Harryhausen Cyclops Mini - for Carter; and a warm welcome to Chris Creel!

If you haven't been following Carter's Cartopia, then you won't know what this is all about but he's been putting some neat stuff on his blog that inspired me to become a member of the Order of the D30.

Anyway, the other day he published stats inspired by the Harryhausen cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. I knew that I had the mini somewhere in my box of figures that Junior Grognard has inherited from his uncle Andy (my figure painter from 25 years ago). And here it is!



I'm sure that there are newer versions of this figure around but there it is, 25 years old if a day.

And to Chris Creel - welcome! Glad that my humble blog has caught your interest. Generally, I try to sample a different ale each week and publicise it. My favourite of recent weeks has to be Maplemoon by the Joseph Holt Brewery in Manchester. Might be a bit tricky for anyone in the US to get hold of, though.

Greetings, Bat, Joe and Carl

A warm welcome to three new followers. As it's very nearly December, I've taken the liberty of making some mulled wine and mince pies - hope you're hungry!





PS sorry for the delayed welcome but I've been DMing a session of my Training Dungeon and my 6.5 year old son has just killed his first ogre!

Saturday Night Fight Club - A Paladin in Hell

We all love that picture – Strongheart the Paladin, +5 Holy Avenger in hand, on a precipice in Hell, ready to do battle with the evil that dwells therein.

But what level would that paladin have to be in order to stand a fighting chance against the devils that are just waiting to turn him into a shish kebab?

Tonight, we’re going to try and find out.

Firstly, let’s look at the diabolic opposition.

As can be seen from the picture, Strongheart is facing two barbed devils, one ice devil, one bone devil and a horned devil. A bit of a mixed grill. There is also a barbed devil lying on the ground but we’ll discount him. Only live and kicking devils need sign up.

Barbed devil (lesser devil)



AC 0
HD 8 average 36
THAC0 12
No of atts 3
Damage per attack 2-8/2-8/3-12 - average total damage 17.5
Special attacks Pyrotechnics, produce flame, hold person, summon another barbed devil (30% chance of success)
Size M

Ice devil (Greater Devil)



AC -4
HD 11 average 49.5
THAC0 10
No of atts 4
Damage per attack 1-4/1-4/2-8/3-12 – average total damage 17.5
Special attacks Fly, wall of ice, detect magic, detect invisible, polymorph self, gate in two bone devils or another ice devil (60% chance of success)
Size L

Bone devil (lesser devil)



AC -1
HD 9 average 40.5
THAC0 12
No of atts 1
Damage per attack 3-12 average total damage 7.5
Special attacks Generate fear, create illusion, fly, become invisible, detect invisible, fear, summon another bone devil (40% chance of success)
Size L

Horned devil (Greater devil)



AC -5
HD 5+5 average 27.5
THAC0 13
No of atts 4
Damage per attack 1-4/1-4/2-5/1-3 average total damage 10
Special attacks Pyrotechnics, produce flame, ESP, detect magic, illusion, summon another horned devil (50% chance of success)
Size L

All devils can do:
Charm person.
Suggestion.
Illusion.
Infravision.
Teleportation.
Know alignment.
Cause fear.
Animate dead.

Phew! Looks like Strongheart is up against Hell’s finest here. What does he have in store for the minions of evil?


Strongheart



Basic paladin abilities:

Detect evil at up to 60’ distance. I think that this one is going to be useful for picking up the invisible devils.

Make all saving throws at +2 – that could be handy.

Immunity to all forms of disease – not quite as handy, that one.

Protection from evil 1” radius at all times – that one comes in very handy as we shall see later.

At 3rd level, the paladin gains the ability to affect undead, devils and demons as if he were a 1st level cleric and so on. If Strongheart were a 16th level paladin, he’d be turning devils as if he were a 14th level cleric, i.e. at 13 on the die. It’s only the bone and barbed devils he could turn anyway – greater devils are immune from turning. Bah. Still, anything that limits the number he has to face at any one time.

