"Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."

Sunday, November 8, 2009

B/X S&S: The Basic Rulebook Monster Roster


I think that one of the reasons I keep coming back to a sword & sorcery style game using B/X is the roster of monsters given in the basic and expert rulebooks. I have typed out the list of monsters from the basic rulebook below. Looking at the list there are a few observations that quickly come to me.

1. The high number of man- monsters such as Acolytes, Bandits, etc.

2. The number of normal and giant animals.

3. The number of S&S-type monsters that can be covered, approximated, tweaked from this list. To run a sword & sorcery style game using this list would require very few deletions. I would delete dragons, the demi-humans (dwarves, etc), a few of the fairytale monsters (pixies, sprites) and a few of the humanoids. Many of the humanoid monsters could be relabelled and reflavoured and used in a sword & sorcery game - for example, looking at the picture I posted in the Priest Class post it could easily be an ogre.

List of Monsters from Basic Rulebook
Acolyte
Ape, White
Bandit
Bat (Normal & Giant)
Bear (Black, Grizzly, Polar, Cave)
Beetle, Giant (Fire, Oil, Tiger)
Berzerker
Boar
Bugbear
Carrion Crawler
Cat, Great (Mountain Lion, Panther, Lion, Tiger, Sabre-tooth Tiger)
Cave Locust
Centipede, Giant
Doppleganger
Dragon
Driver Ant
Dwarf
Elf
Ferret, Giant
Gargoyle
Gelatinous Cube
Ghoul
Gnoll
Gnome
Goblin
Gray Ooze
Green Slime
Halfling
Harpy
Hobgoblin
Insect Swarms
Killer Bees
Kobold
Living Statue (Crystal, Iron, Rock)
Lizards, Giant (Gecko, Draco, Horned Chameleon, Tuatara)
Lizard Man
Lycanthropes
Medium
Medusa
Minotaur
Mule
Neanderthal
Noble
Normal Human
NPC Party
Ochre Jelly
Ogre
Orc
Owl Bear
Pixie
Rat (Normal, Giant)
Robber Fly
Rock Baboon
Rust Monster
Shadow
Shrew, Giant
Shrieker
Skeleton
Snake (Spitting Cobra, Pit Viper, Sea Snake, Giant Rattler, Rock Python)
Spider, Giant (Crab, Black Widow, Tarantella)
Sprite
Stirge
Thoul
Trader
Troglodyte
Veteran
Wight
Wolf (Normal, Dire)
Yellow Mold
Zombie

3 comments:

  1. Dungeons & Giant Lizards?

    Allowed classes would be?
    Fighter
    Thief
    Barbarian
    Savage
    Priest

    M-U?
    Cleric?
    Ranger mod I sent you?

    Did you want to try this with the online group? If anyone can tear a design apart it's that group of rogues.

    ReplyDelete