III-9 thru 12: Not All (Monsters) Who Wander Are Lost; Annotations

Pages 9-12

 

Underworld Monsters

 

Taken as one section since these pages all tie together rather neatly. 

Sighting Monsters and Surprise: a regular sighting takes place just out of melee range, a minimum of 20’; and at a maximum of 80’. Surprise greatly reduces the distance and therefore PC reaction time. At no place in the text does the surprise/complete surprise mentioned, though they become a part of the rules in later editions. 

Wandering Monsters: an excellent way to keep adventure parties moving. Every turn there is a 17% chance of something coming upon the PCs. While this may not necessarily result in combat, chances it will. Especially if a party is prone to hack-and-slash as opposed to negotiation. 

Monsters Determination And Level Of Monster Matrix

Note how the hit dice of encountered monsters is variable. Not just on the individual tables, but also according to a random die roll dictating an upper or lower table be used to generate encounter. 

Monster Level Tables: many of the creatures appearing are not actually detailed in Volume II: Monsters & Treasure. Examples from the various tables follow.

• Table 1: giant rats, centipedes, spiders
• Table 2: lizards, thouls
• Table 3: giant hogs, giant ants, giant snakes, giant weasels
• Table 4: giant beetles, giant scorpions, white ape
• Table 5: none
• Table 6: none

Historical note: centipedes, referenced in Table 1, are the first monster encountered in the first dungeon Gary Gygax ran. 

Tables include various PC parties, which some referees ran as homogeneous parties composed of the listed type of PC. Still others ran them as a higher level PC of the indicated type with various lower level hirelings of differing classes. 

Number of Wandering Monsters Appearing: advice for increasing number of monsters encountered based upon level of party. So even if higher Hit Dice monsters are indicated by the table on page 10, the encounter should still be altered based upon the party. This is reinforcing Gygax’s emphasis on altering results to suit the game, not just blindly doing whatever the dice and rules dictate. 

Hidden Rule: most referees would allow that hobgoblins are roughly human sized (1+1 hit dice). In the second section of this entry, appearing on the next page, we read […] how many [hobgoblins] can come abreast down a typical passage in the dungeons? Allow perhaps 3 in a ten foot wide passage, and the balance will either be behind the front rank or fanning out to come upon the enemy by other routes. We used this as a basis for a 3-man front line in a party while in 10’ corridor. Accurate? It worked, and we still use that ruling to this day. But looking back, we wonder if 3 armed and armored fighting men side by side in a 10’ corridor would actually work at all.