Gelatinous Icosahedron

 Straight out of the Expert Rules by way of Greek mythology, today's monster is the mighty cyclops.  I shall call him Blinky. Or maybe Winky. The cyclops is described as a rare type of giant, but apparently is sufficiently different enough from "true' giants to merit a separate listing in the monster section. Its optical oddity is certainly unlike all other giants, and it also isn't classified according to preferred terrain/elemental affinity as the others are.  It is, however, pretty closely aligned with the stats for other giants, with a slightly inferior Armor Class (5, compared to most other giants' 4) and 13 Hit Dice, which puts it roughly on par with the cloud giant. Both are listed as being about 20 feet in height, so a rare mark for consistency in monster stats to Cook and Marsh. It's a bit more ponderous in its movement than other giants, at 90'(30') to their 120'(40'); let's chalk that up to its poor depth perception. It can still ...

 I'll spare you the cheesy Steve Irwin references and just get right to the point, shall I? In case you hadn't already guessed, today's monster is the crocodile, from the Expert Rules.  Crocodiles are an interesting entry in the D&D bestiary, being denizens of tropical and sub-tropical climates, and so yet another departure from the default Northern/Western European-esque setting. They're almost always found in aquatic environments, and hunt by lurking just beneath the surface and lunging at prey, either in the water or on land adjacent to it. Real world crocs are fairly diverse, with many different extant species, with the American crocodile, Nile crocodile, and saltwater crocodile being among the largest and most well-known.  "Normal" crocodiles are fairly ho-hum in D&D terms. Their AC of 5 is decent; with only 2 Hit Dice, they're much less tough than one might expect. They're relatively slow, at 90'(30') both in the water and out. Da...

 I imagine every D&D player is familiar with certain types of NPCs, especially those who accompany a party on adventures (retainers and hirelings) and those who serve as primary opposition during adventures (villains and their henchmen and lackeys.) Today, I'd like to take a look at other categories of NPCs, especially those who populate the "safe" areas of the campaign where the PCs rest between adventures, acquire supplies, pick up rumors and adventure hooks, gather information, and generally live their lives when they're not fighting for their lives. These are the NPCs that bring towns and villages to life, that give context and continuity to a campaign beyond the dungeon, with whom player characters can build working and personal relationships, which in turn provide motivation and emotional stakes to adventurers beyond the base desire for wealth and XP.  This list, I suspect, is not exhaustive; there are almost certainly categories and sub-categories I've ...

 And now, the scourge of the sea floor, the beast of the beach, the ravenous reaver of the riverbed... the giant crab! By the book, this thing is a heavy-duty killing machine. The description is one of the briefest in all of B/X D&D, at a mere three sentences. These tell us that giant crabs can't swim and are found on beaches, in coastal shallows and rivers, and in salt or fresh water, that they are always hungry and attack anything that moves, and that they are not intelligent. That last bit seems rather an odd thing to mention, considering  most D&D players and DMs surely already know that crabs aren't intelligent, and how many much more ambiguous cases of monster intelligence go entirely unremarked in their descriptions. Oh well. I guess maybe the authors were determined not to leave the description at only two sentences, and that was the best they could come up with. What is interesting here is that the giant crab is one of the very rare creatures that will alway...

 The D&D wilderness encounter tables are a hot mess. That's the message from Eric Diaz at Methods & Madness , and he's absolutely right. It's a subject I've pondered a lot over the years, and I have some thoughts on the matter too.  The post linked above covers the problem quite well, and I'd encourage you to read it. In brief, the tables are both wildly dangerous to adventuring parties, featuring ridiculous frequency of very powerful creatures such as dragons, and the encounters often aren't even terrain-appropriate. My own two cents' worth in the comments was that many of the encounters end up being utterly pointless as well, such as sea snakes on shipborne adventures. The next step in finding a solution is to identify what we'd like to see.  Do we want random wilderness encounters at all? I'd argue that yes, we do, because hex crawls almost by nature consist of large swathes of unkeyed territory with nothing but a terrain symbol in the ce...

 The cockatrice, from the Expert Rules, is one of those monsters that should almost never be engaged by prudent players. It's described as a small monster, with head, wings, and legs of a rooster and the tail of a serpent. What exactly is meant by "small" isn't entirely clear, though I've always interpreted it to be the size of a normal rooster. Apparently a serpent's neck too. What's interesting about the cockatrice is its extreme toughness for its size, with a monstrous 5 Hit Dice. That's equal to a grizzly bear or lion in hit point potential and attack rolls! With Hit Dice in D&D overwhelmingly correlating at least roughly to a creature's size and bulk, the cockatrice is a massive outlier. There seems no satisfactory explanation but to chalk it up to magic, and indeed, the cockatrice is clearly a magical creature.  Its AC of 6 (leather and shield equivalent) is OK but nowhere near impressive. Its ground-based movement is 90'(30') put...

 The chimera, from the Expert Rules, is a beast adapted from Greek mythology. Its mythological description varies; it is usually described as having the body and head of a lion, and a goat's head, with parts of a serpent. The goat or lion heads may have breathed fire. The tail may have a serpent's head. In D&D, it has the foreparts of a lion, the hindparts of a goat, and the heads of lion, goat, and dragon. The Greek versions seem generally to be wingless, but D&D evidently gives the creature the wings of a dragon.  At a glance, the chimera would seem to be a pretty tough encounter. It has a sturdy AC of 4, equivalent to mail and shield, and 9 Hit Dice, equal to an elephant or a blue dragon. It can walk or run at 120'(40'), the same as an unencumbered human, and fly at 180'(60'), so it's tough to escape if things go south, and its staunch morale of 9 makes it unlikely to give up. It gets a rather remarkable five attacks per round. Its damage, though,...