RMA: Medusa

Monsters with petrification attacks are not new fodder for this blog, and this Greek classic has been mentioned in those conversations, but I haven't done a full write-up on her before. She is a rather interesting monster for a few reasons, so let's get to it, shall we?

First off, I'm going to mention the pedantic issue of the name and then drop the issue. I know that in mythology Medusa was the individual character's name, not a race. I'm not sure of why D&D handles the name this way - perhaps because of the other D&D Gorgon - but for whatever reason, like the Pegasus, Medusa has become synonymous with the creature type.

Secondly, you know I loves me some Harryhausen, but just to be clear, he completely made up* the whole "half snake, half woman" design for 1981's Clash of the Titans. The original creature was a woman with snake hair and a face that would make a train take a dirt road.

Medusas (Medusae?) have a reputation for being TPK material, which may be why I have not seen them used much. Granted there is one in B2's Caves of Chaos, but other than that I personally haven't run into them much. When you look at the stats, though, they have some weaknesses along with their obviously strengths.

Medusa (from Moldvay)

AC: 8
HD: 4**
Move: 90' (30')
Att: 1 snakebite + special
Damage: 1d6 + poison
No. App. 1d3 (1d4)
Save: F4
Morale: 8
Treasure: F
AL: C

NOTE: For convenience I'm going to refer to the medusa as "she/her" instead of "it", even though the Medusa isn't really human (I'm not going to even get into the idea of an all-female species!)

With her poor AC and so-so hit dice and low morale, its obvious she isn't a combat powerhouse. We'll get to her petrification ability in a moment, but first I want to talk about the snakes. Despite having a head full of them, she only gets the one 1d6 bite per round. Sure it's save or die. But it's death in one turn, which gives the afflicted character a chance to keep fighting, or get a Neutralize Poison cast on him before keeling over. Beyond that, she has no other attack.

"But wait!" You say. "Her gaze is an attack!"

Nope.

The description is quite clear. It is the act of looking at the medusa's face that petrifies its victims, not her looking at you. She can (and often does) try to find ways to trick people into looking at her face (she's Chaotic, after all), but Flesh to Stone beams don't shoot out of her peepers. Some petrifying creatures, like the Gorgon and Cockatrice, attack to "stone" their victims. Not so the medusa.

That being said, it's still a dangerous ability. Typically, she will trick a party into looking her while covered with a hood or veil or some such. Then, WHAMMO! A few bad saves and she has a new statue garden. PCs that avoid getting stoned are left either hamstringing themselves by shutting their eyes or trying to mess with a mirror. On top of all this, the medusa is getting a fat +2 to saves against any incoming spells.

It's interesting to note that by strict interpretation, even though multiple medusae can appear in an encounter, each one is only vulnerable to seeing its own face (not the others').

Given its tactics described on B39 and in The Keep, it's fair to assume a medusa has human level intelligence. This begs the question "What does it want?" I expect a lot of good RP fodder and plot hooks could be found here. Obviously if she had or knew something important to the PCs, she might ask a favor in return, as she certainly can't easily move about in normal society to get what she wants or needs.

* “Every statue I’d seen [Medusa] was just a woman with a pretty face and had snakes in her hair. Well, that wasn’t very dramatic, so I gave her a rather demonic look. We gave her a rattlesnake’s tail, so that she could be a menace from the sound effect point-of-view. It was a shock to see her come out from behind the wall crawling on her hands because that was the only way she could propel herself.” 

- Ray Harryhausen

REF (Random Encounter Fun): Prairie Petrification!

Time for another round of random encounter rolls! Last time, we had multiple dragons in dungeon, so this time let's return to the great outdoors.

Rolling randomly, our terrain is grasslands. I rolled "Unusual" for the encounter type (uh-oh). The result was Gorgons! Fortunately for our hypothetical party, they only meet one; just one measly, little, armor-plated bull with a petrification attack.

Encounter distance come up at 40 yards. Given that this boulder-making bovine can cover that in a single round, that's pretty close. Let's assume the PCs came over a hill and there it was on the opposite side; maybe just down the slope?

Next up, since there isn't anything in particular in the gorgon's description to indicate a default reaction, and it's of animal intelligence, let's make a reaction roll. An 8 indicates uncertainty and no immediate attack. If the players don't rush it, they might be able to just back away and avoid the fight. Let's assume they try to calm the beast with soothing noises and move around it. A second reaction roll gives us an 11! Since there was no offer to consider, it's fair to say the beast wanders off. Crisis averted.

Or was it?

One of the issues with random encounters like that is if you meet the monster away from its lair, then you're a lot less likely to see any treasure. A gorgon has type E treasure, and since it's a beast, it's not carrying its loot around with it. Greedy players might decide to follow the gorgon and see if it leads them to its lair. Rolling for the Number Appearing in lair (1d4), I got a 2; which means another one (its mate?) is back at the old homestead.

