Hi all,

I said I would do this a while back and never did, but here I am....

I really like bleached lizards idea of a dungeon loadout sheet to give the Overlord more flexibility in what monsters to add into a dungeon. However, this isnt as easy as it sounds and has to be done right, otherwise the overlord could just keep populating it with the same things all the time. The whole idea was for more variety, especially since I now have ToI and none of the original 40 dungeons have any monsters from ToI in them (and the lava beetles are upset by that).

However, before I start putting together my own, my first job was to re-value the monsters and this is where I need your help and feedback.

First of all, I'm talking about raw value taking the monsters on their own. The fact that the beastmen spawn card gives 2+1 beastmen and the sorcerer circle spawn gives 2 sorcerers is irrelevant for the purpose of this excercise - it is simply comparing individual monsters.

So, I sat down with all the copper monsters, laid them all out in a big line and looked real careful at their stats and abilities, trying to take everything into account. Here is what I came up with

5 Kobold
7 Spider, Hellhound, Skeleton
10 Ferrox, Beastman
11 Sorcerer, Shade, Lava Beetle
12 Razorwing, Dark Priest
14 Wendigo, Medusa
15 Deep Elf, Ogre, Manticore
16 Blood Ape, Naga
18 Golem, Troll
19 Chaos Beast
20 Giant, Dragon, Ice Wyrm
21 Demon

Some of my own comments:

Sorcerers and Shades at 11 and Ferrox and Beastmen at 10. This was a tricky one, but the more I looked at the stats, the more I would always choose the Sorcerer over Beastman. The movement is the same. Sorcerer has 1 more wound. Beastman is +2 damage, Sorcerer is Sorcery 2. Damage on the red dice is the same on 5/6 sides, but on the one that is different it is 4 instead of 1. But there are 4 surges on the white dice, and 2 on the red. However, the main thing is that the sorcerer can attack at a distance, so this just gives him the edge.

Deep Elf. The threat cost to reinforce a deep elf is 4 (although this is a pointless rule since you can never actually reinforce a deep elf as none of the Lt's have a deep elf as a minion, but anyway...) so I thought originally they were about as powerful as a beastman. Oh no. +1 movement, +3 wounds, +1 armour. The pierce 2 is not quite as good as the +2 damage. But they have the same attack dice. Deep Elf has Shadowcloak. So its a much better figure. But how good. Not as good as a Naga but I think better than a Medusa

Ogre. Reinforcement cost 6 - same as Troll. But the more I looked at it, the more I didnt think it was that good.

Demon / Giant / Dragon - Another tricky one. My experience is that the Demon is better than a Dragon.

The next stage is for me to get flamed and told that I dont know what I am on about and how my list is rubbish.

Once that stage has passed, and I have listened to peoples comments, I'll amend my list accordingly and then start work on the Masters. I'd like to simply say that a master version of the monster is 50% more, but I dont think this is the case, since the extra abilities of some masters is far superior than others. (Eg: Master Beastmen should outvalue Master Ferrox)

And then finally, I want to work on my own Dungeon Loadout sheet, giving the OL XP with which to purchase monsters to populate a dungeon. This will follow the same basic idea of bleached lizards (Dividing the XP into the 3 types and then having some generic that can go anywhere), but on some levels I will make some monsters cheaper, and on others I will make some more expensive - possibly even excluding some from the list.

This will hopefully encourage the variety of monsters without the OL choosing his favourites each time.

Thanks all.

Good luck! I tried to do the same before I created my loadout sheet but just found it to be so exceptionally difficult and highly subjective that I gave up and decided to "trust" in the values supplied in the RtL rulebook (more fool me).

If you do manage to come up with something though I'd be very interested in seeing it (plus, if it ends up better than mine it would take any responsibility off me to keep my one up to date)!

Only problem I see with having higher values for the monsters (which is actually quite correct - to keep things correctly proportinal Kobolds shouldn't start at 1 like they do on my sheet) is that the maths involved becomes more difficult; it's easy enough for people to figure things out if they only have to add up to 4-5 in each category, but if you're using numbers like 17-23-32 it might put people off.

Anyway, best of luck and I look forward to seeing the finished product!

Oh, and would you really say that a demon is only worth four kobolds?

A very good point. Thats one thing I tried to take into account - but failed.

i.e trying to think "Is 2 kobolds about the same as 1 beastman?" "Are 2 beastmen the same as an Ogre", etc.

Seems I might need to rethink the values a bit. I spent most of my time putting them in order. I should have spent some more time on the values. I think the only reason I had beastmen at 10 and dragons at 20 was because of the original reinforcement values (4 & 8). Of course, I'd much rather have 1 dragon or a demon than 2 beastmen. So on my scale, what do people think Dragons should be worth? 25? 30?

As has been pointed out before, this sort of undertaking is a very tricky business. There are actually TWO things you need to do first, before you start figuring out a cost scale.

1) Decide how many equivalence classes you want. One could imagine a system where each monster has its own unique cost, since none of them are precisely the same (note that this would take a very large numeric scale to be properly expressed). Probably you don't want to do this; you'll want to consider some monsters as 'roughly the same,' - which indeed you have done. The fewer equivalence classes you have, the simpler your system is, but the more prone to imbalance (since if monster A and B are 'considered' equivalent but A is very slightly better than B, than A will always be chosen).

2) Decide on the ranking of equivalence classes - which is what you have done. Most likely you will have to go back and forth between this and step 1.

3) THEN decide on your numeric scaling. Note that the easiest way to do this is probably not to set your lowest-ranked equivalence class (say kobolds) at some fixed value, but to set your MEDIAN equivalence class at some arbitrary sufficiently high value, like 100, then decide how many of each creature it takes to be worth the same as the creatures worth 100. When you're completely done, you can divide all the values by their largest common factor in order to make the numbers as small as possible.

This whole process is made trickier by the fact that monsters in RtL change as you upgrade them. For instance, looking only at the Copper stats, I can see why you put Hellhounds where you did; however, Hellhounds actually upgrade INCREDIBLY well, and overall, they are probably equivalent to Sorcerers. Looking at your ordering, it is mostly pretty good, except I would definitely swap Lava Beetles and Hellhounds. Compared to Skeletons, Lava Beetles are tougher and have blast, but are much slower, do less damage and have virtually no range - and they don't even upgrade that nicely either. They are really exceptionally junky.

Paul Grogan said:

I have had a look at the copper monster stats and think a Dragon should be worth at least 25, but not 30. 30 makes a dragon twice as strong as a Manticore and the health of a dragon is not double that of an manticore (plus the abilities of a dragon are only slightly better - quick shot is similar in strength to breath).