BX Monsters A to Z: Cave Locust

There are a handful of monsters in B/X D&D that I just love for beginning adventures. The cave locust is one of those.

Cave locusts are big (2-3 feet long) stone grey subterranean-dwelling grasshoppers. I imagine them with extra-large compound eyes and a mottled color pattern, rather gangly legs compared with standard grasshoppers, and wings unfolding to reveal some brighter color like yellow or red to startle light-bearing intruders in their feeding grounds.

Why do I like these guys so much? Because they're great "training wheels monsters" --  opponents which can be engaged by newbie players/characters with interesting consequences but without a strong threat of a TPK if things go a little sour. They're fairly tough (AC 4 and 2 Hit Dice) and they have some cool auxiliary abilities without being major damage-dealing threats. They're skittish, preferring to flee rather than fight, but are clumsy and have a 50% chance of blundering into characters, dealing out 1-4 points of damage (probably with their flailing, spiny legs as well as from sheer impact.) That's not a huge amount of damage, which makes it fairly unlikely to kill many characters, and then the locust will probably panic and flee in the opposite direction, so the PC isn't going to have to endure round after round of attacks until he manages to kill it. Interestingly, if a locust actually chooses to attack, it only does 1-2 points of damage with its bite, meaning they're more dangerous when in a panicked tizzy than in a truly aggressive mood. 

Besides that, the insects make a shrieking noise when alarmed, which has a 20% chance per round of attracting wandering monsters to investigate. Players have a strong incentive to wrap up the encounter however they can and get out of Dodge before things get really hairy. It makes what might otherwise be a ho-hum encounter with relatively non-threatening creatures a tense and nerve-racking affair. And if a wandering monster does appear, the locusts themselves will likely be inadvertently running interference, possibly allowing the party to beat a hasty retreat in the midst of the chaos. What a great learning experience!

Finally, when cornered, the locust will spit a gob of foul-smelling brown goo, requiring an attack roll against AC 9. If the target fails a save vs. poison, it is overcome by the stench and can't do anything for a full turn. This is a fantastic example of an ability that is significant but not deadly in and of itself. The target will get used to the smell in a turn, but it continues to affect others who get too close until the goo is washed off. Do you use up a skin of water, or can you remember where that stagnant pool you came across earlier is? It's a minor but interesting choice and some colorful detail to boot. 

As if all that isn't enough, we're told that cave locusts feed on fungi, including yellow mold, and are thus immune to it. It's not a detail that's likely to come into play often, but luring a swarm of cave locusts to deal with a pesky patch of yellow mold or a room full of shriekers is a pretty cool option for clever players.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The good, the bad, and the ugly of B/X D&D

 With my B/X Monsters A to Z series ongoing, I've been focusing a lot on B/X D&D. Also, having mostly recovered from my heart attack and triple bypass surgery, we're hopefully going to reconvene our game group for the new year, and at some point I'll be taking my turn at DMing again, and I'm hankering for a good old fashioned sandbox campaign. So, I'm looking at sorting out my likes and dislikes (yes, there are a few) in good ol' B/X, in preparation for codifying some house rules and clarifications. I should make clear that I like far more than I dislike about the game, but as I ponder what changes I might wish to make, the dislikes are going to come to the fore. Like : Character generation. It's quick, easy, and there aren't an overwhelming amount of choices to be made. The most time-consuming part is buying equipment. Some players enjoy that part; for the rest, a small selection of pre-built equipment packages would be an easy fix. Like: The lack
Read more

Stuff you can do with an ascending AC and attack bonus-based combat paradigm

 Taking a break from the Monsters A to Z for some pondering on what you can do with some new old-school friendly combat mechanics. One of the strongest signs that Old School gaming is not simply about nostalgia is the extent to which old schoolers have embraced ascending Armor Class, in conjunction with class-based attack bonuses, over the old descending-AC-and-attack matrix or THAC0 system. It doesn't just streamline the math and eliminate a whole layer of fiddliness, though, as much as those effects are to be hailed. Within the ascending AC and attack bonus framework, you can do some pretty cool things that would have required some real mental gymnastics in the traditional system. The magic of this approach really lies in the use of an attack bonus stat rather than lines and columns in an attack matrix, which allows everyone to use the same target number for the same target.  To illustrate the point a bit more clearly, consider a 5th-level fighter and a 1st-level magic-user in B/
Read more

What to do with treasure?

 In fantasy role-playing games, particularly those which link character advancement to recovery of treasure (of which practice, for the record, I am a fan and proponent), characters are going to accumulate a lot of silver, gold, and jewels over the course of an adventuring career. There is, unfortunately, a dearth of things on which to spend it in the rule books. At character creation and shortly thereafter, the focus is on the acquisition of basic adventuring gear. A newly-created PC may have to economize, especially on armor and weapons,but by second level, most of those concerns have been settled: a fighter who's accumulated enough treasure to gain his first level advancement has more than enough to purchase a suit of plate armor and his weapons of choice (if he hasn't already found magical versions) and probably a warhorse to boot. Mid-level characters may take interest in the "vehicles" section of the equipment roster, contemplating the purchase of ships or wagon
Read more