B/X Monsters A to Z: Elephant

 Real-world creatures statted up for D&D are almost always illuminating and confounding examples, and the elephant, from the Expert Rules, is no exception.

Elephants are given an Armor Class of 5, equivalent to mail armor. That seems pretty stout, but the term "pachyderm," a common synonym for these largest of land animals, literally means "thick skin." I have never actually touched an elephant, much less tried to pierce its hide, (or mail armor, for that matter) but that AC 5 at least has the air of plausibility. Hit Dice-wise, the elephant has 9, which makes it equal to a blue dragon in its capacity to absorb physical punishment. It also makes it equal to a Name-level human fighter with no Constitution adjustments, and even a bit inferior to one with high CON, the realization of which has always made my brain itch; it just doesn't seem right for a 175-ish-pound human to be as tough as a giant beast weighing at least several tons. That's the abstraction of D&D for you, though.

Anyway. The description states elephants will always charge first, attacking with their tusks for double damage, and in subsequent rounds will either use their tusks (25%, two attacks for 2-8 damage each) or trample (75%, one attack, at +4 against opponents man-sized or smaller, for 4-32 points of damage). There are a lot of things that are weird about this:

Firstly, the notion that an elephant is going to actually pick one of these attack forms in advance of the attack roll itself, rather than simply hitting its foe with whatever it's able to hit him with. 

Secondly, the notion that an elephant, being pretty intelligent for an animal, and also having evolved to defend itself and its herd effectively, would ever choose to use a less effective attack form, and as written, the tusk attacks are greatly inferior to trampling. Even with double damage from the charge, the tusk attack maxes out at 32 points of damage, which is the same max damage as the trample attack, but without the +4 to hit. Once the charge is done, the tusks are less than half as effective overall as trampling.

Thirdly, that it makes separate and discrete attacks with each tusk. (It clearly doesn't make a separate and discrete attack with each foot when it tramples!) 

Finally, it isn't stated how many man-size or smaller opponents an elephant can trample or ram in a round, but it seems ridiculous to suppose it's only one at a time.

Elephants' other stats are pretty unremarkable. Their Morale of 8 is pretty middle-of-the-road. Their movement rate of 120'(40') is the same as an unencumbered human, which might be a little bit generous, considering that wikipedia lists the top speed of an elephant at about 16 miles per hour. In terms of numbers encountered, you could meet anywhere from a single rogue elephant to a herd of up to 20 individuals, which presumably includes young, for which no stats are given. The description states that both male and female elephants have tusks, which indicates the D&D elephant is most similar to our real-world African elephant. Asian elephant females have much smaller tusks than males, and both sexes sometimes lack tusks entirely. 

Interestingly, no statistics are given for elephants' encumbrance capacity, nor are they included in the tables for mounts and beasts of burden elsewhere in the rules.  

Elephant tusks are specified to be worth 100-600 gold pieces each for their ivory, which ironically should serve well to prevent adventurers from purposely hunting them, as much more valuable treasure can generally be had from much less formidable creatures. Murderhoboism is one thing, but I would hope few of us want to run a game glorifying the ivory trade. 

The elephant as written needs an overhaul, in my opinion. I'd give it an extra Hit Die or two, perhaps 10 HD for an Asian elephant analog and 11 for the Africanesque variety. A raging elephant can attack up to four targets directly in front of it, making separate attack rolls for each, with a +4 bonus if all are man-size or smaller. Its damage dice (4d8) are divided equally among the targets; i.e. 4d8 to a single target, 2d8 each to two targets, and 1d8 each to four targets. (In the case of three targets, the fourth d8 is allocated randomly among the three.) An elephant's initial charge can bowl through a crowd of opponents in a 10' x 30' area, inflicting 4-32 points of damage to each (no attack roll needed, but only one elephant can charge any given group). Each opponent may make a saving throw vs. death ray to avoid the charge. 

An elephant can carry up to 10,000 coins of weight at normal movement, or 20,000 cn at half speed. (Based on roughly a 6-ton elephant, with sources claiming a load-bearing capacity of between 10% and 20% of the animal's own weight.)*

*This is considered by many sources to be cruel, on account of the particulars of elephant spinal anatomy making them unsuited to bear heavy weights on their backs, especially for long periods of time. Of course this was historically common practice, whether through callousness or simple ignorance. Fortunately, D&D is a game, and purely fictional, so you can choose to depict this aspect of elephant-based labor, or not, in whatever way suits your campaign, but there it is for your real-world edification. 

Elephants seem unlikely to see much use in-game as set encounters, but do make an appearance in the wilderness random encounter tables. They might also appear as beasts of burden or war along with certain categories of human encounters. Elephants are often considered to be on par with chimpanzees and dolphins in terms of intelligence -- they're known to employ simple tools, to grieve their dead, and to be capable of basic self-awareness such as recognizing their own reflections -- which makes encounters with them potential role-playing opportunities for parties with access to animal communication magic. You might not have deep philosophical conversations with an elephant, but it seems reasonable to impute a certain capacity for abstract understanding to them, and thus perhaps to interact with them on a higher level than bare instinctual motivations.