Monsters, Creating

Make Monsters, Not Monstrosities
by Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon magazine - Monster Manual III - Dragon #59

The questions The answers Food gathering Defenses The food chain

Getting ideas Monsters from fiction - Not "all or nothing" Starkhorn

Statblock - - - Pictish Bag of Demons

Volume 3 - - - Volume BX/BECMI

    Elephant-sized, 13 hit dice, AC
    -3, move 12”, immune to cold and
    charms, animal intelligence but
    with psionic powers, strikes for 2-
    76/2-72 and can spit acid....

....This sounds like a monstrosity, not a
monster. A collection of unrelated numbers
similar to this, rolled on the tables
provided in All the World’s Monsters,
was the cause for merriment at the local
gaming session. Yes, you can “create”
monsters in this random way — you
don’t need tables to do it—but the result
is not a good, imaginative, useful monster,
it’s an unbelievable travesty. There
is an art and a method to creating good
monsters for role-playing campaigns;
one should follow some common-sense
rules — guidelines, really — to avoid silly,
absurd, or illogical creatures.

The 1st guideline, as already indicated,
is avoid random aggregations of statistics.
If you have several dozen charts
and tables — far more than were used in
the case mentioned above — you may
come up with a good monster. But, like
the proverbial monkeys typing randomly,
you’ll wait a very long time for a
Shakespearean-quality creature. If you
think about the whys and wherefores of
the monster, about the background to
the statistics, you can derive suitable
and sensible numbers for speed, armor
class, hit dice, and so on from the monster’s
background, not from dice rolls.
avoid random aggregations of statistics
<italicize the above words>

The 2nd guideline, then, is origins
first. Every monster exists for a reason, if
only because of survival of the fittest.
Consequently, ask yourself how this
monster came to exist, which usually
means: What ecological function does it
fulfill, as well as or better than any other
species, which enables it to survive and
reproduce? Sure, you can call something
an “enchanted monster,” created
by the proverbial mad wizard or by a god,
but this is usually a barren excuse, not a
reason. Unless you desire to give a
monster an ability which is quite unlikely
to have developed naturally, even in a
magical world — say, the ability to teleport
long distances — you should leave
the enchanted monsters and mad wizards
to the dice throwers. Moreover,
when you do devise a monster which is
un-natural, remember that it will probably
be unable to reproduce, and in any
event will probably be very rare indeed.

The 3rd guideline, which ties in very
closely with the second, involves defining
the ecological niche occupied by a
creature. Your monster species cannot
exist in a vacuum, sufficient unto itself. It
is part of the world: it affects other creatures
in its habitat, and is affected by
them, even when adventurers or other
humans are not present.

The monster must fit into the system,
particularly the food chain, without destroying
destroying it. If the existence of the monster
would alter the balance of nature,
either its characteristics must be adjusted
or you must alter nature in the relevant
campaign areas. The monster must
have a source of food, a means of reproduction
and sustenance which enables
sufficient young to grow to maturity to
continue the species, and places to live.
All of the details of hit dice, armor class,
speed, and other statistics must conform
with the basic needs.

Let’s take an extreme example. Imagine
that many or all rabbits were as
powerful as the rabbit in “Monty Python
and the Holy Grail,” able to tear out a
knight’s jugular vein in one swift strike.
This changes only one statistic, the rabbit’s
average damage inflicted per melee
round, but think of the repercussions on
the ecology! Swarms of carnivorous rabbits,
still reproducing at a high rate but
now, let’s say, eating the meat they kill,
would overwhelm the predators which
usually limit the rabbit population. If you
suppose that these creatures appeared
during the era before civilization, you
can imagine these rabbits covering the
entire world, stopped only by the occasional
great predators such as lions and
tigers. It is necessary, for the sake of
balance in nature, that the fecund rabbits
be harmless eaters of plants.

