BX Monsters A to Z: Basilisk

 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 least until the party magic-user reaches 11th level. (The Stone to Flesh spell is 6th level. Even if your campaign is crawling with level 11+ NPC wizards willing to cast for cash, the party is still going to have to drag several hundred pounds of stone back to civilization or somehow persuade a powerful magic-user to tag along to their friend's location. Otherwise, the petrified character is out-of-play for whatever amount of in-game time it takes for a PC magic-user to reach the required level and learn the spell, or for the party to find some other means of softening up their erstwhile ally, such as a potion or scroll.) 

(Random thought: It would be kind of cool if petrified PCs were revived decades or centuries later, perhaps as part of a future campaign in the same world, awakening as if no time had passed for them to find their world drastically changed and most or all of their former friends dead and gone.)

(Second random thought: Might a powerful ruler or wealthy aristocrat in failing health hire a party to capture a basilisk, with the intent to be petrified until a cure could be found? Lithogenics instead of cryogenics...)

As tough as the monster is, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. If party members use mirrors to avoid looking at the creature as they fight it, it has a 2-in-6 chance of seeing its own reflection, thus petrifying itself if it fails its save. The text doesn't specify if that's 2-in-6 for each mirror in play, or 2-6 overall, but it seems reasonable to assume the former interpretation. With this in mind, even a very low-level party has a good chance against a single basilisk if they're all equipped with mirrors and forewarned of the creature's presence and abilities. Unfortunately, the number appearing is 1-6, so it may not be quite as easy as that...

The creature's other potential weakness is its movement rate of 60'(20'), which is slower than most characters, except those kitted out in plate or heavily encumbered with treasure. If this isn't a fight the party feels it can win, they can always make a run for it. However, with Treasure Type F in the lair, the rewards might be tempting enough to chance engaging the monsters. 

All in all, the basilisk is an example of a monster that's very dangerous but not overpowered, with an instant kill power and a specific and potent weakness. If you feel a need to mitigate the mirror strategy somewhat, it's plausible that the creatures instinctively lair in places where the terrain makes it hard for more than one or two characters to attack at once. A glade full of statues actually fits that bill pretty well, if they're spaced closely enough. 

One thing I wonder about basilisks: What do they eat? Their bites petrify, so any prey they kill would almost surely be turned to stone before being eaten. It seems they don't eat their human and demihuman victims, given that basilisk encounters are invariably written to include intact statues nearby, but never any with limbs or heads gnawed off. Are they just herbivores with a very nasty natural defense, or do they eat only non-intelligent game? If the latter, do they digest their petrified prey as-is, or do they have some sort of digestive juice that turns it back into flesh in the creatures' stomachs? And if that's the case, could this stomach juice be a key component of stone to flesh potions?