Since finally picking up a physical copy of Swords & Wizardry and determining to read it cover to cover, I have been experiencing several "aha!" moments, otherwise known as, "Man, I'm stupid" moments. Maybe some of the things I've been realizing are obvious to others, but just in case they aren't, I'm going to post my discoveries/musings anyway.
I was reading through the monster list and came to Giant (or Sea) Crocodile. Here's the description: "The smallest of giant crocodiles are about 20ft long (normal
crocodiles can grow to be as long as 15ft)." I thought to myself, "Well, how do you know how big a giant crocodile should be, then?" "Why, it depends on how many hit points it has, of course." Thanks, brain. Sometimes you're not so bad.
A giant crocodile has 6HD. That means it can have a minimum of 8 hp and a maximum of 48 hp. That's a big range. If an 8 hp giant crocodile were swimming beside a 48 hp crocodile, it occurs to me that there should be a difference in their appearance and size. Perhaps the lesser one is even wounded, or weak from hunger. How many times have you said, "Okay, there are five goblins in front of you. Roll initiative," then just played out the combat as "the fighter slays one goblin, the magic-user blows apart another, the thief attacks a goblin but misses," treating the goblins all as identical, faceless numbers? Wouldn't it be more interesting to describe their appearance and status based on their max hp?
This would add a little more book keeping during play, but the payoff might be worth it.
This method would depend on how you run things though. How do you handle HD: do you roll HD once for a group of monsters, or separately for each individual monster?
No comments:
Post a Comment