What about the other extreme? Imagine
a species of dragons that doesn’t
sleep much, produces a cub (or whatever
young dragons are called) every year,
and must eat 500 pounds of meat a day.
Since dragons are the true kings of
beasts, in any area devoid of human or
other highly intelligent (and magical) interference,
the dragons would soon be
all over, a commonplace — until they ran
out of food. As long as they could expand
into virgin areas, they would spread
like the proverbial plague. The point:
Dragons are so powerful that, unless
there is some limit to their food intake
and reproductive rate, they will sweep all
before them. A dragon necessarily sleeps
a lot, to reduce energy (food) use, and
rarely begets young. And it’s almost as
necessary that the dragon must live long
before it reaches maturity; that is, before
it can beget more dragons.

The questions
Let’s try to get at this in a more organized
manner. When you consider how a
proposed monster fits into the ecology,
you can ask several questions:

What does it eat?

What factors, other than availability
of food and habitat, hinder
the growth of numbers of the
species?

Where does it live?

There are many corollary questions,
f o r e x a m p l e :
Is it herbivorous, omnivorous, or
carnivorous?

What routines does it follow to
obtain food?

What natural enemies, diseases,
and difficulties of habitat kill young
before they mature?

What is its reproduction method
and rate?

What is the minimum amount of
territory which will support an individual
or a mated pair?

What terrain and climate is ideal
for the creature, and how much do
deviations from this ideal reduce
the creature’s ability to survive?

What are the creature’s natural
“defenses”?

This may seem a lot to ask, but you’ll
find in practice that everything falls into
place quickly, or that the struggle to
make it all fit will result in improvements
in your monster design.

The answers
Let’s go back to the two examples to
address these questions briefly. The rabbit
—the real rabbit, not the carnivorous
bunny— is herbivorous, that is, eats only
plants. Let’s assume it eats often but not
incessantly (I’m not a rabbit expert) —an
“intermittent” eater. It has many natural
enemies which eat young and adult rabbits.
As experiences in Australia demonstrated,
when a foreign rabbit lacking
natural enemies was introduced and
overran the wild, normally predators kept
the numbers down despite the fecundity
of the adult rabbits. If rabbits reproduced
at human rates, on the other hand,
there would soon be very few rabbits.

Rabbits are small, so not much territory
is needed to support a pair, and subspecies
seem to live almost everywhere.
The rabbit’s defenses are speed of flight,
color blending with surroundings, and
small size — a rabbit twice as large as
normal, unless he’d seen Watership
Down, would be no less a victim of
predators.

The dragon is another story. One might
say the dragon eats whatever and whenever
it wants, but to conform to the questions
let’s answer that it is a carnivore,
eating only meat. It hunts alone or with a
mate, and pounces on prey — often from
the air, of course. The dragon has few
natural enemies — man is the most
prominent — but its very low reproductive
rate keeps its numbers down. (Note
that the lower the reproductive rate, the
longer the individual of a species tends
to live.)

Dragons need lots of territory because
they eat so much. Although the long
sleeping periods of a dragon preserve
energy, a creature that big requires a
huge amount of protein and calories to
produce enough energy to fly. Different
species of dragon tend to favor different
terrains and climates; perhaps because
of ‘the dragon’s size, individual species
cannot tolerate deviations from the ideal
As for the last question, a dragon’s best
defense is its great offense: biting, poison,
breath of fire, whatever. But it also
has a very tough skin, the ability to fly,
and (in some cases) intelligence of a low
but formidable sort.

Food gathering

To describe the food-gathering habits
of a species, which have a lot to do with
its statistics, I use categories adopted
from Game Designers’ Workshop’s excellent
game Traveller. The types are
clearly and thoroughly explained in the
rules; a summary is provided here.

Carnivores eat meat only. Pouncers
are solitary creatures which leap upon
prey from hiding, or after stalking it.
Chasers are usually pack animals which
attack after a chase; they have good endurance
but are not fast. Trappers use
some kind of device or construction to
capture prey. They tend to be solitary. A
siren is a trapper which uses a lure of
some kind to entice prey into the trap.
Killers are vicious creatures which attack
almost anything, and which seem to
enjoy killing for the sake of it. Obviously,
pouncers and trappers (and some sirens)
must be able to hide well and move
silently.
Herbivores eat plants or unresisting
animals. Grazers spend most of their
time eating, and for defense rely on flight
or stampede if they are herd animals.
Intermittents are solitary creatures which
spend less time eating. They sometimes
freeze (like a rabbit) rather than flee immediately
when confronted with possible
danger. Filters take in and expel water
and air, removing nutrients. They
tend to be slow-moving, if not immobile.

