B/X Monsters A to Z: Elemental

I thought I had posted this entry of B/X Monsters A to Z months ago, but I was just perusing my drafts, and there it was, clearly unpublished. So here it is now, hopefully better late than never. Just try to imagine it sandwiched between Efreeti and Elephant, where it should have been all along.

I have to confess, I have never, ever used elementals in my D&D games. Was this a good choice or a poor one? Let's jump in and check these fellows out.

Elementals are creatures made of one of the four classic elements: fire, water, air, or earth. Right off the bat, the description focuses on the summoning of elementals, noting that they can only be brought forth from a large quantity of the appropriate element, e.g. a bonfire, a pond or larger body of water, open air, or an expanse of bare earth or stone, respectively. It is also noted that a summoned elemental must be controlled by its summoner to the exclusion of all else: the summoner cannot move faster than half speed, take any damage, or take any action other than paying attention to the elemental. If the summoner's concentration is broken, the elemental will break free and attack him, and anyone standing between it and the summoner. That is emphatically NOT a good position to be in.

Three levels of elementals are described, varying in power by the method of their summoning. The weakest are summoned by a staff, most notably a staff of wizardry, the only staff described in these rules capable of the feat. These have an Armor Class of 2, 8 Hit Dice, and inflict 1-8 points of damage per attack. Next up the scale, we have "device" elementals, summoned by special miscellaneous magic items (bowl, brazier, censer, and stone; you can probably guess which goes with which element). These have AC 0, 12 HD, and do 2-16 points of damage. Finally, there are the elementals called by the 5th level magic-user spell conjure elemental. Far and away the most powerful, these ones have AC -2, 16 HD, and damage of 3-24. 

Each type of elemental does an extra 1-8 points of damage against opponents in close contact with their elements, except for fire elementals, whose extra damage applies to creatures with cold-based attacks. Air elementals also have the ability to sweep away creatures of 2 HD or less that fail a save vs. death ray. All elementals can only be harmed by magic or magical weapons, though this is probably not an issue for characters of the levels likely to face them. 

Movement rates vary widely, from the plodding earth elemental at 60'(20') to the swift flight of the air elemental at 360'(120'). All but air elementals are constrained in their movement in some way; earth and fire elementals cannot cross a water barrier wider than themselves, and water elementals cannot move farther than 60' from water. 

One curious item in the stat block is elementals' Morale score of 10, which means that, in theory at least, they will flee if combat goes against them. For a seemingly unintelligent conjured being this is quite a surprise. I would have expected 12s across the board here, and I'm not sure what to make of this. I notice the text says that the elemental vanishes when slain, with no reference of returning to its home plane; whether this means the creature is truly killed is left wide open to interpretation. An elemental may also be dispelled (again, vanishing) or dismissed back whence it came by the summoner, if he still has control.

As implied by all the text about summoning methods and such, it does appear elementals do not appear naturally on the mortal plane; they are completely absent from wilderness encounter tables, for instance. Thus, they are most likely to be conjured by player characters themselves or by powerful adversaries. The most useful sort of elemental depends on the opponents you want to use it against, with air seemingly the most powerful generally. When faced with an enemy who conjures an elemental, intelligent beings who are reasonably knowledgeable in the ways of magic (including PCs) will likely want to target the summoner to disrupt his/her/its concentration and unleash the elemental's fury on him/her/it. Conversely, the summoner's party will want to focus resources on protecting the summoner, both to protect their ally and to maintain the elemental's focus on the foes.

Unfortunately, the description says nothing at all about what happens if the summoner is slain, either by an elemental over which control has been lost, or by some other means. The most logical inference to my mind is that the elemental returns whence it came upon the death of its summoner, this being a major reason why it will always attack said summoner if able: it wants to go home. Whether or not the elemental itself is the cause of death is irrelevant. If that were not the case, there would likely be a fair number of free, berserk elementals loose in the prime plane, a premise that seems to be contradicted by the text of the description.