AD&D 1E XP Value for Monsters?

[ilgatto]

I think you've already earned enough XP from this exercise to go up a level!

I'll tell my DM!

 

[ilgatto]

@ilgatto , I'm starting to think you're worrying too much about whay "they" were thinking at the time, where the true usefulness of this exercise in fact lays in redesigning the SA and EA lists - and maybe all of Appendix E in the process - such that "we" can make more sense of them today.

Fair enough.

Since I was trying to make sense of the immunities and resistances last, shall we try and see if we can do something with that?

MM, p. 5: “MAGIC RESISTANCE indicates the percentage chance of any spell absolutely failing in the monster’s presence.”

I think one of the biggest problems here is the fact that “magic resistance” is worth an EAXPA.

Take, say, a triton leader with 4 HD (and no "magical ability"), which has MR 90% as its sole “special defense”, and therefore gets +65 xp for one EAXPA.

Compare that to the gelatinous cube (also 4 HD), which has “spell immunity (fear, hold, polymorph, sleep), immune to electricity, immune to paralyzation, resistant to cold”. If all of that would stack (and we consider “spell immunity” as just a single “special defense”), it would get +100 xp for four SAXPBs, while it is actually a lot more vulnerable to spells than the triton leader, even if we would take the MM quote above referring to “spells” literally.

IMO, this doesn’t seem right.

Let me see if I can insert a table here...

Nope, I’ll have to cobble something together again.

So here are the contestants as far as I can see: