"Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Ghosts in the Darkness

Somewhat related to my previous post about Normal Humans...

I read the the recent article from AP, Study: Man-eating lions consumed 35 people in 1898

When I was flipping through the Monster section from the Basic Rulebook I stopped at the Lion entry under Cat, Great (pg B32).

A Lion has 5 HD (average of about 23 hit points), an Armour Class of 6, and (the real kicker) three attacks: 2 claws (2-5 damage each) and 1 bite (1-10 damage).

I can easily see 2 lions killing 35 Normal Humans (AC 9 and 1-4 hit points) in B/X D&D - and not over nine months, all at once!

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, once you start doing the math on a fight like that, you quickly see how a lion is easily the match of a fighter with similar HD. Large predators like Lions, Bears, even Wolves - they can be really vicious in game if players aren't careful.

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  2. O poor, brave, Sir Proudblood!
    ; )

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  3. I had two lions rip through the horses of a 1st/2nd level party. The lions took down one of the horses and, had the party just backed away, nothing else would have happened. But no, the party fought back. Surprisingly, they killed one lioness and then the other fled after being wounded once. The lions didn't hit for two rounds--that's twelve crappy rolls in a row--so the party just survived. But, had my d20 not been cursed it would have been very different.

    Dorothy knew her stuff...you can mess with the witch and flying monkeys but those lions, tigers and bears (well, you know the rest).

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