Wednesday, April 25, 2012

A-to-Z Challenge, V: Vulbat (New Oe/BX/1E Monster)

Today's A-to-Z monster was a staple of monster comics of the 50s and 60s. Each issue would usually feature a vampire story and a wolfman story. Then every second issue or so they would have a mummy story (starting to sound "Universally" familiar?), and there would be some witch and voodoo stories thrown in every once in a while. And there would be the occasional mad scientist story, like the one that today's monster comes from. I don't imagine it would take too long before young readers would get sick of the stories, seeing as after about 6 issues they pretty much feel the same. I also imagine this is why, after about a year of publication, many of the pubs would start re-running older stories mixed with new ones. By the end of the run of a couple of the titles, the entire issue were only anthologies of stories recombined from earlier issues.

Vulbat


Oe/1E STATS
FREQUENCY: Uncommon
NO. APPEARING: 2-12
ARMOR CLASS: 6
MOVE: 3”/9”
HIT DICE: 2
% IN LAIR: 10%
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 5
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2-16/3-18
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Blood drain, disease
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Immune to disease
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Animal
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
BX STATS
HIT DICE: 2
MOVE: 30’/90’
ATTACKS: 5 claws/1 bite
DAMAGE: 1-2/1-2/1-2/1-2/1-4
NO. APPEARING: 2-12
SAVE AS: Fighter: 1
MORALE: 7
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
ALIGNMENT: Neutral


DESCRIPTION

Vulbats are a cross between a vulture and a vampire bat. They are clumsy and oafish, moving slowly and attacking as a 1 HD creature. On any successful bite, there is a 50% chance that a vulbat will infect a victim with a mild disease that, if uncured, will cause minor cramping and discomfort, causing afflicted creatures to attack with a -1 "to hit" penalty until cured. Additionally, on any natural “to hit” roll of 20, a vulbat will continue to drain blood from a victim at a rate of 1-2 points per melee round until the victim is dead or the vulbat is killed. Vulbats are immune to disease of all types.

2 comments:

  1. This helps a lot. My other half is teaching my son this so I am trying to learn up on it as well. Thanks so much.

    http://kdstormclutteredmind.blogspot.com/

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  2. That's kinda fun. I've never encountered a Vulbat in any of my gaming, but you could really have some fun playing up the 'cramping' part of the disease if you happened to catch it ;)


    ~ Rhonda Parrish

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