The Holy Avenger, if drawn, projects a circle of power in a 1” diameter which is the equivalent of a dispel magic cast at whatever level the paladin is. So that’ll be 16th then. It also gives magic resistance of 50% in a 5’ radius. If the paladin were fighting demons instead of devils, he’d get a +10 damage bonus on CE opponents. Hmmm…possible idea for next week’s SNFC

And let’s not forget that paladins can do clerical spells when they get to 9th level.


Paladin's to hits at 16th level

0 = 6
-1 = 7
-2 = 8
-3 = 9
-4 = 10
-5 = 11


So in order that Strongheart gets an average chance to hit the toughest of his opponents, he needs to be 15-16th level, let’s say 16th. Strength bonuses kick in at 17, so it’s unlikely that he’d get them, since his minimum strength has to be 12. His constitution minimum has to be 9 so again, the hit point bonus is unlikely to kick in.

HP for a paladin are D10 to 9th level then 3hp per level thereafter. So a 16th level paladin is going to weigh in with an average of 70.5 (let’s call it 71 – Strongheart is going to need all the help he can get)

The total average hp of all the devils combined is 189.5.


We can see from the picture that he’s got plate and a shield. Let’s deck him out with the +4 plate and +3 shield from table 4 in the DMG. He’ll also have several other items but the dice can decide on them.

There we are – he’s now AC –2 at the very least. That means that he can be hit by

Barbed 16 (5 out of 20 or 25%) - he will hit them on a 6 (15 out of 20 or 75%)
Ice 14 (7 out of 20 or 35%) - he will hit them on a 10 (11 out of 20 or 55%)
Bone 16 (5 out of 20 or 25%) - he will hit them on a 7 (14 out of 20 or 70%)
Horned 17 (4 out of 20 or 20%) - he will hit them on an 11 (10 out of 20 or 50%)

Average chance for the devils 26.25%

Average chance for Strongheart 62.5%

Note that I have taken into account the –2 on the devils’ to hits because of the continual Protection from Evil that paladins get as a nice little bonus. Who says being good sucks?

This gives Strongheart a ratio of 2.38 hits to 1 against the devils, and being over 13th level, he gets 2 attacks per round, therefore that’s doubled to 4.76.

Let’s call the average damage that Strongheart can do with his holy avenger 10.5 per hit, since it does (1-12) + 5 for large targets and (1-8) + 5 for medium targets and double that because of his two hits per round, making it 21. Then multiply it by 62.5% to get the average damage he’s going to do over the space of a whole combat.

Barbed 25% x 17.5 = 4.375 - to kill Strongheart will take 16.22 rounds
Ice 35% x 17.5 = 4.375 - to kill Strongheart will take 16.22 rounds
Bone 25% x 7.5 = 1.875 - to kill Strongheart will take 37.86 rounds
Horned 20% x 10 = 2 - to kill Strongheart will take 35.5 rounds

Barbed 36hp - Strongheart to kill devil takes 2.74 rounds
Ice 49.5hp - Strongheart to kill devil takes 3.77 rounds
Bone 40.5hp - Strongheart to kill devil takes 3.08 rounds
Horned 27.5hp - Strongheart to kill devil takes 2.09 rounds


Okay, so that’s one devil vs. Strongheart each round. No problem for our brave paragon of Lawful Good there. What if he faces two per round?

2 x barbed, 25% 17.5 x 2 = 8.75, to kill Strongheart – 8.11 rounds. Strongheart to kill both, 5.48 rounds

1 Barbed, one Ice 10.5 per round, to kill Strongheart – 6.76 rounds. Strongheart to kill both in 6.51 rounds

One Ice, one Bone 7.5 per round, to kill Strongheart – 9.46 rounds, Strongheart to kill both in 6.85 rounds.

One Bone, one Horned 3.93 per round, to kill Strongheart – 18 rounds, Strongheart to kill both in 5.17 rounds.

