T&T's take on the Monster Manual?

[dungeondevil]

Is there a publication that catalogues the game's monsters analogous to AD&D's Monster Manual?

On a related note, could someone help me wrap my brain around the concept of Monster Ratings? How does it work? What do I do with it?

(To reiterate, I'm a complete beginner at T&T, so your patience is appreciated!)

[Vin Ahrr Vin]

No such publication that I've seen, unless my memory is totally failing me.

MR is a single number that represents the monster power. (I suppose that a Monster Manual would actually just be a list of names and MR values.) The MR is its combat strength, which is converted into dice to roll when the monster attacks. I think I could quote the exact equation for you but it's been a while since I played and I don't want to quote the wrong one by accident.

It also counts like hit points and is reduced as the monster takes damage. (Thus a wounded monster can't fight as well as a healthy one.) In this way T&T combat is a little quirky -- if you roll poorly in the first round you can lose fast but if you roll well in the first round you can last a lot longer.

[ProfGremlin]

DungeonDevil, this question came up a little while back so I went looking for the thread - ok, wow, I didn't think it was actually two years ago. Try this: Makin' Monsters. There are several links in there that should help get you started (I need to 'Sticky' that thread...). I think I read mention that perhaps dT&T will have a type of Creature Codex developed for it but I can't recall any details beyond that.

Ok, for MR - It's similar to D&D's Hit Dice but much more versatile. In essence, take a monsters MR, divide by 10, drop any remainders and add 1. This is the number of d6 that the monster rolls for combat. They also get combat adds, typically half their MR. So, one of the creatures I was inspired to create is a Mole-Troll, they have an MR range of 80-200.

Let's say your party of delvers stumble across a mole-troll in a tunnel. As the GM you have decided this is a middle-sized mole-troll and has an MR of 130. This means the mole-troll rolls 130/10 +1 dice or 14d6 in combat. It also has 130/2 or 65 combat adds. This gives it a total combat effectiveness of 13d6 + 65. The MR is also the creatures hit points. So, this mole-troll can take 130 points of damage before embarking upon the greatest adventure (Well, the Abyss solo, at the very least). Depending on the edition, as the mole-troll takes damage it's MR decreases so it's effectiveness, i.e. the number of dice it rolls and combat adds, become fewer and fewer. It's referred to as a 'death spiral'. For example, in the first melee exchange your delvers overwhelm the mole-troll and end up doing 20 points of damage. The mole-troll's MR becomes 110 and you re-calculate dice and adds. In this case, 12d6 + 55. This is true for 5th ed. and, I believe, earlier editions. As I recall, the death spiral, i.e. decreasing MR with every combat round, was done away with in 7th ed. and later. In dT&T MR is specified on page 71, sec 7.2. By default, the decreasing MR is not used in dT&T though it is listed as an optional rule for the GM.

[mahrundl]

Prof, shouldn't it be 14d6 and 12d6 in your example?

dungeondevil, how MR works has changed somewhat over the different editions. The Deluxe edition rule is that the combat adds drop as MR decreases, but they keep the original number of dice, so the 'death spiral' isn't quite so bad. As ProfGremlin said, 7th edition was the same. In 5th edition and earlier, both dice and adds reduced as the MR was whittled away.

Prior to 5th edition, you got half of MR as adds only in the first round; after that, you got one quarter of MR for adds instead. (I think that this was for 4th edition and everything earlier, but I may be mis-remembering. It's not hugely important at this point, just a historical note.)

As for a Monster Manual equivalent, there were a couple of booklets of monsters, but nothing particularly comprehensive. There are supposedly plans for a bestiary for Deluxe to be released at some point, but I haven't heard anything regarding a date at this point.

[ProfGremlin]

Oct 21, 2017 15:18:18 GMT -5 mahrundl said:

Prof, shouldn't it be 14d6 and 12d6 in your example?

You are quite right, Mahrundl, I neglected to add the one after I explained the formula. I'll go back and update the post to avoid confusing folks.

[dungeondevil]

I've got 1st ed and 4th. (I may in the future purchase 5th one day.)

1-9=1
10-19=2
20-29=3
30-39=4
40-49=5
50-59=6

Using your equation I get this progression, which is at odds with what is in the 1st ed. Book.
The increments in the 1e rulebook are irregular. The only thing I can think of is that it was devised that way for copyright law purposes.
It certainly does not make for a straightforward equation, AFAICS.