Let's assume the fight occurs and the PCs win (at least some of them). That's not so crazy. Heck, if they can down one of them, maybe the other fails its lousy morale. So what was their fabulous reward? Well, TT: E is listed with an average value of 2,500gp (B45), but we're doing random here! So I rolled for it. Turns out, the PCs did pretty well for themselves.

• 1,000gp in gold coin/buillion
• 9 gems (!), totaling 2,400gpv (including one 1,000 gpv stone)
• 7 pcs of jewelry (!!), totaling 7,500gpv. The highest value piece rolled at 1,500gpv alone.

This give a grand total of 10,900gp worth of loot!

Defeating the gorgons is worth 2,400xp (8HD + special each). So the party could walk away from that with over 13K xp to split amongst them.

This is why PCs sometimes foolishly pursue risky encounters unnecessarily. Sometimes, just sometimes, it can pay off.

Now, that's the bones of the encounter. Let's put some meat on it.

I don't think we need to do much to explain the gorgons' presence. They are listed as living in grasslands, so that's just their habitat. How they heck did they get all that swag though?

Since as treasures go this has got a pretty high value-to-size ratio and is almost all in gems/jewels, it seems more likely to have come from one place than have been collected from many sources. Who has such things? Nobles do, but it seems odd for them to have been out on the prairie dripping in pearls. That doesn't explain the loose stones or the gold coin, either. So here's my idea:

Years ago (how long is up to the DM), a young gentlewoman was promised in marriage to some horrible old nobleman, but she was in love with a poor commoner-type. She decides to flee in the night, taking enough easily portable wealth for her and her paramour to start anew. Galloping madly cross country to meet him in the next town, she accidentally stumbled across the pair of gorgons. Her horse shied and threw her as it bolted, causing her to drop the bag of treasure. Thus, when the startled monsters breathed their petrifying fog, only she was turned to stone, not the gold, etc.

When her father's men searched for her, the fleeing horse's tracks led them off in the wrong direction. The stone figure of the girl and the small leather bag lying in the tall grass were all but invisible to searchers. The gorgons had wandered off but eventually returned to their preferred resting spot. Over the years, the gorgons and their kin have made the area around this hollow their home.

Perhaps the story of the lass and the treasure is a local legend. Maybe the lad was found out and it was assumed he killed her for the loot. Maybe he's been executed and he haunts the girl's family to this day. If the PCs find the petrified girl when they find the loot, a whole new adventure arc could spawn from a simple random encounter.

Assuming the PCs don't go full murder-hobo and just leave the girl as a rock and take the loot. Those Stone to Flesh scrolls ain't cheap!

RMA: Cockatrice

Hello all!

It's been a little while, as I was finishing a draft for a new Mutant Future module. I am back now with a new Random Monster Assessment: the cockatrice.

I've written previously about the cockatrice (in passing), but have not done an entry on it in particular. Maybe others have seen it in play more than me, but I can only think of one time I ran an adventure with one, and the PCs never ended up exploring the area near its lair.

The cockatrice is sort of the "101" for petrifying monsters. It's small, not too hard to kill, and the nastiness that is flesh to stone only happens A) after a successful hit, and B) a failed saving throw. Unlike gaze or gas attacks (Medusa and Gorgon).

The beauty of the cockatrice is that the petrification thing makes it utterly terrifying to most players even though it's sort of wimpy.

Boo!

Let's have the stats, shall we?

Cockatrice (from Cook):

AC: 6
AL: N
 HD: 5**
 Move: 90' (30')
  Fly: 180' (60')
 Attacks: 1 (beak + special)
 Damage: 1d6 + petrify
No. Appearing: 1d4 (1d8)
Save: F5
Morale: 7

First off, it's "chicken" (get it??). A morale of seven means it will turn a tail feather pretty easily. Secondly, its AC is no great shakes. On the other hand, five hit dice is pretty sturdy for a scaly cockerel, so it will probably take more than one hit to drop, not to mention immunity to the ever-popular fight-ending Sleep spell.

The thing about the cockatrice is that the odds are it WILL get a melee attack in at some point. Even 1-2 pecks will give the PCs sweats. And if, by chance, it does manage to petrify a character, then the whole adventure can become a much more complicated situation. Unless you've got an 11th level MU in the party who has the appropriate spell, it will take some work to get your companion unstuck.

Since it only has a melee attack, peppering it with arrows is a good way to get it to flee. Just do not pursue it into cramped quarters, where it will get to close with you if cornered.

