Here for the Bestiary without the discussion? Scroll to the bottom!
The industrious Phlox of Whose Measure God Could Not Take and the deliriously-tentacled purplecthulhu of Velvet Inks and Crystal Fires have created a quiet, unassuming dungeon known as the Secret Library of the Apostolic Archons.
I was rather inspired, so I thought I’d chip in and craft some stat blocks for the encounters found within. Note that this blog post is likely to be a “living document” for the next few days, as I even out errors and adjustments with the actual authors – one of the side effects of making content on the down-low.
These are stat blocks for my own game, which has a passing similarity in Swords & Wizardry and Veins of the Earth, but they are also broadly compatible with Old School Essentials, OD&D, and B/X. The biggest differences, which may require some short explanations, are as follows:
- There’s only one saving throw! If you want to have a broader set of saving throws, you can look at where the Fighter’s Save vs. Wands target number in your B/X hack of choice hits on the number I list. For example, ink elementals have a save of 11, so we pull up the Fighter from OSE and we see…
…that Fighters have an 11 in Save vs. Wands at level 4. So you use the saves of a level 4 Fighter for the monster.
- Morale uses a bonus, instead of a number – what’s up with that? Well, for my homebrew OSR system, my procedure for morale involves rolling 2d6 + Morale:
–On a 6-, morale breaks.
-On a 7-11, enemies keep fighting until the next morale check or point of negotiation
-On a 12+, enemies become fanatic, fighting to victory or death
So you can convert that procedural math into whatever you do at your table, and in doing so, change my bonus into a number that makes more sense for your running style.
Since so much of D&D is about the nature of monsters and how they tremble through our consciousness, I thought this might serve as some fun advertisement for the Secret Library.
Files for the Bestiary can be found…
Happy adventuring, everybody.
Dungeon Antology 