AD&D Monster Manual 2 - D Part 4 - Dracolisk to Dustdigger.

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Dracolisk.

Turns out, Basilisks and Dragons sometimes have sex. Dracolisks have a Black Dragon parent, but if they tried harder maybe we could have a monster type equally as expansive as the Dragon?

As a general rule, I prefer any dragon-alternative to an actual dragon, so the Dracolisk is already on steady ground. It can't fly for extended periods - which scratches a vague 'realism' itch. It has acid spit and a petrifying gaze.

It has 'hooded eyes with nictitating membranes' making it 90% resistant to having its gaze reflected at it. This is not specifically mentioned as a Black Dragon characteristic, AFAIK, but I'm going to rule that it is. There - canon.

Description includes a mod of the 'chance of meeting gaze' subsystem, adjusted to cover Large gazers.

No mention as to connection with Basilisk, Greater; only 'basilisk of largest size' is mentioned.

Dragon.

To quote myself, I prefer any dragon-alternative to an actual dragon - I prefer the dungeon game to the dragon game.

Dragonfear is described as an aura, but I prefer to think of it as a natural response to seeing such a thing, and you can bolt it onto any other big/powerful scary monster you like.

Cloud and Mist Dragons.

Slightly out of order, but there'scrossover between the two. If they weren't created by the same person, then they were at least in the same article/module once upon a time. They're wingless, serpentine - but think Oriental Adventures rather than Vikings Campaign Sourcebook.

Both 'assume a cohesive gaseous form', making them almost indistinguishable from cloud and/or mist, though they can't make physical attacks.

The Cloud Dragon gets a long paragraph on its breath weapon, a blast of air that can blow you away, and could be reused for a spell, trap or environmental hazard.

Mist Dragons breath a cloud of misty vapours causing air-breathers to take drowning damage each round. Maybe extend this to the cohesive gaseous form.

They also share some new spells: precipitation (light rain, hurts Salamanders), cloudburst (heavy rain, turns fireballs into less harmful steam), zephyr (gentle air movement with some useful applications). No particular reason these couldn't be shared with player characters.

Keep them in cohesive gaseous form as weird elementals of air and water. Give them their breath weapon even though RAW they wouldn't be able to use it.

Faerie Dragon.

I like their euphoria gas breath weapon.

Maybe as the familiar/companion of a particular type of villain or even player character.

Shadow Dragon.

Would reskin as elemental, undead or magical construct.

They prefer to walk and their breath weapon is an energy draining cloud of darkness.

Dragonfly, Giant.

Just another giant insect, yeah?

They could have been, but someone decided that they should be fearless, human-hunting carnivores. Which almost makes them sound noble.

Not only do they make saves as a 16th level Magic User, they have Low Intelligence - putting them on a similar cognitive level to a great swathe of the humanoid threat hierarchy. Because of their speed, they get an Initiative bonus and, as long as they have Initiative, they are much harder to hit.

I'd consider bringing down their HD, but otherwise I think these would make an unusual and satisfying alternative to just having your countryside ravaged/your village threatened by humanoids. If you really want, BECMI Creature Catalog pun-ishes incurious adventurers by giving them a draconic breath weapon based on their colour (also works as reskins for Mi Go with energy weapons).

Dragon Horse.

Some kind of magic horse, a bit like a Ki-Rin.

Dragonnel.

Sort of a confession: I usually lose interest when I see the words 'World of Greyhawk' - I don't know why.

I think the Dragonnel's colouring sounds nice.

Drelb (Haunting Custodian).

This is one of those monsters that is basically undead, but the description specifies is not. Looks just like a Wraith, if you use that kind of consistency.

There's a folklore quality to the magic summoning them only functioning from sunset to sunrise.

Drelb have 'their own strange language' and two unusual powers - any psionic power used nearby can be reflected or imitated to turn back on the psionicist, and they can advance while shrinking themselves so that they seem to be retreating. They do this when you try to Turn them.

The 'nether chill' of the Drelb's touch makes you fall to the ground shivering, unable to act until the chill passes. This is the kind of ability I like to swap out energy drain for - I'm not opposed to energy drain, but I like a flavoured ability that translates across systems, levelled or not. The entry doesn't say how long the chill lasts.

