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Okay, that title is false. Dumb monsters are dumb, but that doesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose. I’m currently entering Fiend Folio data into my 1st Edition AD&D database, so I’ve got dumb monsters on the brain. This reminds me of countless articles I’ve read listing the dumbest monsters in D&D. I don’t agree with all the entries, and I’d guess many of you don’t either. One list had a Beholder on it. That’s got to be a minority opinion. And Teos will have words with anyone who criticizes the flumph. This is, of course, because these lists are subjective, but most of these lists do involve the usual suspects.

For example, let’s look at the mauler. Just look at it. Try not to give it too much thought. You definitely shouldn’t consider how the thing reproduces. That won’t end well because you’ll likely have to consider what it looks like from behind, especially while it’s rolling around. Anyway, there aren’t many things dumber looking than that. However, such a monster can serve a purpose to an adventure writer.

D&D takes place in a world of magic, and that necessarily leads to things that don’t make logistic sense. In fact, maulers don’t need to breed through a natural process. Phew! So, let’s say that your BBEG is performing an apocalyptic ritual. You decide that the ritual’s end goal is to cause non-sentient animals to gain sentience and kill all humans. You don’t want to give that away, but you need an adventure seed that hints at what’s going on. You decide that the early stages of the ritual must manifest themselves with increasingly strange effects on the natural world. The early stages of the ritual may be working out the fine details of the process, causing grossly odd mutations to normal wildlife in the meantime. Such mutations would probably be painful, which would anger temperamental animals such as big cats. Sure, you could give them stronger bites and extra claws, but that’s not so much “odd” as mere exaggeration. We already have exaggerated animals, whether prehistoric or “dire.” You want something far weirder than a larger animal with an extra couple of claws. That plays out no differently than just giving your normal animal more attacks with the claws it already has. The mauler fits this scenario perfectly, so you should be glad that the mechanics of how such a creature would work are already written for you.

The mauler helps in another way. As I was writing this post, I chose the mauler. From there, I had to reverse engineer how the mauler would fit into the example I gave above. I decided that the nature of the ritual was to grant sentience and anger to ordinary animals; ergo, the mauler inspired my writing. Its odd nature gave me the idea I didn’t already have. One of these bizarre creatures could inspire an unexpected story element.

Let’s also look at the carbuncle. That freak always makes the lists of dumb or “unusual” monsters. It has a very specific goal. The actual problem with this creature is that everyone’s aware of it, so players aren’t going to fall for its tricks. However, the carbuncle teaches us that we can come up with a silly little story idea then build a creature around it. I’m sure that’s how the thing came into existence in the first place.

Dumb monsters can fit nicely within your adventure and even help you write it. Once you’ve chosen to use one, you already have a shortcut on how such oddly structured creatures would play out in combat.

Now go insert a duckbunny in your adventure.

Note: I’ve exhausted all the posts I’ve written and don’t plan to write any more for a while. Sorry, but I’m not in the mood and won’t be for some time. I guess the current streak ends at 194 days in a row with a post.

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I just . . . I . . . what?

I just don’t know.

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Last week, I discussed some issues with the calculations for experience points (“XP”) in 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“). When I finally play 1e again, my intent is to play the game as written (as weird and impossible as that is), and every statement I make below will be in the context of the rules as written (unless expressly stated otherwise). I’m fully aware of the fact that a dungeon master can do what they want, but what I want to do is run the game as written. With that in mind, I intend to use XP, though I’m not a fan of it.

It makes far more sense to use a milestone method for leveling up. In 1e, you can’t level up within the course of an adventure because leveling up requires an expenditure of both time and money. You must spend between 1 to 4 weeks training, spending 1,500 gold pieces per level per week just to advance to the next level. (There may be even greater money and time spent on other matters, but those are outside the scope of this post.) In this regard, 1e is a perfect system for milestone leveling. There’ll never be a need for a calculation at the game table to see if it’s time to level up.

My reacquaintance with 1e does give me new appreciation for XP. The source of this appreciation is baked into why it would be difficult to run 1e without XP. (None of this will be new to any of you.) I like that you can earn XP based on treasure, which encourages playing characters intelligently (i.e., don’t have unnecessary fights). More importantly, level drain is some scary shit, and it gives you a sense of danger. That in turn immerses you in the game world. That said, I pointed out on Facebook that level drain more excessive than it needs to be, and someone suggested XP drain instead: each energy drain effect drains 500 XP per level. To that, I add the possibility that 1) in no event does XP drain take you below your current level; and 2) the XP (or level) drain is temporary. XP facilitates fine tuning energy drain to meet the DM’s specific needs, especially if you’re a modern gamer giving 1e a try.