Omnivores eat a mixture of plants and
animals. Gatherers tend to eat plants
more than animals, behaving like intermittents.
Hunters tend toward carnivorous
behavior, while eaters will literally
try to eat anything they encounter. Some
beetles fit into this category.

Scavengers eat the kills of other creatures.
Intimidators scare animals away
from their kill. Hijackers suddenly steal
dead prey and carry it off. Carrion-eaters
eat meat not wanted by the original
killers and stronger scavengers. Reducers,
such as bacteria, continuously consume
dead organic matter.

Some information garnered elsewhere:
Carnivores tend to be territorial (see
below) and more intelligent than herbivores.
The majority of carnivores hunt at
night, and consequently tend to be color
blind. They also depend as much on
hearing and sense of smell as on sight.
Omnivores tend to hunt alone. Carnivores
hunt alone, in pairs, or in packs.
Not surprisingly, carnivores require a
much larger area per creature than omnivores
or herbivores, because they’re at
the top of the “food chain.” For example,
a square mile might support one (9-18
pound) carnivore, 20 omnivores, and up
to 100,000 herbivores.

If a creature seeks food alone (or with
its mate), rather than in a pack or herd, it
may exhibit territorial behavior. During
mating time, at least, an individual will
occupy an area large enough to supply it
(and its family) with food, and chase
away any other creature of its species
which attempts to cross the boundaries
of the area. Its mate is the exception, of
course. In many species the males set up
territories and then try to attract females.

Territories can be very sharply defined.
For example, a bird may violently
attack a mirror placed within its territory,
seeing its reflection as a rival, but if the
mirror is moved just inches beyond the
boundary the bird will ignore it. An interesting
kind of monster would hotly pursue
any intruder in its territory — but
stop dead at the border unless the intruder
attacked it.

Other creatures have fixed abodes but
are not territorial outside the lair, while
yet others wander about for most of the
year. If the monster is an egg-layer, it
might stop for more than a few minutes
to lay its eggs before moving on. Creatures
which rear their young —mammals
and birds, for example — will have different
territorial habits from those which
ignore their young.

Defenses
Defenses can be classified as those
which merely protect or preserve, and
those which harm an enemy. The first
category includes speed of movement
(to facilitate escape), agility (for dodging),
unusual means of movement (flight,
burrowing), avoidance mechanisms such
as camouflage and small size, sheer bulk
(how many predators can kill an elephant
or a whale?), tough skin (including
dangerous coverings such as that of
the porcupine), magic, and intelligence.
The second category includes some of
the above, such as speed and agility,
size, strength, “viciousness” (which can
make up for a lot), intelligence, and magic.
And in either category, numbers
count, or perhaps we should call it cooperation
among individuals — for example,
in herd animals which warn each
other of danger, or in pack animals
which hunt together.

The food chain
When you think about ecological
niches in your world which might be
filled, consider first those which ought to
be filled, lest the system fall apart. For
example, several writers have pointed
out that with all these monsters around,
from orcs up to dragons, the food chain
in the wilderness must be sorely strained.

That is, while plants convert sunlight
into food, something must convert plants
into animal matter for the numerous
predators (and omnivores) which we
find in a fantasy world. Perhaps there’s a
peaceful, fairly large herd animal, with
several subspecies, which reproduces at
a high rate and efficiently converts plants
to its own animal matter. The predators
then live off these herds. Cattle and bison
are rather large and dangerous prey
for many predators, but some creature
like those, though smaller, might do.

In dungeons, too, one finds a foodchain
problem in an artificial ecology.
The inhabitants can’t live off one another
(or there would be no one left for adventurers
to fight), and in many dungeons
it’s impossible for all the inhabitants to
obtain food from outside, if only because
the region would soon be barren. I’ve
solved this problem in my world by creating
a giant “mushroom” which uses absorbed
heat from the earth, in place of
sunlight, to provide the energy which is
converted into food.

