Flying Monsters

In a recent session in the Castle of the Mad Archmage, the Muleteers went to retrieve the bodies, dead or alive, of a couple of rival party members who had gone missing, sent running by a fear gas trap in the middle of a series of rooms full of bats. This meant fighting giant bats, lots of bats. It was actually my first time dealing with lots of flying attackers and I improvised, inconsistently, a number of rules solutions to represent their menace.

After thinking things through I created this one-page rules sheet for the 52 Pages system. It covers where and how flyers can move, and what happens when they attack. Their ability to charge and overfly, surround and disorient, add to the tactical challenge.

One other things: a critical hit that wounds a flying creature in "arm"or "leg" brings it down for good, showing up the greater vulnerability of wings.

Release the bats!

Hit Dice Quirks: 4+4 or 5?

In some old-school d20 rulesets, such as Labyrinth Lord or its source Basic D&D game, hit points added to a monster's hit dice are just a "bump" up to the next hit die, so a creature with 4+4 dice attacks as a 5 hit die creature. Others, such as Swords & Wizardry or 2nd Edition AD&D, base their attacks on straight hit dice, so a creature with 4+4 dice attacks as a 4 hit die creature. Lamentations/WFRP's core rulebook still doesn't say how monsters get attack bonuses ... Anyway, my game uses the S&W convention, easier to remember.

With this system, and d8 as your hit die, each plus of 4 1/2 ends up averaging out to another hit die, and a 9+9 HD creature has the exact same average number as an 11 HD creature (49.5); just a tighter spread (18 to 81 vs. to 8 to 88). But, the 11HD creature is better at attacking and saving throws.

What I wonder is how much monster design takes this feature into account. There's a certain inertia when it comes to messing around with the ogre's 4+1 or the troll's 6+6, arbitrary figures seared into a generation's brains from adolescence.  After a while, hit dice codes seemed to be put out there for sheer novelty value, jumping the wereshark in Monster Manual 2 with stuff like 13+39 (the arcanadaemon), 2+8 (the tri-flower frond) or 7 plus, um, 3d4 (the annis). Keep in mind that each +3 hp counts as an extra hit die when attacking, by 1st Edition AD&D rules. Math is hard!

Or is that seven, plus three, minus twelve? Or 10-19 HD?

Anyway, back to straight-up hit dice combat tables. Why shouldn't the hill giant - long on endurance, short on skill - fight with 6+10 instead of 8+1 hit dice? Is a S&W cockatrice with 5 HD really better at attacking than a near-equivalent werewolf with 4+4? What about more fragile creatures with ample skill and fortune, like sprites or bird-men - shouldn't they have minuses (4-2 hit dice)?

OK, I find that it's hard to mentally budge those iconic numbers for the classic monsters. But maybe it's a thought when we turn to designing new ones.