Gelatinous Icosahedron

 For good or ill, giant versions of normal animals are a mainstay of D&D, and here we have another one, the giant ferret from the Basic Set. According to the description, giant ferrets look like three-foot-long weasels. I'm not sure why we need the comparison to weasels -- did the average person not know about ferrets in the early 80s, or did Tom Moldvay just think they didn't, or did he just need an icebreaker statement about ferrets and that's what he came up with? I'll be forked if I know, but at least the information about the animal's length is useful for visualizing it. As their real world counterparts hunt rats, so giant ferrets hunt giant rats, and are sometimes trained for this purpose, though their unpredictable tempers make this a hazardous proposition. (At least one official adventure module, B11: King's Festival, features a giant ferret trained by orcs.)  For relatively small and very slender creatures, giant ferrets have very robust stats, with...

 Another PC class, monster-ified: the elf, from the Basic Rules. Once again, the book doesn't waste any time describing what elves are, which we already know from the character creation section. Instead we jump right in with a reminder that elves will each have one 1st level magic-user spell, chosen at random. The rest of the description notes that if 15 or more elves are encountered (by the book, only in the wilderness or a lair) one will be a leader of level 2-7. Once again we see the formula, introduced in the Dwarf entry of the same book, of multiplying the leader's level by 5 and checking against that percentage on each magic item subtable for possible magic items. Unlike dwarven leaders, an elven leader checks on all subtables, presumably because elves can use items from every subtable. No guidance is given should one roll up a specific item not usable by elves (say, a staff of healing from the Wand/Staff/Rod subtable) but it would be reasonable to interpret it as no item...

 In a recent post about things I like and don't like about B/X D&D, I mentioned in passing that I don't see initiative as a strictly necessary rule in D&D combat. Another blogger has suggested I expand on that thought, and so in this post, I articulate my case for why initiative is not a necessary component of a functional D&D combat sequence. Initiative, as I see it, can be a useful tool to impart some order and structure to combat. Insofar as it models any aspect of real combat in the game, though, it doesn't do it particularly well. Maybe not particularly badly either, but it's a simplistic and formalized rule for a very chaotic and unpredictable situation. Depending on particular circumstances and how one rationalizes it, it can either make sense or defy sense. It implies that whoever has initiative, if his attack roll succeeds, does all his damage before his opponent can attack in return, so the opponent might be killed before he can even attempt his ow...