Monsters An AD&D campaign is not complete without hordes of monsters to battle. No other foe is as useful for giving player characters violent and implacable foes whose savage and often alien natures make their complete and utter defeat a necessity. Monstrous foes are good for keeping characters guessing about exactly what they’re up against, and monsters come pre-equipped with arrays of natural weaponry that the PCs cannot carry off with them after a battle.

High-level characters can easily defeat most standard monsters, because the monsters usually have been designed with weaker characters in mind. The Planning Combats section in this chapter and the notes on getting the most out of a foe in Chapter 1 can help make sure PCs treat monsters with respect, but even the cleverest planning can come to nothing if the characters can obliterate every enemy as soon as blows and spells are exchanged in an encounter.

A high-level campaign shouldn’t be so overrun with super monsters that low-level characters and commoners have no chance to survive, but sometimes it is helpful to give the monsters a party meets a little bit of an edge. Perhaps you have introduced an unexplored continent or plane where life is hard and everything is a little tougher than usual. Or perhaps you simply need bigger, nastier version of a standard monster to lead a band of lesser creatures.

There might also be times when you wish to introduce a monster that is a little weaker than a typical specimen. Just how nasty are the baby bulettes in that nest (and how much of a fight can they put up before mom arrives)? The sections below offer a few methods for doing so without going to the drawing board and inventing a host of brand new creatures.

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