Personally, in my copy of Vol-2 here I jot down an Attack & Damage stat in the margin for each type (in whole-number of dice, following the OD&D precedent).īut look a little bit more closely. As you probably know, by default everything originally did 1d6 damage, with exceptions called out in the text paragraphs that follow (like giants and elementals for 2d6, black pudding for 3d6, etc.) This was perhaps a big oversight with the first supplement (Sup-I, Greyhawk), rosters of different damage stats for all the monsters were provided, but then you needed to flip between two books to synch them up, and this required the later Monster Manual before it was fixed. Now, a couple things you won't see, of course: stats for Attacks and Damage. and also the 'clean up crew' mindless oozes that got squeezed in here, too. This page is mostly all 'Benign' entities all of the fey woodland-type creatures, mounts (ground and aerial), creatures you might summon with magic, etc. Without anywhere explicitly saying so, this page is predominantly all the 'Hostile' stuff, i.e., Chaotic monsters that you're expected to fight: As you open D&D Vol-2, Monsters and Treasure, the first thing you encounter after the Index is the 'Monster Reference Table, Hostile & Benign Creatures', as follows (tables reproduced for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and scholarship).įirst, page 3. For those of you with OD&D, this will be old hat, but for those who've never seen it, I simply must share. One of the many striking things that occurred to me when I got my Original D&D set (see very first blog post here) was the lovely and informative elegance of the monster roster.

D&d monster stats