As an aside, the mythology of the creature can make for fun background fluff. The stories go that a cockatrice is hatched from a chicken egg incubated by a toad or snake. Definitely a bit of imagination fodder there. What if there was a nest of them in some poor farmer's henhouse? 1d8 in lair... (evil grin).

RMA: Gorgon

No, not her

Him!

The idea of gorgon as a petrifying armor-plated bull has interesting possible origins. One theory says that Hetrodotus originally wrote about the fantastic african beast, the Catoblepas (Yep! You read that right!). Then the greeks eventually folded that in/confused it with descriptions of the rhinoceros and named the resulting folklore after the Medusa-style gorgon for its stone-turning ability.

Whatever its genesis as a classic D&D monster, I don't see gorgons come up too much in games (despite my having a mini for it!). Maybe it's the naming confusion. I don't know. It does show up as a wandering encounter in dungeons (Levels 6-7), and a few terrain types. Rare or not, it's a nasty thing to throw at PCs.

Gorgon (from Cook)

No. App: 1-2 (1d4)

AC: 2

AL: C

HD: 8

Move: 120' (40')

Attacks: 1 (gore or breath)

Dmg: 2d6 or petrify

Save: F8

Morale: 8

OK, first off this thing is physically pretty tough. Its scales give it plate mail-like protection and it has up to 64 hit points. In other words, it's not going down easily.

Its horns do respectable damage, and it gets to double that if it charges. Let's get real, though, the breath weapon is the moneymaker here.

As mentioned previously in this blog, petrification is a scary thing for PCs. Players, as a rule, hate it! The vapor covers a 60' long by 10' wide area and the gorgon is immune, so it might "ground zero" itself and catch any or all nearby PCs. Another tidbit, there is no listed limit to how many times or how often the gorgon can use this attack! So the odds are good that someone is ending up a lawn ornament (at least temporarily).

On the downside for this thing, it doesn't have a great morale and most versions' monster listings peg it at animal level intelligence; so you might drive it off. It has fairly decent treasure (type E), so it can be worth a party's while to track it back to its lair, but remember the number encountered in lair is up to four, so watch out!

Up or Down the Drain?

The lead quote in my previous ramble about turning to stone also mentions Energy Drain (I use this term and 'Level Drain' more or less interchangeably here, btw), which is another marvelously contested "old-school" mechanic. I won't even go into how much the topic has been debated, house-ruled, championed, and railed against. Let me just say I like it, but also recognize its imperfections.

Beedo, over at Dreams in the Lich House, had a nice little poll and post about E.D. last fall that's worth a read. It covers most of what I consider the salient points in the Pros & Cons of any E.D. discussion, including:

• It's scary, and scary = cool.
• We old farts don't have as much time to game anymore. Losing a level or two can take a WHILE to bounce back from, which some find frustrating.
• Everybody and their blink dog has taken a stab at house-ruling it. 

There is a saying that comes up at my table from time to time, usually when some mechanic of classic D&D or a retro-clone is brought under scrutiny. "You can't 'fix' D&D." This doesn't mean D&D is a "broken" or hopeless game. It's the idea that for all its rough patches and quirks, it's still the patriarch, the fount from which our hobby springs. While house-rules and so forth are perfectly acceptable expressions of our interest and involvement in the game, to try and "fix" the game's foibles is an often futile attempt to make it into something other than the inspiring mess that it sometimes seems to be. 

Now you can take that idea or leave it, but the upshot of it is that I tend to play the game more or less as written. That's not to say I don't have my own pet house rules and heartbreaker concepts; I most definitely do! That said, I feel that it's often better to step back and say "It's a GAME! And the rules say ___ works like that." If it really rankles, then it may be time for a house rule that keeps it fun for your group. Of course, one can always look at it for what it is, and choose to play a different game too. There are so many good ones out there to try.

[Stepping off the soapbox and back on topic.] 

Let me assume the role of the Old School Energy Drain Apologist (OSEDA) here: So losing a level sucks? Yer damned right it does! You say it took you 6 months of game play to reach 4th level and now you're 1st again? Wow, maybe next time run away! You say it's 'not fair' that your 8th level magic-user effectively lost 70K experience, but the 8th level thief 'only' lost 40K and that the 3rd level fighter henchman only lost 2K? News flash:

1. Life ain't fair.
2. A seventh level magic-user is still WAY more powerful than the 7th level thief and 3rd level fighter COMBINED.
3. If you're that torqued about it, find a powerful cleric and shell out some loot for Restoration Spells.* 
4. You COULD have been drained to 0 and be that Spectre's towel boy by now.

*Which, I know, isn't in BX. But it is in the Rules Cyclopedia and LL's AEC.

I could go on, but you get the gist of it. Now, I'd like to present a few caveats and addendums, if I might.

