The Justice Beast

Yeah, I had to change the zorbo a lot for it to make any kind of sense.

Justice Beast

Hit Dice: 2 or more
Size: S (1-2 HD)/M (3-5 HD)/L (6 HD)
Move: 6
Armor Class: 5 (descending)/14 (ascending); Armor 0/Agility 2/Magic 2
Attacks: Bite 1 + 1d6/4 HD
Special abilities: Grows with enemies
Intelligence: Animal
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Reaction: 8 (positive)
Morale: 9 (brave)
XP Basis: As Hit Dice when slain

The appearance of this creature? Variously claimed to be a small, fluffy bear-like thing; a white woodland rabbit; a curiously rounded and serene monkey. It is only allegory, of course, yet some insist that the Gods of Reciprocity gave this thing their powers and loosed it on the earth to teach men the consequences of their acts.

Assume for a moment it exists. Its placid demeanor turns to a growling when approached with the intent to capture or harm. Instantly the creature grows; starting from one hit die, it adds one hit die for each level or hit die of creatures within 60 feet who have hostile intent toward it. For every four hit dice it possesses, it rolls 1d6 for damage, adding to this total the 1 hp of its normal attack. Its vigorous defense will end only in its death, or in its shrinkage back to original form, as foes are laid low or routed off.

Flandys the sea captain, they say, once treated such a beast very well. After one short battle, the pirates of her particular coast knew to leave her well alone. In time she came to see the beast as very useful indeed; when it tried to wander off, she had it restrained. For the end of her own tale - used, betrayed and fettered in chains - only the Gods of Reciprocity are to blame.

The Next-to-Last Shall Be Worst

My vote for the worst monster in all of AD&D goes to the one they saved for next-to-last in Monster Manual II.

Somehow it survived into 2nd edition.

Let's see ...

Silly Monster Chassis. The Zorbo is a ferocious, flesh-eating .... koala bear. Now Aussies doubtless know that the koala is a nasty little nipper, but for the rest of us, it's not a creature that exudes any kind of menace. Not scary enough for weird fantasy, not medieval enough for medieval fantasy.

Stupid Ability.  The Zorbo's main ability is the ability to absorb the toughness of its surroundings. Yes, its AC and damage get better when it stands on stone, as opposed to say, earth or grass. This leads to the interesting tactical challenge of defeating it by convincing it to stand on a feather mattress. I'm not sure what is dumber, too: absorbing the hardness of stone without looking any different, or turning into a granite-skinned koala.

Player-Hating Ability. Another characteristic of many bad monsters is that they serve the whim of sadistic DMs with a tacked-on ability that screws players over. The zorbo is no different; his absorption extends to opponents and his touch, unoriginally, makes their armor dry up and blow away. For the rare zorbo who treads on soft earth by choice, doing this might actually improve his AC, but the real reason is to throw the exact same "gotcha!" at players who know to run from a rust monster.

None Of It Makes Sense. As far as unrelated concepts go, "a koala bear" and "absorption of Mohs Scale rating" are definitely in the big leagues of non-sequitur-dom.

Stupid Name. Top it all off with the name Zorbo. For lo, he is ab-Zorbent.

Not Even Flamboyantly Bad. Like great trash cinema, the flamboyantly bad monsters celebrated in fandom - the flumph, tirapheg, flail snail and so forth - earn their kudos by showing a crazy, unbounded creativity at the divergent step, setting up for a more spectactular failure at the "what does it all mean" convergent step. None of this applies to the zorbo.

So, little fella, are you worth improving? I'm not sure, but next post I'm going to try.

The Trianthrope

Here's my own take on the tirapheg, and also a chance to show out my new unified old school system monster listing format. Comments on both monster and format are welcome. Some explanations of the format, below the monster:

Trianthrope

Hit Dice: 2 or more
Size: M
Move: 6
Armor Class: 9 (descending)/10 (ascending); Armor 0/Agility 0/Magic 0
Attacks: Arm bash 1d4 nonlethal; Arm bash 1d4 nonlethal; Hand (dagger) 1d4
Special abilities: Spells; 2 mind attacks (save vs. Mind/Spell or 1d6 damage to INT and WIS); saves at +4 vs. mind and illusion spells
Intelligence: Exceptional
Alignment: Neutral
Reaction: variable, from 3-8
Morale: 6
XP Basis: As Hit Dice, plus 3 major Specials

A trianthrope is the willing or unwilling result of an arcane alchemical ritual known as the Chymical Wedding, in which a living male and female body are fused together, creating a third sentience which controls its parents. The union of two bodies and their exploitation to create a third is monstrously evident in the creature's two featureless heads, handless arms, and footless legs. The third head is hairless but has a normal face, the third arm is possessed of long, supple inhuman fingers, and the third leg is wide-footed and contributes to an effective if slow means of ambulation aided by the other two stumps.

