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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5144226" data-attributes="member: 80487">Ah, yes! For those who don't know, the Cat Lord is the next entry after Cat (Domestic and Wild).The Cat Lord is very flavorful, evocative (to me at least) of several of the fictional sources of inspiration Gygax cited in Appendix N.The domestic cat issue was mainly a joke. It really reflects that the standard AD&D combat system was not meant to depict tackling Tabby for her visit to the veterinarian. Also in MM2, we find entries for such normally non-threatening animals as Bat, Eagle, Falcon, Goat, Otter, Owl, Rat, Raven, Skunk and Weasel. In the context of characters with just 1-to-whatever hit points, an ordinary rat (or cat) dishing out a whole point of damage calls for some extraordinary situation in my view.More generally, though, it is my impression that MM2 tended toward tougher monsters. It came out a couple of years before UA, but material in the latter had appeared beforehand in Dragon (and some in Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth), and I reckon had been tried even earlier in the Greyhawk campaign. So, I'm thinking that maybe the tougher monsters reflected tougher characters already adventuring in that campaign.(Then again, my impression is pretty subjective and might not be accurate.)</blockquote>