Hm, a bit trickier. He's up against it now. The Barbed and Ice combo is the most dangerous. Let us not forget that Strongheart is going to be slapping the Cure Lights on himself to repair the damage that the devils have inflicted.

It’s going to be difficult to work out the magic attacks, given that the devils have attacks including fire, ice, invisibility. Strongheart has a magic resistance of 50% against anything the devils can fling at him while he is holding his sword. He also gets a dispel magic at 16th level.

So there we have the figures. If Strongheart can limit the attacking devils to two per round or fewer, he’s in with a chance. It seems obvious now why he’s standing on that precipice in the picture – tactical considerations. Flying devils can attack him from behind, yeah, but he can detect evil and knows they're there Teleportation is no good since they can't materialise in thin air.

And another thing we’ve learned – horned devils – boy, do they suck. Yeah, they’ve got AC –5 but the damage – pitiful.

So, what do you think? Do the figures add up or have I muffed my maths?
Why not try out some trials by combat, now that we have the figures. Let me know who comes out on top.

And order a side salad just in case Strongheart muffs his To Hits.

Elesalia - a closer look.

Zooming in.

In the previous post, I gave an outline of how I drew up the overall world map. Now I had it but it was on a massive scale. One sheet of A3 covered thousands of miles. I knew that if I wanted to get closer, I had to get local. Then I came across the large-scale maps of the Flanaess, drawn up on Corel by Anna Bernemalm. If you haven’t come across these yet, do yourself a favour and take a look.

http://ghmaps.net/maps.html

Each of these map sheets seemed to be about 300 miles west to east and about 400 miles north to south.

I divided my main map into a grid and numbered each box. Then I started working on the larger-scale maps, concentrating on the area around Stonegarth Hold, the fastness that I intended would serve as the jumping-off point for the wilderness exploration.



I selected an area on the 300 x400 map, on the border between civilisation (Tremantor) and the wilderness. I decided to have a river port there, which would serve as the base town from which the players would explore the sandbox. Just beyond the south-east corner of the hex sheet, about a hundred miles from the base town would be the megadungeon, the Monastery of Doom.

The Sandbox.

I had originally, following from the How to Build a Sandbox series on Bat in the Attic,

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html

set the scale at 6 miles per hex, but this didn’t quite ring true for me; with a party travelling at anything up to twenty miles a day, they could be across the map in a week or so. Ten miles seemed a better scale for me. Another reason for increasing the scale was that it allowed each hex to theoretically harbour a number of different threats and features without them all being virtually on top of each other.

I tried initially to generate possible encounters for each hex by use of the wilderness encounter table in the DMG but after some giant rats and a bombardier beetle (oh no, not bombardier beetles – it’s Tomb of Horrors all over again!), I gave up on that and came up with a different solution. Whilst not planning every hex out in intricate detail, I came up with a list of geographically evocative names that I thought might serve as suggestion points and hooks for possible adventures when the party came to that particular hex. I wanted them to be suggestive enough to give me ideas but not so restrictive that they constrained my spontaneity. And as only I see the map, there's nothing to stop me changing one if the need arises.

I list them here, just in case some out there might not be able to read my writing (it has been known!). If anyone wants to borrow some or all of them, feel free. There are many more to come.

The Bone Highway
Deathrider Dale
The Shades
The Shallows
Broken Shield Deeps
Silver Wolf Marshes
Moaning Caves
Shadowholt Wood
Crow Fields
Ogre’s Ford
Skeleton Tower
Shrine of the Silver Knight
Axehead Hills
Gnoll’s Dell
Rustblade Hills
Dead Elf Dale
Bloodsword Cliffs
Burnt Man’s Haunt
Clawbriars
The Grey Ravines
Bugbear Bluffs
Firedrake Wilds
Griffon Wastes
Troll Tunnels
Trollsblood Vale
Slaughter Field
The Bog of Reth
Stakehead Dale
Hellspring Mountain
Crumbling Castle
Darkshade Caverns
The Knife
Catacombs of Sharnassa
Ironstone Cliffs
Greyshale Valley
Krag’s Grave
Dog Solitude
Wolf’s Maw Mountain
Firebreath Forest
Moon Mere
Valley of Dead Horses
Claw Wood
The Grims
Watchful Eyes
Redtooth Peak
Ratman’s Hill
Wolfsfang wood
Bear Canyon
Spider Wood
Dwarf’s End
Goblin’s Pass
The Cold Mounds
Burnt Tower
Black Wood
Orcskull Hills
The Old Fortress
Sunblood Temple
Trapsoul Forest
The Empty Miles
Singing Sword Hills
The Fearstones.