Even undead and enchanted monsters
must fit into some ecological niche, insofar
as they cannot crowd out natural
species. Fortunately, these un-natural
monsters reproduce very slowly, if at all;
on the other hand, they do not die naturally.
They don’t normally disturb the
food chain because they don’t eat, but
they may disturb or destroy the habitats
of natural creatures, and some may kill
natural creatures just for the hell of it. If
the local inhabitants can’t fight back —
imagine orcs against a powerful demon
— then the enchanted monster or undead
is going to strongly affect the ecology.
This must be considered on a caseby-
case basis, depending on the purposes
and vulnerabilities of the un-natural
monster.

Getting ideas
So much for guidelines two and three,
origins first and ecological niche. Actually,
I find that sometimes the origin
comes second, not first. While the origin
must be a part of the creature consistent
with everything else, the impetus for
creating the creature may be a desire to
devise a monster with one unusual ability
— say, a telkinetic power which enables
it to partially immobilize a victim.
Once you know what power you wish to
use, you can think about how this power
might originate, and how the monster
might fit into the ecology.

Moreover, I find that building a monster
around some unusual power results
in a usable, perhaps outstanding, addition
to the “world.” Unless it is afar out or
extremely powerful ability, the monster
is unlikely to be too powerful to use, and
you automatically avoid the danger of
piling several abilities atop one another
to create a super monstrosity.

The guidelines pertain primarily to
monsters you make from whole cloth,
from your imagination, but most also
apply to modifications of real beasts,
and to your own versions of mythologi
cal, legendary, and fictional creatures.
Probably the average DM is better off
basing monsters on fiction or on real
creatures, at least to get some experience
before he begins to make them up
without a ready-made background.

Real beasts are a great source of ideas,
if you’re willing to do a little research.
Most people know a little about the habits
of mammals, but next to nothing
about insects, birds, fish, and plants.
Merely by increasing the size of a beast,
you can create a monster out of an innocuous
creature. (Yes, such increases
in size, including giant humans, are contrary
to the laws of physics. But these
laws must stand aside somewhere; assume
that an unidentified magic nullifies
the square-cube relationship.)

Take birds, for example. The thrush
likes to throw nuts against stones in
order to get at the edible part. Might a
giant thrush, or some monster with similar
proclivities, try to smash a knight
against a rock in order to get the “nut”
out? The shrike, a small bird with surprisingly
predatory tendencies, sometimes
impales its victims on its beak. Think of a
(domesticated?) giant shrike streaking
into a party to impale a magic-user! What
could a Pegasus rider do if harried by a
flock of giant bluejays (which, in the real
world, can drive away owls and hawks)?

Or, take bugs. Spiders conceal themselves
in a variety of ways when waiting
for prey —such as the tent spider, which
builds an opaque web tent to hide under
until prey comes near. Other types actively
catch flying creatures with web
nets, while yet others wait in holes in the
ground. One even emits a sticky substance
to immobilize a victim’s feet. Giant
army ants would be formidable, for reasons
we can all imagine.

Several species of carnivorous plants
can be easily adapted to fantasy games,
such as the Venus flytrap. Plants in the
sea, or animals resembling plants, also
catch and eat other creatures.

You can also vary the habitats or abilities
of real beasts. Someone has made
up land sharks, and what about flying
lions or burrowing wolves? Many legendary
beasts, after all, are merely misperceptions
of real animals or combinations
of them (e.g., the chimaera). But try not
to forget the guidelines to monster making.
I have my doubts about land sharks...

For legendary monsters, you usually
have some means of comparison with
“real” beasts. If you know, for example,
that a legendary monster was supposed
to be twice as dangerous as a lion, and a
lion has been defined in your game, you
can work from there to determine statistics
for the new creature. If a roc can
carry an elephant, it must be much larger
than said elephant. If a man on a winged
horse could travel twice as fast as a real
horse, you have some basis for assigning
numbers to the creature.

