B/X Morale for AD&D

 I posted these rules in a reddit comment a while back, but I figured I'd post it again here to make it easier to find.

So, Basic D&D has a 2d6-based morale system, where each individual monster is given a score from 2 to 12.

Page 67 of the AD&D DMG, on the other hand, presents a d100-based morale system. There is a base score of 50%, plus 5% per hit die, plus 1% per hit point above the die. Then, if a morale check is failed, the margin of failure is checked against a table, which I've duplicated below.

1% to 15%	fall back, fighting
16% to 30%	disengage-retreat
31% to 50%	flee in panic
51% or greater	surrender

It's also worth noting that AD&D requires morale checks more frequently. A check is made each round when faced by an obviously superior force, when 25% of the party is killed, when 50% of the party is killed, when the leader is unconscious, and when the leader is slain; whereas B/X only requires a morale check upon the first kill, and when half the party is killed.

Now, the difference in systems creates a problem. I, and I think most of us, prefer the B/X morale system—but AD&D monsters don't have morale ratings, and B/X provides no way to calculate morale based on the monster's other stats.

So I set up a spreadsheet and mapped the AD&D rules onto a 2d6 roll. In practice, the extra 1% per hit point winds up being essentially negligible, so the end result is a simple table by hit dice:

HD	Morale
0-1	6
2-4	7
5-8	8
9+	10

It's interesting that these categories actually map very well onto the "Normal Man"/"Hero"/"Superhero" categorization that we see in OD&D and Chainmail. Probably just a coincidence, but it's nice that we get some memorable breakpoints on the table.

These values do tend to be a little bit lower than B/X, even if you use the B/X rules that have monsters making fewer morale checks. Vonsidering that a failure of 15% or less is only "fall back, fighting" in AD&D, whereas B/X doesn't bother with different degrees of failure, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to add +1 to all of these values in order to bring the two systems more in line with each other. (Adding 15% to the underlying percentages is also an option, and roughly similar in the end, but I've decided not to go with that option since it leads to an uglier and less memorable table in my opinion.)

Increasing the values by 1 also gives a maximum value of 11—the highest non-guaranteed value in the B/X system—which also nicely approximates the way things tend to work out in AD&D, where high-level monsters are guaranteed or near-guaranteed to succeed their morale checks.

So finally we get this table:

HD	Morale
0-1	7
2-4	8
5-8	9
9+	11

Dungeon23 Days 6-9: Rooms 10-17, Week 2 Complete

Been busy the last few days, finally got caught up, so here's days 6 through 9:

DL1, Room 10 (Week 2) — Rat Lair

2-12 giant rats. 1-6 corpses w/ treasure & pipes of the sewers.

DL1, Room 11 (Week 2) — Stairs & Collapsed Hall

To DL2. Skeleton w/ treasure. Cursed goblet turns water to poison.

DL1, Room 12 (Week 2) — Pool Room

2-12 constrictor snakes (HD 1, damage 1-3)

DL1, Room 13 (Week 2) — Pit Room

Empty.

DL1, Room 14 (Week 2) — Chasm

To DL 4 (90')

DL1, Room 15 (Week 2) — Obelisk Room

Spilling human blood summons an imp.

Encounters for Week 2

1-3: 1-6 rats
4-6: 1-2 snakes

 

DL1, Room 16 (Week 3) — Pit Room

To DL 2.

DL1, Room 17 (Week 3) — Empty Room

Dungeon23 Day 5: Rooms 8 & 9, Week 1 Complete, and Wandering Monsters

DL1, Room 8 (Week 1) — Black Bear Lair

Black bear lair. 1-4 dead adventurers with treasure.

Wandering Monsters for Week 1

1-3: 1-4 rats

4-6: black bear

DL1, Room 9 (Week 2) — Cavern

2-8 giant rats.

Dungeon23 Days 3 & 4 - DL1 Rooms 4-7: Minor Tombs

 Missed yesterday's post but I still got the rooms mapped out, so here's rooms 4 through 7.

DL1, Room 4 (Week 1) — Minor Tomb

Treasure in coffin.

DL1, Room 5 (Week 1) — Minor Tomb

Looted. 1-6 giant rats.

DL1, Room 6 (Week 1) — Minor Tomb

Treasure in coffin. Zombie.

DL1, Room 7 (Week 1) — Minor Tomb

Empty coffin.

 

Dungeon23 Day 2 - DL1 Rooms 2-3, and an update to DL1 Room 1

Another couple rooms and I've got a complete mini-dungeon, with a treasure guarded by a monster and a couple traps. Tomorrow, then, things expand into the rest of the megadungeon...

 
  

DL1, Room 2 (Week 1) — Grand Hall

Description: Trap—ceiling descends if rm.1-3 is looted.

DL1, Room 3 (Week 1) — Knight's Tomb

Description: Coffin contains Ghoul, treasure, & false bottom w/ chute to DL3. Sword worth 500 s.p.

I've also added a trap to Room 1, where poison darts will fire from the walls once the trap in room 2 is triggered.

 

Dungeon 23, DL1, Room 1

My journal finally arrived today, so here's my first room for Dungeon23!

Having started late, I'm planning on doing two rooms per day from tomorrow til I catch up. Otherwise, I don't really have much in the way of a plan, so not much to note here I guess.

One note, not relevant to this room but relevant in the future: often times I'll just note generic "treasure"—this represents a roll on the dungeon treasure table in OD&D book 3 (page 7).

DL1, Room 1 (Week 0) — Entrance

Description: Old offerings to the dead

Pretty simple room today, not much to say about it, just the entrance to a tomb.

The Delian Tomb, TSR Style

I've been working on some maps for my version of the Caverns of Quasqueton, and decided to try my hand at my own version of Matt Colville's Delian Tomb, in the style of the old TSR maps.

The numbering and most of the text was copied directly from Matt's notes (including the inconsistency of "Varnus" vs. "Varius", so you can use whichever name you prefer), and then just rearranged so it would fit on one page. The Delian Tomb is 13"x17" if you include a minimum one-square border, so I cut a bit off the top, making it 8.5"x11" with about a 0.65" grid.

Below is first the blue version, and then a printer-friendly variant. Both are under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) license—so do whatever you want with them, just make sure to give me credit and link back to this post.