Wandering Monster: Antian

The following text & stats are designated Open Gaming Content as per the OGL:

Antian

	Grub	Queen	Warrior
Freq.	Very Rare	Very rare	Rare
Num.	3d10	1	2d10
Lair%	90%	95%	30%
Horde	None	None	6
Move	1" (Dig 6")	3"	15"
Int.	Non-	Low	Very
Align.	N	N	NE
Size	S (3' long)	L (15' long)	M (7' long)
L/XP	Variable	7/1350+14	5/300+6
AC	6	7	3 (1)
HD	2-5 (d8)	10d8	6d8
Attk.	1	1	2
Dmg.	d6+1	3d6	d4/d4
S.A.	None	See below	See below
S.D.	None	None	See below
N.A.	None	None	None
R.M.	0%	0%	0%

Antian Grub

Combat: Antian grubs attack by biting prey with their mandibles for d6+1 points of damage. They are able to find prey by scent and detect vibrations other creatures make while moving, breathing, and so on; however, they are otherwise sightless and unable to hear sounds.

Description: Antian grubs are worm-like larval young, typically d3 feet long. They are found only in an antian lair, typically in cesspools prepared by antian warriors; these pools are filled with all manner of dung, offal, and refuse, which the grubs delve in and out of while they feed upon the detritus. Antian grubs are always hungry and will attack any prey that comes near. Although otherwise slow moving, they are able to burrow through even semi-solid material (e.g., hard-packed earth) quite rapidly.

Antian Queen

Combat: An antian queen attacks with a bite from its mandibles once per round for 3d6 points of damage. A corosive substance coats the hide of an antian queen; the flesh of living beings touched by this acid will melt at the rate of d8 points of damage per round, while metallic or wooden objects striking the hide of an antian queen will be dissolved in but a single round. Note that metallic objects save against this effect at +3.

Description: An antian queen is a giant slug-like creature, having been fed a special substance while in larval form that mutated its normal development. They are slow moving and dull of intellect, but dangerous to the unwary nonetheless. They exist only to lay eggs from which antian grubs are hatched, and are zealously guarded by warriors. Typically there are d8 grubs and d4+2 warriors present with an antian queen at any time. Only a single queen will ever be encountered in a typical antian lair; however, it is rumored that deep beneath the earth large colonies exist in which several queens breed their horrors.

Antian Warrior

Combat: An antian warrior attacks every round with four arms for d4 points of damage each, or will wield weapons and/or shields. Typical weapons are long swords, battle axes, and morning stars. Each shield wielded by an antian warrior grants a +1 bonus to the creature's armor class. Oftentimes, antian warriors carry darts or javelins strapped to the inside of their shields, hurling these missiles as they close for melee combat.

Antian warriors are very quick and agile, likely to strike first in any given round; they add +1 to all initiative rolls, and will strike first whenever a tied initiative roll is indicated. Cold and lightning attacks have no effect upon an antian warrior, while fire causes but one-half normal damage against them.

While defending their queen (i.e., in her proximity), an antian warrior attacks with a berserk frenzy, adds +2 to attack and damage dice, never checks morale, and fights until all intruders are slain.

Description: Antian warriors have a hard carapace that is black in color, and appear as some kind of weird cross between a giant ant and a snout beetle. They serve as both workers and warriors, seeing to the needs of their queen and the grubs in their lair.

They are quite intelligent and speak their own language; sometimes (10%) the know the Common Tongue as well. They have an acute sense of smell, and scholars speculate that they are able to signal and communicate with one another by emitting certain hormones or fragrances. Antian warriors will sometimes ally with other intelligent beings, if such alliance will further the ends of their own nest. At a minimum, a steady supply of food (particularly human, demi-human, and humanoid captives) and weapons of steel must be offered to secure the cooperation of an antian colony. They are able to create tools and other implements, but they usually trade captives and treasure taken from raids for weapons of steel, as they do not work metals. Antians that do no trade will be armed with wooden clubs, stone axes, flint knives, and the like.

A typical antian colony will have numerous (d6) brood chambers where grubs are nourished to maturity, several (d4) rooms where eggs are kept warm and safe, areas for the storage of food stuffs (d4+1), a chamber where the queen resides and lays eggs, and possibly pens where captives are kept to be devoured by warriors and grubs at their leisure. It is 1 in 10 likely that an antian colony will be inhabited by 10d10 giant ants, and some conjecture that antians are able to communicate with such creatures telepathically or by means of released hormones. An antian lair is usually made up of tunnels and chambers dug out of hard-packed earth or soft stone, and will be a confusing warren of tunnels that ascend and descend in seemingly random fashion, interconnecting the whole. Antian warriors, of course, will be intimately familiar with the layout of their own lair, and will use this knowledge to their best strategic and tactical advantage, often setting traps for the unwary.