The creature communicates by direct telepathy, with no need to know the language of the being it communicates with. It may have more hit dice than two if people with class levels were used to create it. The head with a face can silently use illusion and mind-affecting spells as a magic-user with level equal to its hit dice plus one. The faceless heads each can make one mental attack per round with a range of 60 feet; the victim must save or take 1d6 temporary damage rolled separately to intelligence and wisdom, being unable to think if one ability goes below 3 and knocked out completely if at or below 0. Lost abilities are regained at 1 point per 10 minutes.

Nothing definite can be said about the disposition of this creature. Some are driven quite insane and hostile by their ordeal; others master themselves and become terrifying, if physically fragile, controllers of bodyguard creatures. A few are curious and potentially friendly to intruders.

Monster format explanations:

• The Armor breakdown is a way to let GMs know how many points to subtract if physical armor is being ignored (as when a mere touch needs to be scored) or if agility is being ignored (as when attacked by surprise or from the back).
• Nonlethal damage knocks out its victim if reduced to zero or lower hit points, and is regained at 1 point per minute.
• Intelligence is classified as in AD&D, with the understanding that this is not mere book-learning ability as in some interpretations of the character ability, but how strategic and clever the beast is.
• Reaction is rolled on two d6; in effect, it can also be expressed as a modifier by subtracting 7 from it. A roll equal to the reaction score or one below it indicates a neutral attitude, with various degrees of hostility according to the margin it failed or succeeded by.
• Morale is also rolled on two d6, as in the Basic game. At some point in the future I'll explain further the various interactions of Reaction and Morale rolls...
• XP basis: Old-school games vary enormously in XP granted for monsters slain or dealt with. I myself prefer 100xp/HD (the perils of fighting are its own deterrent at lower levels, and this lets me be stingier with treasure there), but the norm across S&W/OSRIC/LL is a tighter award.  The best I think I can do is indicate how much special abilities should count. In my system each major special adds 50% of the original base hit dice and each minor one 25%. Thus a 2HD tirapheg should be treated as 5HD due to its effective 3 major special abilities.

Bad Monsters: The Urge to Improve

Close behind the temptation to laugh at bad monsters (ha, ha and ha) is the temptation to improve them. It's the same urge that led Neil Gaiman to write a "Prez: The Teen President" story in heroic rather than camp mode in Sandman, or Alan Moore to use Mr. Mxtyplxzwhatever as a very serious villain in one of his DC series. This upgrading from silly to serious is known in TV Tropes land as Cerebus Syndrome, after the Dave Sim comic series that evolved from a funny-animal spoof of Marvel's Conan series to something altogether more profound.

Soon to be released, if not already out, is a fine example in the D&D canon: Paizo's Misfit Monsters Redeemed. How successful have Messrs. McComb, McCreary, and Sutter been? Hard to judge from just the blurb. Some of their "misfits," like the dire corby and flail snail, I never thought were that bad to begin with. With others, like the disenchanter, I'm highly skeptical about their chances for redemption at all. And others show real inventiveness and promise, like the adherer rethought as a horrible spider-silk mutant, and the flumph as a Derlethian herald of the fight against the Great Old Ones.

For some monsters, as for film star Frances Ethel Gumm or pop star Stefani Germanotta, a change of name is going to be a necessary part of any serious rebranding. There's no room for a "flumph" in the Cthulhu Mythos, and I'm guessing most people hate the flail snail because of its silly rhyming name. This point was grasped by Max, of the currently inactive blog Malevolent and Benign, in his great series of Tirapheg Week posts. Five differently named variants on the classic half-baked, purposeless weirdo monster from the Fiend Folio - living statue, alien wizard, mutant mishap, limb-collecting pirate, and three-headed lounge singer - for five different game systems, all brilliantly executed.

What drives people to upgrade the classic old stinkers of monsterland? The urge is greatest, it seems, for the "failure to converge" monsters. These collections of haphazard bits, pieces and abilities form a kind of Rorschach test, an irresistible challenge to create meaning out of meaninglessness. I'm sure there are other improvements out there that I haven't come across, and it would be interesting to know of them.

Next: my own tirapheg variation.

