Gelatinous Icosahedron

 Remember when the Beetles* were huge? The D&D Basic Set remembers. Giant beetles come in several flavors: Fire, Oil, Tiger, and Ringo.  "We all live in a dungeon garbage heap, a dungeon garbage heap, a dungeon garbage heap..." Alternate caption : "I wanna eat your ha-a-and. I wanna eat your hand..." Wait, what? OK, just Fire, Oil, and Tiger. Regardless of type, all the giant beetles have tough shells and very good AC, so Basic-level adventurers are likely to go through a lot of unsuccessful attacks if it comes to a fight. That means more opportunities for the monsters to use their own attacks, which are pretty respectable in terms of damage. With almost no possibility of loot to be had, they're better avoided than fought, if it can be managed. Giant fire beetles are the smallest of the giant beetles, and by far the ones I've used most in my games. They're best known for their three glowing glands, which emit light in a 10' radius and will go on ...

 Is it just me, or are normal animals really underutilized in D&D? Case in point: Bears. "Bears are well-known to all adventurers," says the Basic Set, but are they really? I can't recall using bears at all in my games, except when one of my brothers was running a mountain-man fighter and tamed a grizzly bear as a companion animal. And that's a shame, because bears can make for some interesting and varied encounter possibilities.  Bear expert. In the single entry for bears, we get four different types, ranging from 4 to 7 Hit Dice. In escalating order of HD and aggressiveness, they are black, grizzly, polar, and cave bears. Black bears are described as unlikely to attack adventurers unless cornered or defending their cubs. Grizzly and polar bears are moderately likely to attack, while cave bears are noted to be fond of humans as prey. Their defenses are medium-weak, with AC 6 (5 for cave bears.) All bears are given a claw/claw/bite attack sequence, with black bear...

 Bats, from the Basic Set, are found in either normal or giant form in the D&D world. Giant bats, at least in my early campaigns, were fairly common hazards of dungeons and after-dark encounters. Normal bats, on the other hand, were sadly underappreciated. Both sorts of bats have an AC of 6, probably representing agility and maneuverability. Both also are considered to be effectively blind as far as normal sight is concerned (real-world bats run the gamut from nearly blind to acute vision, depending on the species.) Normal ones have a single hit point each, while their giant cousins have a quite robust 2 HD. Both are skittish about combat, having a morale score of 6 in common, with normal bats needing to check morale every round or flee. Giant bats, apart from their natural ability to fly, are fairly mundane in combat, attacking for 1-4 points of damage, which makes them potentially dangerous but not too likely to one-shot most first-level adventurers. They're explicitly carniv...

 Now, a creature from the Expert Set, more dangerous than all the previous ones combined: the Basilisk. To the younger generations, who grew up on Harry Potter, the word basilisk probably conjures images of a gigantic snake with a gaze that kills. To us old grognards, though, the basilisk is a big lizard capable of turning its victims to stone with both its gaze and physical attacks.  We found a cool lizard! Can we keep him? At a glance, the basilisk looks like a killer encounter, and it certainly can be. Its single physical attack for 1d10 damage is only respectable for the level of characters who are likely to face it, but it hardly matters if it did only a d4. It's got a stout AC 4 and 6+1 Hit Dice, so a low-Expert level party won't be able to dispatch it too quickly, and every round it survives, it has a chance to petrify some unfortunate character. If petrification-reversal effects are as rare in the campaign as they ought to be, it's essentially a one-shot kill, at le...

 Another entry from the Basic Set, and one that's probably extremely familiar to everybody who's ever played any edition of the game: Bandits.  Moldvay describes bandits as NPC thieves who have joined together for the purpose of robbing others. This makes them the second character class to receive the monster write-up. Their listed AC of 6 implies leather armor and a Dexterity bonus of +1; this makes them the only class-as-monster to assume a bonus in the class's prime requisite. Bandits are also listed with one full Hit Die, as opposed to 1/2 HD, despite the standard class using a d4 per level. Whether this allows for possible Constitution bonuses, or level 2 bandits, is unknown. They may have a leader of higher level than themselves of any human character class. The description says bandits will try to surprise victims by pretending to be normal humans; certainly a viable strategy. Oddly, there's no mention of any actual stealth tactics. Most of the thief class's ...

 Back to the Basic Rules for a rather curious creature: the White Ape . Unlike many normal animals of D&D, these white-furred, nocturnal cave-dwellers have no direct analog in our real world, so far as I know. Nonetheless, they're similar and plausible enough to warrant "animal" status, as opposed to some more fantastic categorization. They're also a clear and early departure from the cliched assumption of D&D as straight-up fantasy medieval Europe.  Despite what my brother thought due to the placement of this image in the book, this is NOT a bandit. These dudes are pretty tough for Basic-level adventurers, with a respectable AC of 6 and 4 Hit Dice, the same as a black bear. Their damage isn't tremendous, but two attacks at 1d4 each is nothing to sneeze at for low-level adventurers, and they're also capable of limited ranged combat, hurling rocks for 1d6. An encounter with up to eight of them is probably not a fight to pick if you can avoid it.  The de...

 Next, we jump to the Expert Rules for the next creature listing in alphabetical order: Antelope (Herd Animal). It strikes me a bit odd that the author/editors chose to list it as "Antelope (Herd Animal) rather than "Animal, Herd" as Frank Mentzer did in BECMI, since the listing is essentially a catch-all for large grazing mammals living in herds. According to the description, it encompasses goats, deer, elk, wild oxen, moose, and caribou in addition to the titular antelopes. We might easily throw in such beasts as buffalo, bison, wildebeests, wild sheep, llamas, and alpacas as well.  The entry gives variable Hit Dice, from 1 to 4 depending on size, and variable damage ranges from 1d4 to 1d8 to go with them. Only one in four of any group will be males, who defend the herd; the remainder are non-combatant females and young. Movement rate is a blazing 240'(80') for all types, as fast as a riding horse. That might make sense for the slimmer, nimbler antelopes such ...

 It's been a while since I've blogged, but I thought it would be fun and interesting to go through every monster entry from the Tom Moldvay Basic Set and the Cook/Marsh Expert Set in alphabetical order, giving my thoughts on the creatures themselves, how I'd use them in a game, and maybe things I might change about them. First up, the Acolyte from the Basic Rules. B/X is unique, so far as I know, in providing monster listings for bands of first-level NPCs of every class. Even its immediate successor, BECMI, doesn't have them. It's an understandable omission, but having formal monster listings for them allows them to be dropped easily into a random encounter table, and as I note below, they do make for interesting random encounters. Acolytes, naturally, are first-level clerics, who, according to the description, are on a pilgrimage to, or returning from, a holy or unholy shrine, or possibly just seeking adventure. They may be of any alignment, but the entire group wi...