With its similarity to the Wraith, the advance-while-retreating and the slightly unexpected inclusion of psionic resistance, the Drelb is a Gotcha! monster by design but there's enough here to extrapolate from for your own canon.

Drider.

Spidertaurs. They drink blood and hang out with Spiders. Because they're Drow, they have spells and might also be levelled Clerics or Magic Users.

I can't resist a spidertaur; they don't have to be Drow.

Duergar.

Classic wargame statblock and description - they're evil dwarves and this is how they're armed and armoured; here are the leader-types; here is the proportion of noncombatants for Paladins to prove how Lawful Good they are.

A bit less evocative than (say) the Derro entry, but there are Cleric/Assassin characters - one of my favourite multi-classes (in theory - never got to play one). They have psionics that easily convert to spell equivalents. 

Molecular attraction is apparently a mis-print, so either homebrew that, or decide on whether they meant molecular agitation (heat metal) or molecular rearrangement (turn lead to gold). According to 2e, they meant agitation.

Use directly as Dwarves/Trolls, or reskin slightly as Elves/Goblins.

Dustdigger.

Another monster with a Gamma World/ sci-fi flavour - a giant starfish that hides under the sand and drags you to a toothy death in its own sinkhole. 20% can create an illusion of a pool of bubbling water to draw you in. 

While this is a desert monster, because MM2 came out in 1983, I wonder if this 1981 John Saxon classic had any influence:

Finally, a new letter - onwards to E (& F)...

DMR2 Creature Catalog - F

Faedorne.

Female creatures of great beauty that live on strange timeless islands which float high above the world. 

I'd characterise them as Neutral Elven demi-gods, with powers of illusion, scrying, summoning (Silver Warriors, detailed later on) and 12th-level Magic User equivalence. Text says they embody many elvish ideals but prefer to be subtle in their interventions.

Faedorne (and Silver Warriors) as appearing in the 1984 module O2 Blade of Vengeance by Jim Bambra; Moorcockian stylings by Jeremy (Jez) Goodwin; #BOSR.

Their islands are known as the Shining Isles and are only visible at night, when they appear to be stars or satellites or other heavenly points of light. You could take this to mean they are invisible during the day, or out of phase, or not physically present, or are the product of a sleeper's dreams.

I like to think of the Shining Isles as being fragments of a nearby faerie dimension, or else the Isles and the Faedornae (they slip the plural in) as being of sufficiently advanced technology that they are indistinguishable from magic.

While on the Shining Isles (their own or any?), a Faedorne's phantasmal force is at -5 to disbelieve, and there's a reading that suggests they it can be used to project visions at a great distance (appearing to the communicant in a mirror or pool).

An old setting of mine had 'Star People' that were an approximation of the Faedorne (with a brush of the big-eared ancient astronauts to them). More recently, I think of them as being the ancient eldritch folk who would one day become these Fomorians.

Feywing.

There are hints of a weirder-looking creature when comparing the description (bulbous, elastic body) to the Dave Simons illo, which shows what is basically a three-headed Dragon - which is what the Feywing basically is.

No breath weapon, but it can carry off cattle impaled on its horned snouts - which makes a change to claws (specified as both soft and weak). There's no elaboration on this, so maybe it's for narrative purposes; I suppose a 'kill' can be abstracted as fulfilling the conditions to impale-and-carry-off.

Its tail is feeble but prehensile, which I find suggestive, alongside it being intelligent enough to gather treasure as a lure and for bargaining. It has a given Intelligence of 4 and there's no mention of speech, so maybe it uses its tail to make significant gestures, or scratching messages in the dust if you want to go further.

The Feywing can deflect arrows and daggers with its horny, hooded eyes 40% of the time, which I sometimes conflate/confuse with the Dracolisk's nictitating eye membranes. Why not add both characteristics the next time you need to spice up a Black Dragon for an adventure?

Incidentally, they can attack with a three bites (2d4 each) or three horn gores (d10 each) or a combination. So maybe an impale for carrying something off is simply a successful horn gore? One for a halfling, three for a cow.

One monster that I would be interested to see further detailed in AD&D 2e, but - alas.