Bad Monsters: Failure to Converge

The most spectacular failed monsters are those that bring together elements never yet joined before - the head of a rabbit! the body of a lemur! tentacles that smear you with liquid cement! - but without apparent thought as to how all these elements make a viable whole. In problem-solving terms, the bad monster represents a lot of playing around with the puzzle pieces, but not hitting on a solution that works.

This raises the question, "what works for a monster?" The answers are many, explaining why bad monsters are so hotly debated, as you can see if you even get two flumph haters and two flumph lovers (or at least flumph toleraters) in a chatroom together.

 
Because of this, I am forced to conclude that no monster is bad in and of itself. Even the Fiend Folio's umpleby - yes, the umpleby, my friends, that hairy master of static electricity discharge - would make a great goofy character in a children's book. Or a cool Pokemon. It's just completely out of place in a dungeon.

(Well, all right, there is one exception that wins the crown of the intrinsically worst monster in all of AD&D. It doesn't have a cult of awfulness, it doesn't inspire mockery or jokes. It is not imaginative or interesting enough to even be magnificently bad. I will reveal and explain in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile, guesses are welcome.)

Now, some of the things that go into a working monster are ...

Problem-solving challenge. A monster's habits or abilities can make it a particularly memorable or versatile adversary. Trying to find its vulnerability (it's hideously ugly, was once human and has smashed every mirror in the mansion ... hmmm ...); being surprised by the classic "gotcha" monsters (whoever would have thought that ten foot pole was a giant stick insect?), or just marveling at its strange tactics (it's using the vines on the ceiling to get away!), are all things that make a monster interesting.

The surprise factor, of course, drops dramatically once the monster is published and becomes generally known. And a DM who relies too heavily on "gotchas" like the mimic ... goldbug ... um, cloaker anyone? ... will end up with a paranoid, slow-moving, and generally disillusioned party, and a silly dungeon. Which, indeed, might be the point.

Resonance with setting. The number one cause of disagreement on bad monsters is their fit to the setting. One DM may play the game as a gritty, boils-and-billhooks medieval affair. Another might prefer a backdrop of vaguely Renaissance, vaguely Orientalist weird fantasy. Still another might run a gonzo campaign where just about anything goes. They will all have different ideas about what monsters are appropriate. Some examples:

• Dark Ages or Ancient World epic: Pretty much only the monsters of that epoch's folklore, or plausible variants on the same, fit in. Satyrs and aegipans, not orcs.

• Medieval romance: This is the middle and dark ages as glimpsed and fantasized through the rear-view mirror, for 500 years of European history - from the Renaissance chivalry novelists (Ariosto, Spenser, Tasso) to Tolkien. Mythical, legendary, and wholly allegorical figures abound. Orcs rub elbows with hippogriffs and dragons. Stick with combinations of people, heraldic animals, and the occasional plant and you are on safe ground here.

• Weird fantasy and horror: Looking to far-past and far-future decadence and barbarism, this genre is much more forgiving of tentacles, blobs, giant insects, psionics, human-animal hybrids, and other quasi-science-fictional elements as long as they are eerie and frightening - just being weird is not enough, Mr. Umpleby. Prehistoric creatures are also fair game.

• Sword and planet: Alien worlds from the first half of the 20th century abounded in life forms bearing suspicious resemblance to earth creatures with dye jobs, extra limbs, horns, etc. Humanoids "evolved" from terran-analogue creatures are also common among writers less rigorous in their xenoanthropology than Burroughs. Weird fantasy critters can also be worked in; the main difference between the two genres is more in the equipment of the heroes than the nature of what they're fighting.

• Science fiction: And in this genre, the weirder the more believable. If it looks too much like an Earth-whatever, it's suspect.

Natural or symbolic coherence: The really great monsters have parts that go together, and abilities that go with those parts; symbolically, if not literally. The griffin, for example, combines the nobility of the mammal and bird monarchs, for an ultimate symbol of ultimate nobility. The necrophidius, praised previously, combines two classic symbols of fear, and adds abilities in keeping with those of a snake - poison and swaying charm. It doesn't hurt that it would also be at home in either a medieval or weird fantasy setting, and many people's conception of "proper D&D" combines the two of those elements to various degrees.

The opposite of this is ability-platform syndrome. You come up with a great ability ... let's say, draining magic items. You then ruin that ability by taking about 2 seconds to decide it should go on a glowing blue camel with a prehensile trunk. Or jumble syndrome, where you jumble two or three critters together, add and subtract parts, and voila! The dread one-eyed gorilla shark of Planet Mongo. Again, great for gonzo or heavily sci-fi campaigns, but not so great for the fantasy genre most people are used to.

