^{Originally published on Sidekickcast.com March 8, 2016}

I’ve talked a lot about demon lords and magic in Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ve overlooked the mundane critters that populate the world. As it so happens, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd edition Monstrous Manual, which is in my opinion the best and most comprehensive monster book in fantasy gaming, is available as a PDF from Wizards of the Coast. I was originally going to go through some of the more interesting critters therein, but I got sidetracked when I noticed the surprising amount of detail put into real-world (and real-world-ish) animals. So instead, let’s see what sort of information D&D has about birds, cats, and wolves.

Eighteen Different Kinds of Birds?!

One thing that stands out in any edition of D&D is that in a world filled with deadly monsters, there’s still an awful lot of detail put into mundane creatures that your group will probably never fight. The Monstrous Manual has stats for 18 different kinds of birds. Yes, some of them are actual adventuring fodder, such as a spellcasting eblis or a giant owl, but there’s also stats for condors, falcons, owls, ravens, swans, and vultures.

Despite this degree of gradation in the bird types, the crow simply gets a “see raven” for its stat line and ostriches, emus, and other flightless birds get lumped into a single “flightless” entry. I can only image that the designers got through an exhausting day of assigning THAC0 values to birds, only to have somebody say, “oh, hey…what about emus?” Then everybody else flipped out, erased the word “ostrich,” and replaced it with “flightless.”

Speaking of which…since penguins can’t fly, does that technically place them in the same statistical category as ostriches? Even if they’re only 1 hit die flightless birds, that means a peck from a penguin does 1d4 damage – the same as a six-inch steel dagger.

I have no idea why a multi-page entry on birds was deemed necessary or desirable, but giving mundane creatures that nobody in their right mind would ever fight does add something to the game. See, anything that has stats can attack and do at least one hit point of damage it hits. That means that three or more crows could not only be a murder but could commit murder, pecking the brain out of your poor 1^st-level mage if they all hit in the same round. At the very least, this establishes AD&D worlds as something truly deadly – even the birds can potentially kill you in under a minute.

Anything “Elven” is Better

Given what I just mentioned, it’s no surprise that cats get multiple entries as well. We have great cats, which includes cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, common lions, mountain lions, spotted lions, giant lynxes, wild tigers, and smilodons. We also have a separate entry for small cats, which include domestic cats (which can do up to 4 points of damage in a round with its claws and bites – again, killing your mage), wild cats, and…elven cats.

2^nd edition AD&D is the edition that really embraced the Tolkien-esque idea of elves being better at everything than humans. Most notable among this is the Complete Book of Elves (which I’ll get into another time), but it seeped into the core books as well. Elven cats are basically the feline master race. They have the ability to speak, and even have their own language. (Yes, your linguistic experience is incomplete until you’ve learned how to ask where the bathroom is in Elven Cat.) They also impose a -5 penalty to opponents’ surprise rolls, are surprised only half as often as normal creatures, can leap up to 20 feet, have a 99.9% chance to move silently, have ESP(!), can transform itself into a tree limb, and can double their size once per day.

Let’s review this. If you piss off an elf, that elf’s best option is to send his cat after you. Said cat can stalk you through the forest with almost perfect accuracy, disguise itself perfectly as a tree limb until you come within 20 feet, then double its size and leap at you, getting a surprise attack 70% of the time. In its enlarged form, this cute little critter gets three attacks that deal 1d4, 1d4, and 1d6 damage. That’s an average of about 8 points of damage in a round, which is high-end longsword range. Elven cats can kill a grown man or even take down a horse in the span of one to two rounds, and you’ll never even see them coming.

Incidentally, there are also elven dogs, which are tougher and more intelligent than normal dogs and which can knock human-sized creatures to the ground with their front paws. Like I said – in AD&D, everything elven is just better.

Wait…One More Thing about Cats

Sorry, I got so obsessed with killing power of the supposedly peaceful elven cat that I forget something else in the cat entry. Specifically, the ecology section for the domestic cat.