Monsters from fiction
In general, legendary creatures tend
to be one-shot, made by someone, not
fitting into the ecology, so you need this
kind of comparison to give you some
idea of what the monster can do. But
monsters drawn from fiction — for example,
orcs from Tolkien or Kzinti from
Larry Niven —often come complete with
background information about how they
fit into the world. You may have to modify
the creature — for example, by reducing
the Kzin to animal intelligence — in
order to make it fit into your ecology.

There’s a tendency to make creatures
derived from myth and fiction overpowerful
because the DM forgets to take the
fictional ecology into account. Classic
among these is the tendency to rate Tolkien’s
Gandalf — he’s a kind of monster,
isn’t he? — as an umpteenth-level wizard
merely because he is virtually the only,
and therefore the most powerful, spellcaster
in Middle Earth. But if you compare
what he can actually do with what
characters from your game can do, you’ll
find that he wasn’t very powerful at all
—in terms of the D&D® or AD&D™ rules,
maybe an eighth-level cleric with a magic
ring and the ability to use a sword.

Similarly, just because some monster
dominates a work of fiction, the DM
thinks it should dominate or be powerful
enough to dominate his world. He forgets
that many role-playing worlds have a far
higher proportion of powerful magic and
powerful creatures than any world of
fantasy or science-fiction in literature.

(Note that the words an author uses to
describe a creature don’t necessarily
have the meanings used in your game.
Gandalf is a “wizard” because he uses
magic, but this doesn’t mean he must be
a wizard, that is, magic-user, in a game
such as the D&D game, which allows for
several types of spell casters.)

You can vary legendary or fictional
monsters, too — for example, a cockatrice
which paralyzes or causes insanity,
a foot-long Pegasus, a unicorn which
shoots missiles from its horn, a ghoul
which flies. Make them larger or smaller,
change speeds, change means or medium
of locomotion, and so on.

Not “all or nothing”
Whatever type of monsters you create,
try to avoid dogmatic or draconian pronouncements.
The “rule” is: Avoid all-or
nothing characteristics. For example, a
monster which is vulnerable only to certain
rarely used spells, or only to a series
of three or four spells cast in a particular
sequence, is a poorly designed creature.
If the players have ample opportunity to
learn of these peculiarities before they
encounter the beast, it will be a usable,
but not outstanding, creature. Aside from
the all-or-nothing nature of the creature,
which is bad for the gaming aspect of
role playing, it’s hard to explain how this
unusual characteristic evolved. Even if
the creature is enchanted, why in the
gods’ names was it created with this odd
Achilles heel? Another example of this
mistake is the monster which is deadly
unless you know the trick which makes it
harmless. The Pictish demons, for example
(as described in the Gods, Demigods
& Heroes supplement to the original
D&D rules) are frightening until you
learn to lie down —then they ignore you.
This is an amusing change of pace for a
one-shot creature but would not work
for a standard inhabitant of the world.

An example of how to create a monster
with one special power and avoid all the
pitfalls might help. Let’s begin by giving
the new creature a simple telekinetic
power. The creature can hold down or
immobilize an enemy or victim, or knock
fruits off a tree, but it could not use telekinesis
to pull a lever, turn a knob, use a
knife, or do any other detail work, even if
it were trained to do so.

Unless the creature is very large, it
could not immobilize a large victim —the
victim would drag the monster along.
For no particular reason except a prejudice
against giantism, let’s take the alternative
approach: that the creature
hunts in packs to cooperate in immobilizing
large prey. Yes, the creature does
hunt — otherwise why the need for this
telekinetic power? And flesh-eating monsters
are more fun, so let’s say this creature
is an omnivorous hunter which eats
animals primarily, but is not averse to an
occasional juicy fruit or plant stem.

Hunting in packs reminds me of the
wolf. Wolves rely on their endurance to
run down a victim, but let’s not follow the
wolf idea too closely. Perhaps our creature
pounces on prey, utilizing its telekinetic
power. If the prey isn’t caught within
a few seconds, the monster won’t try
to chase it. Having no need for speed,
our monster is relatively slow, but must
hide well in order to surprise its victims.
It must live in areas providing cover —
probably brush or forests with heavy undergrowth,
certainly not plains. Since
the creature lies in wait for prey, it hunts
when most animals are active—the daytime,
especially when new or failing light
increases the chance of concealment.