1. Like petrify, monsters with this ability should be rare outside of certain environments (i.e. a vampire's castle, a necropolis teeming with undead, etc.). I'm guilty of periodically tossing a level drainer at the party in a random encounter, but that doesn't mean it was my finest DMing moment.
2. Most creatures that have this ability are turnable by clerics. 
3. A DM should make it possible for the PCs to be forewarned about the threat. i.e. rumors in town, hints in the dungeon, etc.
4. A DM ideally should know his group well enough to judge how to balance the "Fun vs. Fear" factor of such an encounter. 
5. Players need to remember that older D&D is more about exploration and treasure, and less about a series of toe-to-toe fights with monsters. (There's a reason most XP comes from loot.) If you encounter some wights and the cleric's turn attempt fails, consider whether this is a fight you really need to have. If not, spike the door shut and run away! 
6. Higher level PCs with more XP to lose should conversely be better prepared to face such foes, and more able to "heal" the effects if they get unlucky.
7. There's nothing inherently wrong with house rules about things like temporary vs. permanent drain, saving throws, etc. Use 'em if they work for you. 

D&D already has so many things in it that reduce consequences: magical healing and raise dead; spell-casting that nearly always works in a predictable  and consistent manner; escalating hit points, a plethora of magic items, saving throws, etc. Most DMs (over 12) aren't on an ego trip, trying to squash the miserable PCs, they want to play the game with their friends, but also maybe have a cool story emerge. A cool story needs challenges and sometimes those challenges need to be daunting, or even scary. It seems to me that having a few things in the game that are unequivocally bad news –beyond just a bigger damage die– isn't such a bad thing.

Great minds...

Darva, over at Stocking the Dungeon, is posting again (yay!) and makes some similar points to my petrification post, but in more general terms. Definitely worth a read!

Stone Cold Killers

"Old school players are only scared of two things: energy drain and things that turn your ass to stone."  -'Clip', from Dragonsfoot

I read that line on a message forum a long time back. (If someone knows who originally said it, please let me know and I'll credit the quote.) It's an interesting statement, and encapsulates a lot of what folks consider "Old School" play. I'm not going to get into the merits of one style of play vs. another, or if those mechanics are good or bad. Rather, I just want to say a little bit about one of those two threats: Petrification.

I'm going to say right up front that, in my games, I've got no trouble with people being turned to stone. I'm sorry, but it's too firmly rooted in fantasy and mythology to leave out.

Oh yeah, him!

Now, I will say it should probably be pretty uncommon. When you look at the ways it can happen, you've only got a few options (without custom traps/monsters). 

• Flesh to Stone spell (6th level MU)
• Some magic items (Eyes of Petrification, etc.)
• Certain monsters
• Beholder*
• Medusa
• Basilisk
• Cockatrice
• Gorgon

*The Beholder is a 1e monster, but a variation appears in Labyrinth Lord's AEC, so I put it on the list. 

If you go by the random encounter charts, the first creature that shows up is the cockatrice, and that's on levels 4-5. So it's not something PCs are sweating right out of the gate. Plus, a cockatrice's petrification power is dependent upon a successful melee attack, unlike a medusa's gaze or a gorgon's breath. 

Such creatures can put a good scare into the party, and might even be best avoided (run from). Fair GMs often leave some tell tales, like a hall filled with statues in poses of fear, etc. If the PCs have been thus warned, then it's on them to deal with the consequences. I don't think putting a medusa or similar in an adventure is a "Screw the PCs" move necessarily, but a total bushwhack might be harder to justify.

[Apologies for the brief 'At the Table' story: In a Ylaruam-based campaign I ran, the party heard of an abandoned place known as the Valley of the Statues, where some curse had petrified dozens of townsfolk a century ago. The remaining villagers fled. There had indeed been a basilisk at work, and its descendent still lived in a cave near there. The PCs were adequately warned by the rumors and were suitably cautious.]

The particulars of how the effect occurs aside, there are a couple things to keep in mind when/if it happens. 

1. In almost every case, there is a saving throw allowed.
2. There is a specific spell that reverses the effects (and can be used by the players if they have access to it!)

Frankly, I think it makes more sense to leave the statue behind and come back to it. 6'-7' cubic feet of rock can weigh close to half a ton! Not to mention its fragility. Break off that arm, and you'll be calling him Lefty.

While getting his PC turned to stone in the middle of an adventure is no fun for the player, he can always take heart in the fact that:

• His stuff is safe from pilfering PCs.
• Wandering monsters won't feast on his corpse if the party leaves him behind.
• Unlike Raise Dead, there isn't a time limit on Stone to Flesh.
• Even though it's 6th level, you might get a StF scroll and have the party mage/elf read it, regardless of level.

In the meantime, play a hireling and get on with the game. No hirelings? I thought we were talking old-school here! ;-)