Rolling dice to randomise the distribution (so as to avoid any unconscious bias on my part as to what I wanted in each hex), I came up with the following map, which will serve as the sandbox for the players. They will start from the river town of Antiar’s Landing and make their explorations across the river and into the Wilderness.





In the next post on this subject, I’ll be outlining a few ideas that some of the hooks above have generated and talking about wandering monsters and wilderness encounters.

Players and Intelligence

Now that I’ve been DMing again for a while, and having read copious amounts on the way of Old School, a conundrum has presented itself to me.

It is quite feasible that a player with a slightly higher than average intelligence, may well play a character who has, let us suppose, an INT of 17 or 18. Clearly, the character is more intelligent than the player.

So what happens when, as is common in dungeons, the DM wishes to present a puzzle challenge? One approach might be to say that a roll under INT on a d20 would mean that the character has solved the puzzle, but this goes against the maxim of Old School, ‘challenge the players, not the character’, and indeed reduces what is often a key feature of the dungeon to just a die roll.

So how should this problem be approached?

 Test the player – sure, but doesn’t this mean that the character’s INT score becomes rather meaningless as an indication of their intelligence.

 Abolish intelligence as a requisite – good idea on the surface, but doesn’t this mean that the Magic User then becomes a very difficult class to run as it no longer has a prime requisite.

 Ban players from running characters above their natural intelligence. Tricky one this. It’s almost like a kind of intellectual discrimination and besides, who judges player intelligence? It's a minefield, to say the least.

INT is not like STR. You can say I’m kicking a door open, or I’m bending the bars, and no-one expects you to actually do it. The DM might get a bit annoyed if the doors in his house are routinely broken off their hinges by players with the equivalent of 18/00 STR.

Puzzles, on the other hand, the bread and butter of Old School dungeons:

"4. At least one puzzle, trick, or obstacle that requires the players to figure it out, rather than being solvable by a die-roll"

Grognardia 20th February 2009.

They are something that either the player solves or the character does, and if the character does, then it revolves around a die roll, or the DM saying that the puzzle is solvable with the application of, say, 30 INT points.

And what if the DM is hopeless at making up puzzles? He might present the players with the D&D equivalent of the Gordian Knot or leave the main treasure chamber guarded by a problem that Elmo from Sesame Street could solve.

As a converse example, what if the player is running a fighter whose INT is way below his own? Is it fair to ask the player to restrict his own intellectual input into the game, just because his dice rolled low? Or should the DM ask someone who may not be capable of it, and would find it immensely frustrating, to role play a dimwit?

Junior Grognard is 6.5 years old and there is obviously a point beyond which his deductive powers are not, as yet, capable of going. I had to put on my thinking hat in one of our Training Dungeon sessions recently and devise a puzzle that would reward the players whilst not relying on the characters to make die rolls. However, as there are two magic users in the party, it stands to reason that the characters, realistically speaking would have tumbled the puzzle in moments. JG got it, but it took a while and a good deal of effort.

The temptation is strong to ‘help’ the players if the DM suddenly realises that the puzzle is just too tricky for them, or if he’s overdone the complexity thereof. Tempting though this course of action is, it has the potential to ruin a dungeon.

But players might very well complain if they realise, as has been outlined above, that their characters could well have solved the puzzle that the players could not. And not everyone is good at logical puzzles, although they might be very intelligent in other areas.