Fish, Giant.

Catfish: Giant fish that can use its mouth-feelers to attack, even though that's not their primary purpose. 

Use as the base stats for a BECMI/RC Aboleth, maybe?

Carp (Gargantua): it can swallow whole any opponent of less than giant size, smashes things with its tail and can produce a blast of water that can knock you off your feet and propel you 100'.

I think of this as being one of those sea monsters routinely drawn on old maps and I like it.

Fish, Piranha (Cold-Water).

It says Cold-Water, but we've really only got their word for it.

Piranha: In tropical waters, they can be bigger (2hp rather than 1). Attack in shoals, so some transferable swarm mechanics. 

Plus they get attack and damage bonuses when in a feeding frenzy.

Giant Piranha: Their feeding frenzy means they don't have to make Morale Checks.

Specifically says they inhabit warm fresh waters.

AD&D 1e Fiend Folio has Quippers, which are a little bit more robust than the regular Piranhas here.

Flitterling.

As themselves, I don't really like them (another type of miniature faerie folk), but I think there's promise in the details.

As presented, they're one-quarter of an inch tall, so barely qualified for the 1 hp they are given. Their physical attack is to stab with their equally tiny silver swords. A group of five can cause 1 hp on a successful attack, if you're armoured or have a natural descending AC of 5 (+4) or better and 2 hp if you're unarmoured/ natural descending AC of 6 (+3) or worse. A point of damage kills a Flitterling, but you can only kill a maximum of 5 per blow. No elaboration regarding magic and AoE. A reasonable swarm mechanic.

Their preferred attacks are to sing at you. A group of 50 can charm monster or cause fear by song. Multiple groups cannot affect the same target. Keep those number requirements, but attach to the next settlement the adventurers visit - Normal Humans (or ghosts!) able to survive in the monster-haunted wilderness, as long as the bonds of community are not disrupted.

They're bound to their homes (tree trunks and mushrooms), and to the rings of magical mushrooms they cultivate. Damage their homes beyond repair and/or deplete their mushrooms by more than 50%, and they'll die in d6 horrible days.

Magic mushrooms of varying colours give varying useful effects: neutralize poison, haste, clairvoyance, cure light wounds, especially nourishing food. They will allow you to pick mushrooms if you are friendly with them, but will fight to the death if you try to take more than your fair (and their vital) share.

Bolt the special abilities onto a statblock and you've got some serviceable Myconid analogues/variants. Maybe they could also be linked to the Fungoid (below)? Possibly as their avenger, or maybe just as their muscle. 

Frog, Giant Poisonous.

I always have time for Giant Frogs.

This one is bright yellow and lurid green, has a grabbing tongue and is poisonous even just to the touch.

Fundamental.

Apart from their ACs, Move rates and the Fire Fundamental being immune to fire, all four types of Fundamental are mechanically/statistically identical. 

They're nothing more than pairs of air/earth/fire/water composed batwings that fly around without a body. Sometimes follow summoned Elementals.

I'd probably replace their swoop attack with something other than a damage die: maybe Air deafens, Earth bashes your head in, Fire sets you alight, Water stuns you with 1 round of drowning. Possibly also an equivalent benign ability.

They're weird and alien, so I quite like them. Maybe they can join the Neutral (evil) with Unratable Intelligence crew?

In 2e, they all get a little more detail - basically fluff but including some habits and quirks as well as more physical description, and all perfectly serviceable.

Fungoid.

It's an ogre-sized humanoid fungus that can't be affected by spells vs. plants, because fungus aren't strictly speaking plants. The text doesn't go any deeper, but I suppose this is based on the scientific fact(oid?) that fungi are more like animals than they are like plants (or something). 

They're also (nearly) mindless, so no illusions or charms or similar work against them. Text specifies that the Fungoid never fails a morale check, but it wouldn't anyway because its Morale is 12 - or have I been labouring under a misapprehension for years?

Takes double damage from fire, and cold does no damage but stuns it. Interesting. For further elaboration, you could make the Fungoid immune to crits/impales and maybe have weapons getting stuck in it.

