BX Monsters A to Z: Leech, giant

 Today's monster, the giant leech, is one I've never used, nor been tempted to use in play. I'll get to why a bit later, but first, let's look at the stats and write-up as given in the Expert Rules.

The monster is described as a swamp-dwelling, three- to four-foot sluglike creature. A giant leech has a listed AC of 7, equal to leather armor, which probably represents a rubbery hide. It has a whopping 6 Hit Dice, which puts it on par with tigers, minotaurs, caecilians, polar bears, and white dragons, hit points-wise. Not gonna lie, that's a lot of beef. It moves at a rate of 90' (30') which is quite brisk for a big slab of worm-slug. Its damage of 1-6 points per attack is not exactly massive, but once it hits, it hangs on and sucks blood for an additional 1-6 every round, and only killing the leech will detach it and stop the bleeding. Its morale of 10 is presumably only to be used before the creature latches onto a victim, making it very unlikely to give up before it tastes blood, and absolutely relentless once it has. If the victim dies, the leech drops off and goes into hiding to digest its meal, so at least it doesn't immediately move on to a new target. The number appearing is 1-4, though, so you might have to contend with multiple 6 HD creatures with auto-damage per round and no chance of ending the fight by some means other than whittling away those big slimy piles of excess hit points. 

In my estimation, the giant leech as written is straight up hot trash. There's no sense of believable proportion. For starters, it's supposed to latch onto a victim and suck blood, but it has the Hit Dice of a very large creature. Nobody is going to walk, or even crawl around, with a worm the size of a tiger hanging off him. Hell, the caecilia, another 6 HD wormlike creature, is 30 feet long and can swallow human-sized prey whole! You could say that the giant leech is just really tough for its size, but disparities of that magnitude usually indicate something magical, and there's nothing magical about giant leeches. It's not a cockatrice or a specter; it's a normal invertebrate grown beyond its real world size. Its movement rate is way too fast for a sluglike lump with no limbs on land. Leeches can swim, and that rate would make more sense in that context, but if it's for swimming, that isn't specified. 

I can't really go much farther in this without offering my suggestions for rebuilding the giant leech in a way that makes sense, so without further ado...

Armor Class 8 -- It's rubbery, but not that tough to pierce.

Hit Dice: 1+1* -- It has some resilience, but isn't a mountain of hit points that can shrug off multiple sword cuts. One asterisk for a reasonable special ability -- see below. 

Move: 15' (5'); Swim 60' (20') -- Come on; it's just not that fast. 

Attacks: 1

Damage: 1-4

Number Appearing: 1-4 (2-8) -- It seems like the sort of thing that might be encountered in stagnant dungeon pools as well as swamps.

Morale: 9 -- And it will let go if its morale fails from taking damage while feeding. 

Giant leeches are most likely to attack when characters are wading or immersed in stagnant bodies of water. The leech's saliva is anesthetic; the victim must save vs. poison or be affected as if by a slow spell, moving and attacking at half normal rates. This lasts for 1-6 rounds after the leech is detached. 

And there you go, a biologically and ecologically credible version of a creature that made no sense on either of those counts before. It takes more to make an interesting monster that makes sound logical sense than just lots of hit points. 

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