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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3273964" data-attributes="member: 4937">Browsing throught my 1st edition MMII finds monsters HD such as...Annis: 7+3-12 (as a giant hag, it follows the giant HD convention)Barkburr: 2-6 (this is 2-6 HD, not 2-6 hit points, interesting the XP table has entries starting at 1HD suggesting 2-6 is a misprint)Bloodthorn: 5-30 + special (Making this plant one of the most powerful monsters in the game.)Catfish, Giant: 7-10Choke Creeper: 25 (I thought I'd throw that out as the MMII was stuffed full of plants that could eat most dragons for breakfast.)Shadow Dragon: 4-6 + 4-6 (And this on top of the fact that in 1st edition, the hit points of a dragon - and not its HD - depended on its age.)Dragonfly, Giant: 8 + 1-8Formian Giant: 13 + 1-3Firbolg: 13 + 2-7Grim: 4 + 2-8Hangman Tree: 61 hp/year (The great thing about this was that it meant that a sapling had more hit points than Thor.  A 151 year old tree, merely the oldest on the table, had 9211 hit points, by far more than any other creature in the game, and more I think even than 3rd edition epic monsters.  I always wanted my players to encounter a 1000 year old hangman tree somewhere in my campaign world, but I feared they'd find some way to kill it and I'd be dolling out 489000 XP.)Jann Shiek: 84Jann Amir: 95 (The amazing ninety-five HD of the Jann Amir fired my imagination from the first time that I read the entry.  This was the most HD of any creature in the game, with average hitpoints higher than even the elder gods.  Truly the Jann were a mighty race of unparalled power to have leaders such as this.  You can imagination my disappointment when I figured out several years later that this had to be a typo, and the intended HD was 9+5)Muckdweller: (1-4 hp)Quickling: 1 1/2 (effectively 1 + 1-4, quickling leaders had 4 1/2 HD.)Raven: 1/4 Rock Reptile: 5 + 1 + 5-12 (The creature got bonus hit points for each foot of length.  A strange couriousity is that the creature was basically weaker for being size large under 1st edition rules, and yet the size large version gave far more experience for defeating it.)Scum Creeper: 1 (2-8 hp)  (1st edition had all sorts of wierd exceptions like this)Squirrel, Carnivorous Flying: (1-7 hp) (see what I mean?)Thunder Beast: 4-9 + 4-9Vilstrak: 1-6 hpYochlol: 6 (1d10 hp per die)There really no rules about how you could create a monster in 1st edition.  That was both good and bad.  Good designers broke the rules with purpose.  My favorite such rules tossing is in Pharaoh.  Tracy and Laura Hickman clearly want to present some mooks that are or high enough skill (good THAC0's) to challenge the party, but still fall over dead like good mooks.  Lacking any of the devices of 3rd edition, he comes up with the solution of 27 4HD creatures with the following hit points: (2,7,1,2,3,1,9,8,2,1,2,10,2,2,2,9,1,10,2,10,10,2,5,4,5,2,5)</blockquote>

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