I would certainly be interested to hear how other DMs have solved this particular problem and if anyone’s got examples of puzzles that can be placed into dungeons to give players a tough but ultimately feasible chance of solving them.

Talk to the axe - 'cause the dwarf ain't listening!

From previous sessions, it will be recalled that the party was approaching room 7, haunt of the water weird. They all filed in and spotted the treasure under the water, but sensibly didn't disturb the pool itself, being more interested in the door on the far side of the room.

(DG memo to self - if you don't want the party to disturb something in a room, put a closed door on the far side, it seems to draw them like moths to a flame)

They opened the door, no traps there, and found within a statue of a nymph, her feet encased in the stone of the plinth. As they approached the statue, a magic mouth appeared and recited the following rhyme.

You see my whole enchained in stone
I flowed but flow no longer
Though my will to be free is strong
That which chains me is much stronger
Water bound by earth
The battle won or seems it so
But those with strength enough and arms
Can start again my flow
And ‘neath my feet, unseen
There lies, yours free to take
A precious gift that may lend
Aid in your struggle with the watery snake.

JG put two and two together about the watery snake, concluding that the bones in the pool were indeed its previous victims. They set to smashing the pedestal and as the statue’s feet were freed, it turned into a woman made of water, who then cascaded to the floor and flowed into the ground. In the rubble, the party found a flask which, although they didn’t know it, contained a potion of purify water. JG at once realised that it could be used to fight the water weird.



Back they went into the fountain room, and while the water weird was forming up (two melee rounds, apparently, according to MM), JG let it have it with the potion - result, one dead water weird. JG quickly scooped the coins out and found the second token as well; I got him to add up the total of the gold pieces he's now got, using his maths skills to get the answers right - another educational plus for D&D! (he can also keep track of his HPs as well - good number skills)

From there, they managed to find their way down towards room 5, where there lay in wait a bubbling pit of green slime. There were two narrow walkways to a platform, ten feet by ten feet.

I should add at this point that JG had got Alia the MU to memorise unseen servant.

They arrived at the 'northern' door, the walkway from which required only one Dex check to reach the platform, rather than the ‘western door’ which would have required four.

Hruthnor, Alurax, Akurath and Lannius went across, Lannius missing one roll and making his balancing roll just in time.

Ten feet across the slime was a wall carving, in the middle of which appeared to be something resemblign a tiny keyhole. They managed to work out, with a little help from Daddy Grognard, that they could use the ten foot pole to get one of Lannius' tools across to the panel with the keyhole, but although Lannius made his pick locks roll, they had no plan in place to catch the gems and they all plopped into the green slime. At least no characters went with them, although Lannius was sent on the Walk of Slime back to the 'western' door, and this time managed to make his DEX roll four times. Some time later, JG was reminded that the MU had unseen servant and had he remembered this, I would probably have ruled that said servant could have caught the gems. He wasn't too happy when he realised this.

Having had the completed sections on the map filled in for him, JG set off again, this time up the winding bit towards the skull and hands room (3 & 4). As they rounded the bend, they came face to face with three wandering orcs, who waded in with cries of "Death to the humans" (well, something like that, given that the two lead characters were a dwarf and an elf - not too bright, those orcs). The resultant melee was quite bloody, with Alurax going down and Hruthnor being reduced to 1hp. Elise the C/Mu got a cracking hit in with the lucerne hammer, more or less smashing one orc's skull to bits all over the wall of the passageway. But the orcs were eventually sliced and diced, and on went Team Adventure.

They got to the junction and spotted two shadowy figures up by the crossroads. It was two goblins with bows, keeping an eye on things for their mates in room 2. I had planned for them to send a couple of arrows in the party's direction and 'persuade' them to move on to rooms 13 and 14, and the descent to the next level. However, things backfired and JG ordered a charge, with Elise and Lannius in the vanguard. A couple of arrows whistled past them and battle was joined.

