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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9173659" data-attributes="member: 20323">[USER=15700]@Sacrosanct[/USER] Love the comparison! One thing I've done a bit of is writing up one edition's monsters in the format of another edition and seeing what I can glean from that. Here's an example of what I mean - taking some 5e monsters and putting them into the OD&D quick reference chart format...[ATTACH=full]316057[/ATTACH]What I learned from this was that you can – with very important exceptions (spells & special abilities) – pare down a 5e monster to its most essential info that can be gleaned at a glance. Worrying about differences between checks/saves is probably more trouble for monsters than its worth. Most of the time common sense dictates the damage type a monster is doing.For a more tactical map+minis approach, speed could be squeezed into this table.For a more OSR approach, No. Appearing and Treasure could be squeezed in.For example, taking the Oni, I could run an oni in theater-of-the-mind using just this table and vague recollection that onis can fly (I should have noted that in table), and cast Cone of Cold and Invisibility IIRC. I don't really need the full description to vaguely recall how Regeneration & Change Shape work. It wouldn't be 100% accurate and perfect to the actual stat block, but I could get it to feel like an Oni encounter.This OD&D fast-and-loose approach to stat blocks supports a play style where the GM has a sort of "word bank" of monsters but doesn't necessarily know when the players will face any given monster from that word bank – wandering monster tables, dungeons with many monster types, fast play styles where players choose from which direction/hex they're exploring, etc.EDIT: Another example that I think would be worthwhile – when I have time I can try to do this over the weekend – is taking a monster (e.g. Ankheg or Goblin), reworking the AD&D lore text with some editing, 5e style bold headings, and removing the plain text combat, then taking the 4e block for the Ankheg or Goblin, and translating all that into a merged OSR / 5e statblock – so there'd also be No. Appearing, Morale, Treasure, and so forth alongside the combat stats. That might make for a very interesting approach.</blockquote>

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