I can live with XP, but I don’t look forward to tracking it. 🙂

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As I said yesterday, I’m not going to spend nearly as much effort on this blog for the time being, but I’m happy to say that I finished data entry for the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual yesterday and started entering Fiend Folio information. I think I may have written that I finished that entry a couple of days ago. I did but had to go back through the data and fix some issues. I’m not taking a particularly professional approach to this database — for software engineers, my requirements analysis phase has been shit — so after I reach a certain point, I realize I have to go back and change a few things. Getting to the very end of the Monster Manual lit yet another lightbulb, so I had to do a little more work.

Something important I learned in making those final changes: The XP calculations in Appendix E of the Dungeon Masters Guide sometimes make no sense at all. That not only includes some strange calculations that don’t seem to be supported by the stat block — green slimes don’t have as many special abilities (10) and exceptional ones (11) as Asmodeus — but it also includes impossible calculations not supported by the table, Experience Points Value of Monster (DMG, p. 85).

As to the former, I did what I was told. I assumed (probably naively) that the creatures were play-tested and played out more powerfully than the numbers otherwise dictated. I’m not going to rock that boat, though there were a couple of times I know I did, but don’t remember exactly which monsters those were. Sometimes the numbers were just so ridiculous that I changed them.

As to the latter, it forced me to make some calls that I really didn’t want to have to make. When you create a specific instance of a monster, you roll its hit points, which affects the final XP calculation. Because I want that calculation to be automated (less math for you!), for every given monster, I entered integers for the number of “special” and “exceptional” abilities. Therefore, the software will combine your die roll with certain data that calculate the XP for you. If that doesn’t make sense, just understand that you’ll push a button, and you’ll have a monster complete with an XP calculation. However, as I said, the calculations were impossible in a few cases, representing odd exceptions to the rules. I sometimes had to choose between a calculation that would give a creature an extra 10 XP or shortchange it by 5 XP. In such cases, I chose to give an extra 10 XP (larger numbers apply for higher level monsters, but the percentage of error is about the same). This doesn’t seem like much, and XP is often, being generous, an inexact science, so I won’t lose sleep over it. What bugs me about it is 1) it happened enough that it appears to be intentional; and 2) if these minor differences are nothing to lose sleep over, why have them? Why not have these monsters conform to the standard formula? If they did, that difference would also be nothing to lose sleep over. It just seems weird to make such specific, small exceptions to such an inexact equation, but knowing some of the AD&D crowd, I know I’m going to take some heat anyway for what I produce.

In addition, there were times that no formulae were given, so I made them, and that also had me going my own way at times. For example, I broke out the dragons by those that cast spells and those that don’t, and considered 1st- and 2nd-level casting as “special” and higher level casting as “exceptional.” I also thought that the dragon’s fear aura was pretty damn powerful, so I called it “exceptional” even though it’s not in either list of abilities. Some will agree, and some won’t. Just try to keep in mind that all of these numbers will be subject to your own modifications within the database itself.

As someone who’s quite pretentious, I’m amazed how much competition some in the AD&D crowd give me in that regard. You realize it’s a game, right?

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David Leonard has a blog, Greyhawk Musings. Last Friday, he added his own voice to the choir with a post about the 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“) adventure, L1: The Secret of Bone Hill. I previously gave my own review (Ha! I quickly made it about me!), but it was much briefer and wasn’t heavy on details. It’s a different sort of adventure, and has been soundly thrashed over the decades, but nevertheless isn’t an adventure you should ignore. I think it’s a type of adventure that needs to exist at various levels of difficulty. As always, YMMV.

This is the 187th day in a row with a post (note: not my longest streak). I’ll probably be ending that streak very soon. I’m going to focus my time on what you really want me to do: Complete my database. Or maybe you want me to shut up. Same net result. I’ll still post when something strikes me as blogworthy, and will probably continue to be consistent with my goofy nonsense on Saturday through Monday, but it won’t be my priority until I’ve got my database completed.

You just want me to shut up, don’t you?

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