To cut a long story short, more and more goblins joined the fray from room 2 (you will remember that there were originally 21 and 4 had been slept and killed by Team Adventure in session 1, leaving 17). One by one the party members were brought down to minus HPs, and were dragged back to be brought round by Alia the MU. First Elise went down, followed by Akurath. Hruthnor was being kept on the bench by the manager, having only 1hp to begin with.



In leapt the hobbit, holding the breach, while Lannius (with AC2) was dodging the goblin blades like Jackie Chan. Then the hobbit took 8hp of damage and was at -6. Despite only three goblins left, JG was looking at the likelihood of a TPK. It was time for the arrival of a saviour with a bendy sword and a fresh set of HPs.

"Need any help, human?" he asked, and when the answer was in the affirmative, he weighed in and the party (well, what was left of it) finished off the remaining goblins.

It was a very long and epic combat, a real old-fashioned meat-grinder with a lot of rounds where no-one actually hit (this often happens at 1st level). I did give JG a couple of chances to leg it, but he stuck with it and managed to wipe out all the goblins in the TD. Result!

The newcomer was a half-orc Cl/Th named Garazor, supplied by my good buddy Old 4 Eyes, who had been following the adventure by e-mail and wanted to vicariously participtate.

Following Garazor’s advice, they are now hunkering down in room 2 for the night. They'll need at least 8 hours, for the respective clerics to get their cure lights back, get the hp levels back up and restock on spells for the next session. Which will contain a tough monster indeed, although the sheer dogged determination that JG displays makes me think that he is a dwarf at heart.

The nymph’s riddle went well. I was concerned that JG might not work it out, but he seemed to get it with a modicum of effort. Wandering monsters caused some problems and the DM's plans went slightly awry, although it ended the session with a melee to remember. I was very pleased that we didn't get a TPK at the crossroads, although there were some very lucky rolls that avoided that and the timely arrival of a certain half-orc.

Saturday Night Fight Club - Bulette v Two Owlbears

At the suggestion of Carter Soles, we present:

Bulette vs. 2 owlbears


Bulette

There is a very good reason why these guys might look a bit worried.

HD 9 (average hp 40/41)
AC -2/4/6 (shell, eyes, bit under fin)
THAC0 12 (will hit the owlbear on a 7 or better)
No of atts 3
Damage per att 4-48/3-18/3-18
Average damage 26/10.5/10.5
2300xp plus 12/hp

Mad wizards sure were busy in the olden days. Here’s another of their creations:


Owlbear

HD 5+2 (average hp 24/25)
AC 5
THAC0 15 (will hit the bulette on a 17 or better)
No of atts 3 (claw, claw, bite)
Damage per att 1-6/1-6/2-12
Average damage 3.5/3.5/7
If it scores 18 or better on a hit with its paw, it has dragged the victim to itself and will do it 2-16hp per round hug damage until it is killed.

225 + 8/hp


There is a 20% chance that each owlbear will hit the bulette, whilst the bulette has a 70% chance of hitting.

An owlbear would have to hit a bulette seven times to have a chance of killing it. Since there is only a 20% (1/5) chance of this happening and an owlbear per round will be killed 70% of the time, it stands to reason that 5 owlbears are needed to ensure that proportionally, one gets a hit in. Since that hit will only do on average 1/7 of the HTK for the bulette, we’d need seven times that many to ensure that the bulette will die. So that’s 35 owlbears to one bulette. Or maybe that’s just my dodgy maths.

Okay, so we’re ready to do…..

Trial by combat!

Round 1

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice

Bite 11 hit. I rolled 3, 11, 7 and 10 – that’s 31 damage with the bite alone.
Claw 9 hit damage of 11
Claw 9 hit damage of 9

In total, the bulette has inflicted damage of 51 points of damage on the unfortunate owlbear 1. A definite kill.

