Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2013 15:00:33 GMT -6
I know they are from greyhawk which is a post 3 LBB book, but how many OD&D hit dice would a beholder have? You need to know to calculate saves, physical attacks, etc. I can't find it.
|
|
|
|
Post by llenlleawg on Aug 10, 2013 18:53:53 GMT -6
The simple answer is that it is nowhere to be found. Really. This omission carried over into the AD&D Monster Manual in 1977, too, which is at least as much a late OD&D text as it is an AD&D one.
In any event, in The Dragon #43 (November 1980, so AD&D, but the best chance you'll get of an "official" answer) had the following question and answer in the "Sage Advice" column:
"Q. How do I handle monsters like Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Demogorgon, etc. who have hit points given, but not hit dice? I don’t know what level they fight, cast spells, or save at.
"A. Using the procedure described for golems (Monster Manual, page 47), hit dice for any monster not given a hit-dice number can be calculated by using 4.5 points per hit die divided into the given hit-point total and rounding the result to the nearest whole number. For example, a clay golem (50 HP) is considered as an 11- hit-dice monster. Asmodeus (199 HP) is considered to have 44 hit dice, and Juiblex (88 HP) is treated as a monster of 20 hit dice."
In the AD&D Monster Manual, a beholder's body and central eye together make up the total hit points, the eye stalks not being counted. So, an OD&D beholder has 60 hit points (40 for the body and 20 for the central eye), which makes it a 13 HD monster.
|
|
|
|
Post by talysman on Aug 10, 2013 21:09:19 GMT -6
I'd like to add: for pre-Greyhawk D&D (six-sided hit dice,) the number would be 3.5 instead of 4.5 (which is based on d8 instead of d6.) But I just go with a flat 4 points. 60/4 = 15 HD, higher than the post-Greyhawk version.
|
|
|
|
Post by llenlleawg on Aug 11, 2013 9:21:35 GMT -6
I'd like to add: for pre-Greyhawk D&D (six-sided hit dice,) the number would be 3.5 instead of 4.5 (which is based on d8 instead of d6.) But I just go with a flat 4 points. 60/4 = 15 HD, higher than the post-Greyhawk version. Of course, the beholder was introduced in Greyhawk, where all monsters use d8 rather than d6, so we can't presume that a putative pre-Greyhawk beholder would have had 60 hit points! Interestingly, the AD&D beholder can have as few as 45 (and as many as 75) hit points. What makes this curious is that if we "convert" the 60 hit points in a d8 system "back" to a d6 system, we get (you guessed it) 45 hit points! To be sure, there's nothing wrong with making a more powerful beholder for a "pre-Greyhawk" version, but another option for a fully d6 campaign would be a 45 hit point beholder with a 30 hit point body and 15 hit point central eye (and 8 hit point eye stalks) which counts as a 13 HD creature. |
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Aug 12, 2013 6:21:16 GMT -6
The simple answer is that it is nowhere to be found. Really. This omission carried over into the AD&D Monster Manual in 1977, too, which is at least as much a late OD&D text as it is an AD&D one. I'll confess that I don't quite understand this reply. The Beholder isn't in Monsters & Treaure, true, but when I dust off Supplement I Greyhawk the answer seems to be on page 37. It's a little hidden, but is in there. The reason why hit dice are listed as "special" is because of the fact that the differnt body parts have different numbers. Total hit points would be 40 + 10*10 + 20, or 160. The 160 hit points (divided by 4.5, the typical value of a d8) would yield roughly 35 HD, a nasty monster indeed. I assumed the d8 hit dice because the game had evolved to the point where Greyhawk was considered to be "official" at that point. To "reverse engineer" the Greyhawk Beholder into a White Box Beholder, one could downgrade hit points by a factor of (3.5/4.5) to convert d8's into d6's and give something like this: At least, that's how I see it. This gives the "new" Beholder 127 hit points, which (divided by 3.5) yields around 36 HD. Since Men & Magic's attack tables cap out monster attacks in the "11+" hit die range, whether the Beholder is 12 or 35-36 HD would have no impact on its attack value.  By the way, creatures like this bother me a lot. Demons and Dragons ought to be (in my mind) some of the toughest baddies in the game. Creating a critter with 35 or so HD just seems absurd and encourages level inflation. Just my two coppers. |
|
|
|
Post by Porphyre on Aug 12, 2013 8:29:36 GMT -6
I'm not sure that all the hit points are supposed to stack.
I would consider that the Beholder himself has the HD of his "body" i-e 40 hp (witch corresponds to a 9 HD monster).
The individual count of HP of every eye counts if the players try to poke every eye separately by some "called shots".