So, that means that Balrog Maximus Meany rolls 26 dice with 125 adds??
And Fafnirr the Fire Dragon rolls 51 dice (187.5 average) with 250 adds (428.5 average)?
Those numbers are absurdly high -- if I'm figuring this correctly.
And this is compounded by the fact that the sums must be recalculated with each combat round?
*rubs temples*

[ProfGremlin]

Assuming, Balrog Maximus Meaney has an MR of 250 and Fafnirr an MR of 500, yes, your calculations are correct. Keep in mind, T&T has never concerned itself with the concept of 'balance'. Running into a dragon or balrog on Level 1 of your dungeon is perfectly acceptable if it makes sense for your backstory/ecosystem/in-game reasoning. The other point to remember, T&T combat is more abstract, it's group vs. group over a set time frame, in 5th ed. that was roughly two minutes. So, all members of the party would roll their respective dice, add them all up for a single total and compare it against their opponents total. The group with the higher total wins and the loser takes the difference in damage (ignoring Missiles/Spells/Spite and damage allocation for simplicity of explanation, here).

Ok, I did a little looking about based the editions you mentioned. You can get a bit better understanding if you look in the 4th ed rules on page 12. The MR system was revised and the explanation is posted there.

[dungeondevil]

Oct 21, 2017 22:50:43 GMT -5 ProfGremlin said:

Assuming, Balrog Maximus Meaney has an MR of 250 and Fafnirr an MR of 500, yes, your calculations are correct. Keep in mind, T&T has never concerned itself with the concept of 'balance'. Running into a dragon or balrog on Level 1 of your dungeon is perfectly acceptable if it makes sense for your backstory/ecosystem/in-game reasoning. The other point to remember, T&T combat is more abstract, it's group vs. group over a set time frame, in 5th ed. that was roughly two minutes. So, all members of the party would roll their respective dice, add them all up for a single total and compare it against their opponents total. The group with the higher total wins and the loser takes the difference in damage (ignoring Missiles/Spells/Spite and damage allocation for simplicity of explanation, here).

Ok, I did a little looking about based the editions you mentioned. You can get a bit better understanding if you look in the 4th ed rules on page 12. The MR system was revised and the explanation is posted there.

*lightbulb blinks on*
A-ha! That makes a bit more sense now.
(From experience with D&D I was assuming something with a comparable level of tactical granularity.)
I'm still plowing through 1st ed. In time I will work through 4th.

[ProfGremlin]

Oct 22, 2017 1:16:49 GMT -5 dungeondevil said:

(From experience with D&D I was assuming something with a comparable level of tactical granularity.)

No worries, happy to be of service. Now, there's nothing saying you can't achieve a similar level of tactical granularity. dT&T sets combat rounds to shorter time spans but leaves it up to the GM to determine with a suggestion of about 10 seconds, IIRC. You can have groups of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 1, 3 vs. 4, etc.(heck, have them all, three separate groups, in one combat scene) whatever works for a given scenario but it's still HPT vs. HPT (Just remember that if it's X number of groups in a combat scene that each group is resolved separately). That gets stale quick though so you'll want to add in stunting, think swashbuckling sword-fights. There is no better explanation of that than Dare to DARO by Dan Prentice. You'll find the article in TrollsZine! issue 1 page 33, available to download on DriveThruRPG for free. While you're there, grab all eight issues, they're chock full of devilishly delving delightedness.

[tp]

Yeah, the combat rules as written are really only apply in what I think of as a 'fair fight', ie something akin to what you might see on the fencing piste, with the two opponents (or groups of opponents) standing tow to toe and using weapons as they were designed to be used.

If a group of 1st level delvers came across a dragon I wouldn't expect them to use this kind of combat. Instead they would have to come up with some kind of cunning plan, be that sneaking up, collapsing the cave on top of the dragons head or tricking it into accepting a jar of mustard in return for safe passage. It is up to the GM to translate this plan into appropriate SRs.

[dungeondevil]

What does "doubles add and roll over" (DARO) mean? Trollish isn't my mother-tongue.

[darrght]

Ah dungeondevil 'doubles add and roll over' or DARO, is applied when you are making a saving roll (SR), if you roll doubles, you get to roll the 2 dice again and add up the two rolls to give your total. You can, of course, keep rolling doubles and keep adding up until you fail to roll a double. This means that even when you require 15 on 2D6 to succeed at a L2 SR on DEX, you still can succeed as long as you DARO

[dungeondevil]

Sounds like "exploding dice", yes?

[Piper]

“Excuse me, do you DARO?”

“Why, yes, I do. Careful though, they explode! And don’t even get me started on TARO ...”

[zanshin]

Oct 23, 2017 7:51:22 GMT -5 dungeondevil said:

Sounds like "exploding dice", yes?

Very like exploding dice. Just remember this only applies to 'saving rolls' (aka stat tests or stunts) not to the rolling of combat dice.

(There is an exception to this known as berserking, but lets KISS for the moment).

There is also spite, but we'll wait for you to get to 5.5e before we go over that.

Good to have you here dungeondevil - thank you for encouraging us to think about these things.

If you like monster manuals (and who doesn't) then lots of rough rules of thumb have been provided for converting D&D stats to Monster rating.

Two oft used options are Hit points = MR and Hit Dice X10 = MR.

Most T&T delvers are more robust by that metric than a L1 D&D character, but that is a feature, not a bug.