in its special attack form before melee is joined. Thus: Giants hurl a single rock before melee, Manticores get one volley of tail spikes, Basilisks and Medusae get one gaze attack before melee (and so, each fighter must always save or be turned to stone before even getting the first attack against these latter types). In a standard D&D game, these monsters may of course get none or more than one such attacks, depending on player knowledge and preparedness, etc.; but I think that the one free entry attack is a fairly good zero-level model.

Mummies: Mummies are surprisingly weak in this analysis; they are assessed at EHD 6 (one more than their HD of 5), which arguably should put them one monster table lower than in the book (all the other monsters at table level 5 have EHD 8 or above). Their long-term rotting disease is simply not a factor within a single melee. While it requires magic to hit them, I think we would agree that most fighters of this level should have at least one such weapon. While Vol-2 says of such weapons, "bonuses are at one-half value against them", that would be a totally negligible difference (maybe 1 pip in most cases), so instead I implemented the Monster Manual text that they do "one-half normal damage" (i.e., a straight 50% reduction in all damage). It turns out that even this defense is not a large factor, because at this level the fighter is reliably hitting, and the mummy does not have any truly threatening attack to stop them within the scope of the melee.

It sort of makes some sense, then, that later publications bolstered the mummy by adding to its abilities. At the end of Sup-II Blackmoor, Dave Arneson has a section on "Disease" in which he really lays it on, calling the mummy ability "Advanced Leprosy: ...  If  not cured within three days, there is a 95% chance of fatality, with a 2% decrease each successive day. Any character that  succumbs to this dread disease may NOT be raised from the dead; they are permanently dead" (as opposed to the Vol-2 rule which only slows down healing; although the table here instead specifies a 60% chance of irreversible death; but by item (f) causes a loss of 6 Strength points per day, maybe?). Gygax in the AD&D Monster Manual likewise makes the mummy rot potentially fatal (although in 1-6 months time; slowing natural healing as before, but negating all curative spells; and causing permanent Charisma damage), increases attack damage, gives fear and revulsion on sight (that causes paralysis), as well as standard undead immunities to sleep, charm, hold and cold. Another thing that I'm not modeling here is their extra-vulnerability to fire (which wouldn't make any difference anyway, because Arena fighters are not so equipped).

So in theory the mummy value might go up depending on your evaluation of the mummy rot risk (which might make a character potentially more vulnerable in some later encounter, or actually put them in the ground permanently), the implementation of fear and revulsion from AD&D, or possibly down because of the fire vulnerability (esp. when you have pyro-magicians as party members). Personally, the Arnesonian irreversible-death-gotcha has a certain roguish wit; but in my games with no Clerics, perhaps the divide-all-healing-by-10 rule originally in Vol-2 is sufficiently dreadful to be worth a significant EHD/XP bonus (e.g.: say results from a 1d6+1 healing potion get divided by 10 and rounded to the nearest integer; then you'd need a natural roll of at least 4+1, a 50% chance, to get even a single hit point back; so PCs in my games would be practically never able to heal again after an encounter with a Mummy, yowch!). Somehow I like that better than pulling strings to make sure a cure disease is always available before the clock runs out with the insta-death rule.

Giants: Only the Hill Giant is normally simulated in my program ("Hill Giants are the most common (60%)", per Vol-2). While they get a free stone-throwing attack in the Arena before melee, and 2 dice of damage in any attack, this doesn't make that much difference; their EHD is only 8, the same as their HD 8 (so: no XP bonus), in line with other humanoids. While they are on the top Level 6 table in OD&D, this analysis puts them one level lower that, equivalent to the weakest monsters on the Level 5 list. Perhaps if I had randomized among all the different Giant types, the average EHD would be a bit higher, but I don't think even that would legitimize their being on the Level 6 list. Without any save-or-die powers, they would be the odd man out there.

Basilisks: Here's another type that sits on the Level 6 list in OD&D, which the simulator would put on Level 5 (HD 6, EHD 8) -- perhaps a bit surprising. Now, here's the assumption I made for Gaze attacks in the Arena: the monster (such as a Basilisk) automatically gets one such gaze as an entry attack; so the fighter must save-or-be-petrified (thus instantly hors de combat) before joining melee. Afterward, we assume that the fighter is crafty enough to "avert their gaze", taking a −4 penalty hit from then on, but not being subject to any more gaze attacks. Granted that the Basilisk bite attack does only 1 normal die of damage in any ruleset, it's then hard for them counter the abilities of a high-level fighter.

But what this discounts, as we noted at the top of this post, is the game situation where a whole party of PCs turns into a cave and the gaze attack instantly wipes out, say, half of them before the fight even gets started. That area-attack-style capability certainly warrants adding some more EHD (and XP) to their rating. But even if we roughly double their HD from 6 to 12, that still argues for their being a Level 5 monster, not Level 6. (We'll see a more specific result for that in the upcoming Arena v.108.)

Edit: Looking more closely at the OD&D Basilisk description, I see that I've missed a key trait: "it has the power of turning to stone those whom it touches and those who meet its glance". The "touch" ability was removed by Gygax as of the AD&D line (1E, 2E, 3E, etc.), although it still appears in the Basic D&D line (Holmes Basic, Cook Expert, Allston Rules Cyclopedia). My memory of AD&D made me overlook this touch power and it wasn't simulated here; I should do that for the next cycle. It's pretty easy to guess that this will safely justify it being in the 6th level monster list.

Medusa: Now, the other petrifying-gaze monster, the Medusa, has a few less hit dice than the Basilisk, but a much more potent secondary attack: save-or-die Poison by virtue of its venomous snaky tresses. So an opposing fighter must save-or-die before combat even begins, and then again every time a hit is made. The Monte Carlo method tells us that this is a much more potent combination; from a HD 4 base, the Medusa is measured at EHD 12; a jump of +8 points, that is, triple the base HD (and so quite sensibly, triple XP), the highest such ratio among all the monsters measured (excepting a few questionable cases at the very end). This puts the Medusae at the top-end of Level 5 (where OD&D put them) in our analysis; arguably they should go in Level 6 instead. Perhaps an elegant adjustment is to just switch the entries of the Basilisk and Medusae in our tables.


How do you run your mummy rot -- as in Vol-2 with slowed healing only, or with Arnesonian creeping-death-in-3-days, or later Gygaxian death-in-d6-months? And are you prone to forget that Basilisks have petrify-on-touch in OD&D, like I did?

A Game of d6's and d20's

A delightful tidbit from D&D Classics Product Historian Shannon Appelcline on the recently re-released digital version of OD&D -- regarding the very early days when the game was in development but not yet released:

At some point, someone (perhaps Dave Wesely, perhaps Gary Gygax) found a twenty-sided dice supplier in the US: Creative Publications of California. However they sold their dice in packs of five, including a d4, a d6, a d8, a d12, and a d20. Notably missing was the d10, which didn't appear until Gen Con XIII (1980). There was one problem with Creative Publications' dice: D&D only needed the d6 and the d20. TSR decided to use the full sets to avoid having to sort out the other polyhedrons when they sold them. As a result, OD&D added some rules for using the other dice — particularly in the number appearing charts for monsters. Nonetheless, they were pretty scant.

This makes so much sense: OD&D definitely has the flavor of a game that is barely a few inches away from just needing d6's and d20's. And frankly: I want that game. So incredibly elegant! (Recall: My monster hit dice and damage are still all d6's; to date players have never noticed any difference, and its so much easier to manage as the DM).