This could be similar to the Hit Location rules in the Blackmoor Supplement:
|
|
|
|
Post by llenlleawg on Aug 12, 2013 9:45:18 GMT -6
The simple answer is that it is nowhere to be found. Really. This omission carried over into the AD&D Monster Manual in 1977, too, which is at least as much a late OD&D text as it is an AD&D one. I'll confess that I don't quite understand this reply. The Beholder isn't in Monsters & Treaure, true, but when I dust off Supplement I Greyhawk the answer seems to be on page 37. It's a little hidden, but is in there. I wasn't claiming that the beholder is nowhere to be found, but (in answer to the OP's original question) that the hit dice of the beholder are nowhere to be found, i.e. in order to answer the question of how to calculate saves, etc. Sorry for the confusion. Indeed, one ought to assume d8 as the base hit die for a monster in Greyhawk. My little exercise was responding to an earlier post which claimed that, as pre-Greyhawk monsters are d6, a putative 3LBB beholder would be 16 HD. My point was that you need to "downgrade" its hit points (and hit dice) in that case. More than that, how to calculate the "total" hit points of a beholder is pretty clear from the AD&D Monster Manual (itself only 2 yrs after Greyhawk, and honestly a late-OD&D supplement as much as the 1st AD&D book): The body of the monster can withstand two-thirds of its total damage potential, while the great central eye can withstand one-third this total, i.e. a beholder with 45 hit points con withstand 30 hit points of damage to its body before being killed; the eleventh eye can withstand 15 points before ceasing to function. (MM, p. 10) The points for the eye stalks, in other words, are above an beyond the total hit points, not part of the total. This is why the beholder, while powerful, is not, nor was intended to be, a 35+ HD monster, but a more "modest" 13 HD one (and still a holy terror nonetheless!). It's not an example of hit point inflation, I think, but of a rather interesting strategic kind of encounter. Basically, the players have to choose either to try to take out its ability to cast spells (but in so doing not reduce its total hit points) by taking out the stalks, take out the central eye (so that PCs can cast spells at it more effectively, but leaving the eye stalks intact), or take out the body directly (which at 40 hp is still mighty tough, but would take less time than deal with all of the eyes). Or, of course, a smart party might just run! If it weren't for all of that treasure, of course... |
|
|
|
Post by cooper on Aug 13, 2013 17:18:46 GMT -6
I will jump in and say that the beholder only has 40 hit points. If by "hit points" we mean the amount of wounds it can sustain until defeat. Attacking the eyes only cause blindness, even the central eye. for d8 HD then a Beholder would have about 9 HD, for d6 11 HD.
Unless you believe that if you do 40 dmg to it's central body just makes it stop moving and the eyes are still "alive" and capable of attacking? Though, I don't think anyone plays that way. The combat strategy then is, do you try and kill the monster at it's most defensive area, the body at AC 0, or do you try and neutralize/blind it by attacking it's eyes AC 7.
|
|
|
|
Post by llenlleawg on Aug 13, 2013 18:09:00 GMT -6
I will jump in and say that the beholder only has 40 hit points. If by "hit points" we mean the amount of wounds it can sustain until defeat. Attacking the eyes only cause blindness, even the central eye. for d8 HD then a Beholder would have about 9 HD, for d6 11 HD. Unless you believe that if you do 40 dmg to it's central body just makes it stop moving and the eyes are still "alive" and capable of attacking? Though, I don't think anyone plays that way. The combat strategy then is, do you try and kill the monster at it's most defensive area, the body at AC 0, or do you try and neutralize/blind it by attacking it's eyes AC 7. I'm still sticking with what Gary says two years later than Greyhawk in the Monster Manual, viz. that the total hit points are divided between the body and the central eye, with 2/3 going to the body and 1/3 going to the eye. That, I think, is the basis for calculating, e.g. hit dice, saves, being subject to spells based on hit dice, XP awards for killing, etc., so a Greyhawk beholder has 60, not 40 hit points for those purposes. On the other hand, I agree with you entirely about the practical upshot of the "divided" hit points, namely, that when the body has taken 40 hit points, the beholder is dead. |
|
zeraser
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 184
|
Post by zeraser on Aug 14, 2013 11:05:55 GMT -6
I'm not sure that all the hit points are supposed to stack. I would consider that the Beholder himself has the HD of his "body" i-e 40 hp (witch corresponds to a 9 HD monster). I agree - I think of a beholder as a roughly 10 HD creature, and 9 seems much more reasonable than 35. For purposes of saves, etc., I'd rule that they have 9 HD. (Although I might have arrived at that number by picking one that seemed right rather than by consulting sources and doing the math!) |
|
tec97
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 157
|
Post by tec97 on Aug 14, 2013 11:09:38 GMT -6
I'm not sure that all the hit points are supposed to stack. I would consider that the Beholder himself has the HD of his "body" i-e 40 hp (witch corresponds to a 9 HD monster). The individual count of HP of every eye counts if the players try to poke every eye separately by some "called shots". This could be similar to the Hit Location rules in the Blackmoor Supplement: I had always interpreted the Beholder in this way. They whole thing dies if you reduce the hit points of the body to zero, so that is the hit-die basis of the creature. |
|
|
|
Post by scottyg on Aug 17, 2013 21:29:43 GMT -6
It looks like taking the HP and dividing by 4.5 is correct, so between 10 and 16+ HD, if you borrow from the AD&D MM. If you look at Appendix E and read the THAC0 column, they have a range from 10 to 7, which corresponds to 10 to 16+ HD. Which is also the HD spread if you take their HP range and divide by 4.5.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2013 9:42:57 GMT -6
Thanks for all the thoughtful responses. Anyone else is welcome to post their thoughts.
At the moment, and remember I want to try a "mostly" white box game, I think a HD 11 beholder with 40 general body hp to kill it. Or 20 hp to take out the central eye or 10 hp to take out an eye stalk. That is on par with a big dragon without any mobility, so that feels about right.
How would you treat a fireball or lightning bolt? Do they just do damage to the body or do you have to see if they take out an eye stalk?
mark
|
|