Antian warriors are rarely encountered outside of their lairs; if so, they will be on an expedition to trade for weapons or other things they need, but normally such encounters will be with a war band intent upon taking captives back to their lair to supplement their diet. They are omnivorous, eating both vegetation and flesh, but prepare meat when it can be had. Only a few bold adventurers have brought back tales of the existence of antian grubs and queens.

Random Roleplaying: Starting Equipment Tables

In our home campaign, we began experimenting with using tables to randomly determine more factors during character creation. Initially, this was simply for fun, but it has had the benefit of greatly speeding character creation and makes for some interesting results. Below are random tables for determining the starting equipment of any character. Eliminating the book keeping that comes with rolling starting money and the selection of equipment within that budget has been a boon.

NB. These tables are weighted such that characters will end up with poorer equipment than is usual for the standard First Edition character. This tends to make the discovery of even mundane items such as torches, rations, a back pack, etc., on the first dungeon level more significant.

STARTING EQUIPMENT TABLES:

Starting money is 1d6 gp, & each character has “typical” clothing regardless.

Fighter/Cleric Armor Table:

Die Roll (d20)	Die Roll (d100)	Armor Type
1	1-5%	None
2-4	6-20%	Padded
5-7	21-35%	Leather
8-10	36-50%	Studded
11-13	51-65%	Ring
14-15	66-75%	Scale
16-17	76-85%	Chain
18	86-90%	Splint
19	91-95%	Banded
20	96-100%	Plate

Shield Table:

Die Roll (d8)	Shield Type
1	None
2-3	Small Wooden
4-5	Small
6-7	Medium
8	Large

Fighter Starting Weapon Table:

Die Roll (d6)	Number of Weapons
1-2	1
3-4	2
5	3
6	4

Cleric/Thief Starting Weapon Table:

Die Roll (d6)	Number of Weapons
1-4	1
5-6	2

Thief Armor Table:

Die Roll (d6)	Armor Type
1-2	None
3-5	Leather
6	Studded

MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT TABLE:

Die Roll (d20)	Equipment Type
1-4	Poor
5-12	Basic
13-17	Standard
18-19	Superior
20	Expert

Cleric: add a holy symbol, plus 3 holy water.

Paladin: gains holy symbol, plus 1 holy water.

Wizard: a weapon, a spell book, plus 1 scroll case

Thief: add thieves' tools.

MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT:

Poor Equipment:

Rations, 1 week

Sack, large

Water Skin

Basic Equipment:

Backpack

Rations, 1 week

Rope, 50'

Sack, Large (3)

Tinder Box

Torch (3)

Water Skin

Standard Equipment:

Backpack

Grappling Hook

Mirror, small metal

Oil, Flask of (5)

Pole, 10'

Pouch, belt, small

Rations, 1 week

Rope, 50'

Sack, Large (5)

Spike, iron (5)

Tinder Box

Torch (5)

Water Skin

Superior Equipment:

Backpack

Bandages (5)

Candle, wax (5)

Grappling Hook

Holy Water (5)

Knife

Lantern, Hooded

Mirror, small metal

Oil, Flask of (10)

Pole, 10'

Pouch, belt, small

Rations, 1 week

Rope, 50'

Sack, Large (5)

Scroll Case

Spade

Spike, iron (5)

Tinder Box

Torch (5)

Water Skin

Expert Equipment:

Backpack

Bandages (5)

Blanket

Candle, wax (5)

Chalk

Compass

Crowbar

Grappling Hook

Hacksaw

Healing Salve (1)

Holy Water (5)

Knife

Lantern, Hooded

Mirror, small metal

Oil, Flask of (10)

Pole, 10'

Pouch, belt, small

Pulley, small iron

Rations, 1 week

Rope, 50'

Sack, Large (5)

Scroll Case

Spade

Spike, iron (5)

Tinder Box

Torch (5)

Water Skin

Copyright GA Norris 2011

Rules Rehash: Memorizing Multiples

Having a magic-user or two in the party with some artillery spells kept in reserve for emergencies can often turn the tide of a close battle, or give the party enough wiggle room too to escape when an encounter is really going against them. Spells like sleep, hold person, and fear can mean the difference between a successful fight (or flight) and a dead band of adventurers. However, I've seen the tendency for players (including myself) to memorize offensive spells over defensive or utility type magic, particularly at lower levels when the fire power is needed to deal with the toughest opponents a party might encounter.

In First Edition, magic-users can memorize the same spell more than once. I think its tough to resist the temptation to slot in a couple of sleep or fear spells (crowd control), magic missile or a silence (to disrupt enemy spell casters), or a few fireballs or lightening bolts to soften up opponents before a big fight. This tendency leads to other spells being ignored, which in my opinion has a detrimental effect on other aspects of game play. Utility spells in particular can be the difference between a party finding magical treasure or traps, fully exploring a dungeon and discovering its secrets, and so on, but these are often passed up for offensive magic.