The Fungoid is simultaneously incredibly strong but kind of soft and squidgy, so it is described as only causing 2d10 hp with each of its fist attacks (you're also knocked down if you fail to save). However, this is the same damage as a Rock Golem (next post), so - while it's more likely this is just a case of separate creators and an oversight/non-existence of balance/standardisation - it implies that the Fungoid is stronger than the Golem. Which means the Fungoid could be put to some interesting and extraordinary tasks if it could be controlled (or was intelligent).

According to folklore, these creatures grow near the sites of unavenged murders or great battles: no further details.

They lurk underground, below a growth of mushrooms (including a ring formation), though the text only says they may be connected to the fruiting bodies on the surface.

These last two characteristics are food for thought, with the possibility of a variation of the Fungoid leaning in the spirit/undead direction, or something more in tune with either intelligent fungus beings or faerie folk.

The squishiness combined with great strength could also serve as something to build a brain/flesh golem or anthropomorphic shoggoth from.

Fyrsnaca.

The Fyrsnaca can breath a line of fire and is intelligent and can be bargained with to perform tasks. 2e specifies that you need speak with monsters, as Fyrsnaca have no language.

It also internally burns so hot after reproducing (vomiting up 2d6 babies - Red Worms; see later) that it has to remain dormant in a large body of water for 50 years to cool off. If prevented from doing so or awakened prematurely, it will attack furiously - as it will be consumed by its own heat if it leaves the water.

Bony, unsegmented relative of the Purple Worm.

This sounds very wyrm-ish, as opposed to worm-ish, but the Fyrsnaca (clearly a vertebrate) is supposedly cousin to the Purple Worm (clearly an invertebrate). Lacking an illo, 2e gives a sparse description that 'corrects' this.

Also, it's not carnivorous and eats ores and minerals as it burrows through the earth. 2e says to offer it gems and precious metals when bargaining or distracting - the costly equivalent of tossing rations.

I'd use one of these instead of a Dragon. And because of the 50 year dormancy period, I think I'd make this one of the type of monsters that are a level-inappropriate adventure/dungeon threat that doesn't have to be directly engaged with and/or can be turned on other monsters.

AD&D Monster Manual 2 - D Part 3 - Devil, Diakka & Dinosaur.

Link back to D Part 2...

Devil.

The standard preamble for multitudinous extra-planars. 

Missed this the first time round, but -as with demons (and trolls)- devils are able to split their attacks between 2 or more opponents: multiple attacks are common; multiple opponents is a special ability. 

There's a list of devils (including Buer) with some detail of their position within Hell's hierarchy. There are several female devils, all with the position of Consort - though whether Bensozia consorts with both Asmodeus and Baalzebul or is the agent of one in the bed(?) of the other is not specified. There are several marked with an asterisk, and based on the use of some of these names in Planescape, I think this indicates that they're Pit Fiends (MM).

Most of the dukes and arch-devils suffer for not being anything like how they're depicted in the Dictionnaire Infernal - if you're not familiar already, they are worth checking out for comparison - and I've provided a pic where I can.  It might be hard to take some of them seriously, but there's plenty of creative room for them to be interestingly gruesome, compared to the array of horned, angry-faced blokes with wings.

There aren't any human/devil offspring -at least in this book, but Alu-demon and Cambion look suitably devilish to be used (with a slight modification of abilities and Alignment, if you want to play it that straight).

Abishai.

Scaly devils, 'most serve Tiamat' and coloured after the evil chromatic dragons - though without thematic special abilities.

An otherwise fairly unremarkable variable statblock monster, though it specifies they grapple - presumably using the rules from the DMG. Which is another kind of Hell.

Amon (Duke of Hell).

I like him because he's got a grinning wolf head and that pose projects personality, but he's otherwise just a hit point/ spell list sack. He has a winter wolf as a pet.

And this version was available and they didn't go with it.

Amon.

Bael (Duke of Hell).

He wears 'bronze armour fashioned in the ancient style' and wields a telescopic morning star, but otherwise he's not much different to any other duke of Hell.

What might have been:

Bael.

Bearded Devil.

I can work with these.

They have a signature weapon -saw-toothed glaive with a treble-hook- and their wiry beard gives you a Dexterity-sapping rash. Both of which make them more interesting than Belial.

Belial (Arch-devil).