A well-treated cat will live for 15 years or more. The cat’s gestation period is about two months, with 1d4+1 kittens in each litter. Kittens are weaned when about eight weeks old. Mother cats will fight to the death to defend kittens.

This is amazing, and one of the reason I love the Monstrous Manual. Not only do we get a full page devoted to cats in a game where heroes fight orcs and dragons, but we get detailed information about the birth of new kittens. I could consider this a waste of space (when do you need to know a cat’s gestation period in AD&D?), but it’s one of those things that gives the game a ridiculous level of flexibility.

See, most modern RPGs are well-designed and streamlined to tackle the exact thing they were made to do. For example, you don’t do hack and slash in a FATE-based game, because that’s a system designed for group storytelling. But the minds behind D&D never had that focus. They just threw everything they could think of into the mix. The result is a game that’s primarily designed for combat and treasure-hunting but which has enough extraneous detail that you could turn it into a fantasy farming simulator if you wanted.

Wolves are the Kindest Animals Ever

The intro text for the wolf reads as follows:

The wolf is a very active, cunning carnivore, capable of surviving in nearly every climate. Shrouded in mystery and suspicion, they are viewed as vicious killers that slaughter men and animals alike for the lack of better things to do. The truth is that never in recorded history has a non-rabid or non-charmed wolf attacked any creature having an equal or higher intellect than itself.

Never. In. Recorded. History. So just shut up Wikipedia, with your list of wolf attacks in North America. Except for the ones tagged as “rabid,” none of those ever happened!

Okay, well, technically I guess they could have happened, since wolves can have Intelligence scores of up to 4. So if you have a 3 Intelligence, you’re downright screwed. If you have an Intelligence of 4 or higher, you might as well walk up to that pack of wolves and start petting. I mean, they can’t all be rabid or charmed, and there has never been a time in recorded history that a wolf has attacked an intelligent creature for any other reason.

The entire wolf entry continues in this vein. I never realized how strong the wolf lobby was in D&D:

Their eyes, a gold or amber color, seem to have an almost empathic ability.

(The emphasis on empathic is in the original text.)

Wolves prefer small prey over the larger variety, because of the amount of energy required to run them down. Even then, they catch only the weak and sickly animals. Wolves usually hunt only one large quarry per week, per pack, going without food for days at a time. During summer months, a single wolf can consume over 30 mice in a single day.

If a wolf or wolf pack is attacked by humans, they run away, looking back momentarily to make sure they are not being followed. If backed into an inescapable location, they will attack by tearing at clothing or legs and arms until they have an opening to escape.

(That’s right – not only do you have nothing to fear from wolves, but you can actively try to chase them down with a club and not have to worry about anything more than a bit of torn clothing!)

Wolves are valuable hunters in the wild. Fear of the wolf has resulted in their extinction in many areas. This genocide results in a marked increase in rodents and deer population that has nearly demolished the surrounding ecosystems.

The wolf entry spend 421 words telling us how nice and peaceful wolves are – which would be great, were they not listed in a book called the Monstrous Manual and were combat stats not the very first thing listed in the entry. The three other types of wolves – dire wolves, worgs, and winter wolves, get less than half that word count combined. Basically, all we know from reading this entry is that dire wolves are big, worgs can talk and are evil, and winter wolves have a breath weapon and pelts worth 5,000 gp.

None of them, though, will ever, ever come close to the majesty, cunning, and haunting beauty of a true wolf.

I spend a whole lot of time on this blog writing about Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Part of that is because those are the games I’m most familiar with. The other part of it is that those are the games that are truly defined by the term “glorious mess.” These games are dripping with enthusiasm and imagination, and you can just tell sometimes that the designers had more energy than common sense. And that energy is downright infectious.

I can’t claim that the Monstrous Manual is particularly well-designed, but I can say that no other book could possibly present details on feline pregnancy, stats for 18 different kinds of birds, and an uncomfortable love of wolves in a way that makes me want to use that stuff in a game. I can actually see myself running an adventure where the PCs have to befriend a group of elven cats to help defend a peaceful pack of wolves from evil hunters. It would be utterly ridiculous, but it would also be very fun.