Wolves are built for a long run, but our
monster need not be. And unlike the
wolf, it doesn’t need to fight — its prey is
immobilized and helpless. So, let’s say
the creature is four-legged but rather fat
and roly-poly roundish, weighing 50-60
pounds. It is not equipped with sharp
teeth. Instead, it has a mouth shaped like
an elephant’s trunk, through which it
sucks a victim’s blood (or a plant’s juices)
until the victim is nearly dead. Then
the monster can chew bits of dead flesh
slowly, perhaps over several days. Because
the monster is slow and often sits
immobile for hours, it uses little energy
and eats surprisingly little for its size.

To settle questions of reproduction,
let’s recall our sort-of model, the wolf.
We’ll say our monster has one litter of 6-8
live pups per year, in spring (mammalian).
Many die from their inability to keep
up with the pack. Those that survive mature
in 6 months and live for about 5
years, if they’re lucky. The pack is promiscuous;
males and females do not
have “mates” per se, but can freely intermingle
provided the pack leader does
not object.

Generally, lone animals of this species
could take small prey, but would fare
poorly in areas frequented by large animals,
especially large predators. Perhaps
an individual driven from one pack would
join another — nature’s way of insuring
against continual inbreeding. Sometimes
an overlarge pack might divide, or two
packs reduced in numbers by fights,
famine, or disease might merge together.
The packs may be loosely territorial.
Probably an area of many square miles
could support only one typical pack of
10-40 individuals, which would continuously
move about within the territory.

Altogether, this monster’s role is that
of a medium-sized flesh eater which can
take both small prey, like rabbits, and the
occasional large animal, like cattle, without
presenting much danger that it will
overrun the countryside.

This creature’s natural defense is numbers
and cooperation between members
of the pack. The latter may require a significant
intelligence. Armor class, hit
dice, and attack statistics need not be
outstanding, for the creature relies on
telekinesis and its considerable size.

A summary of the creature’s statistics
as they might be expressed for use in an
AD&D™ adventure are as follows:

FREQUENCY: Rare
NO. APPEARING: 10-40
ARMOR CLASS: 8
MOVE: 3”
HIT DICE: 2
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-2 plus suck blood
for 1-4 per round thereafter
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Telekinesis
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Semi to low
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
SIZE: S
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil

When the creature hits a victim it attaches
to it and sucks blood each round
thereafter until one or the other is dead,
or until the pack flees. The creature can
stand immobile for hours. Its hair tends
to be the color of the terrain it typically
hides in — e.g., dark greenish in a forest.
The creature surprises on a 1-4 on a d6 in
suitable terrain when lying in wait.

Thanks to their intelligence, these animals
are easily trained, but they occasionally
choose to ignore orders.

The telekinesis ability is easy to define
now that we‘ve determined the other
characteristics. Each creature can immobilize
animals up to 30 pounds (300
gp) in weight at close range (up to 1”), 20
pounds at medium range (1”-2”), and up
to 10 pounds at long range (2”-3”). It
cannot move while using telekinesis unless
it is holding less than half the allowable
weight. Several can join together to
hold one victim, perhaps taking turns so
that all can approach and “drink.” The
weights given assume the victim is not
unusually strong for its weight. And if the
victim is only partially immobilized, it
moves at a proportionately slower speed
— effects may be compared to those of a
slow spell. Humans and many other
creatures also gain a saving throw vs.
paralysis which, if successful, effectively
halves the weight the monster’s telekinetic
power may hold.

What about a name? I keep a list of
names I’ve picked up from literature,
from other players, and who knows
where else, because I’m not much good
at making them up. I call this monster the
“Starkhorn” — for its “trunk,” I guess —
but perhaps you can think of something
better.

-
Aside from simple encounters in the
wilderness, this monster may be most
useful to a DM when domesticated to
guard an area or to assist a magic-user.

I don’t want to give the impression designing
monsters is a mechanical process.
Inspiration, if not romanticism, is a
necessary element, particularly when the
monster first takes shape. Without a decent
idea, you won’t get good results.
The sources and guidelines described in
this article will help you turn a good idea
into a good monster, and help you avoid
turning a lousy idea into a lousy monster.
But no one can tell you how to turn a
lousy idea into a good monster.