Probably the easiest answer would be to simply have more spell casters in a party. This approach may not work for a small group, however, as I think there is a threshold for how many characters each player can run and keep track of effectively. Further, it'd be great if we could all have four or more actual players at the table at any one time, but for many of us with families, careers, and so on, its simply not possible. Some groups grant low level spell casters more spells; I'm not totally against this, and even Gygax offered access to "cantrips" to give low level magic-users a few more options. However, I think bonus spells for high Intelligence probably goes too far, while "cantrips" are pretty weak and don't go far enough. Perhaps some of the simpler, low-power first level spells could be re-tooled as "cantrips" to offer the low level wizard a bit more diversity in his spell selection. Some candidates that might be re-tooled for use as "cantrips" or 0-level spells might be affect normal fires, detect magic, erase, magic aura, message, or read magic, with the idea that the low level magic-user has mastered these "cantrips" during his apprenticeship; perhaps Allow the use of two or three of these "cantrips" or 0-level spells per day, in addition to the regular number of spells.

That being said, some folks don't like bonus spells for various reason. The magic-user starts very weak, but gains great power over time if he is smart and can survive that long Some thing that bonus spells ruin this essential part of the archetype, or disturb that most sacred of cows, "game balance." The notion of "power creep" often enters such discussions as well; if you give the MU more spells, what does that do to game play, and what do other classes need to be on par with the power of the MU? And if the fighter has to be "bumped up" to keep that class interesting and fun to play in comparison to the new goodies for magic-users, then what do we now need to give the cleric or thief? And if what the Referee and the players really want is greater access to spells and abilities in the first place, then why not simply start characters at 3rd or 4th level, rather than altering the paradigms given in the rules?

My wife is taking a turn as Referee for our family campaign (using Joe Bloch's fun Castle of the Mad Archmage found HERE), and I am running a few characters at the same time, one of them a magic-user. After gaining a few levels and having access to greater number of spells, I made sure to have a few sleep spells memorized at all times as a "get out of jail free" card. I knew that other spells would help us to explore the dungeons, but felt we needed the fire power, especially against groups of humanoids that could gang up on us in the upper levels.

Our family campaign operates with the idea that the rules are subject to reinterpretation, tweaking, and elimination if they are deemed to hinder play or create too much book keeping. We are using First Edition as our base, but want to allow those rules to be tweaked and altered in an organic fashion through play to decide what works for us and what doesn't. So, we've had different discussions about the tendency of players to memorize mostly offensive spells, and I had expressed my view that have two or three sleep spells memorized at the same time seemed kind of lame. Still, it was hard to break away from the "safety net."

Originally I figured that scrolls of spells would mitigate this tendency to memorize only or mostly offensive spells. However, its been our experience that low level characters need those scrolls to add new spells to their spell books.

After pondering this for quite some time, the simple answer struck. We ruled that any particular spell can only be memorized once per day, eliminating the ability altogether to memorize the same spell more than once. This has forced the players of spell casters to choose other spells, and frankly its made a big difference. We have fewer "get out of jail free" cards to play, but that has had a positive effect on our game play as well. We approach encounters with more caution and circumspection that we used to, and the use of other spells has led to better dungeoneering.

Now of course, it could certainly be said that the real problem (if you view an emphasis on offensive magic over and above other spells as a problem) was our style of play and poor gaming habits, and I won't deny that there is truth to that. However, by disallowing the memorization of the same spell multiple times, it has actually broken this habit for us, which has been a good thing. While it places a new restriction on spell casters, it also forces the player to think about the other spells in his repertoire and make use of a wider variety of them.

On the flip side, we allow players to reverse spells the character has memorized as long as they are listed as reversible. This adds a nice bit of diversity and flexibility without resorting to granting "bonus spells."

Stand Fast!

Have business at the Keep do ye? Put up your weapons! We hold no truck with vagabonds, bandits, or thieves, but if ye be true men and upright ye may enter.

Oh, you're looking for adventure, eh? Well, there's plenty to be had hereabouts if you're foolhardy enough to go looking for it.

Now then, the stable boy will see ye to the Inn. Watch you're manners, or ye will run afoul o' the Watch!

Welcome to Blog on the Borderlands. Primarily this blog will focus on exploring the First Edition game penned by Gary Gygax, but other early incarnations of The Game will be considered as well (the Original Edition by Gygax & Arneson, and the Basic iterations by Holmes and Moldvay/Cook/Marsh). Gaming products, books, movies, and other material and sources of inspiration for gaming will be considered or reviewed as well. Further, it is hoped that new gaming content will be made available, along with new or variant rules. For the most part, other editions and games will fall outside the scope of this blog.


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