Castles & Crusades Monster Stats, The Riddle That Is...

Castles & Crusades again.

The Troll Lords do a great job of sifting through folklore to find obscure creatures and fairies to spice up your game. Below is the Becolaep. The Becolaep is a medium sized, spectral witch, undead, incorporeal, chaotic-evil, life-draining... thing. Nothing really new here. But...

 

How about HD: 4d20... 

And 2 claws that do 3d10 damage...!

And a Life-Draining touch that drains 1d20+4 hit points (double on a critical hit) which in turn heals the Becolaep, 1d20+4...??? (5-24... that's quite a range!)

Before I go on, let me talk about the stat blocks in general. First, C&C has the perfect balance of information, somewhere closer to B/X than AD&D. However, I don't like that the listed attacks do not include the attack bonus. I know in C&C the attack bonus is equal to the number of HD, but leaving it out creates a little bit of unnecessary work for the DM (CK) even if it is just a glance.

Saving Throws will either say P, M, or both. This means physical and/or mental. If they have the save it is 12 minus their HD, if not, it's 18 minus their HD. This, also, should've been pre-calculated for the reader. In the case of the Becolaep it should read: P: 8, M: 14. If you want people to play your game, make it easy for people to play your game.

The XP for defeating a Becolaep is 500, (+4 per hit point.) I have no idea how they came up with this number. In the beginning of the book there is an XP chart (like with most other versions of D&D) that helps you calculate a monster's XP. Using said chart, I can not come up with 500, even taking into consideration undead traits, which you must look elsewhere for. Which is fine, such charts are just a rough guideline. A lot of monsters in this book don't seem to match up with it though. Again, it's OK, just an observation. I find a lot of traditional monster XP to be low anyway, as I like to reward for killing and finding treasure. Fighting is fun, always has been, always will be.

About these HD... 

At first I thought a creature's HD might depend on it's type, fey, animal, undead, etc. But...

Below we have a sample page of the rather large section on fairies (this is all taken from the latest printing of Monsters & Treasure, btw) All four are small sized and similar in many ways, including XP, yet one has HD: 1d6, another has HD: 2d4, the others are HD: 1d8, and HD: 2d12. 

There's no logic here. This is not a complaint, btw, I actually like it, as well as the crazy damage, just trying to figure it out...

Now, part of the fun of the OSR, is that you can throw stats around, you can be whimsical, you know like -- how about HD: 3d12 and 8d4+7 bite damage, why? -- because.

Now I like this kind of whimsical design, to a degree, and I hope this is sort of what's going on in Castles & Crusades, because, if you are going to use this ruleset, it opens things up, liberates you to really have fun and get creative with it (not that you can't do that with any other version of our favorite game.) And it definitely makes the game more dangerous. And D&D should be dangerous. 

I like the fact that many monsters in C&C do damage like 2d10 or 3d10, but it's usually the more obscure monsters or occasionally a radically different take on an old one. Traditional monsters seem to have more traditional damage, for example, the Minotaur does damage: by weapon +4 -- that's lame as hell for such a savage beast, and the traditional, supernaturally strong Vampire only has a single 1d6 slam! A Troll's claws only do 1d4 and it's bite is 2d6, or by weapon +3 (another flaw, it lists all three attacks for the Troll but doesn't say 2 claws, 1 bite, "or" 1 weapon, it simply says claws, bite, weapon, or perhaps more logically it should say: 1 bite + ((2 claws or 1 weapon.)) And the Troll Lords really love their Valkyrie: (Valkryja in C&C) 15d8 HD, 25 AC, and this is exactly what it says for damage: Spear (8d10), Axe (12d12), Sword (10d8), Bow (6d8) as opposed to: by weapon +7, in AD&D.

So anyway, why 4d20 HD? (That's 4-80 hit points, btw)  I'll say this, no two Becolaeps will be the same as they'll run the gamut from super-weak to super-strong. And be glad that, all though they may have upwards of 80 hit points and have two claws that do 3d10 damage, their saves are mediocre and they will miss a lot in combat with only a +4 to-hit. 

Check out the Krampus...

It only has 4d6 (12 maybe 16) hit points, an average AC (14) and is only worth 55 XP (with no treasure.) But look at that damage in one round, 1d12, 1d10, and 2d20 (2-40!!!... and notice it only says claw, not claws, so 2d20...  twice???) The Krampus will either die in the first round or kill half the party!

Time to learn a new kind of fear.