FREQUENCY:
NO. APPEARING:
ARMOR CLASS:
MOVE:
HIT DICE:
% IN LAIR:
TREASURE TYPE:
NO. OF ATTACKS:
DAMAGE/ATTACK:
SPECIAL ATTACKS:
SPECIAL DEFENSES:
MAGIC RESISTANCE:
INTELLIGENCE:
ALIGNMENT:
SIZE:
PSIONIC ABILITY:

ARCANE

FREQUENCY:
NO. APPEARING:
ARMOR CLASS:
MOVE:
HIT DICE:
% IN LAIR:
TREASURE TYPE:
NO. OF ATTACKS:
DAMAGE/ATTACK:
SPECIAL ATTACKS:
SPECIAL DEFENSES:
MAGIC RESISTANCE:
INTELLIGENCE:
ALIGNMENT:
SIZE:
PSIONIC ABILITY:

ARGOS

FREQUENCY:
NO. APPEARING:
ARMOR CLASS:
MOVE:
HIT DICE:
% IN LAIR:
TREASURE TYPE:
NO. OF ATTACKS:
DAMAGE/ATTACK:
SPECIAL ATTACKS:
SPECIAL DEFENSES:
MAGIC RESISTANCE:
INTELLIGENCE:
ALIGNMENT:
SIZE:
PSIONIC ABILITY:
Broken One (Lesser & Greater)

FREQUENCY:
NO. APPEARING:
ARMOR CLASS:
MOVE:
HIT DICE:
% IN LAIR:
TREASURE TYPE:
NO. OF ATTACKS:
DAMAGE/ATTACK:
SPECIAL ATTACKS:
SPECIAL DEFENSES:
MAGIC RESISTANCE:
INTELLIGENCE:
ALIGNMENT:
SIZE:
PSIONIC ABILITY:

Deepspawn

Deep Dragon

Mercury Dragon

ELEMENTAL, COMPOSITE
(Tempest, Skriaxit)

EYEWING

FEYR (Feyr, Great Feyr)

GIANT, DESERT

GIANT, REEF

GIANT, WOOD (VOADKYN)

GIFF

GITH

GITH, Pirate

GOLEM, Doll

GOLEM, Bone

GOLEM, Gargoyle

GOLEM, GLASS

HATORI (Lesser, Greater)

INSECT SWARM
(Grasshoppers and Locusts)

KIRRE

LIVING WALL

WEREBAT

WERERAVEN

MANSCORPION

MIST, Crimson Death

MIST, VAMPIRIC

MUCKDWELLER

NEOGI

SNAKE, WINGED

TACO (Cis Male, Cis Female)

ZARATAN

GIANT-KIN, CYCLOPS
(cf. CYCLOPS, LESSER)
(cf. CYCLOPS, GREATER)

PIRANHA (Normal, Giant)

PORCUPINE (Black, Brown, Giant)

URD

THESSALHYDRA

-
FREQUENCY:
NO. APPEARING:
ARMOR CLASS:
MOVE:
HIT DICE:
% IN LAIR:
TREASURE TYPE:
NO. OF ATTACKS:
DAMAGE/ATTACK:
SPECIAL ATTACKS:
SPECIAL DEFENSES:
MAGIC RESISTANCE:
INTELLIGENCE:
ALIGNMENT:
SIZE:
PSIONIC ABILITY:

UNKNOWN

PEGATAUR

WHITE APE

PICTISH BAG OF DEMONS
A magical device that summons 10-100 creatures from its interior. It is 16" by 30" and sealed with beeswax. The demons are half-man half-bird with 35 HP. They are as strong as a Fire Giant and they will not attack anything lying flat on the ground.

KILLER BEE

Dragon magazine	-	Monster Manual III	-	Dragon #59
The questions	The answers	Food gathering	Defenses	The food chain
Getting ideas	Monsters from fiction	-	Not "all or nothing"	Starkhorn
Statblock	-	-	-	Pictish Bag of Demons
Volume 3	-	-	-	Volume BX/BECMI