Big guy, handsome, diabolic, basalt palace. Next.

Glasya (Princess of Hell).

She has 69 hit points. I never noticed before. FFS.

She is also 9' tall.

"Okay. So she's a dog" Dr. Peter Venkman.
Glasya-Bolyas.

Hutijin (Duke of Hell).

Uses his tone of voice to cause fear. He's a Pit Fiend, but with smaller head and wings.

Mammon (Arch-devil).

There's a bit of the Wild Hunt about this guy - riding a Nightmare and leading a pack of Hell Hounds. Otherwise, he's a big fat red devil who is worth fewer XP than his vassal, Bael. But he's got fool's gold as a spell-like power, because he's about love of money or something.

Mammon.

Mephistopheles (Arch-devil).

Another big snore.

Moloch (Arch-devil).

Has an electric whip and fear-causing breath.

Moloch.

Nupperibo.

'Nupperibo' and 'noppera-bo/ nopperabou' were dissimilar enough in the contexts they were being used that it took a while to realise that the AD&D name was from the Japanese.

The Nupperibo - the least of all devils - are not faceless ghosts, but 'blind, deaf and unable to speak', with no other clues as to what they look like, other than they march (so must have legs) and have hands.

Milling, silent hordes; instinctively gathering together (they can sense the presence of their own kind); waiting to respond to the thought commands of more powerful devils; regenerating the damage done to them as part of their eternal torment; the tiny prospect of being raised to devilhood.

To add a creepy cherry to top this cake, they may be semi- to exceptionally intelligent, but no one can tell because of their 'limited sensory capabilities' - leaving you to imagine what their interior lives are like and what they'd say if they could but speak.

Titivilus (Duke of Hell).

I was keen for this one, because the Tuttivillus Room (not that far off) was one of the locations in the horror-focused Fighting Fantasy gamebook, House of Hell.

And he doesn't disappoint (by my measure).

He has a silver sword of wounding, which could be reasonably reinterpreted as a silver sword of wounding with the additional effects of a Githyanki blade on astral travellers.

His spell-like abilities selection is dissimilar to those of the other dukes and arch-devils, with more non-combat application options. He can cast feeblemind, which I've always felt was more narratively frightening than (say) finger of death. His charm is the druidic version, rather than the MU.

And he has ruddy cheeks.

Spined Devil.

Not much more than an Imp, really - they're only 3' tall. With their 3+3 HD, I'd be happy to make them adult human-sized and treat them as the basic/standard devil - they're armed with forks.

They can also use their spines as flaming darts, bombarding opponents while airborne and setting them on fire. Much cooler than Hutijin.

Diakka.

With some foreknowledge, I was expecting the Diakka to be something like a possessing poltergeist rather than weird humanoid/stork monsters from the Glooms of Hades. 

Their special abilities (jump, audible glamer, weakness, enfeeblement) are integrated into their behaviour and tactics. The description gives some details of how they use their abilities and how they approach encounters with potential opponents of varying strength, which is miles away from the statblock-and-spell-list monsters that Daemons, Demons, Devas and Devils lavished on me.

The Diakka here and the Diakka I had in mind are very different beasts, but it turns out I do rather like a weird humanoid/stork monster (another one turns up later on).

Dinosaur.

There are nineteen dinosaur or dinosaur-adjacent entries here. While it's handy to have readymade statblocks for Compsognathus, Deinonychus and Dimetrodon, there really isn't the need for so many individual entries - particularly since almost none of them have any distinguishing special abilities or unusual mechanics/subsystems.

Ankisaurus has a Special Defence listed, but it is literally that it will climb to escape threats - no mechanics; not that special.

The BECMI Masters Dinosaurs are given as broad types and ranges of statistics, rather than Linnean hair-splitting with plus or minus AC/HD here and there.

I use dinosaur statblocks as starting points for Lizardfolk, and gave Tanystropheus caustic venom it could spit to make a non-draconic dragon. 

Once upon a time, I gave a necromantic society dinosaurs as their beasts of burden - the raising of the dead to do one's bidding was more a sacred rite than for practical purposes.

Next up, D - The Final Part: Dracolisk to Dustdigger (includes Dragons)...