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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ilgatto" data-source="post: 9794593" data-attributes="member: 86051">Agreed. There’s a lot going on in Appendix E, and virtually nothing of it makes any sense. In fact, there’s only about two dozen monsters in it with an xp value that corresponds to the “rules” laid out in the EXPERIENCE POINTS VALUE FOR MONSTERS table on p. 85—and the vast majority of these are monsters without any special/exceptional abilities. And even then, of those very few that do have them, the final xp value corresponding to the rules on p. 85 seems to be a coincidence rather than anything else (e.g., efreeti, wyvern).I suppose your “reasonable standard” is where, eventually, the elusive subject of “monster levels” comes into play. I’ve heard it argued that the DUNGEON RANDOM MONSTER TABLES in the DMG (p. 175 and on) are to be the guideline for this, which seems fair enough, but that brings many problems with it. For one, it may be based on OD&D and then misunderstood from the get-go, and for two, “monsters” can have also “levels”, character classes, and “abilities as” levels (which are the worst), and then some.Heh. So am I.Yup. The whole “hit points per hit die” thing is a bit of an issue. And not only for dragons, for there’s also the demon lords/princes and arch-devils, where the matter becomes even more complicated because of their 10-, 12-, and 20-sided Hit Dice in OD&D (well, for demons in any case).Even without that, things are also made worse by the fact that the #hp/HD is was “addressed” in 2E, which sort of suggests that it was a factor of at least some importance in 1E. Or perhaps in OD&D and then bleeding over into 1E?I have to say that the notion of breath weapons being an alternative bite is actually quite an interesting thought, which hadn’t crossed my mind. It would solve some issues, such as the iron golem not having a breath weapon and the gorgon having one, and it gets at least some way into the “hydra problem”. Hmm… but it doesn’t address the problem of breath weapon vs breath weapons—and then there’s the silver dragon... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":unsure:" title="Unsure    :unsure:"  data-smilie="24"data-shortname=":unsure:" />Not sure what you mean here. Are you suggesting that, say, a five-headed hydra should be treated as “five monsters with 1 Hit Die each” instead of one with 5 HD?Yeah, I’d agree with the notion that massive damage counts should probably not really apply to breath weapon damage. Although they still might. If we assume that a breath weapon is a “special attack”, as it says in Appendix E, and therefore worth 1×SAXPB in its own right (although DMG p. 85 doesn’t list a breath weapon in its bracketed examples after “special attacks”), then the massive damage count (which is an Exceptional Ability X.P. Addition) might still come into play. But that’s probably another rabbit hole.</blockquote>

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