Monster HD

[Gaxkang]

I just found out about Dungeon Crawl Classics and I was intrigued so I picked up the PDF. I really like what I see, especially the way magic works, the patrons, mighty deeds, and just the general flavor of weirdness and unpredictability which is so lacking from D&D. I VERY much like this game and am tempted to buy the book and run it but one thing really runs foul on me and thats the way monsters are handled. Each monster has its own HD and attack bonus, saves and initiative and they are all divorced from each other. Coming from a B/X background this really sucks for me because I'm so used to just seeing the HD and knowing what I need to know about the monster and I cant do that here, I have to write out the statblocks. The blocks are mercifully short but it feels like it might be a dealbreaker for me which is sad because I like a lot of the other stuff in the game.

I'm willing to try though so does anyone have any experience with this and some tips for maybe "hacking" monsters to work with a unified system by HD?

Thanks, and this is my first post.

(Also if I were to unify all weapons to one die what die would be best to use? D8 or D6? Im a fan of making all weapons the same just so players can pick whatever feels cool to them)

[Cody M(ysterious)]

First thing, welcome to the wonderful world of DCC!
May the Old Gods smile on you, and may your dice score more crits than fumbles!

IDK about other folks, but I don't think I've ever used the monster section for my games.
I either make monster stat blocks up as I'm prepping the adventure, or pull from other sources (DCC specific modules, AD&D or Rules Cyclopedia)


I don't think the HD matters as much for DCC as it does in B/X.
i.e. B/X sleep spell affects X number of HD, in DCC sleep affects X number of creatures.

[GnomeBoy]

DCC is very hackable.

I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but if you want to "unify" the monsters, you could take their average hp, based on their listed HD and just divide that average hp by the average result of the HD size you want to use...

So if the creature had 4d14 as it's HD, that'd average out to 30 hp -- which if you wanted to convert to d8's for HD would be something like 6d8 or 7d8.


But I'm more than willing to discuss further the "why" of why you want to 'unify' things... If it's so you know what to throw at your players without setting them up for a built-in TPK, why not just approach the game with the understanding that there will be a bit of a learning curve. Mention that to your players -- "Hey, I don't normally adjust things mid-encounter, but if I've made a horrible mistake as I"m learning, I'd like the leeway to adjust on the fly until I know the system better..." What sane player would refuse that?

[Gaxkang]

Thanks for the response. Its mainly that with old school D&D stat lines I can basically know everything about a monster if I just give it a HD and a weapon or something. In DCC each monster everything is divorced from each other. I just find that to be annoying during play when I'm pulling monsters out of somewhere or doing something on the fly. Maybe im making too big a deal out of it, do you find it a hindrance?

[GnomeBoy]

Thanks for the response. Its mainly that with old school D&D stat lines I can basically know everything about a monster if I just give it a HD and a weapon or something. In DCC each monster everything is divorced from each other. I just find that to be annoying during play when I'm pulling monsters out of somewhere or doing something on the fly. Maybe im making too big a deal out of it, do you find it a hindrance?

Well, the beauty of it is, if you remember their Fort Save to be a +2, but it turns out it was +4, it's no big deal. If you want a monster with 4 HD to just have a +4 to hit and a +4 in all Saves, that's cool. Certainly eases the work load, which can certainly mean more fun load.

For myself, I usually focus on the monster's concept, and just run/improvise the numbers based on that. So if they are meant to be really fast, I'll run them that way, and even if I get a number wrong here or there, as long as I represented the concept in a fun way, that's all that matters really.