To be fair, let’s allow both owlbears to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 1
Bite 6 miss
Claw 9 miss
Claw 6 miss

Owlbear 2
Bite 16 a pretty good roll, would have hit AC-1 but unfortunately it needs to hit AC-2
Claw 15 miss
Claw 6 miss

Round 2 – so now we’re down to one owlbear and the bulette has taken no damage. Let’s give the owlbear a chance and say that the bulette has raised its fin, giving an area on its back AC6. We’ll say that if the owlbear rolls an 18 or higher, it’s hit this area and can then roll to hit AC6 rather than AC-2

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice:

Bite 2
Claw 18 for 6 damage
Claw 12 for 7 damage

In total, the bulette has inflicted 13 points of damage on the unfortunate owlbear 2, reducing it to 12hp left.

Let’s again allow the owlbear to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 2
Bite 9
Claw 4
Claw 6

So none of its attacks hit that vulnerable area of AC6. Let’s see if they get through the bulette’s armour this time.

Bite 6
Claw 13
Claw 5

Nope.


Round 3 – so now we’re down to one owlbear that’s taken damage, and the bulette has still taken no damage.

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice

Bite 11 hit – I rolled 2, 2, 6 and 4 – 14 in total, so that kills the owlbear
Claw 5 miss
Claw 13 hit - 8 damage, which knocks a bit more off the body of the owlbear

In total, the bulette has inflicted 22 points of damage on the unfortunate owlbear 2. It’s dead meat. Dinner time for the bulette.

Let’s again allow the owlbear to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 2
Bite 6
Claw 19 – yay, the claw has hit the vulnerable area of softness
Claw 10

Bite 4 miss
Claw To hit AC6 is a mere 9 or better, so here goes – 10, yes it’s a hit. Damage of 5, so that brings the bulette down to 35hp. Whew, that’ll teach him to take on two owlbears at the same time.
Claw 6 miss

Okay, so that might have been a fluke. Let’s do it again, just to be sure.

Round 1

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice

Bite 9 – hit, damaged of 10,8,8,3 – in total, 29
Claw 18 – hit, damage of 10
Claw 2 - miss

The first owlbear has taken total damage of 39 points of damage from the bite and claw. Not quite as much as the 51 points in the first battle, but still enough to kill the owlbear outright.

To be fair, let’s allow both owlbears to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 1
Bite 11 - miss
Claw 1 - miss
Claw 6 - miss

Owlbear 2
Bite 6 - miss
Claw 9 - miss
Claw 5 - miss

Round 2 –

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice

Bite 6 - miss
Claw 16 hit 6 damage
Claw 12 hit 12 damage

The bulette does 18 points of damage on the unfortunate 2nd owlbear, leaving it with 7hp. Looks like there’ll be an empty place or two at Mr and Mrs Owlbear’s dinner table tonight.

Let’s again allow the owlbear to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 2
Bite 16
Claw 16
Claw 6

So once again, none of its attacks hit that area of AC6. I wonder if they get through the bulette’s armour. What do you think, readers?

Bite 8
Claw 4
Claw 16

Oh dear. Those claws are just bouncing off the bulette’s scales. No wonder they’re so prized as shields. Just the question of getting them off the bulette in the first place.


Round 3 – so now we’re down to one owlbear with wounds, and the bulette is just laughing at it.

Bulette attacks, rolls the following dice

Bite 5 - miss
Claw 3 - miss
Claw 16 - hit for 10 damage.

The bulette has done 10 points of damage on the now late and lamented owlbear 2. It’s dinner time for the bulette.

Let’s again allow the owlbear to attack on the same reaction

Owlbear 2
Bite 12
Claw 7
Claw 7

No attack hits the vulnerable AC6 area but wait, what’s this?

Bite 18 – the owlbear fastened on with its beak before it died, doing 7 points of damage.
Claw 16
Claw 9

Okay, so the result wasn’t a fluke.


So, this is proof conclusive that two owlbears are no match for a bulette with an attitude. That’s more or less any bulette then.

Thanks to Carter Soles for pointing me in the direction of two meaty monsters, who will be gracing the encounter tables of my sandbox for quite a while to come.