Next time: The fine art of redeeming monsters; or, Captain Save-A-Flumph.

Bad Monsters: Failure to Diverge

Allow me to resurrect this article on creativity that came to my attention via Trollsmyth several months ago.

I'm passingly familiar with the psych literature on creativity, but the short review in the article reminded me that creativity is not just about making up crazy stuff (divergent skills), but also vetting the crazy ideas to make sure they serve your purpose (convergent skills). The convergent skills in particular are what makes the difference between "Yeah, she's very 'creative' (eyeroll)" and "Wow, she's really creative!"

Now that we're ready to move from the good side of the Fiend Folio to the bad, this theory can help explain bad monsters - in AD&D or anywhere else. Monsters can either fail to diverge, or converge. Converging is the more spectacular kind of failure, so let's cover failure to diverge first, AKA basic lack of creativity.

The prime example of this is where you take an existing monster, jack it up by a hit die or two, and pretty much call it a day. I'm not saying the Fiend Folio didn't have its flinds and what not, and even the Monster Manual needlessly promoted the otyugh to the, er, neo-otyugh. But the real champion of the phoned-in monster upgrade was Monster Manual II - greater basilisk, greater lammasu, annis, xaren, margoyle, storoper, thessalhydra, different colored slimes, jellies, puddings and oozes for Pete's sake ...

Mmm. White pudding.

Then you have the even more wrongheaded monster downgrade - the moral equivalent of letting your players feel important in the Star Wars universe by having them meet Dark Helmet. Thus, you have FF's mini-red dragon, the firedrake. And then MM2 goes hog-wild with a mini-beholder, mini-stone golem, and hey, if you want to say you bagged an elephant too, we'll give you one the size of a Jack Russell terrier.

Let's not forget the gratuitous monster breeding program, the kind that dares to envision the offspring of two critters already in the same niche - kind of like those towns where a Norwegian dating a German is considered "interracial." Thus, the FF's ogrillon, giant troll, two-headed troll (oh, they forgot the ogg-roll, which is what you get when you cross an ogre and a troll, right) ... yeah, and the gorilla bear.

Look, either you need a gorilla, or you need a bear. You are never going to need a gorilla bear.

What's sad about all these monsters is that they show so little faith in you, the DM, and your ability to add, subtract, or average basic numbers. If you want a super-tough ... let's call it a russet ... hulk, you should really be able to gin it up on the fly, adding some hit dice here, subtracting some AC there. AD&D is simple enough that you don't have to worry about his Spot skill or Charisma.

Next: The convergently challenged ... source of the truly legendary WTF's.

Grimlocks vs. ... Every Other 2HD Soldier

Okay - one more damn good Fiend before we start fixing up the bad ones.

Grimlocks are, of course, the Fiend Folio's version of H. G. Wells' Morlocks from The Time Machine. They fill that "2 hit die troops" niche that your party starts bumping into once they have a level or two under their belts. Grimlocks are in direct competition with gnolls, troglodytes, lizard men, crabmen and so on.

And they win. Hands down the best 2nd level dungeon soldier.

The great advantage of grimlocks is they are not ani-men, human-imals, beast-oids, zoo-morphs or what have you. They are human ... and not human. Most plausibly descended and degenerated from us, they belong to a great old pulpy tradition of inbred cave-dwellers. Consider, for example, how much creepier Clark Ashton Smith's The Dweller in the Gulf would have been if it had been set on Earth not Mars, and with Earthlings and not Martians populating the strange society the explorers find.

Unlike gnolls and their kindred, unlike the weaker humanoids the party has been battling on the shallow levels, grimlocks are utterly of the underground, natives of its deep places. They may raid on the surface ... but they don't have to. Grimlocks are fundamentally different from the Tolkienoid grunts; imports from the world of science fiction, they nonetheless fit perfectly in a world of weird fantasy.

Completing the greatness of grimlocks is their blindness and Daredevil-sense. Different things work against them. No illusions; no casting light on the face; then again, if they surprise you, it's not because you've been holding lanterns and torches to light your way. Visual dangers of the dungeon - medusa's gaze, bedazzling mosaics, enchanting purple flames - hold no peril for them. But clouds of pepper, or the din of beaten shields? That just might work. One more way their traits and attributes hold together and create a memorable picture of underground horror.

So, one last time - sometimes the Fiend Folio is better.